Become A Resilient Writer With 5 Mental Models (10x Your Willpower)

Upgrade your mindset with these 5 frameworks

Building an audience is a long hard road.

Most writers give up within 6 months. Your enthusiasm and dreams will get you started. But they won’t sustain you. Low results discourage even the most positive person.

But if you develop the ability to keep going. You’ll get ahead of most writers. And achieve your writing dreams of extra money or freedom from the 9–5.

The most helpful way to do this is with a new set of mental models.

This is 10x more effective than willpower.

A mental model is how you think. The story you tell yourself. Your motivation is not affected by the facts but by the meaning you give to them.

Upgrade your mindset with these 5 models:

1. Place your faith in compounding

Creators can learn a valuable lesson from investors.

Warren Buffet is worth $117bn. He is a brilliant investor who started when he was 11. But 90% of his wealth came after his 65th birthday

That’s because compounding is ridiculously powerful.

The key is to stay in the game because the gains become exponential. The progress in 1 week is irrelevant. It’s time that matters. But many burnout trying to go viral.

So set your aim to be still writing in 2 years rather than gaining exposure this week. Trust the power of compounding. It guarantees to take you somewhere exciting. Pace your creative efforts.

Play the game to stay in the game

2. Focus on the gain not the gap

Dan Sullivan’s brilliant book The Gap and The Gain changed my life.

They identify a pattern that kills our motivation.

What happens is this:

1. We set a goal for ourselves. A desired future.
2. We see a gap between now and then
3. This creates dissatisfaction
4. We are desperate to close that gap
5. So we take action to move closer to our goal
6. We reach our desired state (or at least get close to it)
7. But instead of getting closer to fulfillment. We move the goalposts. Wanting more.
8. The gap widens between now & our desired state (so we go back to step 2)

I remember the joy of reaching 100 followers and Medium Partnership. But found it wasn’t enough. I wanted 200 followers, then 500. Then I wanted Twitter followers. And then email subscribers. It never stops.

Living in a constant state of dissatisfaction is exhausting. We feel inadequate. Writing online and its focus on numbers makes writers vulnerable to this.

The key is to switch your reference point. Instead of measuring yourself against where you are going. Measure yourself against where you’ve been.

This one change will transform your energy, confidence and motivation.

How to do this:

• Identify 3 ways you’ve progressed this week.
• Assess where you were 3 months again. Notice 5 positive changes.
• Recall your situation 2 years ago. Name 7 ways you’ve grown and developed.

And if you want to blow your mind. Consider 10 years ago. Write down 10 ways you have progressed.

This is super simple.

But training your mind to celebrate progress will sustain you.

3. Take back control

Feeling in control is a key component of well-being.

But creating online draws your attention to what you can’t control:

• how many people comment
• how many people read your words
• how many people share your work

Focusing on what you can’t control is an invitation to an emotional rollercoaster. Some days you’ll be flying high. Then you’ll be in despair. This will exhaust you. The quality of your writing will drop. Then you’ll quit.

But there is a better way.

Focus on inputs. Those things you can control. This will give you stability. And energy as you achieve your targets.

You can decide which inputs to concentrate on but try these suggestions:

• Time engaging and commenting
• Reading books/articles/courses
• Implementing your learning
• Time spent writing each day
• Number of articles written
• Digital products created

Set goals you can control and ignore what you can’t.

Because feeling successful every day will nourish you.

4. Redefine success & failure

To become resilient you need to define failure and success differently

This is crucial because everything you publish has a number attached to it. This gives instant judgment. An assessment of success or failure.

This will drain you.

But deciding on new definitions of success and failure can protect you. And preserve your motivation.

A new attitude to failure

Central to creating online is getting comfortable with failure.

You need to try a ton of stuff that won’t work. In Originals, Adam Grant shows that what distinguishes successful writers from the rest. It’s the volume of writing. This is how you produce quality content and learn to be a great writer.

You need to fail a lot.

When you read the stories of those who have made it big. Nicolas Cole. Tim Denning. Eve Arnold. They all say the same thing. Volume wins. Get comfortable with failure.

The only failure is not trying and giving up.

A new understanding of success

Success isn’t going viral.

This is outside of your control and due to a many of factors

Success is not giving up. It’s writing lots. It’s improving your writing. It’s keeping going when you see no results.

Notice when you are doing these things and celebrate them.

5. Think like a farmer not a factory worker

Most new writers think creating is like factory work.

But unless they change this mindset they won’t last.

Factory work has the following features:

• There is a predictable link between effort and output. Work an extra 2 hours will you produce 100 more widgets
• You can see the results of your work at the end of each working shift
• You can see clear, linear progress towards your goal

Creating online is nothing like this.

A better model is that of a farmer.

Farming has the following features:

• plant seeds, work for months and see no results
• you don’t know if there will be a harvest or how big it will be
• a farmer keeps going because he has faith in the process
• even if the harvest fails one year he retains faith and plants seeds again

Creators quit all the time because of the stories they tell themselves. Their perception damages their motivation.

Adopting these 5 mental models will transform your motivation and sustain your writing.

And if you can keep going then good things will happen.

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