Success Principles for the Write Magic
~A Living Document~

These principles of success are based on five success predictors used by a major league baseball scout. He used these predictors to choose the players who had the best chances of being successful in the majors.
 
As a baseball fan and student of human potential, these success predictors got my attention. I worked with them and realized they could be applied to any profession. They evolved into what you see below and will continue to evolve. This isn’t a system or a formula but a group of guidelines to help us reach our potential. It's a living document. It will grow and change as we all work with the principles that lie within it.

Follow #thewritemagic on Twitter for daily insights on each of the principles as well as for The Write Magic Blog.

#1 Desire

• Let your desire, your vision pull you towards the success you choose.

 
#2 Self-discipline (To bind yourself to what you value)

• Process not goal oriented
• Preparedness (have a plan, create a reasonable routine, execute consistently). To be prepared as a writer remember to do these things every day: live, read, write and be silent.
• Commitment helps you persist
• Support and accountability
• Take delight in the moment to moment work as well as overall process (be able to delay gratification)
• Celebrate successes but don’t let elation take you away from the work by thinking you’ve reached the pinnacle.
• Act more think less
• Discipline is showing up. And then coming back to the work at hand when you get distracted.
• Allow space for the deepening of understanding.
• Watch for the appearance of laziness, being disheartened and falling into busyness.

 
#3 Believe in Yourself

• Know yourself on the human level as well as spiritual as a way to begin believing in yourself.
• Discover what you value, believe and resonate with. Get to know your guiding principles.
• Confidence based on higher self not ego
• Release feelings of desperation. They repel what you want and allow you to be used by others.
• Don’t let others define you.
• Embrace your unique self.
• Start telling others you’re a writer to help you believe it.

 
#4 Self-care

• Manage stress
• Know your limits and set boundaries both personal and professional.
• Humility (rejection and ego)
• Cultivate personal relationships and time for self.
• Practice gift-and-response gratitude (being thankful for life itself). This protects us from going into worst case scenario and brings more good our way.
• Celebrate success

 
#5 Focus & Concentration

• Know overall focus (vision and goals)
• Bring your work in progress into focus and then concentrate all your energy towards it.
• Concentrate energy and effort by creating a hierarchy of priorities.
• Set work and time boundaries as a tool to help you focus your attention and concentrate your energy.
• Eliminate distractions in order to fully give your attention to the work at hand.

 
#6 Cooperation not Competition

• Being competitive zaps your energy and takes your focus away from creativity.
• Stop comparing yourself with others. The only competition is with yourself.
• Cultivate professional connections and look for ways to collaborate.
• Remember, you stand on the shoulders of those who came before you.
• Cooperation opens up opportunity and stimulates creativity. Competition can stimulate creativity but also causes missed opportunities. This limits the ingenuity first stimulated by competitive thoughts.

 
#7 Growth Mindset

• Ability to learn new things
• Adaptive
• Flexible
• Willingly seek out and accept honest and helpful feedback.
• Curios

 
#8 Creative Process

• It takes you outside the accepted standards of what is possible.
• The creative process applies to individual works as well as how you create your place in the industry/world.
• Have a way of tapping into your source of creativity consistently (subconscious). Pros know how to court their muse.

 
#9 Craft

• Study and practice your craft so you can produce the best work possible.