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.
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
#2 Self-discipline (To bind yourself to what you value)
#3 Believe in Yourself
#4 Self-care
#5 Focus & Concentration
#6 Cooperation not Competition
#7 Growth Mindset
#8 Creative Process
#9 Craft
- 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.