Episode 6: What if I have chronic health issues?

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of chronic health issues and their impact on an author's career. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own health journey, Claire explores how chronic conditions can affect work and life and provides compassionate strategies for managing your author dreams alongside your health needs.

Key Takeaways:

• Chronic health issues do not mean you have to give up on your author dreams. Modifications and self-compassion can help you thrive.

• Connecting with your three centers of intelligence can provide valuable insights into how to handle chronic health issues and their impact on your work.

• Acceptance and care are essential skills for managing chronic health conditions effectively.

• Developing a loving connection to your body, mind, and heart is crucial for long-term well-being and success.

• Seeking medical treatment and advocating for your health is vital, even in the face of potential challenges within the medical system.

Why Listen? If you find yourself struggling with chronic health issues and wondering if you can still achieve your author goals, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance their health with their passion for writing.

Links Mentioned:

• Sustain Your Author Career

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors, I'm so glad that you're here. My name is Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer myself. You can check out my latest book Sustain Your Author Career on basically any online retailer by going to books2read.com/syac Sustain Your Author Career and that "2" in books2read is the numeral, books2read.com/syac.

I have a feeling that this is going to be one of the top downloaded episodes of this podcast. So like 10 whole people are going to download it. Yay! Honestly, I'm so grateful. For all ten of you. So today we're asking and then answering. The question, what if I have chronic health issues? [00:01:00] And then tagging along to the end of that is the concern that's sort of implied of can I still reach my author dreams?

Is it futile to try? I remember having depression in my teens, that really high-functioning stuff that no adults knew how to recognize at the time. , and giving up on some of my dreams. I did that because I never saw any examples of people with depression out there doing the things that I wanted to do.

I used to want to be some sort of performer, oddly enough, like really wanted to. I've always loved the adrenaline rush of being on stage and performing for like a delighted audience. I specifically remember a moment while I was driving I 35, my freshman year of college. And I asked myself what it was I actually wanted to do with my life and what I had any talent with, that was also a factor.

So the only thing, two things that came up for me were writing and performing, so acting, singing, that sort of thing. [00:02:00] I didn't think it could be a singer or actor. With the kind of depression that I had. So I chose writer because, well, clearly some more obvious role models there. That moment and my rationale still really stand out to me though, as probably a pretty common experience of people who have any sort of chronic condition trying to figure out.

What can I do with this? What is now out of my reach? Unfortunately, although as we'll see very little is probably out of your reach. So we're gonna talk more about that And I think that's why it's important to talk about chronic health issues and how you may not see a ton of authors dealing with theirs After all, we're mostly at home dealing with it, but there are plenty of folks living their author dreams dealing with the time suck that chronic health issues can become, and taking good care of their body.

You don't have to choose between caring for your needs, however burdensome they may seem, and following your publishing [00:03:00] dreams. Modifications? Sure. We love those, but there's not really a norm in anything about this job. So in that way, there's no default to modify. Right? Everyone's modifying to their individual needs.

I can't tell you how many of the authors I know in this community experience chronic health issues. I'm one of them, even. If you are also one of them, or if you're listening to this because you want to support the authors you know who are dealing with health issues, very kind of you, by the way, I'll say that this is , eventually an issue that comes for us all, health issues, everyone, our bodies break down.

This is not to lessen the impact of it because when you have a chronic health condition, especially from a young age, it feels incredibly unfair. So I'm only saying that to remind us all that the ableism. You might be facing from others if you are in this position, it will bite them in the ass eventually.

It'll [00:04:00] happen. Sleep well at night knowing that, my type 8s and type 1s. In all seriousness, this episode will probably end up being mostly about the internalized ableism that tells us we shouldn't have the needs that we do. And I know talking about ableism makes some people roll their eyes. It's almost a buzzword on the interwebs lately, but that doesn't make the concept of it any less important because at the end of the day, your or my internalized ableism is a form of garbage perfectionism that can erode our connection to our heart, mind, and body.

Not great. That being said, I'm not here to shame anyone because I still have internalized ableism. I haven't rooted out yet. Just like I've been a feminist for, you know, as long as I can remember, and I still have internalized misogyny that pops up from time to time. And I'm just like, Whoa, where did that come from?

Same with racism. I've spent a lot of time reading and learning to practice anti-racism, but I still have, [00:05:00] you know, racist stereotypes popping in my head from time to time. Basically, we're all in different stages of our personal evolution on all of these issues, and it often takes a lifetime of work to counteract all these societal norms that, uh, help us internalize or force us to internalize these isms.

As far as my own journeys go, I would say that rooting out my internalized ableism, , is probably the one that I've made the least progress on, honestly, even though I've been dealing with chronic health issues my whole life, it's just wild how that can happen. So I'm here really just interpreting what my understanding of the Enneagram tells us about the importance of rooting out ableism and how some of the cultural mythos we take as law is actually hurting our relationship with ourselves.

There's so much to say on this topic of chronic health conditions, and I will absolutely not hit on all the points. Like, all the medical stuff is between you and your doctor, [00:06:00] for one. Uh, I'm not gonna get into the weird health conspiracy shit on that, though I do feel like I've earned a little bit of conspiracy in my life over the last few years of being exposed to it constantly.

And refraining from diving in the deep end. I don't know. I feel like I've earned a little, a little conspiracy treat. Doesn't it sound nice? Just let go and bathe in the conspiracy theories instead of all this critical thinking all the time. Ugh. Yes. I, I want to just pick sweet oblivion, but I'm not there yet.

I can't just let go in that way. Okay. So yeah, I'm not going to get into health conspiracies here instead. I'll stay focused as much as I can on the Enneagram specific approaches to our health and wellbeing, because those are things that you won't find in many other places. You can find health conspiracies just about anywhere nowadays.

So it's just gonna be Enneagram theory, not conspiracy theory. And it's going to be lessons from my time as an author mixed in.

I think the approach I want to take today is to talk about the three centers of intelligence. So these are three [00:07:00] intelligences through which we connect to ourselves. Lovingly, hopefully. In return, they provide us with important information. We can become disconnected from our centers if we don't value them, or if we disregard them, or, unfortunately, if we've suffered trauma around them.

I know this immediately sounds woo woo and new agey and borderline a conspiracy theory. So let me be clear that there are not three actual centers that you treat separately.

Describing us as having three centers is just easy language to talk about our patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that arise from our core motivations, perceptual filter. So when we discuss cognitive patterns. In the Enneagram, we discuss the head center, right? So people tend to associate the head with cognition and intellect already.

So it makes sense to just call this our head center, uh, for linguistic purposes. When we discuss emotional patterns, we discuss the heart center. [00:08:00] People tend to associate their heart with emotions, right? And when we discuss behavioral patterns, we discuss the body center, , sometimes called the gut center because people tend to associate the body with action.

And as a side note, intuition is talked about in the body center as well, which is why it's sometimes called the gut center. So I'll be calling it the body center through this episode, so just get ready. All of this comes from well established theory of human psychology, cognition, emotions, behavior, these are kind of the three things functioning inside of us.

So those, seamlessly. Our emotions can lead to particular thoughts. Our thoughts can lead to particular behavior, and our behavior can lead to, say, particular emotions. Think about how exercise influences serotonin and dopamine, for instance. So no one center is more important or intelligent than the other two when they're all [00:09:00] firing on all cylinders. Many of us were taught that the only quote unquote real intelligence was the head or intellect, but that's simply not the only or even the best way Of knowing emotions give us important information.

And so does our body. So devaluing the heart center, for instance, will cause us to disconnect from our emotions and possibly repress them. Almost everyone has a few emotions that they feel they're not allowed to experience. So we all have some emotional repression in us happening in us. Maybe at this very moment, , to varying degrees.

So it's normal, but unpacking that repression can be a huge gift to our health too. So this is why we learned to value all three centers. They all serve important purposes in our well being. A lot of the problems authors into can be solved by looking at the three centers and asking which one or [00:10:00] two is falling asleep on the job and causing the remaining one to try to do the knowing of all three.

Head centers are shit at emotion, for instance. Thinking through emotions can be useful sometimes. And you need the heart center present for that, and so on each center has its own purpose. There are two skills that really stand out to me about chronic health issues. And those are the skill of acceptance and the skill of care.

If you develop a health issue that will most assuredly not go away as long as you live, Then there's a certain amount of work around acceptance that we want to do to keep from pretending that it's not there, which can cause us to, to not make the accommodations we need and deserve. When this acceptance doesn't exist, I see authors trying to [00:11:00] ignore the condition and push through to get the words down, but that usually makes it worse afterwards, right?

Maybe you deemed it worth it to push through, but why? Really think about the result at the end. You push through. Great! But now you might have severe pain or fatigue as a result. And pain and fatigue lead to mood disruptions. So maybe you also feel like shit emotionally now, and it also disrupts thinking.

So you're struggling to focus on the book. , you know, maybe this is a book that you're trying to read for pleasure. You deserve it. Or maybe you're struggling to focus on the conversation you're having with a loved one. Basically, you left nothing for yourself when you pushed through. And listen, we've all tried to push through.

Of course we do. Of course we try. No one wants to feel that restriction or limitation. It can feel like our dream is slipping away in those moments. But spoiler, it's not. It's not. You don't have to push [00:12:00] through. Acceptance is really fucking hard y'all. When you truly accept your chronic health condition, here are some things you might be asked to accept along with that.

Letting certain people down. Being criticized, being called lazy, irritating people, feeling needy, asking for help regularly, missing out on what others are doing, and even losing connection with certain people. Not the great people, but certain other ones. so yeah, there are drawbacks to acceptance that you're going to face.

And I think that's why we don't face it sometimes. We don't allow ourselves to accept something because we're also accepting the possibility of those negative side effects.

But here's what you don't have to accept when you opt for self acceptance. Hating your body, mind, or heart, taking shit off anyone, giving up on your [00:13:00] dreams, having close friends, and, you know, just enjoying your one perfectly imperfect life. Those things can still happen even while accepting the reality of your needs.

If you can't accept things from that first list, you're likely going to fight through to hit those deadlines. You're going to push yourself farther than you know is healthy to please people and avoid criticism. You'll wait to ask for help until you really, really need it and are in serious trouble, and so on.

If you allow that to happen, you're forfeiting a whole lot of love for yourself. And in doing so, you're hurting your connection to your three centers. And you need those centers healthy, for daily functioning and thriving.

So there's the Buddhist idea that transforming the world starts by transforming yourself. I really like this idea, and I don't think it's as selfish as it may sound at first. It doesn't mean you navel gaze all day long, or you never offer anything to [00:14:00] those around you. But rather, it points to a deep truth, which is that you cannot be more connected to others than you are to yourself.

Ever wonder why you can feel lonely around other people? This may be the answer. If you feel disconnected from yourself in a moment, if there's some part of you crying out for attention that you're uncomfortable looking at, then you'll disconnect from it. The result is that you feel disconnected from others, too.

So that's not great. That's not great at all. Especially when writers tend to be such solitary people to start with. We gotta feel that deep and nourishing connection with others whenever we can get the chance.

So this center work is really important. If all you did was try to get in touch more with your least developed center, you would see transformation in your life and your writing career that you didn't even think possible before. Here's the problem though, we often have a chronic illness existing in our least developed center.

It doesn't always work out that way of course, uh, we could have mental illness and have our [00:15:00] head center be our primary center, in which case the overuse of the head center might be exacerbating the symptoms. Uh, we could do a little work around lessening that burden by connecting more deeply to emotion in our physical body, maybe.

Give that head center a vacation, essentially. Closing off to a center is not a route forward that will serve you well for long. I promise. I totally understand the impulse though. If your body hurts all the time, why would you want to feel connected to it? That's super valid. So like, for instance, I'm a big fan of body scan meditations.

I love them because they put me right to sleep. My body has such a pattern of muscle tension that the moment I pause and relax, Tune into what's going on. I'm out. I'm out. Don't don't threaten me with a good time of relaxing my muscles So I never make it down to my feet when I do body scans. I have no idea what's going on in my feet Well, actually I do it's plantar fasciitis So maybe it's good that I don't make it down to my feet [00:16:00] Or maybe I really really need to make it down to my feet in a body scan just to hear what they have to say You Even if they're just cursing me out, the point is that body scans might not be for everyone.

If you have condition like chronic joint pain, body scans might actually hurt your connection to your body because they lure you in and then drag you through the mud. Look, pay attention to your body. Doesn't it fucking suck to be in it right now? I mean, yeah. So if a practice does not make you feel better, don't do it.

, but there are other ways to connect to your body and that's the good news. Because the authors I know who disconnect from their body center have a hard time moving the manuscript forward. They think they're just disconnecting from the physical pain, but if, if they don't find some other way to connect to their body center, they'll disconnect from their knowledge around taking focused action, too.

That's the gut. The gut tells us when it's time to move. So, those are in the same center of intelligence. And writing books takes a [00:17:00] little of that action fire to keep going.

I guess we're starting with the body center for this episode, so let's keep it going. Some ways to connect with your body center are movement, sure, and that includes whatever's comfortable for you. If it's wiggling your toes, great. If it's scrunching up all the muscles in your face and then relaxing, awesome.

If it's a nice gentle walk, go for it. , if you can do more with whatever physical condition you have, Great, do it. But if you can't, all hope is not lost. Connecting to the body center is less about working yourself to the bone or trying to get your body to look a certain way. In fact, it's never about trying to look a certain way.

But rather, it's about creating a bond of love between you and your physical existence. I even use drinking water as an excuse to connect to my body. Get that big, cold glass of water, start drinking, mmm. I send love to all my cells in my body that need this water to function. It's like, here you go, cells.

[00:18:00] And then, I often finish drinking the water by going, Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. God, I fucking love water. Cause it's true. Water is amazing. Uh, just, you know, bring your attention to the kind of things you do to nourish your body. So, give some focused attention to that. As you are connecting to your body. And that leads to the second thing I wanted to talk about outside of acceptance.

Which is the skill of care. So accept that your body is doing the best it can, and that might mean that you can't be like a superhero to everyone, but practice that acceptance without neglecting to care for your body and give it the best shot it has at feeling alive.

Just to drive the point home, any body center practice can be done through vengeful attention or through loving attention. So running on a treadmill until one of your legs gives out because you hate the way your body [00:19:00] looks and want to punish it, that would be vengeful attention. Even though you're exercising, which is, I guess, fine, you're just pumping hate and rejection into yourself, and that severs the connection between you and your body.

I know plenty of very athletic people who would have what much of society deems an acceptable body, but who are totally disconnected from that center because of the beliefs they have about their body that they use for exercise fuel. So just keep that in mind. If you exercise, experiment with how to do it with loving care.

Figure out what an exercise gift for your body would look like. Acceptance and care. I can't say that enough. Your body, it's doing the best it can. Treat it the same way you would treat a child who's doing the best they can, while not necessarily feeling that great, right? Unless, you know, unless you're shitty to kids, then don't do that.

Don't spank yourself or, or do, just, you know, [00:20:00] do it with loving kindness, I guess. lastly about the Body Center, I want to point out that our career of sitting and writing is probably the worst possible thing we could do to our bodies. But we know that, right? There's research about sitting all day. But also, we tune out from our bodies when we write.

We lose ourselves in the story. It's a great feeling in many ways. But we end up sitting in our chair and looking like a damn shrimp. But also we don't sometimes notice whatever pain we're experiencing until it's pretty bad. So a way to care for your body when you're a writer is to set alarms to take frequent breaks and check in with how your body is feeling.

What does it need to be happy right now? And then go do that.

Mood disorders are also a thing that a lot of writers deal with and it can get quite a bit of stigma because people want to call you emotional, which like, Yeah, that's the thing I'm struggling with, dude. Thanks for your help. Uh, but also there's this big emphasis on consistency [00:21:00] that I hear around the industry.

So, like, to be successful, you must be consistent. People put consistency on this fucking pedestal. And that is super ableist. If you're a person whose health issues have flare ups You're not less of a serious writer because you have to take unplanned days away from your work. Fuck off with that nonsense.

People with mood disorders, I hope you hear me when I say that you get to go do what you need to do. If you never know if you'll be in a place to write from one day to the next, that's just fine.

Writing will be there when you come back. You're still a writer like everyone else. And, you know, maybe just stay off social media while you're riding those waves. That might be a good way to, , give some loving care to your heart center. Social media is already disorienting and destabilizing to our moods.

Like, God, TikTok screws with my brain's ability to produce serotonin so bad. I just feel like, Generally down for days at a time [00:22:00] when I have that app on my phone and just scroll it endlessly. Anyway, it can be a very loving thing to avoid social media. When you need that energy for yourself, you never know what someone will post on social media.

So you're almost guaranteed to run into something triggering, which is not ideal if you're struggling with mood. If you want to reach out to people and feel human connection, which can be really healing, reach out to people, you know, who love and accept you. You're also likely to regret anything you post when you're managing the mood fluctuation, and I'm speaking from my own depression here.

Take the apps off your phone if you have to, go outside if that's safe for you at the time, and see if you can't activate your body center a little bit to alleviate the burden from your heart center and lightness load. That's not medical advice, by the way. If you need medical intervention, a loving thing you can do for yourself is go get it.

But I also understand that mood disorders can lead to a lot of strife in the medical complex. Uh, medications that don't work well. You might have those. You might [00:23:00] experience some gaslighting from doctors and so on. So, um, best of luck. I'm, I'm just being, you know, sort of flippant here. All I can really offer is that there's never a good reason to stop loving yourself and stay as connected to your heart center as you can.

And finally, head center health conditions. Most of the ones I ran into working with authors are mild, like slight paranoia, circular thinking, and so forth. So when I see people who are struggling with these mild Mental health setbacks. I actually get kind of excited because I know the center work can be hugely beneficial to them.

, these are more cognitive patterns than any official condition I'm talking about though. So the Enneagram is all about decoding cognitive patterns. , often these happen when we're asking our head center to do the work of the other centers. So building up that connection with the heart and body can open a flow of new information to the person that allows them to know in the deepest [00:24:00] sense of knowing.

What action to take and how they feel about a situation. The head center can only ever collect 33 percent of the information in a room or situation. If you don't have the other two centers offering their intelligence, yeah, the brain is going to be exhausted. So if you're dealing with sort of these mild cognitive frustrations, then this is where you start.

Now, if you have an actual mental health condition, remember acceptance and care. Accept that you have it. And care for it accordingly and with love. There's this idea that mental health issues, and sometimes mood conditions like depression are lumped in there, but it's this idea that those things are somehow beneficial to your writing, and if you treat them, you'll lose your touch.

I don't know that I agree with asking yourself to suffer untreated, and that that would necessarily serve your writing, and It certainly doesn't serve you the best. A lot [00:25:00] of comedians, for instance, fear that if they treat their depression, they'll stop being funny. But what actually happens, turns out, uh, and they find this out, if they go get treatment, is that if they treat their depression, They're still funny, and now they are not depressed.

That's all that happens, right? So if you feel like, well if I go get treatment, then I'm not going to be able to write, I'm not going to be the same kind of writer. You might be the same kind of writer, and just not suffering. And that's great.

Also, if you're wondering if depression is a mood condition or a mental condition, let me just say that I don't know. This is really where the line gets blurry. So, my experience of depression is that it's very much in all three of my centers. So, there are the mental patterns of thoughts I used to have that were very mean.

And rude and added to the depression. I've unpacked most of those now, and I really feel like it's a disruptive cognitive pattern anymore, or rather with the thoughts [00:26:00] come through. I'm like, Whoa, easy there thought not today. And then I kind of help it move along and there's the mood around it. And I've been working through that and I mostly don't have the moodiness of depression, but when I do, it's usually a sign that there was a big emotion I was ignoring for a while.

And it just needed to have it's say so I invite it through and it does its thing for a bit and then it moves along And then there's the physical element of depression, which I still have to write out. So that's the the fatigue of it there are days at a time where I kind of drag ass around the house because there's not like a single drop of serotonin to be found in my body if I can muster it on these days I'll go for long walks to try to remind my body that serotonin is, is kind of important and would it please, please give me some, that I have to do all this work to accept and support myself in this way might come as a surprise to some of you listening, but that's because you [00:27:00] don't see it. There's so, so much we don't see about each other's lives. When I'm feeling this way, I cope by retreating like a sick dog. So by nature, you won't know about it.

That's my own learned response, uh, in my own baggage, even after all this inner work I do on a daily basis. I can't quite shake this belief that it's, it's my responsibility to take care of myself completely. And that my needs are too much to bother anyone else with. So I know that's wrong in my head. And I've gotten to the point where I feel comfortable asking for the support I need from like John or my inner circle.

And for now, that's just where I'm at. I don't mind talking about it though, because I don't take it personally. So these are just patterns I picked up at a young age. They don't align with my values and yet they still keep happening. So I don't know. I find it pretty fascinating to observe.

Also, as a side note, what I described was just my kind of depression. There are all flavors of depression out there. Your flavor may be very different and [00:28:00] that doesn't make it better or worse. And that doesn't mean that you're going to approach it with the same success that I have had doing it the way that I have done it.

So, yeah, your mileage may vary, and I'm really not trying to add to any stigma about depression. I'm trying to share my experience so that we maybe see that there's a little bit of hope there. If you're wondering when the depression blows in and my exhaustion starts, No, I don't usually get my writing done.

I will generally skip it. Because if I try to push through, I know that it won't be fun, and it'll create resistance to the process of sitting and writing, and I probably won't get much done anyway. Also, if I don't address the needs of my body on those days, the shit will just drag on and on. I'd much rather take a day or two off to get myself back on track quicker.

I don't, don't like depression y'all. I don't like it. I'm not a fan. [00:29:00] And I found that when I treat myself lovingly by giving myself what I need, I surprisingly, who would have thought, I enjoy being alive much more. Uh, but I've also had chronic back and neck pain since I was about six years old.

I get migraines at least once a month, sometimes more. Uh, and I've never had a normal period in my life. TMI for some of you, but it's a medical condition, so grow up. Basically, I'm not talking completely out of my ass here when I say it's worth practicing acceptance and care. I've gone through the self loathing myself.

I've gone through the disconnection from my centers that were causing me trouble. I've tried it. Would not recommend. Zero out of five stars. Living in harmony with yourself is much better for your author career long term, as well as your general will to live and enjoy this one life.

Also, even with all the days I've taken off from my regularly scheduled writing to care for myself, I've still managed [00:30:00] to publish quite a few books over the long term. And frankly, who cares how many I've published? The measure of a person's life isn't what they produce, or at least I don't believe so. If you believe so, I do invite you to ask who taught you that belief, and if it's served you well, or forced you to disconnect from your centers of intelligence to get the job done.

Just a little line of inquiry. Lastly, I do want to touch on something that's just speaking straight from my heart here, from me to you. It's just the two of us. It might even just be the two of us. There may be no one else listening to this episode but you. If you have a chronic health condition that's interrupting your life, please seek medical treatment.

You deserve it. In the best way. Now, I know that if you're a cisgendered woman or a trans person, you've probably been treated like shit by at least a few doctors. You know, gaslighted, told all the pain is [00:31:00] in your head, that sort of thing. And if you're black, then we know that the statistical chance your pain has been dismissed by a medical professional is extremely high.

And I don't have to tell you that if you're Black and have experienced that as a result. So I am really, truly sorry that anyone has to go through that. I know it hurts to be disbelieved by someone in that position of authority who's the gatekeeper of your care. The number of medical professionals who have written off my pain and symptoms is almost as high as the number of medical professionals I've seen.

But please keep trying if you can muster it. What I suggest is to build up the support you need. Knowing what you're up against, and call in the troops if you have to, but then go get the help you deserve to care for yourself. Maybe leave time afterward to download the experience with a trusted friend if you need that, but create the conditions and support you need to [00:32:00] keep going.

Get that second opinion. In the US you can call bullshit on a doctor and nobody can stop you like you can say it to their face and they can't have you arrested. You might not get the greatest care from them after that, but you probably weren't getting great care to begin with if you find yourself at that point.

Advocating for your health is hard, but it's one of the most loving things you can do for yourself. And I encourage you not to limit it to the medical industry, but continue that loving advocacy into your author career. Be the advocate your body, mind, and heart need to thrive. Don't participate in their downfall just because you want to get a book finished by a deadline.

Or you don't want someone to be disappointed in your lack of productivity. Or you want to impress someone who probably doesn't think that much about you anyway. I know it can be hard, especially if you're an Enneagram 2 who can't stand asking for help, but this is the [00:33:00] only way you'll continue to be able to show up for the people you love. First, you ask for help from them, and they'll feel so grateful to be able to return all the care you've given them. And then, You care for yourself so that you can continue later on showing care for others.

So, to answer the question of what if I have chronic health issues, I say that is part of life. You can still do incredible things as an author, I promise. All of our personal struggles can become doorways to richer empathy for the struggles of others. And I think that's a beautiful thing. Accept the things you cannot change, take action to care for your health where you can make a positive difference, and then always put your connection to yourself ahead of the perceived demands of people who probably wouldn't even show up to your funeral.

The unspoken secret in this industry [00:34:00] is that most people are managing chronic health issues of some kind. The folks who are out there encouraging everyone to just toughen up and push through are simply the ones who will crash and burn. Eventually and have to learn a lesson the hard way that you and I.

Already know.

So that was a lot, wasn't it? It's hard talking about health. I probably shouldn't have done this episode, probably stepping in it, but it's worth the risk. I guess that's it for this episode of what if for authors, if you want to reach out to me, you can email me at contact@ffs.media.

Emails that are designed solely to disrupt my peace and lash out can be sent to thatsnice@ffs.media. And now I'm gonna go take a quick break and check in with my three centers. I'm Claire Taylor and thanks for listening. I hope you come back for the next episode of what if for [00:35:00] authors.

Episode 5: What if my book launch is a dud?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of book launches. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own author journey, Claire explores the fear of a book launch failing and how it affects different Enneagram types. Whether you're launching your first book or your tenth, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing your expectations and emotions.

Key Takeaways:

• A book launch's success or failure doesn't define your book's long-term potential.

• Understanding your Enneagram type can provide valuable insights into how you handle book launches and their outcomes.

• Develop self-compassion and curiosity when setting expectations for your book launch.

• Conditions outside your control can affect your launch; recognize and respect these factors.

• Celebrate your accomplishments and take care of your well-being on launch day.

Why Listen? If you find yourself anxious about book launches or feeling overwhelmed by their potential outcomes, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective.

Links Mentioned:

• Sustain Your Author Career - Available June 13th

• Reclaim Your Author Career

• The Child in You by Stephanie Stahl

• Nine Lenses on the World by Dr. Jerome Wagner

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Access the transcript for this episode here.

Happy Writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. My new book for authors, Sustain Your Author Career, is available on all your favorite and most hated retailers June 13th.

So depending on when I end up releasing this episode, which I don't know yet, it might already be waiting for you to purchase and read. I would say that I'm much less of a smartass in it, but the depth of information in it is pretty good. So if you're listening to these episodes and want to go a little deeper, That book is the place to go.

Or you can read my other book, Reclaim Your Author Career. They've both proven pretty useful to authors, apparently. On to the actual content of the show. What's today's anxiety, you may be wondering? Unless you read the episode title where it spells it out. , well today we're going to ask the [00:01:00] question, What if my book launch is a dud?

In other words, what if you pour your heart and soul and a dump truck of cash into a book release To launch it up to the charts and then the book simply flops. It doesn't do what you wanted it to do. It fails to meet your expectations. This fear is so important to look at because it can keep authors from even trying , around their releases. Maybe they hit publish, don't bother telling more than a few people. And then deep down, wonder why their career isn't where they wanted it to be. Or on the flip side, they put a lot into launch and then it doesn't make them immediately rich and famous.

And they emotionally crash and burn as a result. I've seen both. , and I've actually lived both ways to some extent, so this is a no shame zone. As with any of these patterns that I point out in these episodes, if you spot it in yourself, that's not a call to feel ashamed, but rather a summons [00:02:00] to curiosity.

Where did you pick up that pattern? Where did it work well enough to protect you that you decided to keep it going? And do you still want it? Because if you don't still want to keep it around, you do actually have options here. You can start the work of trying new things and developing new neural pathways instead. Yay! Neuroplasticity for the win. So our patterns aren't us. We exist beneath these patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, which is great news because it means we can throw out any of those patterns that are keeping us stuck.

Bye bye. I know that this can work and that we can do this because I do this, uh, all the time now. I didn't for a very long time and life started sucking and feeling very cramped and so then I figured out that this was a thing I could do and I started doing it. So now I'm constantly noticing patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing on the daily, like [00:03:00] oh shit, that's unfortunate.

I don't think doing that aligns with my values. I should probably knock that off. And then over time, I figure out how to knock it off. It's great. And that's obviously an oversimplification because there's a lot of work that goes into quote, knocking off unquote, a single unwanted pattern, but it's possible.

And I found quite worth the trouble. And you probably already know what I mean, because you've noticed a pattern and decided to knock it off and interrupt it over time. We all do this occasionally. We just learn how to be a little bit more intentional with it. Okay, so launches. When I think of book launches, I think of dreams, desires, great expectations, without any burning wedding dresses.

, When discussing launches, I see a few themes emerge that lead me straight back to, you guessed it, [00:04:00] the Enneagram. First, I see a discussion of core desires coming up, that's kind of where my mind goes. I also see things like identity coming into play, idealized self, as well as that unholy chasm between expectations and reality.

I also see things like idealized self, as well as that unholy chasm between expectations and reality.

I wanted to spell one big myth though, which is that a book's launch is indicative of its earning potential over time. So I've launched books to absolute crickets before that eventually found their readers and continued selling well over a period of time. My Jessica Christ series fell into that category.

So the launch, , did almost nothing. I did everything I knew at the time, , to tell people about it and build that buzz, but it released and the sales sort of trickled, but it wasn't, it wasn't great. Then another author told his readers about it and another and then I ran some promos on it And then I figured out [00:05:00] how to use ads Anyway over the course of maybe six months the book gained momentum That this would be the first book and then the first I think four books were out by the end of the six months That's when it really all of it took off So the books gained momentum Until I started having some pretty solid sales months from books that I had been told there would be no broad audience for.

Now granted this was back in 2016 2017 and things worked very differently than in a lot of ways, , particularly in indie publishing. And Yeah, the sales for that series have since fallen off for I think a lot of small reasons adding up, but most importantly, I don't advertise those books as much anymore because other series of mine get a better ROI on ads.

So I put my money toward the thing that gives me more money. But my point is the same. It wasn't the launch that created the success for that series. [00:06:00] Meanwhile, , I have certain series where I can get a really good launch out of a book and then I just can't keep the sales up over the following months.

It drops off pretty quickly, , no matter what I've tried. And maybe I haven't tried everything because we know that, of course, I haven't tried everything. But from what I've tried, the effort I've put into it, Behind it, this is just a thing that kind of keeps happening with, , books in this particular series.

So, a strong launch doesn't tell you much about the earning potential of a book over the long term, just like a weak one doesn't. And of course this is anecdotal, and I only talk about my stuff to illustrate the point, but this is also the case over larger sets of data I've seen and with authors I've worked with, so there is a broader sampling I'm speaking from.

If your book launch is a dud, if it falls flat, uh, being disappointed about that, I think it makes sense. It's a very normal response. But if you notice yourself projecting that [00:07:00] disappointment onto the future of the book, like thinking, oh, it'll never earn back the expenses, then maybe interrupt those thoughts.

Try to keep the disappointment limited to the present circumstance, and don't project it into the future to also dash hope. Dashing hope can be very demotivating. And then you've created a self fulfilling prophecy for yourself, right? Because you don't believe that the book has earning potential. And that leads you to not take the necessary action to nudge it toward making money.

Now, what I've talked about up till now is mostly for indie authors. I understand that if a traditionally published book launches to crickets, that can actually mean that the future of the book is pretty much squashed because the publisher won't continue to put any money into marketing it. You may also not be offered another contract with them after a dud of a launch, even if the failure to launch was all the [00:08:00] publisher's fault from not marketing the book effectively.

Even still, if that's the case, all is not lost. So some of the very practical things you can do, check the contract to see when you can buy or request your rights back for the book, , then plan on doing that at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, you can always write another book. If no publisher will take it, they've seen that, oh, they released this book with this publisher and it didn't do anything, well, welcome to the wild world of indie publishing.

We are so glad you're here. Enjoy control over your own marketing destiny. So, on a surface level, there are plenty of options to move forward after a book launch. It doesn't meet expectations. You have many options and paths forward. And yet, it may not feel that way. So, why not? That would be the inner work that I won't shut up about.

That's why not. , [00:09:00] having options and feeling like you have options. are two different things. It can be really helpful when you feel like you don't have any options to remember this. So maybe you repeat to yourself, right now I don't see any good options.

I have faith that the options are there, but I may need help seeing them. Then if you can, Ask yourself who might help you see them, right? We do a lot of this work all on our own, internally, no one else can do the internal work. But we need support from other people to do it. So it's okay if you can't see the options, as long as you feel like you have someone you could ask to help you see some options.

And then you're open to listening to them. Okay, so as authors who are humans, We have this tendency to put a lot of stock into particular [00:10:00] moments. We build up these expectations that the outcome of this or that will pass a verdict on whether we're worthy, loved, competent, supported, or even good. Did you Enneagram sleuths catch that?

I was just listing off core desires of the types. Worthy, loved, competent, supported, good, right? These aren't all of them, but these are some of them. So, book launches tend to be just such moments where we wait with bated breath to see if we are the thing that we really want to be. So we attach our sense of self to the success of the launch.

And that's maybe not the wisest approach because it hands over how we feel about ourselves to external results that are influenced not only by us, but by an unnameable number of external [00:11:00] conditions.

I'm not going to say that the effort we put into our book launch makes no difference. It does, but it's not as simple as effort in equals success out. And I say that knowing that the idea is really going to bother Enneagram 1s, 3s, and 5s especially, who are all competency types, which means that they deal with conflict, by simply trying to be better at what they do.

But we all want to believe we're in control of our destiny, no matter what type. And I get that, trust me. I. Get. That. I did not go softly into the night when it comes to accepting how little control I have over the external world. , as a one I'm an autonomy type. So my deep hope is that if I just live perfectly enough, the world around me will bend to my will.

So there is a dark side to the belief that we have control over the results of our efforts. [00:12:00] And that is that when those results don't turn out the way we want, a failed book launch for instance, we blame ourselves first. So our inability to control the world around us then tells us something mean or rude about who we are and what we're capable of accomplishing.

Or rather, that's how we interpret it. It doesn't inherently tell us that. So if you have total control over results, then it follows that you must also assume total responsibility for any poor results. On the flip side, if we presume to have no influence over external events. We may give up completely and that's not great for your career trajectory either.

So there's a middle approach here, but it takes practice because it requires us holding some tensions, some internal tensions and polarities to be able to proceed with this middle approach. we can't fall too [00:13:00] far one way or the other. Even when the siren song of believing we have total control reaches our ears, or that ghostly voice that whispers to us to just give up because nothing we do matters.

We've got to find the little middle point between those two poles. Now, this middle approach looks like understanding that our actions may influence external conditions. Influence, not control, influence external conditions. But we can't know to what extent that they will. That may look like if I ask other authors in my genre to email their readers about my book release, it will influence some ideal readers to check out my book.

But I don't know how many, and there's always a chance that the other author will forget to send it out. So anyway, you can use that kind of influence a bunch of times over to increase the odds That you will sell books. [00:14:00] But you have to accept that your influence will not necessarily lead to a specific result you're hoping for.

One of the greatest tools we have as authors is curiosity. So if you find yourself in a place of certainty about results. Like thinking this will definitely work, then that's a good opportunity to pause and try and switch your internal dialogue from that to, I wonder what this will do. So no two launches are ever the same.

And just because a tactic was effective last time you launched a book does not mean it'll work again. You're not entitled to the same results. And that sucks. But it's true. That's reality. So even if a tactic led to, let's say, 500 sales the last three times you used it during a launch, that doesn't mean that you can count on it with certainty again.

So what I suggest is that We practice saying, I wonder [00:15:00] how effective it will be this time. And then we inspect the results afterwards, like a scientist. We can do a post mortem.

So this mindset will do a lot to keep you from being blindsided by your own lofty launch expectations if, and probably when, they're not met. So you don't have a set expectation, so you can't be let down. You're still committed to trying, because you'd like to sell copies of your book, of course. But you're going about it with curiosity rather than certainty, and that makes such a difference.

It doesn't do the whole job though, because even if you're practicing that approach, there's a good chance that deep in your heart, you're still wishing for a miracle. Maybe you're even expecting it. Maybe you feel like you're due a miracle after all the time you've spent in this career, getting less than ideal results from launches.

I get that. And I find that speaking to that part of us that hopes so [00:16:00] dearly, speaking to it as we would a small child who we love, Not one of those shitty kids who can't stand speaking to that part of ourselves with the compassion that we would use for a child We love that goes a long way toward understanding what's going on.

So you might say yes I know it would feel very good to sell a thousand copies on the first day Wouldn't that be fun? Even if that doesn't happen You've done great work and you have a lot to be proud of. So that sort of thing, right? Like we're talking to a kid here and I know this is going to sound obnoxious.

What I'm about to tell you, but trust me that it does help with your nervous system regulation. And we need a lot of nervous system regulation around launches. So when you're talking to this. part of yourself that is hoping for a miracle, , Place your hands over your heart. I know place flat palms over your heart, close your eyes, as you speak to this part [00:17:00] of you.

You may feel goofy, but do it for the sake of that little kid. Okay, so yes, that's inner child work to some extent. It's like inner child work Light really, and listen, we get there eventually with this Enneagram stuff because these patterns are picked up early in life and when we adopt a belief about ourselves or the way the world works, when we're like five, our understanding of that belief often doesn't develop beyond the unrefined understanding of a five year old. So we have to meet it where it is. So if you talk to that belief like an adult, that's not going to work. You got to talk to it like it's a five year old if that's how old you were when you learned it.

For instance, uh, one I hear a lot from people is that you can't rely on anyone to help you out. It's all on you. First of all, that's so heartbreaking. And most people learn this when they were very little, maybe their parents didn't show up to help or were absent or [00:18:00] incapacitated and , the kid had to make their own meals or get themself to the bus stop or make sure daddy made it to bed every night and so on, which is.

Tragic, tragic, right? If someone learned that belief at eight years old, me showing them statistics, otherwise that, that disprove their belief that you can't count on anyone else. That ain't going to do a lot of good because eight year olds are notoriously shit at understanding statistics. Anyway, that's where some of the work of assessing and removing patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing can get kind of tricky. So if you want to dip your toes into inner child work and you haven't before, I do recommend the book The Child in You by Stephanie Stahl. She has some useful exercises to get you started and can kind of walk you through the basic concepts of this work.

So outside of the inner child work, you can also direct your attention to the Enneagram's idealized self for each type. And you can read more about this in depth in Dr. Jerome Wagner's book, [00:19:00] nine lenses on the world. But basically there is this thing that we want to be able to feel about ourselves. We spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that we are that thing.

And our sense that we are not that thing drives a lot of decisions. For example, if you are an Enneagram two. You're doing a lot of work to believe that you're helpful and giving because the idealized self you want to touch is that you are a helpful and giving person. Meanwhile, a five wants to feel like they're wise and perceptive.

So they spend a lot of time trying to convince themselves and the world that they are. We're each so desperate to protect our idealized self, in fact, that we do a lot of work to distance ourselves from every part of us that doesn't fit this ideal. So if you're a 3 whose self looks like, I'm efficient and successful, then every part of you that [00:20:00] disagrees with that or contradicts it, Your failures, your lack of motivation, and so forth, will be shoved into a closet and locked away from sight.

This is being locked away from sight of not just others, but yourself. So opening that closet and looking around is what we call shadow work. Those are the blind spots. Anyway, we sort of look all over the place for evidence that we are our idealized self, and some situations seem especially ripe for finding that proof.

Here it comes, bringing it back around because for authors, book launches are one of these places. Book launches are these easily isolated moments with measurable results. So they feel perfect for confirming or You know, less flattering, denying that we've met our type's ideal. If we let this happen without interfering, if we allow ourselves to attach that significance to the moment of a book [00:21:00] launch, then a book launch becomes so much more than a book launch to us.

It becomes a big old verdict. It becomes an existential matter to us that we meet or exceed our expectations. It doesn't have to though, nor do we really want it to. Right? . So again, we have a choice about this, but the first step to making that choice is learning to pause and notice when we're doing the thing we don't want to be doing.

So if you're coming up on a book release at some point in the planning and then probably again, after the release, consider asking yourself the question I'm about to list off to you that's associated with your types idealized self. Okay. So just ask this ones ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will confirm my rightness and goodness?

Twos ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will [00:22:00] confirm that I'm giving and helpful? Threes ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I'm successful and efficient? Fours ask, how am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am special and conform to elite standards?

Fives ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am perceptive and wise? Sixes ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am loyal and do what I ought to do? Sevens ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am okay? Eights ask, How am I hoping that the results of this will confirm that I am powerful and can do what I intend to do?

Nines asks, how am I hoping that the result of this will confirm that I am settled? And then maybe follow up the answer you get with, [00:23:00] could I be that thing anyway? Could I also be okay? With not being that thing? The last two questions might take a bit of inner deconstruction and possibly coaching before you hit on a definite yes, but go ahead and ask them anyway.

So

I will give you a little bit of a spoiler here. That yes, you will be okay no matter the results, but to get to the point where you feel that you'll be okay despite the results, that's a different matter. But if you want to, for now, you can just trust me that you'll be fine. So sometimes a book launch is just a book launch, but sometimes it's a verdict on who we are.

Or at least it feels that way, and that's where we get into the tricky stuff. But once we deconstruct some of our fixed beliefs about it, and stop taking it as a judgment of who we are, we can pretty easily answer the question of, what my launch is a [00:24:00] dud with, Then it's a dud and I'll be fine. I'm not out of good options yet, even if I can't see them without help.

I'll leave you with this final piece of hard earned wisdom by the time you make it to release day. See if you can have already scheduled everything that absolutely needs to be scheduled. It doesn't have to be all the things.

Just what is required. See if you can have done what needs to be done. If you're an indie, that's uploading the manuscript. That sort of thing. And see if you can do that so that you leave yourself very little to do on the day of the release. Then, during that time, go celebrate the release of a new book.

Take yourself out to coffee. Go have a nice lunch or dinner. Go see a movie. Or even just go for a long walk and sort of revel in your accomplishment. You wrote a book. You published it. There were undoubtedly times [00:25:00] during the creation of it where you struggled, but you pushed through. You did what most people only ever talk about doing.

And then you have the courage to push it out into the world. So what a strange and wonderful thing to be a storyteller. We get to string words together and then we get paid for it. What a silly and delightful hobby. or career. So not only do you get to do it, but You've done it. You wrote the book and now it's out there and people can pay you money to enjoy it.

The results of the launch don't change any of that. That has already happened once you hit publish. So what I recommend is to go celebrate..

So that's it for this episode of the What If For Authors podcast. If you want to reach out to me, email me at contact@ffs.media. And I hope you'll join me on the next episode where I [00:26:00] show you that there's probably no reason to worry at all.

Episode 4: What if I can't hit deadlines?

Episode Description:

In this episode of "What If? For Authors," Claire Taylor tackles the anxiety-inducing topic of deadlines. Drawing from her experience as an Enneagram coach and her own author journey, Claire explores the complexities of deadlines and how they affect different Enneagram types. Whether you love deadlines or dread them, this episode provides a compassionate and realistic approach to managing your writing schedule.

Key Takeaways:

• Deadlines can create a sense of control and order but may also lead to burnout and disconnection from your creative work.

• Understanding your Enneagram type can provide valuable insights into your relationship with deadlines.

• It's important to develop self-compassion and flexibility when setting and attempting to meet deadlines.

• Conditions outside your control can affect your ability to meet deadlines; recognize and respect these factors.

Why Listen? If you find yourself struggling to meet deadlines or feeling overwhelmed by them, this episode offers a thoughtful and empathetic perspective. This episode is a must-listen for any author seeking to balance productivity with well-being.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy Writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm a certified Enneagram coach for authors, as well as a humor and mystery writer of a bunch of books. Oh, and I'm also a non-fiction writer. And by the time you listen to this episode, my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, will probably be available to buy on all your favorite retailers.

If you like listening to me here, you'll like the book. And if you hate listening to me here, you might still like the book because I'm slightly less snarky in it than I am on this podcast. I don't know. I didn't write that book for six drunk authors at Bar Con, in other words.

I'm pretty excited about today's topic, so let's jump right into it. Today's episode asks the question, what if I can't hit deadlines? I love this question and I get it a lot because it seems like our lives [00:01:00] would have so much more ease and flow if we could just hit the damn deadlines. Doesn't it? Like set a deadline, calculate how much you have to do each day, then do that amount.

each day. My Enneagram oneness is like, fuck yeah, order instead of chaos. We love it. The bad news is that I've worked with so many authors who are trying to do this, and of those who can pull it off, they usually aren't enjoying it after a while. It's like their consciousness has completely left their body in order to hit those deadlines.

So, in other words, whatever joy or relief the author might have hoped to get from getting those rewards of hitting the deadline, it's not precisely what they're getting. Maybe it's comforting to stay on schedule? I honestly wouldn't know because I have a tendency to fill my schedule so tightly that it's a miracle I get anything done at all.

But at what [00:02:00] cost does one earn that comfort? That deadlines and staying on schedule can bring. Now, if you're listening and thinking, I love setting deadlines, and I hit them easily, and I enjoy my life, so I don't know what you're talking about, Claire, then I'm, truly, truly happy for you. That's great.

You can skip to the next episode. Let the rest of us overwhelmed degenerates talk privately then. If you're an indie author, Then you're almost always setting the deadlines for yourself. So this makes the struggle to hit deadlines, feel even more ludicrous sometimes, but I promise it makes a whole lot of sense.

Once we look at what's really going on beneath the surface here, if you're a traditionally published author, then you may not be setting the deadlines, but you're agreeing to them for the most part when you sign the contracts. So that doesn't make it harder or easier to hit those deadlines. It's just a different kind of [00:03:00] complication.

Let's say you're setting your own deadlines and then failing to hit them over and over again. There are a few things that are probably going on internally inside of you. Your adult voice is trying to put some boundaries on your creativity and add a little bit of practicality in there because you want to make money selling books, so you need to, you know, publish books.

The adult voice and the playful inner artist voice don't necessarily get along, and sometimes that artist wants to rebel against the man, even if the man is you. Why do you keep setting deadlines then? Because you're probably afraid of the chaos that will ensue if you don't. Or maybe you know that you won't do anything without the fear of a time crunch motivating you.

So this points out what many of us use deadlines for, which is fear based motivation. We create a false time scarcity with our made up deadlines to [00:04:00] try to get that adrenaline going. That can help us sometimes muster the energy to sit and write, even when any, everything in our body in our mind, in our heart, is telling us to rest.

So maybe we're not hitting these deadlines because we're too damn tired and we haven't admitted to ourselves that we need rest or given ourselves the permission to fulfill our basic human need for rest.

But it's also possible that we catch onto our own scheme. If we're the ones trying to pull one over with the synthetic time crunch, then we know it's made up. Part of us knows that the world will keep spinning if we don't finish our first draft by the end of the month or whatever. So what do we do? We stick another project right up against the deadline to create even more made up reason for us not to fall behind.

It becomes this matter of, if you miss this deadline, then you'll be behind on the next book project. And you'll [00:05:00] keep falling behind until you die. I'm telling on myself with that example, but I see it happen a lot. And it's usually found in people who are really high achievers in school. So we learned that little bit of trickery. To keep us engaged in homework and projects that didn't matter at all to us outside of the grade we could capture from them.

So yeah, we're trained to disconnect from the meaning behind our mental labor very easily. Early in life,

that can be great. If you don't work a job you love, but not great. If you're trying to work your dream job of being an author, you got to stay connected to the work or else things start to fall apart. The other problem here is that people are generally bad at estimating how long things will take them to complete, even if it's things that they've done a thousand times before, like writing a book chapter.

Humans often fall victim to the planning fallacy, which dismisses how long a project or task has taken us to complete in the past, [00:06:00] and instead estimates the time as if there will be no complications or fuck ups along the way. We won't get sick, we won't have to take an unexpected day off, we won't get shit sleep one night, and be dragging the next morning, that sort of thing.

There's also the optimism bias that we suffer from. Yeah, everybody suffers from this, where humans plan projects based on the idea that they will be functioning at their peak throughout the duration. Instead of Looking back at how long it took us the last ten times and realizing that every single book we've written has fallen behind schedule by, say, two weeks.

No way we'd add two weeks to our deadline, though. Uh uh. Never. That last time? That was last time. This time, though. This time will be different. The optimism bias happens to almost everyone, by the way, not just the self-proclaimed optimists. So you can be a pessimist and still have the optimism bias.

Already there is a lot going on with our relationship to [00:07:00] deadlines. And if someone else sets the deadline for you, there's even more happening beneath the surface. Maybe you hate the person who said it, and resent that they're telling you what to do. You may internally rebel and find that it's hard to get yourself to focus because focusing feels like bending to their will.

Or maybe someone you don't like setting a deadline for you stirs within you some real fuck this guy energy that makes you want to beat the deadline by a mile, right? That can be gratifying in the short term, but Anyone who's ever met a deadline early can also tell you what happens next. You're assigned something else right away and then given even less time to complete it because you've established a precedent of doing things quickly.

So I learned this the hard way when I was an in-house editor for Romance Publisher. It was fast paced, high volume work. There was one time I was given a single Eight hour day to proofread a 200 page manuscript. Usually though, we were given four days for a copy edit, [00:08:00] which is still not enough fucking time.

I learned real quick that if I completed something early, my reward was another manuscript right away that may or may not be a complete disaster. So the work never stopped. That's also how it goes with indie publishing. The work never stops unless you make it stop. As in, taking a break. When I was editing for this publisher, I learned that.

And I would either go slow with lots of breaks to Google factoids, that I could find in the book. Or I would finish the job ahead of deadline and act like I was still working on it, just so I could catch my breath. So not the greatest employee, but I was doing what I needed to, to stay in that job and not burn myself out completely. I can attest to the process of doing something really quickly to piss off the authority who assigned the deadlines as not a great approach. That would be an example of stupid games, stupid prizes. Now let's say you really like and respect the person who assigns you [00:09:00] the deadline. There's a whole new bag of problems there, right?

If the deadline isn't realistic, on top of the stress of trying to meet it, there's the emotional stress of not wanting to let that person down or make them disappointed in you. Or maybe you don't want to let on that you're struggling, or you want to impress them, but don't feel like you can, or maybe you feel like you're going to get in trouble or hurt the relationship in some other way.

If you miss it, all those anxieties are emotional ones that can make the already tough task of completing the project, even more fraught yikes. So now that I've given voice to a lot of the feelings around deadlines, I should probably do what I do. Best? Maybe not best. Most frequently? Sure. I'll do what I do most frequently and break this down by Enneagram type, even though I said I don't want to do that in every episode because it's a lot.

I don't see another way. So maybe it's time for me to surrender. To the [00:10:00] trap that I've set for myself. And just let this podcast be what it's going to be. Alright. The trickiness of deadlines, if you're a one, an Enneagram one, is that you tend to set them, or agree to them, based on an idealized version of yourself and your capacity.

And then, once you make them, your sense of personal obligation and responsibility urges you to do whatever it takes to meet them, even if that's burning yourself out completely. So you've gotta watch out for that. Alright.

Here's my little kick in the pants to you ones. Stop expecting more from yourself than you'd expect from anyone else. Who made you so damn special? And I mean that with love. I have to tell myself that all the time to have a little self compassion. Come on, Claire, who made you so special that you're supposed to be able to do all these things in a short amount of time, an exceptionally high standard of quality, and without triggering a single migraine?

But seriously, Ones, a little perspective goes a long [00:11:00] way. Nothing we're doing is so urgent that it's worth destroying our health and our peace. We deserve joy, too, just like everyone else. The trickiness of deadlines, if you're a two, is that you're probably overextending yourself, committing to too many things with too many people.

That need to be needed can compel you to say yes anytime someone asks for your help before you have time to think about whether you actually have time in your schedule to do what you say you're going to do. Then you might make room in your schedule by skipping out on sleep or basic self care. And then everything starts to fall apart before too long.

You'd be lucky to meet a single deadline at that point, let alone all the ones you've agreed to. So that little pause to ask if you actually have the capacity to agree to a new commitment before you agree can go a long way. And I promise, that what feels like selfishness to you doesn't register that [00:12:00] way to people who are not twos.

So practice saying, I can't commit to that. I cannot commit to that. You'll find that meeting one deadline is a lot easier than meeting 20. Strange, huh? Okay Threes, you're gonna get a rush out of deadlines. That has been my experience. Threes love deadlines. And you're gonna get a rush so much that you might give yourself too many if you start measuring your value by how many deadlines you can hit.

If you're one of the Threes who struggles with workaholism, which is most of the ones I work with, and no shame on that. We all have the thing we struggle with. If that's the case though, then you got to look at every deadline with the most suspicion possible. You may be prone to setting so many deadlines that you don't allow yourself to second guess why you're doing all the work you're doing.

The real drawback for you to being so busy is that it disconnects you from your heart center. So emotions don't [00:13:00] work on a deadline, which can be incredibly inconvenient when you like hitting deadlines. So this, the temptation here is to push them aside until you have time to feel them. But if you keep going from one project to the next without pauses in between, you end up having to disconnect from your heart center, sometimes completely, and that eventually catches up with you in a big way.

Emotions will be heard eventually, even if it takes a while. depending on how long it takes and how much you've pushed them to the side, they could come crashing in at a very inconvenient time and in a very inconvenient way. Besides, if you're only making decisions with your head and gut and leaving out your heart, you're ignoring an entire center of intelligence and likely making, frankly, heartless decisions as a result.

Businesses can only get away with those for so long before it catches up with them. So if you're a three who enjoys deadlines, consider [00:14:00] building in breaks between those deadlines. And during the projects to feel your feelings at their own pace. Eventually that heart center might become integrated enough that it's involved in everything you do.

And if you get to that point, you're going to be unstoppable, frankly. But until then, slow those deadlines down and build in space to feel your feelings. They have important things to say. Fours, meanwhile, are like deadlines? Haven't heard of them. That's obviously a gross oversimplification. There are plenty of productive, , fours. Because it's not like fours don't feel like they should be able to work on a deadline. And sometimes they face deadlines whether they put themselves there or not, and the angst over trying to meet them can become a lot.

A shame spiral can follow if the four isn't careful in these situations. So if you're a four that has no choice but to try to meet a deadline that's set by your editor, or publisher, or [00:15:00] whoever, what I recommend is to take a sticky note, then write in all caps on it, Simplify, don't complicate. Because a lot of the trouble with fours trying to hit a deadline is that they feel the need to make everything more complex than it necessarily needs to be.

So this is especially true if the four has connected the concept of complexity with authenticity. Which many fours have. So not everything is more authentic when it's complicated. Maybe go ahead and think about how you might be doing this in your mind without realizing it. If you keep things simple, when that's all they need to be, then you might be surprised how much less stress you feel around deadlines you can't control.

It's rare that I see fours set hard deadlines for themselves. And that can be a good thing for stress levels. But if the four starts feeling stressed about not having it. having anything to show for their work or their, their time or their, their thoughts and [00:16:00] feelings about the manuscript, then it's time to put some of those structures in place.

Maybe not deadlines, but other structures. Take a little bit of the structure from your line to one, if you're a four and add that into the routine. So it doesn't feel like you're really spinning your wheels constantly.

That being said, there's a difference between structure and deadlines. So pick deadlines carefully. Fives may coexist with deadlines well if they're the ones that set them, but if someone else has set the deadline and it doesn't provide enough space for the five to do the learning and research they need for the project, then that will become a point of stress, or if the expectations of the project change midway through, or or the five isn't left alone enough to work on the project in peace, then the five will definitely be stressed out.

I tend to see fives who are quite happy with setting and meeting deadlines, with the exception of a five who is under a [00:17:00] lot of stress and moving toward that scattered type seven energy. The seven energy is so counter to the focus the five usually enjoys that it can be incredibly unsettling for a five to go there.

And it will make any deadline seem like a total energy drain. Of course, no one really likes deadlines when they're slipping towards their stress type. But I point it out because I don't want any fives to feel like they're an abnormality just because deadlines do stress them out. Sixes tend to like when others set deadlines for them, assuming the person who said it seems more like a friend than a foe and has the six's best interest at heart.

It can be a relief for a 6 who spends a lot of time in doubt to have the clarity of a deadline. But that doubt can sometimes lead to stress when the deadline is near, and there are still big decisions to be made. A 6 is likely to feel emotional stress around possibly getting in [00:18:00] trouble for not meeting the deadline, which doesn't always add clarity.

to the decision process. On the other hand, some sixes are just going to rebel about anything that anyone calling themselves authority tells them to do. In which case, the six will very much not respond well to externally set deadlines. A lot about this depends on how the six feels about the person setting the deadline, and whether the six wants to keep ties with them or subtly undermine them.

When it comes to deadlines that sixes set for themselves, I haven't seen a whole lot of success with this, but if the six can somehow wrangle their sense of duty to apply to their own progress, I could see it working. Sevens and deadlines are who, boy, . My advice to my type seven clients is generally not to set a deadline because it doesn't usually create the intended result of getting things [00:19:00] done.

Instead, it. It often causes the Seven to either miss the deadline and then develop a complex, usually one that was started way back in elementary school, about how they can never hit deadlines and are irresponsible, so on and so forth. Or the Seven does manage to hit the deadline, but only through massive last minute spikes in cortisol, overdoing it with caffeine, and inviting the taskmaster voice of their inner critic.

To berate them about being irresponsible until the job is done. So none of that is what I would define as healthy. what a shitty gift to leave at the altar of productivity. Here is, here is all of my health. I have destroyed it. I usually recommend seven set up a system of celebration checkpoints along the path and start to notice when they're feeling FOMO and use that indicator to bring their attention back to the task at hand.

The manuscript will be [00:20:00] done when it's done. And that actually goes for all types. Eights like the challenge of deadlines, but like ones, they're not particularly great at estimating how long they realistically need. Part of this for eights is that they are caught in cycles of forcefulness, so forcing things feels incredibly familiar and is therefore not their approach of choice for writing.

Too much free time can make the eight uncomfortable, so they create near impossible timelines with those deadlines to keep themselves in that aroused state of forcing. At the same time, eights can feel like deadlines are restrictions, even the deadlines they set for themselves. And if that switch is flipped, Then the rebelling will start if they're, they're feeling of being controlled is triggered, activate rebellion, even if it's not in the eight's best interest, this can happen.

[00:21:00] So eights need to be conscious of what it feels like when they go from rushing toward a deadline. To feeling the restriction of it, like it's trying to impede on their independence. A little flexibility can go a long way. With that deadline moving it a little bit back, just a tad, that can go a long way.

And it may be, just hear me out, eights. It may be, better than burning the deadline to the ground. I'm just, I'm throwing it out there. Nines almost always self identify as procrastinators, but I find that they just need a little extra time to percolate before they're ready to act. The percolation We'll often take up as much space as it's allowed though, so that's something to consider when looking at deadlines for a nine.

More percolation time doesn't necessarily mean a better result either. I find that nines would prefer not to have deadlines, so they don't tend to put them on [00:22:00] themselves. When they do, they can usually, you know, it doesn't matter themselves out of sticking to the deadlines. All the nines tendency to believe that they don't matter and therefore their work isn't important is usually a belief that I, I will work with nines to challenge and possibly dispel.

In this case, I agree. In the indie publishing world, especially, it doesn't really matter that much if you finish the book today or next week as long as you don't have, you know, like a pre order date set or an appointment with an editor booked already, then it's okay. I think more types could benefit from listening to the 9's approach here, but at the same time, if someone sets a deadline for the 9, then we can run into issues.

Adding a deadline doesn't suddenly sort out the 9's struggle to prioritize. And, you know, isolate the most important elements of their work in progress. So, for example, if a three is running up against a deadline, they might take a step back, [00:23:00] look at what parts of the novel are most important to readers, and give their attention to those specific places in the minimal time they have left.

A nine will probably struggle to see one element as more important than the others because of how the nine sees everything. Being so connected. I mean, that's their gift, seeing how everything is connected and in harmony with each other. So, the Nine is more likely to simply start back at the beginning for revisions and then try and just go all the way through giving equal attention to every part.

Which is slow work. So adding a deadline doesn't magically change this about the nine, so the nine may either miss the deadline, or simply be very, very stressed and disappointed in themselves on the home stretch. So there are all the problems with deadlines that each type may run into. As a one, I'm great at finding problems sometimes even where there are none, [00:24:00] but I would also be remiss if I didn't leave you with some possible solutions and hope, because that's what this podcast is about. Okay. So deadlines create comfort.

They create a sense of control and order over the future. And they certainly help when multiple people are involved in a project. Okay. But in general, I think capitalism's idea that our value comes from our production has made us worship at the altar of deadlines way too much. The world won't end if you don't have your beats written by a certain day.

If shit pops up in your life and you have to delay the completion of your book by a week or even a year, people may be disappointed, some may even be angry with you, but no one will die. That doesn't mean your book isn't important. It just means that it's not more important than everything else in your life.

I will always encourage you to put your health and well being first. Otherwise, you'll hit a point where you can't write [00:25:00] any books because you're so unwell or dead. So let's delay the inevitable as long as possible, shall we? I encourage you to go back and listen again to where I talk about your type's relationship with deadlines.

The first step to addressing the anxiety around missing deadlines is to really dig into your beliefs about what deadlines signal About you and about the world around you and notice how you might be using them as a way of avoiding dealing with deeper fears. Speaking from personal experience, I don't love the feeling of not hitting a deadline.

There was a period in my life where I prided myself on always hitting deadlines, no matter what it took. Now I just think about that and feel like, ugh. I push back deadlines all of the time, and I've never seen anything catastrophic happen as a result. Pushing back deadlines is one of the luxuries of being an indie author, and yes, [00:26:00] I've That means I set deadlines for myself, but they're as malleable as can be, because I have been humbled, more times than I can count, by my own ambition as it runs face first into the brick wall of reality.

So rather than deadlines, I create more of like production schedules that are designed to be easily pushed backward if I need that, and I usually need that. I intended to start recording this podcast, for instance, about four months earlier than I actually started recording it. Would I have liked to hit that deadline?

That malleable deadline? Well, no, actually, when I think about it, the deadline hitter part of me is like, yeah, I would have loved that. But the wise part of me says, no, I didn't want to hit that. My dog died right around that time. And I couldn't think straight. That wouldn't have made a very good podcast. I would have sounded like a raving, you know, lunatic over here. I would have been crying too many [00:27:00] times in between, sentences. So yeah, I'm actually really grateful for my developed ability to cut myself some slack around deadlines. And I really emphasize that this is a developed ability, this is a muscle that I've built. It meant that I could mourn when I needed to and still return to the project when I was ready without feeling like I was already behind or had somehow failed.

I'm going to leave you with this. We're in the heart of wildflower season in Austin, as I record this episode. And I think a lot about how that season changes each year. Nature doesn't have any deadlines. It has these natural flows. We don't get mad at the bluebonnets if they're not blooming by a certain date.

Instead, we sit and we wait with anticipation, knowing, having faith that they'll bloom when [00:28:00] they're ready to bloom. And when that happens, we celebrate and delight them. in the existence of the bluebonnets. We recognize that it's bluebonnet season, and then families go and take pictures in them. No one is mad about any delay in it, because we understand that the blooms are so dependent on conditions.

Conditions they can't control, like rain and sunshine and temperatures. They bloom when they're ready. And then we just fuckin frolic when they do. So, you, too, are actually dependent on the conditions around you that you can't control. So what if instead of letting our hubris convince us that we have the ultimate control over our life, we instead respected that the conditions might not have been right just yet for our manuscript to come to fruition?

And when those conditions are met, and our stories bloom, you, too, What if we just allow ourselves to pause, enjoy the moment, and [00:29:00] celebrate? So set the deadlines if they give you a sense of peace for now, or a target to shoot for, but hold them lightly. And don't let them tell you who you are and what you're capable of.

Do what you can to stay connected to yourself, to your story, and your purpose for writing. And then you can trust that the book will be ready when it's meant to be ready. So that's it for this episode. If you want to reach out to me, email me at contact@FFS.media, or check out how we can work together at FFS.media. Thanks for listening. And I'll be back with another episode for you soon. I'm not committing to a deadline for it though.

Episode 3: What if I've tried everything?

Episode Description:

In the third episode of "What If? For Authors," we dive into the daunting question many authors face: "What if I've tried everything?" If you're feeling stuck in your writing career and you're seeking new ways to break through barriers, this episode offers valuable perspectives and actionable steps to reignite your motivation and discover new possibilities.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding your Enneagram type can help you identify and break free from limiting patterns.

• There are always more options available than you might initially see, especially when you shift your perspective.

• Small experiments and curiosity can lead to significant breakthroughs in your writing career.

Why Listen? If you feel like you've hit a wall in your author career, this episode offers a fresh perspective and practical guidance to help you move forward. Claire's deep understanding of the Enneagram provides unique insights tailored to individual personality types, making this episode a must-listen for any author seeking growth and new possibilities.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'll be your host, your guide, your Virgil through the nine circles of hell and back out again as we ask the scary question and then answer it to discover that you're gonna be okay. It'll be fine.

You're great. Besides being a Virgil, I'm an author of a bunch of satire and mystery books, I created and run FFS Media, and I'm an Enneagram certified author coach. Woohoo! I also realized that I am coming up on nine years. Since I told my nine-to-five to suck it, and then started working for myself full time.

My last day working there was May 29th, 2015. Oh, 2015. Ah, we were so naive back then. It was early May. When I decided [00:01:00] I was going to leave, because I got tired of being the lowest paid person in the office, despite doing most of the work for the directors who didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground, totally separate story.

So I had like laid out everything that I've been doing for the last year for the CEO. And I was like, this is the role I want you to create for me. Cause I'm already doing it. I'm just not getting the title and not getting paid. And he said, that sounds good to me. Let me run it by the COO. And then she shot it down and blamed it on the board of directors. So I don't know. She hated me for whatever reason by that point. , but I do think about how my rage in those moments around getting shot down and then the days following, I do think about how that rage, while perhaps admittedly a little outsized in the moment, it was this great catalyst for me to get more in alignment with what I really wanted to do, which was work for myself and be an author full time.

So that anger. Came from a betrayal. So I, I had a long [00:02:00] history with the COO, but basically she used to be a mother figure to me growing up. So that anger was calling me to take action. That's what I really like about anger. As an Enneagram one, my main work is to examine my vice of anger in all its forms.

So, yeah, I think about anger a lot. I used to repress it and pretend I wasn't angry, but I don't do that. now I try not to, and I recommend that anyone listening try not to just swallow down the, the anger and rage. That's no bueno.

So relating to anger, I sort of split anger into two varieties. So there's healthy anger that points us toward right action. So maybe that's like the anger that causes us to stand up to a bully or engage in local activism, or You know, set a boundary that needs to be set or express to someone that they've hurt us or someone else.

That's what anger can inspire us to do. It can give us a little bit of physical energy to [00:03:00] go and do that sort of hard or scary thing. And then there's whatever anger is left over after you've taken all the right action you can think of. And that tends to be Unhealthy anger and it comes from things like, you know, internalized sense of entitlement or perfectionism or insecurity or these other little things that are really happening mostly inside of us stories that we have internalized, , where we're just going to be angry all the time if we don't address those stories.

So when I feel anything in the anger family of emotions, contempt, annoyance, frustration, irritation, uh, obviously rage, I now like to pause and ask what right action I'm being asked to take by that sort of fiery feeling. And if the anger is not asking me to take any clear and useful action, then probably, Probably.

I just need to deal with my own shit because I have some expectation of the world that's unrealistic and sort of causing that [00:04:00] disconnect and that frustration. Anyway, I should talk about today's question. I think it's a good one. , and of course I'm biased because I picked it, but this is one I hear a lot, so I think it's great.

Today we're going to ask this question. What if I've tried everything.

The implication is that if you've tried everything and nothing's worked to get your author career to where you want it to be, then what next? Like, I've tried everything. Do I just give up? , so this sentiment falls into likely the frustration category for most people, which is, my wheelhouse, as I mentioned. Great news though, and this may be a little bit of a spoiler, but you haven't tried everything. If you feel like you've tried everything, spoiler, you have not tried everything. You will never get to the point where you've tried everything. You might get to a point where you feel like you've tried everything you can think to do that fits within your set of rules of what you're allowed to do, but that's not everything that's available to you.

So let's talk about that because the [00:05:00] Enneagram has so much to say about it and it's all good news.

I'm going to do a very brief little primer on the Enneagram first because a lot of people think they know what the Enneagram measures and how it works, but they haven't necessarily studied it. Deeply. So if that's you, this is no shade to you. You're busy. You have other things in your life, which is why you're listening to me right now.

So I can pump facts straight into your ear holes real quick. So let's do it. Uh, each Enneagram type is built on a single core fear and core desire pair. So this is how you know what type you are, what your core fear slash desire are. These two are flip sides of the same coin, so if you're an 8, an Enneagram 8, your fear is to be harmed or controlled, and your desire is to be independent and strong.

You can see how those are the same things from opposite angles, right? Now, for the core fear and desire, which together form what we call the core motivation, these patterns [00:06:00] of thinking, feeling, and doing arise. To oversimplify a lot, I hate to do this, but I, you know, I, I understand it helps sort of grasp the concept at the start, but to oversimplify a lot, if you're an eight who doesn't want to be harmed or controlled, your attention is going to narrow in on threats to your autonomy and independence.

So that attentional pattern means that your thoughts will naturally drift towards power dynamics. You may tune out feelings that make you feel vulnerable. And your actions will mostly be bold and done despite what anyone tells you to do. That sort of sketches a picture of the eight for you right there, doesn't it?

Of course, if you're an eight, you're thinking, I'm not that simple, you don't know me. And I get it. I get it. I'm not trying to control you with this knowledge eight. So the pattern of thinking and feeling and doing Yeah. , those patterns relate to our type and they start at a very young age. You can usually spot them back to about three or four years old when we start having a personality, whether it's [00:07:00] nature or nurture, that's, you know, sort of the question that no one could ever really arrive at what.

What is nature? What is nurture? So I don't think it's important. , the point is that you have one type your whole life, and it usually starts to set in at three or four, but basically those patterns have a lot of time to dig their heels into our lives before we get to the point where they really stop working for us, and we have to like call a timeout and start doing this work.

To look at them, to see how these patterns that seemed like they were really helpful have now kind of, , built a prison for us. So by the time we get to that point, these patterns are, are pretty well established inside of us. So, essentially these patterns getting dug in means that they've created very strong neural connections in our brains.

we've created neural pathways. That when this stimulus happens, this thought about the world is a response, or this emotion is a response, or we do this action. We will default to these patterns before we even realize we're [00:08:00] defaulting to them. That's how, subconscious and sometimes unconscious they are.

So doing NERAM work is all about rooting out those patterns and trying to establish some new options for ourselves by experimenting with new thoughts, feelings, and actions, and creating some new neural pathways for our brain.

So do you know what that means? It means that the Enneagram work leads us to see more options. More options. You haven't tried everything. You're not out of options now. Woohoo!

The Enneagram type, sometimes called a style, is also referred to as a lens. So before we start unpacking these patterns, and that's something you can do through other processes like therapy, reading about psychology and sociology and so forth. There are other modalities that can help you start to see your patterns.

But before we start seeing and unpacking our established patterns. We're essentially walking around with blinders on. So our field of vision, [00:09:00] and this is a field of vision for what is possible, what we, as we know ourselves, do or can do or think or feel, that field of vision is incredibly narrow.

We also tend to assume that everyone is working with the same lens as our own. So when people act based on different core motivations, it can be shocking, enraging, confusing, depressing, or it can just be like really scary to us. So we sense that something is different between them and us, something very fundamental, but we don't have the language, the understanding to name it.

The big scary thing that nobody likes to name when they start learning about Enneagram is that if there are nine types, and they are just one of the types, then maybe their way of thinking, feeling, and doing isn't the best and only sensible one. So that can shake the ground you stand on to think about at first.

A lot of your defaults about how things work and your place in the [00:10:00] world are going to be challenged by just admitting that you are one of nine equal types. And this is where a lot of people kind of nope out of this learning altogether. They don't feel like they're ready to remove those blinders. They don't like how it feels when they do, when someone tries to take those blinders off of them.

It's, it's too much, right? It spooks the horse. There's a reason we have blinders. Okay, so that's a lot of theory, right? Let's ground this theory in some practical application to our author career, shall we? Let's go through some examples of how an author might feel like they've tried everything and nothing's worked, and then how they might go about seeing some new workable possibilities.

I'm gonna start with an example of an Enneagram 6 author who's usually called the Loyalist, but I like to call them the Faithful Writer. That's because the 6's journey is from fear to courage, and the key tool for that journey is [00:11:00] development of faith. So not necessarily in a religious sense, not faith in a religious sense, but this can look like faith in their ability to handle whatever comes their way, 6's are actually damn good at since they're usually over prepared.

So it's really about understanding it and building that confidence that they can handle it, not, building preparedness. Anyway, our sixth writer feels like they've tried everything in their career and their career is just not getting off the ground. Okay, first of all, bummer. That feeling sucks. So the Six's core fear is being unsupported and without guidance, and their desire is to have guidance and support.

Right? Two sides of the same coin. The problems arise when the Six starts trying to do, the thing that we all do, which is seek what can only be found internally, So they're trying to find outside guidance to listen to because they've lost trust in their inner [00:12:00] authority and guidance that inner guiding voice, the sixes start to lose touch with it.

And then they end up in all this doubt and fear because they feel kind of unmoored. It's, it's very, it can be very disruptive to live life as a six. I have a lot of compassion for the sixes out there, but also. We need you sixes. We need, we need someone to point out the risks involved in things and slow things down and make us think about things in a practical sense.

Okay. So the sixes are trying to find that outside guidance because they have lost touch with their inner guidance. But the problem with trusting someone else to be your guidance and support is that it gives them. easy access to betray you, or pull that support out from under you. So this reality can cause a 6 to live in a state of hypervigilance about their social connections and their resources and so on.

Just general hypervigilance about what could [00:13:00] happen. So here's where I'd start to poke around, from my position as a coach. So with a six who thinks they've tried everything, there's probably a lot of great options that the six is scared to try and can't imagine themselves trying feels unprepared to try.

So probably the six already knows what those options are in their gut, but has stopped trusting their gut. So I might ask the six what options they could see for someone else in their position. Or I might encourage them to ask what someone who seemed incredibly confident and brave might try.

Right, just to start sort of engaging in that imagination, it can be really helpful to get outside of her own sympathetic nervous system to start imagining. And there's really nothing better than a call to curiosity, to help us expand our options, right? Curiosity. [00:14:00] is a really nice antidote to fear and anxiety.

Because fear and anxiety is sort of like something bad will happen. And curiosity sort of flips that and goes, Well, I don't know what's going to happen. I wonder what will happen. Right? So we're already taking a little bit of that negative edge off. The Six may not be able to execute on any of the options they come up with for that, you know, imagined, courageous person until they themselves do some work on their doubt and these sort of hyper arousal patterns of hyper vigilance and anxiety.

And that's okay, The Six doesn't need to jump into things. What a lot of people will advise Sixes to do is to just rush towards the thing, right? Just go for it. No, not just go for it. Sixes, don't worry. I'm not going to be like, just face your fear and just run toward it. That is not great. There's this, , window of tolerance that we have, which I can talk more [00:15:00] about it later, but Basically, we want to stay within our window of tolerance and we can expand it through curiosity, but really just jumping outside of it is just going to traumatize us.

So like, if you just go for it and things don't work out really well, you're just going to be less likely to push that sort of, those sort of limits for yourself, you know, cautiously, but, but gently push those limits for yourself. So we don't want to We don't want to do that. Don't worry. What we want to do is, , just acknowledge that the Six can see some options for other people.

It's still progress to simply see that those options are there, even if the Six can't yet see themselves doing that. Right? That seed of curiosity is still planted, and if the six waters that seed, it'll grow.

So when we're looking to try new things, it's super helpful to start small and frame it as an [00:16:00] experiment. An experiment is premised on the idea that that we don't know what will result. And so in reality, we're kind of always experimenting. We may believe we know what the result will be. We may have a pretty good guess.

Our guests may follow previous patterns, but we never really know what the result will be. So living life in sort of this experimenting phase could be really helpful. It can keep us from getting stuck in our patterns. But essentially with an experiment, you're forming a hypothesis, right?

So we all have this hypothesis of what we think will happen. But then we run the experiment, and if it doesn't turn out the way we thought it would, that doesn't mean it's a bad experiment. It means we have more information, And more information, especially for a 6, can mean more security and guidance, You know more now. Right? You're more informed. That can be a sense of security. So it may feel like you're back to square one if your experiment doesn't go as planned, [00:17:00] but you're not. You have information that you didn't have before. You're smarter now. You're wiser. You're better informed. And so maybe the next experiment will work out better as a result.

Activate that curiosity. Maybe this will be better. Let's see.. Do I have time to talk about one more type without losing the attention of the six drunk authors at my table? Uh, maybe. Let's try it. Let's try it. Okay. So with the type four, sometimes called the individualist, but who I like to think of as the authentic writer. I think the authenticity is so central to Not only the gifts of the four, , as an author, but some of the problems that the four runs into.

Let's talk about it. So a four thinks they've tried everything and nothing has worked. Okay. The four's fear is that they'll lack significance and identity, and their desire is to feel significant and authentically themselves. So the four's tight grip onto this idea of authenticity and Is what usually causes the blinders, [00:18:00] to the options for getting their books in the hands of readers, right?

That need to be authentic, fully authentic all the time, can, I see it most often, start to create Some tough situations, some challenges when it comes to getting the books that they've written into the hands of the readers. , their narrow definition of authentic, that's what I would poke at a little bit.

That narrow definition is the narrowing of the blinders for the four. So, fours tend to mention their books, Once every harvest moon or whatever and then expect that something will happen, right? They'll mention it if it feels like an authentic moment to mention that they have a book, but they're not going to create Opportunities necessarily to mention their book and there's this hope that if I mention it once that should be enough.

that's Not reality with selling. It can seem kind of gross and inauthentic to a four to really sell the products So marketing can feel like phoniness and if that's the case for the four They're going [00:19:00] to run out of options that fit that narrow definition of authenticity really fucking quick Let me tell you, , they'll look at the three who has no time to wait around to be discovered and is actively telling everyone who will listen about their books and the four will go, Ooh, not for me.

And fair enough. If you're a four, you're not a three, but if your approach of posting a picture of your book once and then hoping it will be discovered, isn't getting you where you want, maybe it's time to reframe. And we can do a reframe that's going to feel natural here. So I'm not going to be just like twisting things and telling you, just be happy.

Just be optimistic. Um, I'm going to give you a very real reframe here. Here's the question I would pose to you to kind of get that curiosity going. Is it inauthentic to try to get your books to the people who would connect deeply with them? Is it inauthentic to care enough? to try to get the books to the people who would connect deeply with them.

And then I'll [00:20:00] ask you, what's your purpose of writing if not to be understood by others deeply and help them understand themselves more deeply too? That's important. So might it be worth making your cover More, you know, on genre or reworking your blurb to really make your tropes pop. And yes, you have tropes in your book, uh, or might a little bit of comprehensibility and simplification and your products packaging.

Be worth whatever quote unquote inauthenticity you're feeling there if it gets the words themselves into the hands of the people who would cherish those words.

Sometimes, fours can unconsciously convolute authenticity with complexity. So this can look like this. lead to the four making things complex, complicated for the sake of feeling authentic, rather than because the thing [00:21:00] actually needs to be complex. So I'm talking book covers, marketing copy, even just sentence by sentence in the book itself.

Fours can experience a real breakthrough to all kinds of new options when they take a hard look at that false correlation they may be holding between complexity and authenticity. So where might the most authentic expression of something Actually be the most simple. There's a challenge for you fours.

Where are you making processes and marketing and your writing career more complicated merely to appease your ego's need to feel special? Yikes. Okay. That was kind of a cheap shot, wasn't it? But don't worry, all fours like the emotional realness. I, I get it. Um,

so if you feel like you've tried everything, I want to encourage you to pause, take a few deep breaths, and rest assured that you have not. Regardless of your type, you have not tried [00:22:00] everything. Maybe you've tried everything that you can see with your blinders on, but just a little bit of this deep work can go a long way toward creating new options.

If you want to do that and you need a Virgil, you can come work with me and I'll show you those blinders and the steps to removing them. It'll be much more individualized. All my offerings are at ffs. media. But hell, you've listened this long, so, okay, here's a question to ask yourself for each type to start poking away.

Before you even come see me, just ask this question, see what comes up, and you may have some interesting answers. , ideas. You may see some things through fresh eyes. So I'm going to do this by type. So if you are a 1, ask, Where is my fear of making a mistake keeping me from running experiments? 2s ask, Where is my need to be needed preventing me from asking for advice from others?

Threes, okay, threes rarely feel like they've tried everything, but I'll include them anyway. Okay, if you're a [00:23:00] three, ask, where has my definition of success narrowed what I'm willing to try?

Fours ask, where have I been valuing complexity over simplicity when simplicity might be better?

Fives ask, where could I tap into the expertise of others Instead of trying to learn it all myself, sixes ask what low stakes experiment can I run to get more information? Sevens, sevens also don't usually feel like they've tried everything and their dilemma is generally that they want to try everything but can't make it all happen at once.

Uh, but if you're a seven who feels like you've tried everything to, say, focus on one task, here's what you can ask yourself. What pain am I not acknowledging here that is causing my attention to jump elsewhere? Eighths ask how has my need to be an island kept me from [00:24:00] collaborative options? Nines ask what part of myself have I been hiding to avoid conflict, and how has that created unpleasant tension?

inner conflict instead. On that last one for the nines, my hope is that the nine gets a little pissed off thinking about how the world doesn't feel safe for them to show up in fully because nines are in the anger triad, but they fall asleep to that anger. So waking up to it is how they start to connect with their types virtue of right action.

Again, some anger is healthy. Anger is in nines, whether they see it or not. And if they don't see it, then it just kind of sneaks around and fucks with their physical, emotional, and mental health. So nines. It's time to root it out. Alright, that brings us to the end of this episode. If you feel like you're out of options, you're not.

It might take a little work on the inside to be able to see those other options, but I promise it's worth it. A little bit of poking. Can lead to a [00:25:00] revelation, which I think is pretty rad So if you want to go a little deeper on this I do offer a five week course called the liberated writer and I also offer a liberated writer retreat each year for like a small number of Authors people who are fed up with their existing patterns and want a safe and supportive place to Reset and try some new things on for size, or you can book an author alignment with me. You if you're not even sure what your Enneagram type is yet, reach out to me and we can get you set up with an IEQ nine assessment, which is the most accurate one available and will immediately tell you a heap about yourself.

So thanks for joining me as we asked and answered this question together. I look forward to talking at you again in the next episode of What If for Authors.

Episode 2: What if I hate social media?

Episode Description:

Welcome to the inaugural episode of "What If? For Authors," the podcast that delves into the fears and uncertainties authors face. Join me while I explore the motivation behind starting this podcast and set the stage for the insightful discussions to come.

Why Listen? Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting your journey, "What If? For Authors" aims to provide you with the support, advice, and reassurance you need to overcome your fears and succeed in your writing career. This podcast is a safe space to explore the "what ifs" that often hold us back, with the goal of turning those fears into fuel for your creative fire.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or a fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to episode two of What If for Authors.

I'm so glad you're here. Today we are answering the question, what if I hate social media?

I'm Claire Taylor, your host, the owner of FFS Media, a humor and mystery author, an Enneagram coach for authors—et cetera. Okay, so this is my first full episode, so I will be figuring out how this works, experimenting a little, trying things on for size.

I don't actually know how long these episodes will turn out to be, but I'll try to keep it reasonable. There might be variation, which I will I have heard is not a great strategic move for a podcast, but I would counter that not saying things that need to be said because of artificial time constraints or saying bullshit just to fill up artificial time constraints is also not that [00:01:00] strategic for keeping listeners around. So we're going to do it the way I want to do it. So I've decided that my approach when it comes to speaking into the void is I'm just gonna imagine a group of like six drunk people sitting at a table with me at some bar con and someone just said, Hey Claire, what does the Enneagram have to say about that?

Oh God, I love it when someone cues me up like that. Anyway, I don't know that more than 20 people will ever listen to this podcast, so I like my new approach. I think I'm going to go with it. Um, and that's not to poo poo on the 20 people that are going to be the audience of this show. I would be thrilled if 20 people downloaded each of these episodes. Like, where else do I get to speak to 20 eager listeners each week? Fuck yeah, I'm here for it. Welcome 20 of you. Or if it's just the six drunk people at the table, uh, I'm glad you're here as well. So onto today's question, because I think it's an important one, and [00:02:00] that's, what if I hate social media?

Tough shit. Eat some raw meat and do it anyway. Uh, no, that is. That is not my answer. I have ended up on the wrong algorithm on Instagram, and that is now a lot of my videos. I, I started sending those, like , you know, the, the manosphere influencers. I've, I've started sending those to one of my friends who thinks this is funny as I do, and now the algorithm is very confused and sends me a bunch of that.

But no, you don't need to go on the carnivore diet or whatever, you know, you don't need to eat raw meat. You don't need a six pack to answer this question. We are just going to proceed, like well adjusted people. So of course it's fine if you hate social media. I kind of do too, frankly, maybe not hate, maybe that's a stronger word.

Uh, in some cases not strong enough word in other cases, and I don't feel the same way about all social media, but it definitely makes my [00:03:00] soul feel like it's swimming against the current every time I get on there. So generally when we talk about social media, we're talking about a lot of different things at once, and that's rarely the most discerning approach to making business decisions.

So as I use the word social media, I encourage you to pause and ask yourself, Which social media comes to mind when you think about how much you like or hate it? So which platforms? Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, uh, Tumblr, X, Twitter. Did I miss one? Uh, Reddit, LinkedIn. Onlyfans? Now, I guess OnlyFans is more of a subscription service.

The point is that when we have a negative reaction to something as varied as quote unquote social media, that's usually a good indicator for us to pause and sort of activate discernment. So for me, I currently enjoy Instagram, or maybe I'm just addicted to it.

I don't know, but it doesn't make me [00:04:00] want to puke when I get on and check it. So I check threads sometimes, but I find that it stirs contempt in me for humanity that I don't necessarily consider healthy. so I, I regulate my time on threads. I will post a thread and then. Disappear. For me, Facebook is boring because I curated my feed to make it so.

Again, because of that contempt I was feeling for humanity. Uh, LinkedIn, it makes me feel like someone carved my personality out with a melon baller. So anyway, That's, you know, case by case, I feel differently about social media platforms is my point. So for me, Instagram is really the only game I cared that much about.

So TikTok was fun for me when I was on it, but it was way too much dopamine for my brain. And I started to notice that my mood was more dysregulated while I had access to that on my phone, not just while I was scrolling it or immediately after, but kind of on a day to day [00:05:00] basis, I was having, , trouble feeling, you know, sort of the high, fun, light emotions.

And I was just thinking, okay, my brain is just dopamined out. Like. Not, you know, not a drop of serotonin to be found. So obviously I took that off my phone, not worth it. So TikTok may not even be around much longer. I don't know which, and that's quite bad for some people who've built their businesses on it.

So I'm not going to make light of that. But for me, TikTok was not for me. So basically I don't love social media much either. And here's the thing. If you really don't enjoy a platform. You'll never be successful through it, period. You need to hear that. You will never take off, reach the stratosphere on a platform that you don't enjoy.

It's just not going to happen. You just are lacking the motivation that it takes to really move the needle. So if you only [00:06:00] half like threads, you'll lack the motivation to, you know, post incessantly, you know, to the point where you start to really gain random followers who have never heard of you before threads.

If you hate Instagram, forget about it. The algorithm is shit now anyway, but even back when reels could catapult your visibility, you had to do a lot to get them to get you anywhere. So don't worry, I'm not going to explain social media tactics on this episode, because for one, that's boring. Uh, and it changes so much that anything I could tell you, it would be obsolete next month.

So instead I I want to tell you, , what I know about people's relationship to social media, and lay out some options for you to use it, , options that hopefully don't make you want to become an off the grid outdoor survivalist. Do I think social media is necessary to have a career as an author?

Nope. I've seen people pull it off. it's tricky, but it can happen. Uh, you'll probably [00:07:00] want to get really good at ads or like hand selling at cons or markets. And you'll probably also want to master the art of an email list. if your goal, your objective is to sell books. but those are helpful for authors who do like social media.

So whether or not you're on social media, those are probably good skills for you to have. There's also the possibility that you don't care about selling a lot of books and that's perfectly fine. That's an okay way to live your life and run your author career. You don't have to be a best selling or even a mid lister, , author to have an author career.

If you have or want to sell a single copy of your book to someone, then you have a career. Woo hoo. We can call it whatever we want. These labels are very, uh, flexible anyway. You could say, I want to have an author career, but I don't care that much about, making a thousand dollars a month. That isn't necessary for my life off books. Great. You now have a bunch more options, including, , [00:08:00] just forgetting about social media if you want to. But if you want to sell some books, having social media accounts can be helpful. Even if you don't do that much with them or anything with them, really.

So there are a few approaches to social media, and I think it's important to consider which one we might take. You can view social media as a lead generator for your books. So that would be like taking a cold audience, people who don't know anything about you, warming them up, maybe getting them onto your list or reading your first book in series.

So this approach works easiest on platforms where organic reach is very fruitful, which is currently. None of them. All right. Even TikTok's organic reach is narrowing significantly and very quick. So by the time you listen to this episode, who even knows what will be happening with TikTok. , but basically people who got in early on there may continue to have good reach, assuming it's not shut down.

[00:09:00] but folks who are starting on TikTok today, Or who are on TikTok, you know, a couple of years ago, but haven't really done much with it. It's going to really be pushing a boulder uphill to get that organic reach to work for you in the sense of finding complete strangers. Which is a cold audience like ice cold audience and starting to warm them up to not just you But to the point where they will go purchase something.

That's a long walk for a reader So I don't encourage anyone to necessarily see social media as a safe place selling platform or a place to find cold leads for readers. That's really hard. And if you already don't like social media, forget about it. Like there's just no point in you expending your energy on something like that.

So instead the approach that seems to be worth taking is connecting with existing fans on social media. So you would make your profile a place where people who already like you and your books can come and see [00:10:00] more of you. So the difference between what kind of content you use to deepen existing relationships versus Hooking in people who've never heard of you, that's a huge difference.

So pause to think about that. What would it take for you to start following a person on social media who you don't know, have no information on, you just see a reel, right? it's just you and some random person on, let's say, Instagram. What would it take for you to start following that person on social media?

What would giving them access to your feed. So any, any creepy dudes sliding into DMs that are listening to this, you can sit this one out because I know it doesn't take much for you. But for most people, it will take more than a couple of funny or relatable videos in a row before you're willing to actually hit that follow button.

Meanwhile, what happens if you're already on social media and you see that your favorite author is on there? [00:11:00] Probably an instant follow, right? And you're likely to engage with their content more too, because you already know about them. So, if you, as an author, can tolerate it at all, taking the approach of using whatever social media platforms you like to just share little bits about your writing or your life, that's a great way to deepen your connections with your readers and keep your books front of mind for them.

And this is front of mind in a landscape where, , Attention is the most precious commodity. It is really hard to keep anyone's attention. And as marketers, our job is to not expect that someone will see our book once and go buy it. That almost never happens, even with some of our most rabid fans.

The super fans out there may need to see the book a couple times before they buy it. Not because they don't like the book, but because they're busy as shit, [00:12:00] right? They're busy. They're distractible like all of us. So you can use social media to just be another touch point, right? if you use it this way, that doesn't mean you need to post daily, or even weekly.

But you can tell people where to find you, and then when you do have something to share, or like a new book release, you have at least one more touchpoint for your readers to let them know that, hey, this is here. Would you like it? , your social media doesn't have to be more than that. Your presence doesn't have to be more than that.

But that is a really useful and sort of low maintenance use for it. But wait! There's less. You can also simply create an account on a social media platform and post on that account, something to the effect of, I don't use this platform, but I have free shit you might like on my email list. So click here to join that community.

So that's essentially being a social media squatter, you know, like just go be a social [00:13:00] media squatter. Who cares? Some people will join your list from that, which is great. , but you also have less of a chance of someone, you know, stealing your, , real estate, taking your name, pretending to be you, which almost never happens unless you're like super famous, in which case just hire someone to do your social media.

But, um, it is sort of staking your claim because there may be people who really like a particular platform. You may have readers who really like, , X. That's great for them. I just had a very visual image of what those people look like. And then I was like, Claire, you have a bias there. Look at that bias.

Okay. Thank you, brain. , But let's say you have a reader who really likes being on X, spends a lot of time on X, and has just finished your book or sees it, you know, on the table as they're scrolling on their phone. They may be like, Oh, I want to find this person. And if they can find you, because you just have like your profile set up with this little message of like, Hey, I don't hang out here, go somewhere else.

Then they might do that. Right. [00:14:00] they will at least be able to find you and get that connection.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah. I wanted to talk about Enneagram types and social media. So, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about this are the triads of childhood needs.

Rizzo and Hudson talk about this in their book, The Wisdom of the Enneagram, but basically it breaks down the nine types of the Enneagram into three groups, which they call triads. So the twos, the threes, and the fours are in the attention triad. The fives, the sixes, and the sevens are in the security triad.

The eights, the nines, and the ones are in the autonomy triad. It just means that each of these types has this underlying hunger for either attention, security, or autonomy, but it also means that one triad is going to be more motivated. to be seen on social media than the others in general. Can you guess which triad that will be?

Yes, you guessed it, the attention triad. [00:15:00] twos want attention, but they tend to be much more comfortable being the power behind the throne. So they'll crave attention if you're two, this is going to sound familiar, but you'd probably prefer to receive it through appreciation. That is earning that sort of attention.

And that's why twos are called the helpers. If you're a two and you're not admitting that sometimes you help specifically to be appreciated for helping, then it's time to do some shadow work. Sorry, twos. No hate, just realness. Trying to help you along here. Helping the helpers.

So threes want attention and they want it now. Uh, we love the threes, but threes are really good at winning, that attention. They, they win the social media game. Threes have it hands down. No one is going to have more of that natural, gift for it than the threes.

It's not even close really. So not only are threes motivated by the promise of attention, but they are able to [00:16:00] know what people want. Like, it's a supernatural sense. So they're able to figure out what the audience wants and deliver that. That is the gift of the three. Uh, So the only exception here is a self preservation type of three, which wants attention, but doesn't want to be seen as someone who wants attention.

So they aren't as out there about it generally, and they kind of look a little bit like a one, sometimes a little bit like a seven. Six.

Okay, so fours want attention, but they kind of want you to have to work for it. Sorry, fours. Uh, you're actually in what's completely separately called the emotional realness triad.

So, uh, This is, I'm being emotionally real with you here. A four wants to know that it's authentic attention. So they're reluctant to solicit the attention, because if they did that, how could they trust that it's authentic, and that you're doing it right? genuinely interested in giving them attention because of who they are, like they want the attention.

They want to know that you're authentically giving them attention because you can't [00:17:00] not give them attention because they're so complex and interesting. So this can even slip into the force, making their social media presence feel more like an abstract collage or a riddle to be solved than something coherent that communicates clearly what a person will get if they hit follow.

Okay, so When we move into the security triad, we see that security and a strong social media presence don't necessarily gel easily with one another.

The seven is the exception to this rule, but I'll explain that in a second. Let's start with the fives. So fives tend to, , not want to let people into their lives, especially not just like randos. So, you have to get over the drawbridge and pass the portcullis if you want to be friends with a five.

So if you're a five, it's okay that you're not posting about yourself, let alone about your [00:18:00] feelings or anything like that. So what you can do if you want to do a little bit of social media where you're open to it as a five, and this usually works, , pretty well for, fives who are open. Okay. To, , social media as part of their strategy.

And that is to post about your interests. Post about your interests. Keep it limited to that. Make it very clear that this is a place for people who have similar interests to post. It doesn't sound as draining as trying to connect like as deep human beings, right? Right fives? So, um, maybe give that a try. Or again, just don't worry about social media. It's not necessary. And it will likely drain you if it's not highly focused on your particular interests and you're a five.

Social media I've found makes sixes nervous. And part of that is because the sixes attention flows towards community and connection as well as the security that can be found in those. So if you're a six, those online pylons. are [00:19:00] really going to stand out to you. They're going to jump out to you, off of whatever screen you're looking at.

When people just gang up, when it gets really toxic, when you have that pile on, that sort of mob mentality. Cause that may be the 6's worst nightmare, having everyone gang up on him. So, I get why social media would make a 6 very uneasy. The best approach is simply to, Mind your business. If you're a six, if you're going to have social media, do your best to mind your business.

Do not join in on any of the dogpiles yourself. , that may be tempting, especially if the people that you're in alliance with are doing it, but action that we engage in creates a perception that others will engage in that same action. So to make yourself less scared that everyone's going to pile on, the best thing you can do is not pile on to anyone else.

So, , maybe if you want to use social media, create small groups for readers where the only people who really have [00:20:00] access to you are those who you've built some trust with. So this could be a Facebook group, or you could get people from social media off of social media into like a discord, something like that to create a little bit more controlled and coherent community that you can spend time with. Now, sevens usually enjoy a little social media. My theory is that it comes from two things. So first, they're what's called an assertive type. So this is the hornevian groupings. Three sevens and eights take an assertive approach to get what they want.

, for sevens, they seek security. That's that childhood need triad. By doing everything. Everywhere, all the time, no chance for not having what they need, they're going to get it. They're going to , do all the things, right? They're going to consume all the things. This is where we get into the vice of this type, which is gluttony.

And I know that has like weird biblical implications. So just take that stigma and just Toss it. We don't need that weird sinning [00:21:00] stigma, but the vice of gluttony is what can get sevens into a little bit of trouble , doing all of the things all of the time, seeking that security by doing everything everywhere, , it creates Let's face it, great content for social media, especially if you're one of those traveling nomadic sevens.

All kinds of pictures for Instagram. But sevens also tend to be wired for dopamine hits. if you're a seven, this is something to watch out for. You really like it. Your brain really likes the dopamine hit, sevens can become addicted to pleasure if they're not careful. And that is, sort of the avoidance of pain that sevens do.

Don't balance out the dopamine, the sort of pleasure hits that they're getting. So they have to seek more and more pleasure rather than being sort of anchored by the pain that everyone else sort of allows into their lives that sevens don't. So the, the sort of smorgasbord of novelty that you can get at your [00:22:00] fingertips online, it's going to be really seductive to a seven and the ease of just like popping off a post is also great for the sevens natural flow that, you know, you're doing something fun and then you're moving on before it gets boring or painful.

So this can sometimes lead to authors who are sevens getting on a platform with business purposes in mind, only to discover that they spend more time scrolling than marketing. So, just proceed with caution, sevens. If you find that you can't control yourself on social media, it might be better To be more intentional about which platforms you use, how you use them, when you have access to them.

There are all kinds of good apps that can limit what time of day you're able to even access those apps. And so, you know, if you have a, an hour each day where you're allowed to access them, you're more likely to do your marketing and then get off of them, right? Hurry and get your marketing done and then return to [00:23:00] work.

You know, the real world. Okay, so on to the autonomy triad, where everyone wants to exert control and influence over the world without letting the outside world control or influence them. That is the triad we're into. So eights are going to start us off. Eights may enjoy social media as a place where they can kind of come and tell it like it is and that may get a really nice response.

But once people start asking things from them. Or trying to dictate what the 8 posts, like what kind of content, or God forbid, what the 8 writes next, it's game over. The 8 is saying, fuck this, and throwing up walls. They're done. And the 8s are very sensitive to anything that feels like an attempt to control them. if you can manage this impulse as an eight, you may do all right on social media, but if you, if this is one of the more pronounced patterns for you as an eight, this sort of, uh, you know, [00:24:00] fuck this, I'm out, this person's trying to control me. Then, you know, social media might just be a trigger and you just maybe don't need it.

Right. So if you're a nine, But not the social subtype of nine. So the self prez or the one to one subtype of nine, then you're probably really struggling to figure out what to post on social media. That may be your main struggle. Like I'm on social media. I've been told I should do this. I don't know what the heck to post.

, so that process of trying to force something. to post, it might be draining you a lot. So this comes from the nine's narrative of, Hey, it doesn't matter. I'm nobody special. Who cares what I have to say? And it's really hard to motivate yourself to post to a platform. Where anyone in the world can then come and try to start shit with you for no reason at all.

When you don't even feel like it matters whether or [00:25:00] not you post to that platform. Social media also is rife with conflict, which nines hate. So I posted a thread the other day that included, you know, as a detail being stuck in a random and unexpected security line at the airport. And I was about to miss my flight.

This was not about the security line. It was about something completely different. There was a much bigger point that I was making. The first comment I got was something like, this is what you get for not showing up early enough to the airport. like shit, my brother cries. I do not know who the fuck you are.

Um, I muted that. I muted for all on that one. I was like, I don't need this in my life. Uh, boundaries. Anyway, the point of my story, went completely unnoticed by this guy. Like it just smacked him in the face and he didn't even know. , he was so focused on trying to start beef with me. Cause I guess some pivotal point in his childhood he was late to the airport and missed a flight that he can [00:26:00] never get over.

I don't know. I was like, brah, you gotta keep it to yourself. Anyway, if you're a nine, I get it. You don't have to be on social media. If it seems like too much conflict, if it's, you know, you're just opening yourself up and you're like, this takes all my effort to even think about what I should post. Yeah.

You don't have to be on social media. In fact, if it makes you so uncomfortable that it puts you out of your emotional and psychological window of tolerance, I actually encourage you to stay away. So that being said, social nines look a little bit more active and involved in social groups and might enjoy social media more.

So if you're a nine and it doesn't stress you out, go for it. But again, if it stresses you out, if the conflict on there, if the people constantly being at each other's throat, it's just too much for you, it's okay to say, I don't want this. It's okay to say you don't want this in your life. Your author career is not dead on arrival.

You can still have success in your author career without it. And [00:27:00] lastly, in the autonomy triad, we're going to talk about ones and. Just so we're all on the same page, I am an Enneagram one, so when I talk shit about ones, I, I come from a place of deep self loathing. I mean, self love. Okay, so, ones are a mess with social media, and that is, of course, speaking from experience.

we don't want to be wrong. All right, number one, we don't want to be wrong and we're sensitive to criticism. So where better to have someone just come out of nowhere and say you're wrong and you suck than social media. So when ones get triggered like that, we can also shoot ourselves in the foot and shoot our business in the foot by wanting to pass along the criticism to others, which can pull ones into these online crusades.

being a part of an online crusade, it may seem like a good idea at the time, you may feel very self righteous, but it's not a great idea. idea for your business in some obvious [00:28:00] ways that we can see when we're not in the moment, right? It's just not a good look to be viciously going after people, to be persecuting others.

It's just, we could just stop. Seriously. Almost every author community pylon I've seen is led by an unhealthy one trying to flip their position from feeling like a bad person in some way to feeling better than. , through self righteousness. I will own that about the type. I will own that that I have those impulses and I have certainly let it get away from me at times.

Thankfully not, not in any noticeable way. I don't think. Um, I mean, I'm sure there are people out there who think I'm self righteous. , but if you're a one, just notice. If the tension you feel in your shoulders as you engage with the social media platform, does that tension increase or decrease?

So, if you feel more tension in your neck and your [00:29:00] shoulders, , and your upper arms, And maybe even like a little bit of a headache when you engage with a social media platform. That might be a sign that it's more trouble for you than it's worth. Social media can be helpful, but it's never as helpful as it is harmful.

If it causes you that degree of stress and that degree of body tension, which leads to all other, you know, all these other health problems. So you can just let it go. Feel that. Just let those muscles relax. Ah, okay. So that does it with the types. Uh, no way I'll be doing every type, every episode like this because it takes too damn long.

I'm tired. I feel like I just ran a race. I really use a nap. Let's wrap this up though. So what if you hate social media? The answer is you have options, a lot of options, and those options will vary based on how motivated or demotivated you are to engage with strangers [00:30:00] online. Do you have to do it? No. Are there solid options for people who don't want to use social media to still have a social media presence?

For sure. So consider if a more nuanced approach might be right for your business. And if you look at your history with social media and decide you've spent years half assing it without getting any results, Maybe it's time to give yourself permission to not use it. Wouldn't that be a loving gift? Just, I have permission not to do the thing that I hate, that is ineffective for me, and drains my energy.

Hell yeah. Give yourself permission. So that's it for this episode of What If for Authors. Thanks for hanging out with me and I will see you next episode. But for now, I think I'm going to go take a little Enneagram induced nap.

Episode 1: What If? For Authors

Episode Description:

Welcome to the inaugural episode of "What If? For Authors," the podcast that delves into the fears and uncertainties authors face. Join me while I explore the motivation behind starting this podcast and set the stage for the insightful discussions to come.

Why Listen? Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting your journey, "What If? For Authors" aims to provide you with the support, advice, and reassurance you need to overcome your fears and succeed in your writing career. This podcast is a safe space to explore the "what ifs" that often hold us back, with the goal of turning those fears into fuel for your creative fire.

Join the Conversation: Have a question or a fear you'd like me to explore? Reach out to me at contact@ffs.media.

Happy writing!

Transcript:

Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome, I'm so glad you're here at this inaugural episode of the What If For Authors podcast. Before I tell you a little bit more about the show, I do want to establish that this is going to be more of a headphones slash ear pods kind of podcast than you, you know, you may be expecting. There will be cursing, there will be realness.

There will very likely be soundbites that you don't want someone just passing by to catch out of context. That's because we're gonna get real on some big scary things like fear itself, and I've found that core-level fear is generally a pill that goes down easiest with a nice sweary coating, so maybe this can be your end-of-day loading the dishwasher podcast, or your long midday walks so your body doesn't break down on you podcast.

Or you [00:01:00] know, do whatever you want blast it for everyone to hear. I don't give a shit, but don't say I didn't warn you. Okay, so what can you expect from this show? Each episode is going to cover one of the questions I get asked frequently by authors.

And if you don't know me, well, yeah, I'm Claire, the owner of FFS Media. FFS stands for what you think it stands for. , I'm a coach and story consultant. I'm the author of a bunch of satire and mystery books. And I am a writer. Certifiably insane about the Enneagram, If you don't know what the Enneagram is yet, it's a personality profile that groups people based on a core fear and core desire.

And then the patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that tend to arise from those fears. That's it. Really all the preliminary info you're going to get from me about it here, but I will be referencing the Enneagram types a lot. So if you're not already somewhat initiated, it's time to pull up Google, read a little bit more about it, or you can go read my book, [00:02:00] Reclaim Your Author Career that breaks down the types more in depth.

Okay. So this podcast is for folks, authors who already know a little bit about the Enneagram and a little bit about me. This is not really like, Hey, first brush with Claire. If this is your first brush with me, I apologize in advance. Hopefully we've already met in some other context, be it coaching, maybe you heard me through the Sell More Books Show.

Or you heard me speak or read my book or whatever. I've never been one for small talk, so let's just dive in. Each week, we're just going to go for it on our topic of the week, and it's going to be super fun.

And if I know one thing about authors, it's that small talk is not necessarily everyone's favorite. I will be honest with you. That's a promise I'm going to make. So the first bit of honesty that I will deliver to you is that I've been thinking about this podcast for a while. I knew I needed to do something solo so I could let her rip and just do my own thing, which [00:03:00] happens to be my favorite thing to do, my own thing.

I will say it's a little weird talking to myself and hopefully I don't go full shining by episode 10. But if I do, you know, you're invited to follow along and enjoy it.

So as I started putting together ideas for this show, I found myself asking a lot of Um, what if I'm not ready? What if I don't know enough to talk on these topics? What if I make an ass of myself? What if I say something that someone misinterprets and then it leads them to make a terrible decision and they decide to make my life hell as a result?

So all valid questions. Which we will answer. So one of the best skills we can develop as authors, as people who have to draw our own maps for the duration of our career, is to actually answer the what if questions. We see these, what if questions everywhere, all the time we're asking them. Sometimes we're asking them subconsciously.

We don't even realize we're asking them [00:04:00] subconsciously until we bring them into the consciousness. And that is a first step of a really important skill. of asking these questions so that we can answer them with our adult brain. And so then if we don't know what the answer to them is, we have the question formulated and we can ask someone who can help us walk through it, which is what I do. Basically all the time now.

So I asked myself all of these what if questions, I'm going to walk you through it. So the first question was, what if I don't know enough to talk on these topics? if that happens, I'll notice that, that I really don't know what the fuck I'm saying, at least I hope to notice that, I've gotten pretty good at noticing when I'm just bullshitting.

So then I can just hit pause on the recording. This isn't a live show, thank God. I would never do that. , but I would hit pause in the recording and learn what I need to learn to at least [00:05:00] be of some help to some people. So there's that. Also, I know a hell of a lot about Enneagram, so it's kind of a silly question to begin with.

I don't know the most about the Enneagram, certainly. But I know enough that what I say may prove useful to folks and that's a pretty good reason to start talking. It's good enough for me. So the next question, what if I make an ass of myself? Even just pausing to think on that for a second kind of makes me laugh at how ridiculous it is.

Of course, I'll make an ass of myself. I do it all the time. It's one of the things my friends like best about me. So, yeah. Besides, making an ass of myself is a sign that I'm taking risks. And no risk, no reward. I can look like a fool and be okay.

I've done it before plenty. So, all evidence points to that. indicates that I can do it again. And then finally, what if I say something that someone misinterprets and then they make a [00:06:00] decision that doesn't work the way they wanted it to, and then they make it a hobby to make my life hell. So this one takes a little bit more consideration.

And when you learn about my core fear over the following episodes, you'll understand why it shakes me a little bit more. But basically this comes down to being an adult. Working with other adults. I will offer perspective for y'all, but at the end of the day, the responsibility for making the wisest choice for you, that falls to you.

I trust that you have the inner wisdom already inside of you, and I hope that you'll trust that it's there and listen to it. Also, sometimes decisions that seem immediately bad in the short term turn out to be wonderful in the long term. And holding that tension is a skill that faith, in the most secular sense of the word faith, allows us to have.

And if someone decides to make my life hell, it wouldn't be the first time, y'all. I was a teenager in the early days of AOL instant messaging. You think I haven't been [00:07:00] cyberbullied before? Please. , you know, people may try and, lodge some allegations against me, and that's fine, you know, maybe they have a point.

And that's okay. I get to be wrong sometimes, and I will do what I can to make it right. But even if it's just bullshit claims thrown at me, I trust deeply that the truth wins out at the end of the day. So I'm not actually worried about it when I break it down, when I go ahead and ask the question. So to review, all of my what if anxieties turned out to be answered with If That Happens. Fine. Whatever. I'll be okay. My goal in this podcast is to take you on that same journey each episode. You might not resonate with every topic, but it could be useful to give it a listen anyway, either because there'll be nuggets that you'll find interesting or because a friend of yours may one day throw that what if at you, and you'll [00:08:00] be able to know how to support them as they deconstruct the anxiety.

I have a lot of interesting episodes lined up for you, and we're gonna have a damn good time together. Because why not? Life is short. We have a shit ton of stories to tell as authors. So let's have some fun while we can. See you in the next episode.