How To Beat Your Fears and (Finish Your Book)

“Life is growth. You grow or you die.”

—Phil Knight

ALL AUTHORS FACE FEAR

At some point and to some level, you’re going to be afraid of writing your book.

Don’t feel bad. EVERY author feels the same way (including me). I’ve written seven books (so far) but should have written ten (maybe more). I lost at least three books to fear.

I get it. I’ve been there. It’s an awful feeling to know I had these books in me and never got to them, only because I was afraid to write them.

THE PURPOSE OF FEAR

The first thing to remember about fear is that it’s not necessarily bad. Fear serves a purpose.

On a primal level, fear is an adaptive response that helps us survive by motivating us to protect ourselves from danger. It is both natural and helpful in many cases. You evolved to fear things that can hurt you, and fear works to help keep you safe.

The problem with fear is when you let small or irrational fears stop you from doing something you should be doing. Then fear is destructive, not protective.

Some of the fears you face will make sense, while others will seem ridiculous if you rationally analyze them. That’s normal. Fears aren’t always rational (nor are they intended to be).

Don’t shame yourself if you feel any of the fears listed, even if you think they are irrational. Even if they are irrational, the feeling of fear is still real, and you have to address it in order to move forward with your book.

Don’t beat yourself up if fear is holding you back. It’s beaten me before, as it’s beaten almost every author at some point or another.

HOW TO BEAT YOUR FEARS

You can win this fight against fear. How do you do it? And, even more importantly, how do you prevent this fear in the future?

You train your emotional brain to reframe the fear you feel and then use it as fuel to action, instead of inaction.

I’m going to show you the specific, step-by-step method we use to help our authors overcome their fear, but first, let’s actually reframe what fear is.

These are the symptoms of anxiety:

1. Heart rate raises (adrenaline increase)
2. Fight or flight response kicks in, you get jittery, break out into a cold sweat (cortisol surge)
3. You have tunnel vision, can’t see or think beyond your fear (norepinephrine increase)

These are the symptoms of excitement:

1. Heart rate raises (adrenaline increase)
2. Fight or flight response kicks in, you get jittery, break out into a cold sweat (cortisol surge)
3. You have tunnel vision, can’t see or think beyond your excitement (norepinephrine increase)

Fear is excitement…with a negative frame.

Excitement is fear…with a positive frame.

Think of a roller coaster. Some people will spend hundreds of dollars and hours waiting in line to ride the scariest one they can find.

Other people will have a panic attack at the thought of going on one.

Same ride. Just a different frame.

Now are you starting to see how to beat your fear?

Here are the steps to use to do it:

STEP 1: LIST ALL YOUR FEARS

Ask yourself, what are you afraid might happen if you write a book? Write down the fears you are feeling. Write down every fear or anxiety.

Don’t run from, deny, or minimize your fears.

Really take a moment and pause to think about ALL your fears. Recognize them, acknowledge them, and identify them.

If you are having a hard time articulating your fears, the last chapter discussed the most common fears; that should be a pretty good guide.

Don’t worry if this list is long. It should have at least a few fears, and if it has a bunch, then so be it. In fact, the more you list (that are true), the better. That means you are being honest with yourself.

STEP 2: ASK YOURSELF, “IS THIS POSSIBLE?”

For each fear, ask yourself: “Is this fear possible? Is there any chance it will come to pass?”

Many times people are anxious about vague and undefined fears. If that’s the case, forcing yourself to name the fear and realize it’s not even possible at all can make it go away.

For example, we have authors who work with us that say, “I’m afraid that I’ll write this book but that I won’t be able to get it published.” That’s not a realistic fear. They’ve paid us to do the publishing, we are going to do it.

This being said, most fears will be possible, even if only a small possibility. For example, continuing with the above example, you could say instead, “I’m afraid that I’ll write this book and I will look bad, and it will hurt my professional reputation.”

That’s a real fear with real consequences—if you write a bad book, you will look bad. Yes, it is highly unlikely that the book will be bad, but it is possible.

For fears that are impossible, disregard and cross them off the list. For the ones that could possibly come to pass, keep going.

STEP 3: ASK YOURSELF, “IF THIS FEAR CAME TO PASS, WHAT WOULD THE CONSEQUENCES BE?”

It’s okay to think of the worst-case scenario here. In fact, it’s preferable. If you articulate the worst thing that could happen, then you at least know what it is and can now move forward with a clear understanding of what there is to lose.

There is nothing wrong with this—being realistic is a big part of defeating fear, so write down what the consequences are.

For some of the fears, the consequences will be minor. For example, if the fear is “I’m afraid I sound bitchy,” the consequences of that are probably benign.

For other fears, the consequences could be larger. For example, if the fear is, “I’m afraid that I’ll write this book and I will look bad, and it will hurt my professional reputation,” the consequences might be substantial.

And don’t shortchange the impact of the consequence. If you are afraid of something like this happening: “I will write a bad book and people will think I’m stupid and my company will fail, and I’ll be a joke and go broke. I’ll lose my house and my family, and I’ll go hungry and die cold and alone on the streets,” then write it out.

Whatever you fear the consequences might be, write them down.

STEP 4: ASK YOURSELF, “WHEN I WRITE MY BOOK, WHAT BENEFIT WILL I GET FOR MYSELF?”

You could say, “If I write my book, then I will increase my authority and visibility in my field, get more speaking gigs, and be able to grow my business.”

Note: You’re going to specifically define these benefits as the very next part of the process, but put something down now, even if you come back and refine them later.

Then speak these benefits out loud, making sure to frame yourself as excited about them.

Literally say, “YOU should be excited, because this book will get YOU increased authority, additional speaking, and a bigger business.”

Do it three times.

And you MUST say it OUT LOUD. And make sure to phrase it as you, talking to yourself.

I know, this sounds hokey, but saying it out loud has a very different impact on you than just thinking it. Without going too deep into the psychological explanation, saying it out loud makes it more real to your brain.

[If you want to know why saying this out loud makes such a difference, Google “inner speech of behavioral regulation” or “Von Restorff effect.” Warning: these will take you down a serious rabbit hole.]

STEP 5: ASK YOURSELF, “WHO’S HELPED BY YOUR BOOK, AND WHAT DO THEY GET?”

Did you notice a trend with the fears you mentioned? What did they all have in common?

It’s actually pretty simple: All fear is selfish.

When you’re afraid, you are focused only on yourself and your own needs. Fear puts you into survival mode. Fear makes it impossible to see outside of yourself. Fear traps you inside yourself.

I don’t mean this to say selfishness is bad. It’s not. Like fear, selfishness has its place in your life. I say this to help you refocus on a main reason you probably want to write your book: to give something back, and make an impact on other people.

Imagine the person you will be helping. Think of them very specifically. Imagine the pain they are in now. Feel the suffering they have because they haven’t read your book.

How much of a difference will your knowledge make in their lives?

Your book is important to them. It matters to their lives. That’s why you are writing it. They need your book.

Think about how much they need the knowledge you have. Imagine your audience after they’ve read your book. What will their lives be like then? How much better will they be because of your book?

Connect with that feeling. Can you do it—for them?

You want to write your book to help other people solve a problem that you used to have, one that’s very painful to you. Helping those people is a big part of your motivation. And picturing those people in need, and you letting them down if you do not write your book, is a very powerful motivator.

Using this motivation turns out to be the ultimate fear-buster: most people who can’t be courageous for themselves can easily be courageous for other people.

And of course, if you just think about who your book is intended to help, you can focus on them. And if you do that—if you focus on the reader—you will actually end up looking good. [We’ll talk a lot more about this later in the positioning section of the book.]

STEP 6: ASK YOURSELF, “WHAT IF I JUST QUIT?”

Ask yourself, “If I do NOT write my book, what will happen? Who will suffer, and how?” and write down everything that happens if you quit the book.

This is about using your anxiety against itself. If you ask yourself these questions, often your brain reverses itself, and begins to argue for writing the book.

This works because of the peculiar way that human brains work. Now that you have “seen” the benefits you can get from writing a book, picturing yourself quitting will trigger one of the strongest psychological reactions in humans: loss aversion.

Once you imagine yourself with all these benefits, and then you imagine yourself losing them—things shift in your brain. Your fear doesn’t necessarily go away. It just takes a back seat to loss aversion.

This is one of the most replicated findings in social science; people are far more motivated by losing something than by gaining something. By already picturing yourself with benefits and gains, you now want to keep them.

STEP 7: MAKE YOUR DECISION

This step is very simple: review everything you’ve written so far, and then decide: are you going to move forward with your book? Is it worth it?

Make no mistake, this is a decision, and it is NOT assumed or automatic that you should write the book. In fact, there are plenty of times people look at their lists and realize that the risks of the potential consequences outweigh the benefits, and they decide not to do the book. And that is fine.

In the Guided Author Workshops we run, I have people literally read the major parts of each step out loud, and then either commit or not, out loud in front of the entire group. It works really well as a way to take this out of your head and make it real.

I mean it, you really should say your decision out loud. When you say it and hear it, it makes it different.

STEP 8: ASK YOURSELF, “WHAT’S THE PLAN TO AVOID THESE CONSEQUENCES?”

Now that you have committed to your book, to move past your fear, you need to lay out precisely what the plan is to avoid or minimize the consequences.

This is because fears often partly originate from a subconscious reaction to a poor plan, or a lack of a plan (this is also where procrastination comes from).

For example, if the fear is: “I’m afraid that I’ll write this book and I will look bad, and it will hurt my professional reputation,” it’s highly likely that fear comes from, in part, the fact that you’re not confident in your writing skills and don’t yet have a clear idea of who will help you edit your book. The plan might be as simple as having a professional editor and two colleagues review the manuscript before you decide to publish it, to make sure you look good.

You may have to come back and fill in parts of this section later, and that’s okay. For example, if the fear is, “I’m afraid I won’t have time to write the book,” well, right now you don’t have a plan to make time to write the book (we get to that part of the plan later).

But don’t worry—by the time you finish this book, you will have a specific, detailed, actionable plan, so you can know for certain that if you follow it, you’ll get your book done.

STEP 9: ASK YOURSELF, “HOW CAN I USE THIS FEAR TO HELP ME?”

Fear can actually help you, if you take the right perspective on it.

Remember the roller coaster example. You cannot choose your physiological response to a roller coaster, but with some practice, you CAN choose how you interpret that physiological response. Your subjective experience can be “afraid” or “thrilled,” but the body treats the physical response the same.

This means you can reframe fear into excitement, and retrain your brain to not be afraid of writing your book—and in fact to harness that energy to help you write your book.

Now look at each fear you wrote, and ask, “How can I use this fear to help me?”

For example, if the fear is “I’m afraid that I’ll write this book and I will look bad, and it will hurt my professional reputation,” then you can use the energy of that fear to motivate you to put in the work to do a really good book—to ensure that you do not look bad.

This is possible for each fear. Every fear has the seeds of its solution in it, if you can find them and use them.