How to Successfully Deal with Feeling Overwhelmed
Our job as an authorpreneur is never done… It doesn’t matter how many hours a day we work, our duties are never over. When we get into the long, long list of things to do, it’s overwhelming. Heck, just writing a book is overwhelming, even if it’s your only job. Now put it in the realm of a side-hustle where you’re writing your book around your day job, and it’s really overwhelming. Hold on a minute, though. At this point of being overwhelmed, you’re still an author, or maybe even just a writer. Being an authorpreneur is a whole other level of being overwhelmed.
Writing is hard enough. But being an author requires one to do a whole bunch of new things beyond just writing to get published. If one is going to be an authorpreneur, you are now creating a business based on their book. And having a company based on your book to generate another income brings us to a whole new stratosphere of being overwhelmed.
As authorpreneurs, many of us will build a website, write a blog, write columns, craft solo articles, and more books. We have to have follow up books. We need to write a series. We have to get a YouTube channel and create videos, create vlogs, run multipole social media channels, and the list goes on and on and on. The research, the platform building, and the marketing never stops. Ever. Oh yeah, and don’t forget about how we have to answer hundreds of emails and social media comments every single day. Now imagine doing all of that around your day job…
Do we feel overwhelmed yet?
Hey, this is the lifestyle of an authorpreneur. And sadly, it becomes way too easy to follow way too many paths while living that lifestyle. Going down all of those rabbit holes makes us feel so overwhelmed. We begin to think that what we’re trying to do is impossible, and it makes us want to quit and go back to the simpler life.
Don’t try to do it all. Don’t fall victim to the shiny object syndrome that splits you way too thin in a million different directions and keeps you from doing any one thing very effectively. When you do this, sales lack; you begin to feel like a failure again, and want to quit again.
Here’s a tip. Try to focus mostly on one thing every day. Now I write every day. But I don’t give speeches every day. I don’t blog every day, I don’t do interviews every day. And I don’t do my Mindalia TV Show every day either. We can’t do it all. Just pick one main thing to do every day, and a couple of other things to do less frequently, but continue to do. My Golden rule, even for beginners, is to make sure you do at least one thing every day. Doing at least one thing every single day, even if it’s something as small as just sending a single email, then you’ve done something. You’ve built some momentum, or at least you’re keeping the momentum going. Doing one thing a day isn’t too overwhelming, is it?
Another thing that will help a lot in dealing with feeling overwhelmed in this authorpreneurship business is to pick a niche. Hey, you can’t be all things to all people. Pick a tiny niche to make your mark in. It doesn’t mean you have to stay there forever. But picking a little niche to make a difference in will allow you to actually make that difference, get known, and build your skills. Then eventually, you can branch off to other nearby niches that are closely related to what you’re already doing. Start small to go BIG.
Also, mostly follow one person and one system. Too often us indie authors are following dozens of people and trying dozens of things. This causes us to be ineffective and overwhelmed. We just can’t become an expert, or even proficient at everything this scattered way. In addition, everything takes time. You can’t have success without sustained effort spread out over time. Jumping from one influencer and one system to another, to another, and another will do nothing but frustrate us and make us want to quit again.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s especially important to find a teacher, a mentor, a coach, or just a friendly person who has already traveled the path you’re trying to travel. These people can help you avoid the pitfalls they hit. They can help you decide what’s important and what’s not. They will save you a lot of time and pain. Hey, I’ve always said that there are two great ways to learn a lot of stuff really fast. The first one is through massive failure. The second one is through mentorship. Mentorship is a lot less painful. Plus, it might also give you another life-long friend who can bring up your average in regards to the five people you hang out with mentioned in a previous chapter.
*Watch this FREE video lesson on this chapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5VefgS337Y&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=13
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