Turning Defeats into Victories
Sometimes our darkest times become our brightest futures. Just think back to President Lincoln. Everyone knows who President Lincoln is. He is universally admired. His name is recognized all over the world as one the greatest U.S. Presidents ever. However, what is rarely remember about Lincoln is all of his defeats. Not many people remember Lincoln’s darkest times when he was victimized by failure after failure and even death after death. These dark times helped forge Lincoln into the man that he would have to become to win the Civil War and turn his and his country’s defeats into victories.
I can still remember the first book I wrote so many years ago. I recall the jubilation of finally holding a copy of the physical book in my hands. I remember how it physically felt. I also remember how it emotionally lifted my spirits and how I had thought I finally made it. I had finally arrived. Now everything was going to be different, better, and more fruitful moving forward. I couldn’t wait for the sales and checks to come rolling in… And then… nothing happened… I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what went wrong. I didn’t know why nobody liked me or my book.
It was an emotionally exhausting and pretty dark time in my life. I could finally better understand why so many authors become alcoholics. It didn’t drive me to drink, but it did make me want to quit. I came very close to quitting a lot of times. Thank goodness I didn’t quit because, like Lincoln, those dark times forged me into the man that I would need to become to be where I am today. An Authorpreneur! And that’s a pretty cool place to be now that I went from victim to victor and turned defeat into victory through authorpreneurship journey.
You see, here’s the deal. We’re always going to make mistakes and have problems. The only way not to have any problems is to be dead. And I don’t think any of us want to be dead so we don’t have to have any more problems, right? So face it. There is no way around it. We’re always going to have problems and make mistakes.
The secret to this lifestyle with problems and mistakes is to make our problems higher quality problems and our mistakes different mistakes. You see, if we’re still making the same mistakes over and over, then we aren’t learning and progressing. We have to educate ourselves on how to overcome the common problems we face every day as self-publishing indie authors. Once we’ve done this, we’ve made some real progress.
Now comes the exciting part. Now we get to make new mistakes, which will bring us to the land of high-quality problems. Think about this for a moment. If we’re still making mistakes, but now see that they are new mistakes, it’s a positive thing. It means we’re learning how to overcome our old mistakes and are now trying new things.
Getting beyond old things, and trying new things is what brings us to the problem-solving tasks of higher quality problems. Hmm… Should we now publish this book or that book? Should we speak over here, or over there? Should we send 10,000 copies of our books to this association or that organization? These are pretty good problems to have. And these will be the problems that we will have once we are successful authorpreneurs.
So don’t sweat the problems or mistakes. It just means that we’re learning. And as long as we keep learning, we’ll be eternally young and vibrant within our niche. Also, look at it this way; the bigger the obstacles are that we face, the more people will quit leaving us more of the glory of our authorpreneurship. Our darkest times can equal our brightest futures! So don’t quit. Keep going.
*Watch this FREE video lesson on this chapter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL5G_VH-MAw&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=20
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