Are You Moving In The Right Direction?

I have decided to write a book. Like most people I talk to I believe that I have one good book in me, two at a push. It is obviously hidden itself very well and doesn’t really want to come out but I feel with a bit of coaxing and maybe a nice glass of Chablis it will show its face sooner or later.

I am by nature a procrastinator, seriously I am. I know I shouldn’t admit that being a Life Coach but it’s time to be honest. The one thing I know about my procrastination though is that it isn’t hard-wired into me and that I can beat it if I set my mind to it. The beating it usually means not ‘forgetting’ to set my alarm, refusing to be sidetracked by stories of 20 foot man-eating pigs and dolphins that can do calculus on the Internet (by the way, the dolphins don’t do the calculus on the Internet, I meant the story was on the Internet. Well it wasn’t really I made it up, but you get my drift) and most importantly of all writing down what I want to achieve out of the day and then ticking off the items as I go through them one by one. There is one other small element that helps me, and that it to commit to somebody else what I am going to do, usually my coach or my wife. If it is the latter, then the icy stares I will get if I don’t follow through are enough to keep me motivated trust me.

So anyway, back to the book. I have always enjoyed writing even though my style is somewhat less than classical. It was about the only thing I ever got complimented on at school other than my ability to think of unique and usually convincing reasons why I couldn’t make French that week. I suppose as it is the only thing I remember feeling good about I haven’t anchored any negative emotions to it. If you asked me write a book on being beaten over the backside with a floppy gym shoe by the athletics coach however I am sure that would have been another matter altogether.

I want my book to help and add value to other peoples lives so bearing in mind what I do I thought I would like to contribute a self-help book to add to the other gazillion that are already out there.

Most self-development books I have read are ok, a few are terrible and some are brilliant such as the The Maverick Mindset and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People The brilliant ones have left an indelible imprint on me as a person and are still helping to shape my life for the better. The thought that I could maybe do that for somebody else is a huge motivating factor for me.

With most projects like this the getting going is the hard part but I had a cunning plan to give me a head start. So, I thought, where do I have a load of stuff already written down along the lines of self-development? Right here of course with about 9 months of blogging. In fact I thought, I must have the book already written it is just a case of collating all the material from about 100 or so Blogs, sticking it in an envelope, mailing it to Nightingale Conant and waiting for the checks to flood in.

It hasn’t quite worked out like that. On delving back into my early Blogs I made a shocking and brutal discovery. They were rubbish. Yep, I have to admit, some of my early Blogs were just terrible and if I put then into a book I think it is fair to say only my mom and the criminally insane would offer up good money to read it and even then my mom would probably ask for her money back.

Why did I think they were better than they are? Is my mind playing tricks? I’m not sure really although I did read something recently that may explain it. I was scanning one of the Jeffrey Gitomer books I have, I forget which but probably Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude: How to Find, Build and Keep a YES! Attitude for a Lifetime of SUCCESS and noticed a passage where he talks of a similar thing with his own writing and how it took him years to fine tune it.

On the one hand I was a little dispirited reading that but on the other I can see that I have improved a great deal over the last 9 months and I know I am moving in the right direction.

Current goal: To have the book finished and up for sale on my website by 30th October 2007. Hold me to that one!

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