Help for “Overwhelm” …
and Four More Lessons
I’ve Learned as a Mentor
By Michele Peterson

Imagine, for a minute, me on a rooftop shouting …

“I know the No. 1, very best way to overcome that feeling of overwhelm that every writer has faced at some point.”

That’s how excited I am about this.

Hi … I’m Michele Peterson (off the rooftop and here with you today in The Writer’s Life).

I’ve been getting paid to enjoy the writer’s life for 15 years now. Full time for the last 13. And for the last several years, I’ve been helping fellow writers along the way to their own successful writer’s lives as an AWAI Circle of Success Mentor.

In fact, I’ve logged almost 300 official COS mentoring sessions so far!

Now, I’m not saying that to brag — although it’s something I’m incredibly proud of — but rather to set the stage for why I know I can help you if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

For me, and for many of the writers I’ve mentored, overwhelm most often results from the sheer abundance of opportunities there are for us. All the “what-ifs,” including …

• How can I possibly narrow down all the opportunity I see in the world around me and choose a single niche of clients to write for or projects to specialize in?
• There are so many AWAI programs that sound interesting and valuable, how do I pick which ones to enroll in?
• Of all the strategies for getting clients, which will work best for me?
• Do I even want clients? Should I go the clientless route?
• I landed a big project (YAY!), but now what? Where do I start?

Feel familiar? If you’re nodding your head “yes!,” you’re not alone.

And I’ve found — through my own experience as well as from the hundreds of writers I’ve mentored — that the best way to overcome that feeling of overwhelm …

No matter what’s causing it …

Is simply this:

Focus on ONE next step at a time.

Now, the tricky part is that the ONE best next step is different for all of us, depending on where we are in our writer’s life journey.

For some, it’s going all in on one training program to improve our writing skills.

For others, it’s picking one ideal target market to focus our prospecting efforts on to land a paying client.

For still others, it’s deciding whether we even want to work with clients at all or prefer a clientless writer’s life.

What is it for you? What is your ONE next step?

When you focus in on that single, strategic next step, you’ll eliminate overwhelm.

It’s worked for me. It’s worked for my writer friends. It’s worked for all the COS members I’ve been privileged to mentor.

And, it will work for you, too. (I promise 🙂)

So, I ask again … what is your ONE next step? And if you don’t know exactly what it is, what is ONE thing you can do today to get closer to figuring it out? (By the way, that itself would be your one next step!)

Here are four more lessons I’ve learned and encourage the folks I mentor to embrace …

1. Deadlines Are for Doers, so Commit and Schedule Next Steps

Do you know the story about the five frogs sitting on a log on a sunny riverbank?

They were sitting there, having a good time and enjoying the warmth of the sun. But as time went on, it started to get uncomfortable. They got hot sitting there in the sun. And they thought the shady side of the river looked like a better place to be.

So three of them decided they’d jump into the water, swim across the river, and see if the other side was, in fact, a better place to be.

Now, before we go further into the story, and to make sure you’re paying attention … how many frogs are still on the log in the hot sun?

If you’re like most people, your answer is two.

But that’s not the right answer.

In fact, all five of the frogs are still on the log. Because they decided to take action, but they didn’t say when they’d do it.

You, too, may have decided on your one strategic next step that will move you forward in your writer’s life. But as we see with our frogs, deciding to do something isn’t enough.

You have to also say when you’re going to do it …

You have to give yourself a deadline.

This is something I’ve seen to be true over and over again:

Deadlines are for doers.

Doers give themselves deadlines. They commit to taking action, and they schedule their next steps so that they meet both their external and internal deadlines.

Depending on the complexity of your action step, your deadline may be in the next hour, by the end of the day, next week, or even next month. The frogs in our story could have given themselves a deadline of just a few minutes.

The important thing is what the deadline represents …

It is your commitment to follow through on your decision to take action.

The writers I’ve mentored are familiar with this concept. I rarely let a mentor call end without getting them to tell me a realistic deadline for the action they’ve committed to taking.

It’s something I do myself, which I learned from Tony Robbins. He teaches, “Never leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action toward its realization.”

Giving yourself a deadline for your next step IS taking a specific action. It is doing something to keep you moving forward.

So now, I ask you this … When will you take the action you’ve decided on? Commit to a realistic deadline and schedule it into your calendar. In fact, why not go ahead and do it now, while you’re thinking about it?

2. Accountability Strengthens Your Commitment to Take Action

Now, let’s help you strengthen your commitment to taking action and meeting that deadline you just set for yourself.

But you may be thinking … Wait a darn minute! My commitment is plenty strong. I don’t need any help!

I know. I thought the same thing once upon a time.

And while my commitment to myself was — and is — strong …

It’s even stronger when I make my commitment known to someone else.

Commitment is stronger with accountability backing it up.

Various studies prove that when you tell someone else about the action you’re committed to, you are more likely to follow through and take said action.

That’s because it’s easier to procrastinate or keep pushing back the deadline you’ve given yourself when you’re the only one who knows about it.

Telling someone else about your commitment gives you accountability. It gives your internal commitment an external — extra — boost.

So, where can you find accountability? Really, just about anywhere. But here are a few common places, in no particular order:

• Accountability Partner
• Mentor
• Family
• Friends
• Facebook Group
• Social Media

Of course, an actual accountability partner or mentor will check in with you and ask for progress updates. But even the act of going public with your commitment strengthens it.

Proclaiming it makes it “real.”

So, I encourage you to tell someone about the action you’ve committed to take and the deadline you’ve given yourself for it.

If you’re in one of the AWAI Facebook groups, post it there. If you have a Circle of Success Mentor, tag them in the COS Facebook group and tell them. (Want to learn more about COS? Click here.)

Because let’s be real …

Even if you don’t need the help, why deny yourself the extra power boost when it comes to taking the action that leads to your success?

3. Action Builds Confidence, So Start Even Before You Feel Ready

It’s a catch-22. A conundrum. A quandary. A predicament, a pickle, a puzzle that seems to have no easy solution.

It’s something nearly all the writers I’ve mentored have asked me at some point and in some fashion …

How is it possible to have confidence that you can do something when you haven’t actually done it yet?

For writers, the question is “How can I be confident that I can write copy that a client will pay me for, before I actually get paid to write copy?” Or, “How can I be confident that I’ll land a client when I haven’t yet?”

It’s a great question. And it comes from a common belief that you have to have confidence to do something.

But that’s not entirely true. In fact, it’s the other way around.

You don’t have to have confidence to take action. You have to take action to build confidence.

Remember it this way …

A-B-C: Action Builds Confidence

Confidence is having the belief — the certainty — in your ability to do something. So, it follows that you have to do the thing before you can have confidence in doing it.

But confidence isn’t a prerequisite to taking action. Instead of confidence, you need courage to take action.

Trying new things … doing new things … can be scary. But as Mark Twain said, “Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”

So how do you develop that courage?

In my experience, courage comes from three primary sources:

• Faith that everything happens the way it should for your greater good. You either win or you learn, but you never lose.
• Being prepared with practice and planning.
• Past experience that proves you can figure things out and do new, hard things.

When one of my mentees is particularly struggling with the courage to take action, I have them list all the things they’ve successfully done that they hadn’t had any prior experience doing.

For example, some of those things for me are driving a car, buying a house, running a half marathon, landing a client as a freelance writer, and having a $10,000 month as a freelance writer.

Having done those things in the past proves not only that I can do them, but also that I can do other new things like them.

And your past experience proves the same to you … if you let it. If you believe it to be true.

So, make your own list of past experiences that prove you have what it takes to take action now as you build your own version of the writer’s life.

Let your past action build your confidence in your current ability. Let it fuel your courage to take action now that will build additional confidence for your future.

4. The Truth That Will Set You Free: Clients Are Just People Who Need Help

We’ve covered a lot, but don’t give up on me now. Because now, we’re talking about clients.

If you’re pursuing the writer’s life with the intent to generate income (rather than it being a fun hobby), then you’re going to need someone to pay you. Even if you go the “clientless” route, someone will be processing the payments you collect on behalf of your writing efforts.

That person signing your check — literally or virtually, in the case of e-payments — is your client. They’re an important part of your writer’s life.

But while every writer is excited about getting paid, many get nervous when it comes to talking to prospects, having the money talk with clients, and dealing with clients in general.

I was nervous, too, with my first clients. Looking back now, I realize that I was trying so hard to sell them on hiring me that I was very transactional in my approach. It worked … at least sometimes …

But I also knew it could be better.

And then I realized something that changed everything about how I interacted with prospects and clients.

And it changed my income, too.

This is the truth that changed my writer’s life for the better:

Clients are just people who need help.

And the help they need is something I can provide.

When I started treating prospects and clients simply like people who needed my help, I started landing more clients and more projects with existing clients.

When I started helping these people instead of selling my copywriting services, I had more success.

I got more joy from my writer’s life, too.

It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. And I see the same weight being lifted when I share this truth with the writers I mentor.

Are you shaking that weight off now as you read this?

It’s incredibly freeing, isn’t it? To realize that prospects and clients are just people who need our help.

So instead of being nervous about the process of reaching out to prospects and getting clients, get excited about the opportunity to help them. People will be able to feel this from you. They will respond accordingly and be excited about receiving that help.

In full and honest transparency, you’ll still likely get some people who tell you no. Let’s face it: You always will. I still do, too. But you’re also likely to get more people to say yes to accepting your help.

And this approach works when you’re monetizing your clientless writing, too. Keep in mind that you’re helping your audience of people, and your monetization efforts will be that much more successful.

This Zig Ziglar quote says it all:

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

So, remember … it’s not about selling your writing services but about helping people. Your writer’s life will be better for it.

Now, while we’re on the subject of helping people …

The Help YOU Need …

I hope you now see the power of mentoring as the “secret sauce” to help writers achieve success. And I encourage you to find a mentor who will give you the help you need as you pursue your writer’s life.

If you’re already a Circle of Success member, go to your Member Page now and schedule your next COS Mentor Call. If you aren’t in COS yet, go here to learn more about it (you get mentoring plus so much more!).

Your writer’s life awaits.