Whenever I’m working with my writers, I often feel like I’m back on my childhood ice rink, only I’m the coach and they’re the skaters. I’ve written before about the ways in which being a serious athlete in my early childhood shaped my mindset as an artist. Other than my adolescence and early twenties in the theatre, I can think of no better training than individual sports for navigating the ups and downs of the writer’s life, particularly the inner life, where creatives find some of the biggest pitfalls of their practice.
If you’re struggling with the inner critic, self-doubt, fear and the many slings and arrows of the writer’s life, I think you’ll find these tips I’m about to share from Yankees sports psychologist Lauren Johnson to be incredibly helpful. From practical suggestions for mindset shifts to quick productivity and performance hacks, it’s clear that if the jocks and artists had let themselves sit at the same table in the school cafeteria, they would have had a lot more in common than they ever could have imagined.
In Episode #467 of The Pomp Podcast, Lauren shares stories from the dugout about the challenges faced by some of the country’s top athletes—familiar plot lines to any of us who have dealt with crippling fear, anxiety, or procrastination. It’s no surprise that she often cited James Clear’s stellar book, Atomic Habits, which I often encourage my writers who struggle to get to the writer’s seat to read.
You don’t need to stretch before you read this post, but it will give your mental muscles a good workout.
Changing your Habit Energy
As I listened to Johnson discuss habits that up an athlete’s performance, I found myself thinking of the way Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh uses the phrase “habit energy” to discuss the ways in which we engage in the habits that keep us stuck. You checking your social media every time you have a few spare minutes instead of daydreaming about your novel? Habit energy. You saying yes to going out because you feel bad saying no…even if that means you don’t get to write that day? Habit energy.
These habits become so rote that they have an energy of their own, unconscious and highly destructive to the creative’s life. This is where mindfulness for writers comes in—and sports psychology.
Johnson leans on Clear’s Atomic Habits to talk about how we develop habits - such as a writing habit, or a habit of getting to the batting cages every morning. We develop habits through repetition and - good news - we can rewire our brains to become accustomed to these habits (hello brain plasticity!).
She asks this all-important question:
“Can you still show up when you don’t feel like it?”
Doing a little versus doing nothing goes a long way, whether you’re a writing struggling through a novel or a Yankees shortstop who needs to work on his slides.
That’s why I always tell my writers that five minutes of meditation is better than no minutes. Half an hour of writing is better than none at all. Two-hundred words will do when there isn’t time to knock out two-thousand.
When you do a little of something each day, you’re rewiring your brain. And here’s the good news: Half the time when you sit down to do the thing even when you don’t feel like it, you find yourself sticking around longer than you intended.
Success: Focus on Process, Not Outcome
“We have to redefine success to be in our control. ”
What does redefining success to be in our control look like exactly? It looks like finding what you can control versus what you can’t. So many writers focus on publishing—which they have zero control over. Even if you were to self-pub, there’s no guarantee you’ll find a deluge of readers. But if you focus on how much time you spend writing that book and base your idea of success on that? Now we’re cooking with gas.
We need to focus on PROCESS rather than OUTCOME.
You can’t control whether or not your book will sell, but you can almost always control whether or not you show up to write.
And so: We re-define success based on process. Perhaps for you the win is writing every day at the time you planned to write. You measure your success based on how often you wrote, not on how many words you wrote, or how many offers for your book you get. (Technically, we can control word count, but then we find ourselves focusing on outcome - word count - and so we end up writing what I call “empty calories”: words that aren’t inspired and are going to be deleted. They were only written to give us a false sense of security, where we trick ourselves into thinking we’re moving forward with our book, when we’re really just treading water).
Sometimes, the best writing you do happens when you’re staring into space, waiting for the dots to connect.
That kind of waiting takes a lot more courage than the writer who sits and bangs out 2K words of gibberish just to color in a square in their productivity planner.
When we focus on process rather than outcome, we can now evaluate our performance based on variables we can control, which means we discover clear areas where we can improve. And if we can improve, then we stand a great chance of getting that outcome we’re dreaming of.
If we focus on outcome, it’s very difficult to find a workable next step. Either you get the thing or you don’t.
Example: Focusing on Outcome
Goal: By the end of the writing session, you will have written one chapter (outcome).
Either….
You don’t finish the chapter. You got stuck on what your character really wanted in the scene and now you feel like a failure. What can you improve on next time so you can finish a chapter in one sitting? (Answer: Um, that is a really hard question to answer, given the thousands of variables involved in the construction of a chapter / plot / character).
OR
You finish the chapter come hell or high water. Woohoo! You get the gold star. But wait…the next day, you read the chapter and it’s terrible. All you did was write a bunch of empty calories so you could hit that word count. Now what?
Here’s what happens if you focus on process
Goal: By the end of the writing session, you will have not checked your email, phone, social media, or done any Internet browsing. You followed Neil Gaiman Rules: you can write or stare out the window.
Either…
You don’t finish the chapter. Gah! You checked your email JUST ONCE and got totally sidetracked. That’s okay: You’ve learned your lesson the hard way. Tomorrow, you’re turning off your Internet and your phone is going to be outside your writing cave AND on airplane mode. As the meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg says, “We can always begin again.” Tomorrow is a new day. You got this.
OR
You don’t finish the chapter. But! You followed Neil Gaiman rules and when you were staring out the window, you got a big fix for your plot. You can’t wait to dive back in tomorrow. You feel really good as you get up from the desk. Sure, you didn’t write a ton today and you would love to finish this book before you die, but it was so COOL to have gotten so much out of one session. Productivity unlocked!
OR
You finished the chapter! It was AWESOME because you were so in it, so focused, and so in flow. No interruptions = no problems. Today was a gold star day.
Do you see how when you focus on process you are both more kind to yourself and have more workable solutions for when you hit roadblocks? Do you see how focusing on process puts you in the driver’s seat, rather than handing over all your power - and perhaps even your self worth - to some rando editor or agent in New York?
Engaging In A ”Biology of Courage”
This part of Johnson’s podcast interview was super cool. She spoke about a study on body language and how “feeling and actions don’t have to be the same to co-exist.” A typical example is looking confident in your power suit even when you feel nervous as hell at the job interview.
In order to get the players of the Yankees to engage with a biology of courage, Johnson has her players do their victory fist pumps throughout the day, basically signaling to their body that they’re victorious. This sends a chemical reaction through their body - suddenly, they’re starting to feel a little more badass, even though they struck out in their last game. The next time they go up to the plate, that feeling has stuck around: their body knows what victory feels like, so when that fast ball comes racing toward them, they’re a little more likely to believe they can knock it out of the park.
For us writers, I like to engage in visualization exercises, like in this Finish Your Book meditation I created to help my writers combat their Inner Critics.
What will you do when you finish this book? Will you pump your fist, clap your hands, have a dance party? Will you type, The Motherf*cking End after the final sentence, as I once did on a tough book? (I had a plan to do that and couldn’t wait to type those words before sending the draft off to my editor - it was highly motivating).
I wonder what would happen if every day you sat down to write, you practiced typing The End. You turn on the song that you’ll dance to when this book is finished and dance to it. It’s going to be a lot harder for your brain to tell you that you’re not going to finish this book. And even if it does whisper that in your ear, it’s going to be harder for you to believe that.
Because your body already knows what it feels like to finish.
Meeting The Moment: “Threat Mindset vs Challenge Mindset”
This concept Johnson shares of having a threat mindset vs having a challenge mindset is also related to the biology of courage. When we’re in a threat mindset, we experience panic and overwhelm. We’ve all been there. (Every writer ever: “Man, this book isn’t working. Oh my god, what if someone else writes this same book before I can finish it? And what if I can’t sell this book because there’s already one out there like it? Maybe I should delete it and start something totally new oh my gooooood.”)
When we’re in a challenge mindset, our body will respond physically to prepare us to meet the moment. Our job then, is to work on getting ourselves into a challenge mindset.
We do this with the victory fist pumps I mentioned in the last section.
We do this by reframing our thoughts. (“I’ll never get published” becomes “I’m not published yet. But I will be.”)
You can turn your habit into a healthy challenge by using a habit tracker to track how often you get to the writer’s seat. Or put a quarter in a jar every time you mindfully took yourself out of a threat mindset by reframing your thoughts and getting back into a challenge mindset.
The challenge mindset is you as Rocky in that workout montage, only you’re at your laptop and punching the air.
Revising Your Identity
Our beliefs and our actions drive our identity—this isn’t news. But what you might not realize is how much the story you’re telling yourself about who you are is shaping who you will become. This is something we talk about a lot in the meditation world. The stories we tell ourselves are false constructs of our minds, and the sitting we do helps us realize these illusory thoughts for what they are and dismantle them so that we can go forth and kick some ass in the present.
If the story you’re telling yourself isn’t helpful, then we need to revise that.
Johnson asks her players two questions when they’re in a slump and struggling with performance:
- What kind of person do you want to be?
- What action do you need to take to be that person?
Then, it’s simple math:
You take this identity of who you want to become and you support it with daily actions that solidify and create the belief that you are this person.
Do you want to be a writer who writes every day? So write every day and now you are a writer who writes every day. Guess what? If your response is, “But I don’t have time to write every day” then I, putting on my coaching cap, would ask if you had five minutes a day to spare. Just five. Yes? You have five minutes? So write five minutes a day. Now you are a writer who writes every day.
““Mental toughness doesn’t make you invincible, it makes you adaptable.”
”
My writers often come to me either struggling to own that they’re a writer (they’re effectively in the writer’s closet) or they no longer believe they are a “real” writer or a “good” writer - they’ve hit what a Yankees player might call a slump.
In both cases, these writers are dealing an identity crisis. They no longer have a sense of who they are as a writer, what they bring to the table, or if they even belong at said table.
In the interview, Johnson discusses an instance with a player who was struggling to speak up in team meetings or in one-on-one sessions. He didn’t know how to advocate for himself, and because of that, he didn’t get the help he needed from his coaches or therapists. This affected his performance as an athlete. After some digging, Johnson was able to trace his reticence back to a teacher in his childhood who said he didn’t speak well.
Okay, so now what? We get why he’s this way—how does he pivot to become the kind of player he wants to be?
Before they could work on a plan to get him speaking up more, they needed to know the answer to an essential question:
What kind of baseball player did he see himself as? How did he want to show up?
Once they figured that out, they were able to work on a plan to get him speaking up more so that he could get the help he needed, contribute more to his team, reach his goals, and up his performance.
Desire Mapping: Goal Setting From The Inside Out
I do something similar with my writers when I ask them to identify what wellness maven Danielle LaPorte calls “core desired feelings” in her book The Desire Map.
This is a life-changing, intentional, intuitive way to set goals. Rather than imposing goals on yourself (I want to be on the bestseller list, etc.), you instead focus on how you want to feel. Then, as you go through your day / week / month / year / life you keep checking in: am I feeling my core desired feelings? Yes - onward! No? What shifts need to be made so that I can feel the way I want to feel? She tells you to keep asking:
What do you need to do to feel the way you want to feel?
I love this approach because it honors the divine feminine. It’s in the right brain, honoring our intuition and our feelings. The great thing about this is that it’s workable. It’s in our control, to a large extent. It’s focusing on process, not outcome.
(So not only can the artists and jocks have lots to talk about at my imaginary school cafeteria table, but the woo-woos and witchy types could pull up a chair too).
Example:
One of my core desired feelings is ease. So when I’m writing, if I feel like I’m pushing, if I’m getting stuck, I sit back and think, “Okay, what do I need to do to bring more ease into my writing practice?” Maybe I read some poetry beforehand. Or take a break and do some walking meditation. Maybe I do some mind mapping to get the ideas on paper. Ease.
Explore:
1. How do you want to feel? Choose 3 to 5 core desired feelings.
(LaPorte has some great word lists in her book, but you can always just bust out a thesaurus and keep digging until you find the words that feel juuuuust right.) These words should NOT be aspirational. Go deep and dig for what you really want to feel. Maybe the word “joy” comes to you, but you’re a glass half-full kinda gal. Joy might not be your jam. But release just might be.
2. Now, what kind of writer do you want to be based on how you want to feel? Stay in your own lane here. You do you. Don’t try to be some other writer. Close your eyes and imagine you as the kind of writer you want to be. In other words: how do you want to show up for your writing?
3. Finally, what do you need to do to feel the way you want to feel?
If one of your CDF’s is “Curious” and you want to be the kind of writer who adds to the conversation, then what do you need to do as you write your book to bring in a sense of curiosity? Maybe you need to go to a museum, get a subscription to National Geographic, learn a new language because you’re going to follow your fancy and trust that your writing will take you where you want to go. Maybe your protagonist needs to be a bit more curious.
Hint: You can do this work with your fictional characters too.
This last question is the biggie. Rather than imposing goals on ourselves and working toward them (outcome), we focus on how we want to feel (process). If we feel the way we want to feel then we have succeeded.
You don’t need anyone to validate you. You’re performance is based on things in your control.
Your Daily Check-In
Johnson suggests answering the following questions at the end of each day in order to look at where you’re at and seek areas where you might bring a bit more attention. The key to this inquiry is that we’re looking to see our patterns and our strengths. This isn’t about berating ourselves or focusing on the “wins.” We’re just getting curious.
1. What did I do well today?
2. What can I improve?
3. What did I learn?
As writers, it can be really challenging to track our improvement because we don’t have the same standardized bars to hit as an athlete might. There aren’t competitions with measurable elements that can be scored or race times or numbers of repetitions.
Our industry is incredibly subjective - even if you were to get a National Book Award, that is by no means an indication that you’re the best writer in the country. This is why focusing on outcome is counter-productive and only serves to twist us into knots. Most of the NYT Bestselling authors I know aren’t very happy. So. Maybe you don’t actually want that? I’d take happy over being on some list any day.
What do you need to do to feel the way you want to feel?
Now, go do it.
