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Meditation and The Art of Writing

by Farnoosh Brock on November 7, 2011

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I want to tell you about an invaluable writing asset.

It’s become a non-negotiable element of my writing process, and I hope it becomes the same for you.

Writing is hard work. It’s not hard like electrical engineering (a chapter in my past life), which was a mind-numbing, sleep-depriving, hair-pulling kind of hard.

Writing is more a sweet torture, soreness-post-crazy-workout kind of hard.

You know the routine: The words get stuck. The ideas get jammed. The mind gets cluttered, and you get discouraged. 

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Sometimes inspiration strikes. A writing flow ensues. You create a beautiful piece and you hit a home run with your readers.

But what about those times when it’s not working? Where do you turn? How do you tap into your very best self? 



Outside versus inside influence

There is no shortage of resources in the world of writing today; we have it covered well, from writing techniques, resources, and tools, to inspiration and endless, amazing role models.

How lucky for us to be living in a world where we have such fast access to all of the above. 

Yet, that’s all on the outside. You should never lose sight of what lies on the inside.    

How often are you turning inward and shutting everything else off?

How do you tap into what you uniquely have to offer the world without being pulled so many directions from the outside?

into Thanks to my engineering brain, I used to be a skeptic of all things that fell outside the realm of science and logic. I eventually came to understand that skepticism is downright limiting when it comes to a technique I want to talk about today, an empowering writing tool you should embrace.

The benefits of meditation to your writing

Meditation will make you a better writer.

I am not saying that meditation is the only element necessary to turn you into a master writer, but if this practice is absent from your writing and creative process, you are simply leaving too much potential on the table.

Without a simple meditation practice, you’re not tapping into your full creative juices and you’re robbing yourself of becoming the best writer you can be on many levels.

Reading is a wonderful stimulant for your brain; it expands your horizons and increases your knowledge of the world, but what matters with your writing is how well you can access that information and express it on paper (or pixels) in your best writing voice and style.

You need to get into the right state of mind to achieve that, and meditation is the shortest path to that state. 

Meditation can unlock your best writing ideas.

Meditation calms your nerves and allows the brain to process the information it has soaked up from reading and listening. Meditation allows your mind to have a genuine conversation with itself, and to make honest discoveries about what untainted and original content it can create.

Meditation fills the gaps and connects the dots. Meditation tames fatigue, purifies ideas, discards old ones and gives birth to new ones.

It awakens your inner voice and gives it courage to speak up. 

It splashes drops of awareness on your thoughts and it showers you with a wealth of creativity and knowledge that otherwise tends to be trapped in your mind. 

Meditation is a gift far too accessible, too easy, and too rewarding not to embrace — if you are willing to cultivate the habit.

Here are 3 effective meditation habits that will invigorate your writing …

1. Meditate On Your Own

There are many types of meditation; you can go to retreats, classes, or group meditation sessions.

You can also meditate on your own.

The most practical and effective type of meditation — and one where you can use the resulting mindfulness to stimulate your writing — is done on your own and in the privacy of your own home.

You can choose from different two routes here. You can use guided meditation technique where you listen to CDs, podcasts of experts who lead you through the meditation.

Or you can meditate on your own, and you do not need a diploma from a yoga school or an approval from a Buddhist temple, I assure you.

No prior experience is needed to follow these instructions. You only need to be willing.

  • Decide to do it Tell yourself you are willing to give this a fair shake. Nothing happens without a mental commitment.
  • Find a time and a space in your home that is comfortable, inviting, and quiet. That means no pets, no children, no partners or spouses. The good news is that you can even use your closet, so no excuses either!
  • Sit on the floor or on a cushion Sit crossed legged but be sure that you are comfortable and if need be, have your back supported by a wall for a tall spine. Meditating on the floor has an impact that cannot be replicated on other surfaces because when seated on the floor – or on your cushion – you have a physical connection with Mother Earth. The simplicity of this act combined with a straight spine does wonders for your mind.
  • Put your hands on your lap Be relaxed and receptive. When you know what to do with your hands, it immediately helps you to relax.
  • Choose a mantra This is a phrase that you keep repeating to yourself during meditation. It can be a question you ask, a problem you want to solve, or a mental block you wish to release. For example: “How can I write differently about the same old topic?” or “What is my writing voice?” The answers will come to you.
  • Close your eyes and begin breathing Let the meditation start. Tune into the silence. Let your thoughts come and neither reject nor acknowledge them. Repeat your mantra over and over. Just listen. Stay as little as 5 minutes or as long as 30 minutes. When you are finished, slowly come out by opening your eyes, rubbing your hands together, and sitting another minute or two before getting up.

2. Forgive yourself when you slip

Nothing works if you do it only once, or sometimes even ten times.

Meditation is a practice and you need to develop a habit around it. Habits are built over time, and with consistency. 

When you sit still for 5 minutes every day for a week, you have a start. When you sit still for 10 minutes every day for a month, you have momentum. When you feel compelled to meditate and to tune into the solitude before you write, then you have a strong habit.

This is all great but we are human beings. You will slip here and there. You will miss a day now and again, so remember what makes or breaks the return to meditation: forgiving yourself instantly for those times when you slip. 

Whether writing or meditating, just let it go, and then pick it back up the following day.

3. Write after meditation

Protect the post-meditation state of mind for as long as you can.

Write soon after meditation.

Even take a notebook (yes, a physical notebook) or your writing device and write while still on your cushion or on the floor immediately after you finish the day’s meditation practice.

There may be a slow return to writing, but you’ll find yourself in a different space than you’re used to. It is a reflective, creative, and productive state, free of noise and clutter, and a haven of clarity.

Trust me, try this before you dismiss it.

In fact, I say try everything at least twice, because good ideas in life sometimes deserve two chances.

We’ll never know, but would you not like to believe that the greatest writers of our time meditated before creating their timeless masterpieces? 

Even William Shakespeare wrote (through King Henry VI):

Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close; And let us all to meditation.

A penny for your thoughts

What do you think about the connection between meditation and writing?

Have you ever meditated before? And, more importantly, have you experimented with sitting down to write immediately after your meditation?

Please share your thoughts with me in the comments below …

About the Author: Farnoosh Brock left her corporate career to write, to speak, and to pursue the world of entrepreneurship. She writes about living on your own terms, crushing your fears, and cultivating smart habits at Prolific Living. She invites you to join her LinkedIn Group to engage in conversations about smart habits for mind, body and heart.

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How to Capture Your Reader’s Attention

by Marcia Hoeck on February 1, 2011

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“OH MY GOD! Your hair is on fire!”

Well, that’s probably not true. I only said it to get your attention.

Getting attention is the most important part of online marketing. No matter how brilliant your ideas are, you can’t even offer them to your prospect unless you’ve made her look in your direction first.

You have to get your prospect’s attention before you can turn her into a reader, let her know how wonderful you are, or sell her something.

Do I have your attention yet?

Good. Now I’ll show you how to get someone else’s.

Your reader can’t pay attention to everything

The brain is funny like that — in order to understand, the brain has to focus on specific information.

Attention helps us screen out the irrelevant and choose which information will enter, and stay, in our awareness. Our attention decides what to “pay attention to,” because human focus is limited, and we just can’t give our attention to everything.

Your reader’s minds are very selective. So we have to give them a reason to pay attention to our content instead of everything else out there they could be listening to.

There are many obstacles in the path to gaining your reader’s attention

Even if you have the best product, service, or information on the planet, it’s still difficult to get people to give you the time of day. Here are some common obstacles to getting your prospect’s attention:

  • The relentless proliferation of available products, services, and information
  • Increased and increasingly better competition
  • The multiplying methods of distribution
  • Buyer sophistication
  • Information overload
  • The desire for instant gratification

These are all roadblocks you face in the attention-getting game, so you’ve really got to be good at showing readers why their limited attention should be directed to you.

Try these attention-grabbing strategies

  • Help them see what you see. You might be focusing on yourself when creating messages about your business, thinking that everyone sees things the way you do. But they don’t. People won’t “hear” you, or pay attention, until they perceive what you perceive. So you’ve got to make your position crystal clear — help them to see what you see, using storytelling, description, personal experiences, case histories, and anything that will put the prospect in the right position to understand your message.
  • Make it personal. When you make your writing personal, you make it important. Personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information can grab attention, bring clarity, and help it slip right into your prospective client’s awareness. You don’t have to do a lot of explaining to tell someone his house (or his hair) is on fire — because it’s so personal to him. You immediately get attention.
  • Use emotion. Emotion is a great way to bring clarity to your business messages while making them personal. Emotion also comes with the triple bonus of adding clarity, giving clients a reason to talk about you and your business, and triggering the circuits in the brain that activate behavior and decisions — emotion is much better at that than logic is. Emotional messages get attention.

    • Don’t take chances with attention

    You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention, so don’t take chances with clever, cute, or insider language or visuals, which are often lost on people. Don’t use inside jokes or industry terms, either, unless appropriate for narrow niche marketing. These tactics only tend to confuse audiences, if only for a few seconds, which is all it takes to lose them — and a confused mind does not pay attention.

    Follow up with a strong second

    Once you’ve managed to capture your reader’s attention, don’t waste it. Getting your reader’s attention is like the first strike of a One-Two punch — if you don’t land the second part, you’re not going to knock them out (and I mean KO in the good way).

    Make sure your second punch, the actual information or message for which you grabbed her attention in the first place, is worthwhile.

    If it’s valuable, you’ve paved the way for easy entry into her attention with future conversation.

    If it isn’t, it’ll be that much more difficult to capture her attention the next time, as your prospect’s brain has already filed your information under “not worth our attention.”

    About the Author: After being in the trenches herself for over 25 years, Marcia Hoeck now helps entrepreneurs create businesses that will run without them. Get a great free report 5 Power Shifts You Can’t Succeed in Business Without at her Breakthrough Business blog. (Oh, and yep, you heard right — she’s Johnny B. Truant’s mom, and lives a normal life anyway.)

    P.S.

    Want to learn more about how to capture a reader’s attention — and how to translate that into sales? Sign up for the Internet Marketing for Smart People newsletter. It’s free, and it’s packed with advice on how to grow your business effectively, without hype, sleaze, or silly games.

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Wake Up! 7 Simple Ways to Energize Your Writing Powers

by Dean Rieck on November 9, 2010

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Do you sometimes feel like you’re in a rut with writing?

We all do from time to time.

It comes from getting too comfortable with the way we do things. We fall into familiar patterns and it puts us to sleep.

But waking yourself up isn’t as hard as you might think.

My wife and I were driving around a few days ago.

Like most people, we fall into a daze whenever we travel along familiar roads. But about halfway there, purely on a whim, I turned onto a new street. And we both instantly perked up.

Along the way we discovered a beautiful neighborhood, a quaint old bookstore, and a new restaurant where we had a fabulous meal.

It turned a routine evening into an exciting adventure. These places were there all along, of course, but we would never have known about them if we hadn’t tried something different.

The same is true when it comes to writing. When you’re feeling like you’re in a creative daze, take a new path. Do something different. That’s one way to wake up, discover fresh ideas, and energize your creative powers. Here are a few others.

1. Learn your craft

You can’t be truly creative in any field until you have mastered the tools of the trade.

Robert Irwin, an artist and MacArthur Fellow, spent two years working up to 15 hours a day, painting the same picture over and over again in order to understand his work better.

You don’t have to be so extreme, but you should certainly read books, attend seminars, talk shop, keep up on your field, and get as much experience as you can.

Knowledge is fuel for your creative fire.

2. Get off auto pilot

Robert Frost once said, “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts the moment you get up and doesn’t stop until you get into the office.”

It’s good to have formulas and rules, but we should never rely on them blindly.

Question your own expertise and the advice of the experts. Stop looking for just one right answer. Don’t settle for the first idea. Set aside those pet techniques now and then. Banish those clichés.

Borrow good ideas from others, but try out your own, too.

3. Stop avoiding failure

Long, long ago, while still in high school, I took a driver’s education class along with a friend. With a death grip on the wheel, he sat bolt upright, swerved back and forth on the road, and slammed the brake at every intersection.

He was so fixated on not making a mistake, he couldn’t concentrate on just driving.

Likewise, if you build your writing life around the idea of avoiding failure, you will be unable to concentrate on writing well. You will certainly not realize your full potential.

Instead of avoiding failure, strive for success and accept the occasional failure as part of the learning process.

4. Focus on important problems

My work involves writing marketing copy, which is often tested to see what works best.

Recently, a business showed me test after test where they had changed a color slightly or modified minor copy points.

“We just can’t seem to change our results,” they lamented.

I could see why immediately. They were focusing on tiny, irrelevant issues!

When you focus on trivia, you will generally get trivial results. And this will only discourage future creative thinking.

Success breeds success. So tackle the big issues first. That’s where the real results come from.

5. Find new uses for old ideas

While analyzing copy for a fundraising organization, I concluded that people may harbor doubts about how funds are used. I knew from my work in advertising that doubts are often put to rest with a guarantee. So I suggested including a strong, detailed guarantee about the use of funds.

The organization hesitated, since none of us had ever seen a fundraiser use this blatantly commercial technique. But this old idea used in a new way produced significantly better results.

6. Break down false barriers

When it’s time to write a blog post, do you immediately start writing?

Who says a post has to be just another post? Why not a radio show? Or a video demonstration? Or a series of photos with captions?

Back up. Think things through from the beginning.

  • What is your message?
  • What would make it most interesting?
  • What sort of post have you never tried before?

False barriers blind you to alternatives. Ask yourself how you would normally do something. Then look for other ways. Often you’ll find them.

7. Set the conditions you need to create

For most people, this means comfortable lighting, pleasing sounds and colors, plenty of space to spread out and work, information and equipment handy, and no distractions.

But the right conditions for creative production vary from person to person.

Beethoven poured ice water over his head. Kant wrote in bed. Balzac drank cup after cup of coffee. Hemingway merely got up at dawn and sharpened 20 pencils. Find what works best for you.

I must admit that while driving along unfamiliar roads, I often get lost. But that’s okay. Because I always find my way again. And I always discover something new.

About the Author: Dean Rieck has been called “the best direct response copywriter in America.” Get his free report, Dazzle Your Clients and Double Your Income.

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Copyblogger Weekly Wrap: Week of October 3, 2010

by Johnny B. Truant on October 9, 2010

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I’m going to keep this week’s intro brief because my dog is biting me.

My mother says he bites us all because he’s herding us (he’s a collie mix and barks and corrals when anyone runs), but I think it’s because he wants to be on the winning side. If anyone is play-attacking anyone else, he bites the person being attacked. He’s kind of an ass that way.

So it really can’t bode well that I’m being harassed while writing the Wrap. Speaking of ass, it’s just like that time he bit Jennifer Lopez while she was busy working on Gigli.

Now for the part where I massively fail to tell you what happened this week on Copyblogger (with bite marks):

Monday:

4 Simple Ways to Get More High-Paying Clients with Your Blog

If you’re not getting clients with your blog, chances are you’re not doing the four things in this post. Or possibly, you’re doing them but are wearing a clown costume. So remember also #5: Don’t wear a clown costume. And off you go.

Read the full post here.

Tuesday:

The Simple Tricks Experts Use to Always Get Paid For Their Time

Sometimes the person asking to “pick your brain” isn’t a zombie, and when that happens, you’re really in trouble. Rather than awkwardly stumbling through a conversation containing sentences like, “But my brain is supposed to make me money, you freeloader!”, Laura Roeder has better ways to deal with sticky situations.

Read the full post here.

Wednesday:

Captivate Your Readers with a Marketing Story that Sells

Let me tell you a story: There once was a guy named Johnny, and he had the very unprofitable hobby of writing stories. Then he discovered that if you can learn to tell your own true story in business, you can make money… so he did just that, and taught others how to do it, too. Then he hooked up with seven Victoria’s Secret models and lived happily ever after.

Read the full post here.

Thursday, part 1:

The Easy-to-Use Tool that Helps You Build a Breakthrough Blog

Apparently there’s this newfangled trend out there in the Interwebz called “being organized.” The way I read this, some people actually plan things out on a calendar and do NOT blog totally randomly. Apparently this crazy new trend has some advantages that you can read about in this post, like “knowing what the hell you’re doing.” Hmm. Interesting.

Read the full post here.

Thursday, part 2:

Two Conferences for Serious Online Marketers

Brian Clark will be speaking at the BlueGlass Internet Marketing conference in Florida November 2-3, and at PubCon Las Vegas on November 8-11. That’s pretty much it. Not funny enough? Okay, imagine him speaking in a clown costume.

Read the full post here.

Friday:

Blogging with a Learner’s Mind

This post made me think of how people say that kids pick up languages naturally and well, and how my response is, “If you were content to just say stupid and incorrect things and had people tirelessly correct you for months until you got it right, you’d be good at languages too.” Pamela says it best: “A learner’s mind is fearless.” Learn to lose that fear and be content to learn over time and your blogging will become so much more awesome.

Read the full post here.

This week’s cool links:

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant specializes in selling through stories and would like very much to set you up with a cheap blog or website. (That’s “cheap” as in “inexpensive,” not as in “tawdry.”)

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The Simple Tricks Experts Use to Always Get Paid For Their Time

by Laura Roeder on October 5, 2010

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When I think about it, I still get that feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I was chatting with a woman with an interior design business about the changes she needed to make in her website. The conversation was going well — she loved all my ideas and was ready to rebuild her site.

I started getting excited, thinking I had found my next project. I was already putting together her proposal in my head. Then she uttered those dreaded words …

“I’d love to take you to lunch and pick your brain sometime.”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt my face turning red and I stammered out an excuse about getting back to her when I checked my calendar.

Requests for “brain-picking” are rampant in any business, and they’re never fun if you’re the one whose brain is being picked. It used to happen to me so much that I found myself becoming resentful.

Every time I spoke with someone new I heard a little voice in the back of my head saying “Ugh, I bet they’ll never hire you, they just want a bunch of help for free”.

That little voice was not very helpful for landing clients

If you’ve ever been in this situation, there is a way to turn this around. There is a way to handle these situations with grace and without frustration.

There’s even a way to make those freebie requests go away — or, even better, turn into paying clients.

It is your job, and your job alone, to set appropriate boundaries and clear up what you’re happy to give for free and what you charge for.

That might be hard to hear. But if you want to move through these situations with grace (and encounter them less often) you have to stop placing blame — and start making it a policy to get paid for your time.

Sound impossible? It’s not. Here’s how:

1. Take full responsibility

The most important thing you can do is stop being angry at the prospect for asking.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If you were given the choice between getting a new computer for free or paying for the same computer, you’d pick free every time — and you’d never think about the company who doesn’t get paid for the sale. Why would you?

I know free is my favorite price for everything.

It is your prospect’s prerogative to ask for your time for free. Let me say that again — it is their prerogative to ask.

In fact, they’d be missing a golden opportunity if they paid for something when they didn’t have to. You can’t blame the prospect for taking the smart route.

You’re also missing the subtle compliment that goes with being asked for advice.

When someone asks you for your time for free, be grateful that they view you as someone who can offer valuable advice. Gary Vaynerchuk constantly says how grateful he is to get thousands of emails a day — he doesn’t take it for granted that every one of those people thinks that he is worth taking time out of their life to write to him.

Everyone asking for your time is already “sold” on you to a degree — they must be or they wouldn’t be asking you for more! Instead of viewing them as a dead-end cheapskate, see them as someone who is so invested in you that they’ll either be a potential client or a source of referrals.

2. Clearly establish your service offerings

Sometimes people ask you to work for free because you haven’t given them anything to buy.

When I offered web design I didn’t have any packages for ongoing support. I charged clients a per-project fee, and considered the project done when the client signed off on the design.

Invariably, people would contact me after the project was officially “over” with some tiny request — things that literally took 5-10 minutes of my time. Crafting a new invoice for this small request seemed silly, yet all of these requests were starting to seriously eat up my time.

I started to feel like I had to provide free service for life for each one-time purchase, and I felt like people were taking advantage of me when they asked for these small favors.

Looking back, I can see that they weren’t taking advantage of me. The issue was mine. I should have had a clearly-defined ongoing support package to offer in response to those requests.

That would have made things clear — either you had purchased my ongoing support or you hadn’t. As it stood, everyone was in the grey zone.

If you don’t like people asking for your time for free, but also don’t have any sort of well-defined offer in place to charge them for that time, the blame falls squarely on you.

3. Decide what you’ll give away …

What are you willing to give out for free?

This is where content marketing is your friend, because you offer plenty of valuable free resources like your blog or newsletter.

It also may be appropriate to do brief introductory phone calls, or host one group in-person session per month for people who are interested in working with you.

Whatever it is for your business, get clear.

For the record, you do not have to offer any time for free. It is possible to get hired without any kind of free consult beforehand if you do a great job building the relationship ahead of time with your content marketing. In my business people sign $5,000 contracts with me without any kind of free introductory consult.

4. … but don’t assume that free advice is all they want

We often make the mistake of assuming that someone isn’t willing to pay just because they ask to “pick our brain.”

Again, they’re asking because we all love free. That doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to pay, it means they’re hoping they won’t have to.

They’ve expressed interest in learning more from you, which means they are a potential client and should be treated as such.

Remember that you are in business here, which means that you exchange value for money. Don’t let “free” become your default mode. It is your job to take the lead.

If you lead them down the free path that’s exactly where they’ll go. Lead them down the customer path instead.

5. Respond with confidence

Here’s a script for how to handle someone asking you for coffee or lunch to “pick your brain”:

I’m glad to hear you’re interested in getting deeper into this. The next step is my one-hour consultation. Would you like me to tell you how that works?

Notice that you’re asking permission and putting the prospect in the driver’s seat.

You’re also using the clear service offering that you established in step two. You’re not explaining why you’re charging, because there’s no need: your time is valuable. That’s a given. Even if you’re not used to thinking of it that way yet, get used to responding to these queries as though you are.

If they want to hear more about your consult, that’s great! You have the green light to sign a new client.

Some people will backpedal and start saying they’re tight on money. Here’s another script you can use in that scenario:

I completely understand, you have my card so just get in touch with me when you’re ready. You can also take a look at the articles on my blog if you’d like some more general advice that can tide you over until you’re ready to embark on this project.

What you don’t want to do is hedge, waver or discount. Stand firm with full respect for your business and you’ll find that the prospect will share that respect.

Hold firm and freebie requests will fall off

You’ll notice that the people at the very top seem to struggle with this topic less, even though they get the most requests.

Why? When you’re clear and confident in what you offer, paying for your time becomes the natural progression.

Get clear, get confident and start being honored by those “freebie” requests. That’s how you become an expert that always gets paid for their time.

If getting all of those requests because you’re the top expert in your field is a problem you would like to have, check out my course Creating Fame. It’s a step-by-step guide to making you and your business famous using social media. Enrollment opens for a limited time on Thursday, October 7th.

About the Author: Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who teaches small businesses how to create their own fame and claim their brand online. She lives in Venice Beach, California, where she video blogs, makes frequent trips to the library, and volunteers with local middle schoolers.

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