YOU-Q: Finding Your Inner Winner ...As A Writer

The talk You-Q: Finding Your Inner Winner can be contextualsied for different audiences. This particular talk was tailor-made for the South African Writer's Circle.

YOU-Q is about living life to your full potential. It is about finding your Inner Winner.

You- Q is more than IQ – Intelligence alone is insufficient to find your Inner Winner.
You-Q is more than EQ – Managing your emotions is insufficient to find your Inner Winner.
You-Q is more than SQ – Having spiritual understanding on its own is insufficient to find your Inner Winner.

YOU-Q includes all of these things, but it is also more than these things.

Developing YOU-Q and finding your Inner Winner requires you to focus on 3 things. These are:

1) Get real
2) Change your head talk
3) Relate

By Get real I mean becoming authentic, genuine and totally true to you.
By Change your head talk, I mean changing the negative beliefs you have about yourself, and the unhelpful messages you give yourself.
And by Relate I mean relating to others. To do this effectively requires developing your communication and interpersonal skills (being more assertive, being able to listen with empathy, being able to deal constructively with conflict, and so on).

Anyone can find their Inner Winner, but sadly few people do, because it takes boldness, courage and effort. You really have to want to transform your life, and you need to be prepared to put in the time to do what it takes. Today I will tell you what it takes, but you need to go and take the steps.

So how can you, as a writer, find your Inner Winner? In this talk today I am going to make a few suggestions. I am going to focus on just two of the YOU-Q requirements:

1. Get real
2. Change your head talk

Get real
Do you want to get to the end of your life and realise that you have lived someone else’s dream? That you have been the kind of person or writer that someone else wanted you to be?

If the answer is “No”, then you need to start thinking about who YOU are. This is not so easy if you don’t even know where to start, so I am going to suggest you start by asking yourself 3 important questions:
What are my values?
What is my purpose?
What is my vision?

Knowing your values is important, because values give you direction. If you have to make a decision in life, it is your values that will help you make that decision. Your values act as your compass, and you need to know where your true north is if you want to stay true to your path in life. Your values will help you decide what type of writer you want to be, and will influence the type of writing you do.

So if, for example, you value money and wealth, you will want to write books that sell, in their millions, to a commercial market. Wilbur Smith may not produce the best literature, but he sells! I can perhaps say the same of John Grisham and Jeffrey Archer?
If you value reliability and stability, you will write the kind of books that give you that – Mills and Boon novels, considered absolute trash by many, work to a formula – and they sell!
If you value spirituality, your writing will have that bent. Francine Rivers does this really well.
If its knowledge you value, then your books will be well researched and bring knowledge to the reader. You may decide to focus on non-fiction writing.

The list in front of you is a list of values. Have a look at these values and decide which are the most important to you. Choose only 5.
To do this, think about:
Which of these would you compromise?
Which values would you never compromise?
It is not as easy as you think to choose only 5 – it requires a lot of thought and being conscious of your inner voice and your choices. Don’t sabotage yourself - make sure you choose your own values. Not your editor, mother, father, husband or wife’s values.

Tip…
Go home and put some time and effort into doing this - don’t just accept that the values you were told to have as a child are your values. They may no longer be your values (and perhaps they never really were!)

Then ask yourself, “What is my purpose?”
People can get so caught up trying to answer this question, but I think you can keep it simple. Viktor Frankl gives us some great help here.
He said that our hearts are restless unless we have found, and fulfilled, meaning and purpose in life. He said we are meant to live lives that are more than just existing, more than just seeking pleasure or power.
Frankl believed that we want to live our lives for a purpose - for a good cause, for some sensible reason. We want to be involved in something outside of our own skins. He also said that self- actualisation is most easily attained through selfless goals.
Your purpose, then, must be greater than your own personal gain. In other words your purpose is about making a difference in other people’s lives.
Ask yourself, “What can I do to make a difference in someone else’s life?”, “What gifts and talents do I have?”
The answer is, that you can write. So use that talent to make a difference.

Your purpose is the big picture. It is the long-term reason why you are doing something.
Your actions and goals are the short-term means to achieving your purpose.
It is far more motivating to think about your purpose than your goals, so you need to know what your purpose is.
For example:
I am reading a book on presentation skills. (action)
I want to develop myself into a speaker of international calibre. (goal)
I want to make a positive impact on people all over the world, and help them develop their YOU-Q (purpose).

Think about your purpose and the actions (like attending these meetings) and the goals (writing your book) that you need to achieve, to realise your purpose.

By the way, Viktor Frankl wrote “Man’s Search For Meaning”. It was originally written in German, but has been translated into 21 other languages. It has had nearly 100 printings in English - and the English editions alone have sold more than 3 million copies. It is considered to be one of the greatest books of our time. Viktor Frankl just shared his experiences and wrote from his heart. He was totally real.

When you know your own purpose, you can create your own vision. Vision is important, because if you don’t know where you are going you won’t get there.

“If a man knows not what harbour he seeks, any wind is the right wind.”
~ Seneca ~

So you do have to know where you want to go. You have to know what your vision is for yourself as a writer.
When you go to a workshop, or perhaps to The Time of The Writer events, you listen to what all the writers share about what they do – their writing – and it is easy be caught up and follow their vision. To want to be like them.
But don’t sabotage yourself. Ask yourself, “Am I doing my writing or somebody else’s?” Is this really my vision for myself? Or is it someone else’s vision for me? Perhaps your editor’s, mother, father, husband or wife’s vision? Become aware of what the little voice in your head is saying. Stop sabotaging yourself - Choose your own vision.

Tip…
To help you clarify your vision, it may be useful to create a vision board for yourself, comprising a collection of pictures of things you want as a writer. Put this collection where you can see it. This focuses your unconscious mind, which in turn steers your choices toward making the vision real.

Put up the name of the publisher you want to publish your books, put up the titles of your books, put a picture of the library with your book on the shelf, book stores that will be selling your book, the cover of your book etc.

To really work, your vision board must come not from society’s impositions, but from your own deep and unique inner self. If you do this, it really works – it really does…

So, to summarise Get Real
Think of your own values, purpose and vision. As a writer get real.
Write the books you want to write. Be yourself, who you are, accept yourself as a writer with your own unique style. Pick words that express your own style. Choose your own rhythm and pace. Use your own creativity – you already have it!
Don’t try to compare yourself to others because then you are not being true to yourself.
There will always be other writers who are better than you, and there will always be writers who are not as good as you.
Hemingway is known for his style of using extremely short sentences. His novels are short. Tolstoy is famous for his long novels. Both produced classics.

The other aspect of YOU-Q that you need to focus on to find your Inner Winner is to Change your head talk.
Head talk’ is that inner voice which creates constant chatter in our minds. It is disorganised and creates chaos and disharmony. We hear it in that little voice in our head which constantly makes comments like:
“You shouldn’t be doing this”,
“You’re not good enough”,
“You are going to make a fool of yourself”,
“You can’t write.”

Do you recognise the little voice I am talking about? Have you identified that voice? You need to do so, because it defines you. It is this voice that tells us what our strengths and weaknesses are, what we are capable of achieving or not achieving, and what we ought to be doing or not doing. It defines our beliefs and feelings - and it is our beliefs and feelings which cause our behavior.

To find your Inner Winner, you need to lose your inner loser! At the heart of the challenge is the need to reconstitute our sense of ability and intelligence.

What is that little voice in your head saying? Is your inner voice telling you that you aren’t capable of being a writer, or perhaps that you shouldn’t be a writer? Are you your own worst critic?

Remember…The most important judgement we will ever have to pass in life is the judgement we make on ourselves.

Tips….to change your head talk:
1) Question the validity of your beliefs
Access those beliefs that stop you achieving your dreams, and create new beliefs that do allow you to achieve your dreams.
Most of these beliefs are unconscious, so consider getting professional help to do this.
A good idea to help you stop sabotaging yourself is to write down a list of affirmations about yourself and pin these somewhere where you can read them every day. Keep adding to your list.
An affirmation is a positive statement about yourself that you write in the present tense. For example: “I am a talented writer”, “I have a great way with words”, “I am great at developing life-like characters in my stories”.
The idea behind reading these affirmations every day is that you replace the negative self-talk you have been hearing in your head, with positive self-talk. Remember…You will achieve what you believe you will achieve.

2) Quiet the voices in your head and hear the real voice within.
Bring silence within you and outside of you. To bring it within you, practice yoga, meditation and relaxation exercises. To bring silence outside you, spend time in silence, without man-made noise.
This gives you the chance to hear the real voice within - the one that communicates with authenticity. Connect with your inner voice – it will always guide you.

3) Refuse to listen to the negative head talk and do something positive.
To be a writer you need to be creative – and creativity is not about who you are, but what you do.
Creativity can be defined as the generation of new ideas, new products or services and new ways of working, through stimulating the brain. The right brain is the creative side – music, images, colours - and the left brain is the logical side.
To develop your corpus collosum (the network that links the left and right sides of our brain) you need to do things differently. Let me give you some suggestions:

1. Use colour – it stimulates ideas when you are writing – doesn’t matter whether you are writing by hand or using a word processor, you can still use colour.
2. Use your non- dominant hand to do things – clean your teeth / brush your hair / wash the car.
3. Be prepared to be wrong - We are born creative – but sadly we have it schooled out of us. We have this idea that there is only one right way and we must conform.
If you want to be innovative and creative, however, you need to be prepared to be wrong. If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with something original.
Galileo was prepared to be wrong – now his idea is so right, we laugh at any other way.
Hemingway’s short sentences were new to the writing world, but the literary circles loved it.
Perhaps your own creative idea for writing will in fact be the right idea, but you won’t know unless you just put it out there.
If children don’t know an answer they will make it up – take a chance. They will be creative.
Joke: Little Mary is in the art class and she is working on a drawing. Teacher says: What are you drawing? Mary answers “I am drawing God.” Teacher says, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Mary answers, “They will in a minute.”
4. Listen to music – not the music you always listen to, but music that has different rhythms. Try music from different cultures – Greek, French, Latin American, Calypso, West African.
5. Change your attitude - the most important factor affecting the quantity and quality of ideas is attitude. Change “yes, but…’ to “yes, and…”
6. Have a laugh – Edward de Bono said “Humour is the highest achievement of the human brain…and it is the exact model for creativity.” Humour is the cultural condition of creativity. With humour we can go from ha ha to ah ha.
7. Find an environment that inspires creativity – or change where you are. If you get inspired in a shower, go and have a shower. If you get inspired while driving, take a drive.
8. Take a walk – and stop to smell the flowers.
9. Exercise
10. Capture your genius – think you will remember that moment of inspiration? You may not. Write it down. Always carry paper and pen with you. Have it in the car and around the home.
11. Engage in a speed thinking exercise – come up with 50 ideas on…X
12. When stuck – reframe. I would do x – but what would John, Jodi or Dick do?
13. Don’t write a brief, make a wish. A brief is a list of things you want to achieve, rather say “I wish…” it is more magical.
14. When was the last time you did something for the first time? Every week, do something you have never done in your life before. If you do things in the same way, you set your life up to be the same. Then you wonder why life is boring, or why you are not getting your book written! It doesn’t have to be something scary and radical, like sky-diving or bungee-jumping! (Although if the urge grabs you, go for it!) It can be simple, every-day things, like:

Listen to a new radio station
Park on a different side of the mall
Drive a different way to work / home
Try a new recipe
Buy a different brand of product
Cook with an ingredient you have never used before

So, to summarise Change your Head Talk
Question your deep, underlying beliefs, learn to quieten your head talk and listen to your inner voice, refuse to listen to negative head talk and instead do something creative.
Remember, writing is a journey of perfecting, not perfection!

Question & Answers

As I said in the beginning, anyone can find their Inner Winner, but it takes courage, boldness and effort. You really have to want to transform your life, and you need to be prepared to put in the time to do what it takes.

I leave you with the words of William Ernest Henley from the poem ‘Invictus’
“I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”

I am Claire Newton, thank you for listening.

Download Values Poster.