This week, we are celebrating the release of the book The Faith of Elvis, which I co-wrote with Billy Stanley, Elvis Presley’s stepbrother. Here on the podcast, I’m sharing a few lessons I’ve learned from working on this project.

If you pick up the book this week or anytime in the future, you’ll notice that one of the recurring themes is that Elvis kept his superstar status in perspective. He didn’t see himself as any better than a regular blue-collar worker. He saw what he did as a performer and a musician as just a job.

That’s hard for us to imagine in a day and age when we worship celebrities and see famous people as larger than life. It’s a great lesson for all of us writers, especially when we start to have a little bit of success.

At the end of the day, no matter we achieve, we’re not any better or more important than anyone else. You might have books in bookstores or have your books on a bestseller list, but it’s all just part of the job.

After all, the purpose of what we do is to serve people. The more success we have, the more opportunities it gives us to serve others.

The problem is that it’s easy to get tied up in the emotions of what we do. As creative people, it’s hard to separate our personal value from our rankings and sales numbers. That’s why this perspective is so important. We have to separate the job part—showing up every day—from the exterior success part, because so much of that is out of our control. When we treat what we do as a job, we focus on being disciplined and putting in the work.

None of us will ever come close to the level of superstardom that Elvis Presley had. If it was good enough for him to view what he did as just a job, we can do the same thing also.

Question: How does it help you to know that what you do is a job, no more important than what other people do for their jobs?