Am I right? Or, am I right?

This can make it hard to build an audience over the long haul. Here’s one way to handle it: take nothing personally. Remember that every comment, every review, and everything other people say has more to do with their perspective and emotional state than it does you.

This is where your observation skills as a writer can come in handy.

Whenever someone says something you don’t like or makes a negative or critical observation, examine it like a doctor does a patient. See if it’s true and make a correction, if needed. But do so without letting it affect your self-worth or identity.

Nobody said this was easy. It’s not. But it’s necessary if you are going to keep your sanity and stay emotionally healthy.

Today’s Challenge: Ask yourself if it’s hard or easy to avoid taking things personally. Why or why not?

The post Are You Taking Things Personally? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

The creators are the ones who make things. They make buildings, cars, computers, books, plays, speeches, movies, rockets, and so much more.

The creators are the ones who move society forward. They invent. They design. They use their creative powers to stick their necks out, add value to others, and risk being criticized by those who don’t like what they do.

Critics, on the other hand, play a limited role in society. They are the ones who stay safely in the distance. They spend most of their energy pointing out the flaws in other people’s creative work.

There have always been critics, of course. And they do have a certain value in culture. We need people who can offer intelligent reflection and commentary on culture. But make no mistake, this is not where the real action is. The real action lies in creating something.

Which would you rather be, the creator who makes things for critics to comment on… or the critic who just rides the creator’s coattails?

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert said, “A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.”

It’s easier to be a critic. And why not? You get to sit back and relax while other people do the work. Then you get to offer your opinion and commentary… all while never taking one ounce of risk.

Choose to be a creator. Choose to be the one who puts in the work and adds value to society. Choose to create with your words and through other means.

Don’t fall into the trap of just being a critic.

Question: What kinds of things are you creating now?

The post Are You a Creator or a Critic? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Ask anyone who has gotten sick from contaminated water or tried to avoid falling out of a canoe while going down the Amazon River teeming with deadly piranhas. They will tell you that water can be deadly.

But what about a person dying of thirst in the desert or someone who goes into the hospital because they’re dehydrated? Water can bring life.

There’s a wonderful scene near the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indiana passes three deadly tests to get the holy grail, fills it with water, then pours it on his father’s gunshot wound so he does not die.

It’s a beautiful analogy for the power of your words. Your words can cut people down to the bone with sarcasm and criticism. Or they can bring life through wonderful storytelling, personal experiences, or inspiring content. The choice is yours.

Daily Question: As you use your words today, will they bring life or death?

The post Pour Out the Healing Waters appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “People who are too busy rowing the boat don’t have time to rock it.” The meaning is pretty straightforward: when you are occupied with doing the work, you don’t have much time to criticize others.

William Faulkner said something similar: “The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”

If you are too worried about what other people think of you, it might be because you’re not putting enough time into your writing. Spend your emotional energy on creating, on serving, on writing. Then you won’t have much time left to care much about what others think.

Daily Question: On a scale of 1-10, how much time and energy do you spend worrying about what others think of you?

The post Too Busy to Listen to the Critics appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

We writers have a reputation for taking everything personally. Many of us would describe ourselves as introverted artists who are highly sensitive. As such, we tend to absorb other people’s emotions and have a hard time letting things go.

Am I right? Or am I right?

This can make it hard when trying to build an audience and keeping your readers in mind. Here’s one way to approach life: take nothing personally. Remember that every comment, every review, everything other people say has more to do with their perspective and emotional state than it does you.

This is where your skills of observation as a writer can come in handy. Whenever someone says something you don’t like, or makes a negative or critical observation, examine it like a doctor does a patient. See if it’s true and make a correction if needed. But do so without emotion or feeling that it reflects on your personal worth or identity.

Nobody said this was easy. It’s not. But it’s absolutely necessary if you are going to keep your sanity and remain emotionally healthy.

Daily Question: Would you say it’s hard or easy for you to not take things personally? Why or why not?

The post Take Nothing Personally appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

This is the seventh and final entry in our mini-series on dealing with rejection.

Rejection is not fun, but it still has an important place in our business and creative lives. When you’re rejected or criticized, it forces you to ask tough questions like these:

Is this something I should have been doing in the first place?

Do I really, truly want to be doing this?

Even though I’m in love with this idea, does this person have a point?

How can I make this idea better?

The people who have rained on your parade have done you a great service. They have forced you to decide whether you should be doing this thing in the first place… and if the answer is YES, they have forced you to consider how it can be improved.

Rejection and criticism are like the refining process for precious metals. They make you more pure and more valuable. They bring out the best.

So even though you might be irritated right now, you can still be grateful because those unkind words are helping you become a better version of yourself.

Daily Question: Think of the most reject time you’ve been rejected. How did it make you better or help you have a clearer vision of what you want to accomplish as a writer?

The post Are You Grateful for Your Critics? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Today’s episode is the first in a seven-part series on dealing with rejection.

As writers, we deal with rejection in many forms. You can be rejected by a reader, a publisher, a literary agent, a podcaster, a beta reader, a book reviewer, a peer, and so much more. This rejection can be formal or informal, big or small. It can be direct and aggressive, or indirect and passive.

Whatever form rejection takes, one thing is for certain: IT HURTS.

And when it happens, we ask the inevitable questions like these: Why don’t they like my writing? Have I done something wrong? Why do they have to be so mean? How can I move forward now? What does everyone else think? Are they just as displeased?

Those are normal questions, but when you feel rejected, make sure and ask the most important question of all: Where is the seed of truth in their rejection?

Most of the time, in most cases, there is a kernel of truth in someone’s rejection. The person who hurt your feelings might be over the top, or maybe they went too far, but oftentimes there is a little bit of truth in every rejection or criticism.

So, look for the kernel of truth. Even if criticism or rejection is delivered in a hurtful way, it doesn’t mean the person was wrong. It just means they were wrong in their delivery. So, with as much humility as you can muster, see if there is any truth in what they said and adjust accordingly. You and your writing will be all the better for it.

Daily Question: Think of the most recent time you have been rejected or criticized. Was there any truth to it?

The post The Seed of Truth appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

I’ve talked about this a few times here on the podcast before. But, just in case you haven’t heard, I left my teaching job at St. Louis Christian College this past summer in order to focus full-time on ghostwriting and running my Daily Writer membership community.

Now that SLCC has announced it will be merging with another school at the end of this school year, I have been reflecting a lot on what I learned as a professor during the previous 17 years.

One of the most important things I learned as a teacher is the value of assessment. “Assessment” is a broad term for a set of practices designed to help you see if you’re reaching your goals.

Most people in higher ed honestly hate assessment because it feels like a huge pain. It’s time-consuming and often feels like busy work. However, being in this world taught me the value of taking a detailed, honest look at how you can improve.

One of the most important skills we can develop is the ability to separate our personal identity from our work. If you always base your self-worth on what others think of you, you’ll be an emotional yo-yo. The big lesson for writers here is that we need to evaluate and assess our work with a critical eye. We also need other people’s help in doing so.

We get so emotionally tied to our work that we get defensive whenever someone criticizes our “baby.” But there is often a nugget of truth in people’s criticism, even if we don’t like the way they deliver it. The question is, can we set aside our ego long enough to listen? Is there something we can learn? Do we care about our work enough that we can see if there is any truth to the criticism?

In the entrepreneur community, there is a huge emphasis on “doing things my way” and sticking it to the critics and doubters. I totally get this, and this kind of attitude helps us move past obstacles and get things done. But there is also a dark side to this approach. When you push ahead at all costs and totally ignore the critics and doubters, it’s easy to become blind to your own shortcomings. That is why we all need to surround ourselves with people who give us feedback and hold us to a higher standard (It’s also why I created the Daily Writer Community).

When I was a professor, the college did a formal evaluation of one of my classes each semester. But I also did a separate assessment of every one of my classes, every semester. I asked students to answer a few questions to help me improve the class for next time. I learned three critical things from having students evaluate every class, every semester. I want to share these with you and apply them to our writing.

1.) The best ideas for improving a class almost always came from students.

For example, I used to teach a public speaking class. The way I taught this for years was to focus on doing two or three big speeches. We would work on these for weeks, and then they would deliver it in class. Each speech was a pretty decent chunk of their grade.

However, one comment I would often hear is, “We would like to have more practice speaking, instead of just doing two or three speeches.” Eventually, I completely changed the course so that students were doing shorter speeches, but a lot more of them. They had more fun, there was less pressure to make each speech awesome, and they got a lot more practice upfront.

If you are the one creating the content, either as a writer or teacher, it’s easy to think of yourself as the expert. You know more about your “thing” than anyone else, so why would you listen to someone else’s comments? But the truth is that we get blind to all the ways we can improve what we do. Oftentimes, it takes a beginner’s perspective to give us a fresh perspective.

So, make sure to listen to people who don’t know much about what you do. Your expertise might be blinding you to some obvious and simple ways to improve.

One little caveat here: students wouldn’t volunteer these ideas—I had to ask first. They weren’t going to go out of their way to give me ideas for improvement, which leads to the second lesson.

2.) I emphasized to students that I did not take any of their comments personally.

In fact, I WANTED them to tell me what to improve. I wanted them to know I was not emotionally attached to the class. My one and only concern was improving the student experience. This gave them the freedom to say what they really thought. Without that freedom, they would hold back and not tell the full truth.

This is a very hard lesson for writers. We love what we do. We put our heart and soul into it. It’s hard not to take things personally. But if we are approaching our work like professionals, we have to maintain some emotional distance from our work. We can’t get emotionally wrapped up in it. Our work is ultimately a product that is either working, or it isn’t. The question is, do you have the courage?

3.) I had to be willing to take the best ideas and actually change the class.

It was easy to do a survey and gather comments. But once I had the data, I had to be willing to put in the work to revise the class. If you have never taught a college course, this isn’t just a matter of changing a couple of things. When you do a substantial update to a course, it usually involves several things like changing textbooks, changing assignments, changing your teaching notes, figuring out how to best meet your learning objectives, adjusting how your gradebook is set up, and so much more.

Over the course of a semester-long class, this can mean over a hundred hours of work when all is said and done. You’ve probably had the experience as a student where you had a teacher or professor, and they were infamous for teaching a class the same way over many years. In fact, I remember taking a Bible history course in college, and I honestly don’t think the professor had changed the course in thirty years.

It is easy to make fun of this approach until you’re actually a professor who is faced with the gargantuan task of re-doing a whole course. I have done it many, many times and I sympathize with the impulse to leave a course alone and do it the same old way year after year, although ultimately that doesn’t serve you or the students very well.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Are we willing to put in the time and effort to create a better experience for our students and readers? Are we willing to not only listen to feedback and evaluation, but actually put it into practice?

I can tell you for sure that as a professor, I had a lot more fun when I listened to feedback and did the work to change a course and make it better. The students had a lot more fun as well. In fact, in my last few years of teaching, I completely changed my teaching style. I transitioned to a more “flipped classroom” approach where I did very little lecturing and talking, and we had a lot more learning activities, presentations, group work, case studies, and so forth.

And as I did that, I noticed something interesting… the more that students were involved, and the less that I lectured, the more they seemed to learn and have fun! There are some important lessons there not only for teachers, but for all of us who are writing, communicating, and trying to impact lives with our words and ideas.

The post 3 Quick Lessons on Evaluating Your Writing appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

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Do you remember what it feels like to be criticized for your writing?

Different memories come flooding back for different people. Maybe it was in junior high, when a teacher pointed out all your mistakes. Maybe it was in college when you submitted an essay to a contest, and you didn’t even place. Maybe it was more recently, when you published a blog post or wrote a social media post that someone didn’t like … and they let you know about it in no uncertain terms.

These memories can be painful because it feels like people are criticizing us directly. They’re questioning our personal worth and stomping on our creative identity.

Don’t they know how important this work is to you? Why don’t they understand that when they criticize your work, they are taking a little bit of your heart away?

But that’s precisely the problem. We are usually far too close to our work to be objective about it. What’s more, the criticism often says more about the person doing the criticizing than it does about you.

Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, knew a thing or two about dealing with critics. You don’t write one of the most popular books of the 20^th century without getting your share of criticism.

She once said, “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”

But how do we do this? How do we develop a thick skin when so much of our writing and creative work feels so personal?

The answer is simple. We must approach our writing like any professional approaches their work. The plumber, the contractor, the dentist, the attorney, the teacher … they all show up on time, put in the work, and then let it go. When something isn’t right, they try not to take it personally, but instead look for ways to get better at their job. Most important of all, they separate their personal identity from their work.

There’s an important lesson here for every writer. You are not your work. You produce your work, but your personal worth and identity are not tied to your work.

So the next time you publish your writing, wherever that might be, remember that this is not a job for thin-skinned writers. You will have your critics and haters, and when you do, remember that you are separate from the work.

If you keep that perspective, your mental health and your inner sense of security will be a lot stronger.

The post This Isn’t for Thin-Skinned Writers appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.