The growing stages of life never stop. From the moment we are born, to the moment we die, we are learning. We are developing and growing, having new experiences and gaining new insights. Our biggest challenges are often our greatest teachers; it’s through these that we gain knowledge, wisdom and a deeper understanding of the world around us. The more we understand, the more meaningful life becomes.
This is a guest post by adventurer, author and motivational speaker Alastair Humphreys. Find out more about Alastair here.
There are many aspects to travel.
We go to places we’ve never been because we want to be surprised.
We want to see new sights and experience fresh things.
We seek out remote places to see what they might teach us – about the world and about ourselves.
Going somewhere you have never been means there are no familiar crutches to prop yourself up, no old memories to fall back on. Everything is new and different.
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What’s is making you happy this month? What is making your heart sing? What are you most grateful for?
Write it all down on July’s happy list! Big things, small things – it really doesn’t matter! All that matters is that everything on your list makes you smile and feel thankful.
On my happy list this month… fun, freedom and new experiences! It was so much fun chartering a yacht from Brighton Marina and spending some quality time with the Do What You Love team ~ Rachel
Download July’s happy list here and start celebrating your happiness today!
Today’s post is written by our Senior Editor, Rachel Kempton.
My big dream, growing up, was to be a magazine journalist. When I was eight-years-old I had an article published in a national newspaper and that was it. I just knew that was what I wanted to do. But as I got older, a combination of bad careers advice and self-doubt led me down a different path and for years my dream was just that: a dream.
Last week we had our annual ‘away day’ at Do What You Love. It was actually two days – a strategy meeting on Wednesday, and a day on a yacht on Thursday! We chartered the boat to give us a way to get a complete change of scenery, open our minds and think differently. And it worked!
We were brainstorming ideas for my book (more on that in the coming weeks), and it was amazing how the gentle lapping waves helped us forget about to-do lists and tune into some big deep questions.
It was also good to spend some fun time with our lovely team, on a gloriously sunny day, to hear more about their individual dreams and plans, and get to know them better.
We are only a small team, but moments like this are important.
Even if you work on your own (or for someone else), can you give yourself the gift of an away day? If so, here are some tips to make it special:
This week we challenge you to find time for your own awayday. We’d love to know what you thought about, and what came out of it – please share with us on Facebook or Twitter!
Have a lovely week
Beth and team
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Remember those dreams you had when you were a kid? As children we could lose hours pretending we were explorers, zoo keepers, sports champions, movie stars or characters from our favourite storybooks. Heroes or villains, astronauts or aliens, pirates or deep sea divers – no adventure – real or fantastic – seemed impossible. The only limit was our imagination.
Imagination is a powerful thing. It makes it possible to experience a whole world inside the mind. It enables us to look at any situation from a different point of view, and to mentally explore the past and the future. It’s the key to achieving our goals and making our dreams a reality.
Do you still have a wild imagination? What are your big dreams? Do you believe they are possible? What are you doing towards making them happen?
This is a guest post by adventurer, author and motivational speaker Alastair Humphreys. Find out more about Alastair here.
The day you finish writing your book is not the day your book is finished. Nor is it the day the book is published and you gaze with a mixture of relief, disbelief, pride and trepidation on the book in your hand. Your book! At last!
Now you need to sell your book. This requires at least as much work, and is almost as important, as crafting your beautiful manuscript was in the first place.
My book Microadventures, reached #12 on the chart for all books sold on Amazon UK. To put this in context, my long-time most popular book, Moods of Future Joys, is currently sitting at 33,365 in the book rankings!
1. How does your book, and how do you, the author, look on the site?
How good is your Amazon author page? Get your photo, bio and Twitter feed all up to date on there.
How good is the book page itself? Can you ‘Look Inside’ the book? Are there plenty of images available (where appropriate)? Are there enough? Is the description of the book as good as it could be? Look at the books of your competitors to see how you match up.
If you have several versions of the same book available (paperback and Kindle, for example), get them consolidated onto one page. Fix any inconsistencies. Having random rubbish appear when people search for you and your books damages your brand equity. Yes I did just write “brand equity”!
2. Make sure the book is very “discoverable”
People search for books in two way, so you need to focus on both things. These are:
Search: What keywords are people going to type in to find your book? Amazon explains it well: “Please include any words customers would use to search for your product on search engines that aren’t already in your item title attributes – brand name, model name, target audience, product description, size, size unit of measurement or colour name.” You can get idea of the stuff that people search for by typing in a word to the Amazon search box. Amazon then drops down lots of suggestions. Nab these. Then write the word followed by ‘a’ to get the popular second words beginning with ‘a’. Then do it for ‘b’ and so on… (Thanks, Jo, for this tip!)
Dual Noding: Also known as “finding your book in more than one area”. Look at the list of topics on the left of the page here. Could your book fit into more than one category? Where might the customer reasonably search for your book? There are a bazillion sub-categories to all of these things too. You obviously want to be in the right category. But bear in mind that if you can become a best-seller in a tiny, random category then you can more or less claim your book to be best-selling without feeling too much of a fraud. Clearly every book ever written claims to be best-selling so I wouldn’t hold too much in store from this dubious honour!
See what random categories my book has ended up in:
3. Casting the net wide
I should have (but haven’t) tried to get the book on Audible.
4. Reviews
If you are an Amazon customer yourself you will know how you respond to items that have lots or not many reviews. Which do you prefer? My personal preference is for books that have lots of reviews, but not when the reviews have blatantly all just been written by the authors friends with an instant 5-star rating.
When Microadventures came out I worked really hard to get people to review the book. I asked – a lot – on social media. I probably annoyed people by doing it too much. I didn’t ask them to write a good review, I asked for an honest review. I didn’t just want 50 identical 5-star reviews from my friends. I believed that the book was good and that the reviews would genuinely be good. So I was willing to accept a few bad ones too, if necessary. Like this 1-star review I got.
5. Rally your tribe
Amazon takes note of spikes of sales: sudden sharp bursts of activity are more likely to get your book zooming up the charts than a steady trickle of sales. You need to rally your tribe – your friends, family, blog readers, social media followers and beg, plead, order them to buy your book on one certain date. Don’t do this lightly – it’s quite annoying for them. But people are willing to tolerate you hassling them like this if you’ll built up a rapport and a store of goodwill. Here’s how I did it for Microadventures. I went so far as to offer one of my other books for free as an incentive.
I am certainly not an expert about any of this stuff, so I would welcome any thoughts and suggestions you might have.
Good luck!
Make your big crazy dreams come true this June!
Do you find yourself thinking things like: “I can’t afford to _______” … or “I’m too old to _______” … or “I’m going to need years of training before I can _______” … or “It’s just not realistic for me to _______?” Then our flagship e-course is for you – and you can register today!
Do What You Love is an acclaimed transformational course that will show you that all of your options are still open, no matter what your current circumstances and responsibilities may be. It’s about re-opening doors that you thought were locked shut… re-opening possibilities that you thought were long gone… and illuminating possibilities you never knew existed.
Over the period of 5 weeks course you’ll be inspired and motivated. You’ll learn things about yourself that you may never have know and you’ll have lots of fun! Lessons are energising and doable and they’ve been carefully sequenced to help you build confidence, build a plan and build momentum.
Join us and make possibility your new reality.
“Thanks to this course I stepped off the ledge and did something I have been wanting to do for years – and I feel lighter than air.” ~ Christine B
Do you have a routine? How does it go?
Chances are you don’t acknowledge your routine day to day, but we bet you have one. You probably go through most of it on autopilot, without stopping to consider whether what you’re doing is healthy, productive or enjoyable. Isn’t it time to change that?
We’ve been really enjoying doing the activities from the Do What You Love e-course recently. Week three of the course is all about being brave and coming alive. One of the activities asks you to spend a day mixing things up a bit, so we asked Rose to ditch her routine today. Here’s what happened.
When I started thinking about what I was going to do differently today, I was at a bit of a loss. Shaking up your routine is inevitably going to move you out of your comfort zone – that was clear at the very moment I started thinking about it. But when I really got to thinking about what I could do differently, I felt a strange sense of excitement.
It started with breakfast. Today I swapped my usual Marmite for Nutella and bananas on toast. Having chocolate for breakfast always feels indulgent, but it’s the chocolate-banana combo that makes this an unbeatable start to the day.
Rather than sitting straight down in front of my computer after breakfast, I decided to go for a morning stroll on the seafront. It was a beautiful day – sunny and breezy – and I was surprised to find so many people by the sea before 9am. I was even more surprised at how friendly everyone was. I tend to assume everyone is grumpy in the morning, not being a morning person myself. But receiving so many friendly hellos so early in the day put me in a great mood.
After my stroll it was time to get to work. But I was feeling remarkably chirpy, and I didn’t fancy working on my own. I decided to give my friend (a freelance designer who works from home) a call. She invited me to work at her house, so I grabbed some juice and biscuits and headed over.
I loved working somewhere new in the company of my friend and her cat, Mila. We enjoyed frothy coffee, countless snacks and great music. And I had a really productive working day.
I was so surprised at what an effect shaking up my routine had on my mood, and my productivity. I felt more alive today than I have in weeks. I’m looking forward to changing my routine in different ways in the future – perhaps I’ll end up replacing my old routine with a great new one that’s just right for me!
The Do What You Love e-course will help you ditch bad habits and boring routines, and lead you to see what you really want (or need) more clearly.
“I am now far more open to ideas and willing to say yes to opportunities. I think, well, whats the worst that can happen?!” Shona W., Do What You Love participant, Jan 2015
Join us this June for the experience of a lifetime.