Authors, an Ecosystem of Enough and an Overflowing Cornucopia: Plenty
22 of 28 big ideas from the world of coaching to grow your author business
The twenty-second in a 28-part series on 28 big ideas from coaching for authors to coach themselves, adapted from my book, The Coach Within.
“Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.”
— Epicurus“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Welcom to plenty. An ecosystem of enough. A sense of abundance. Everything an overflowing cornucopia.
And, because we’re in the multi-layered world of coaching, you can think of plenty as tool, awareness, and destination. It’s a yin-yang zen combo of enough and more than enough inextricably nestled together.
Let’s look at worlds of plenty we’ve already covered in this series, directly or indirectly:
Plenty of options (possibility thinking, big idea 15)
Plenty of opportunities (responsibility, big idea 3)
Plenty of time (slowing it down, big idea 13)
Plenty of space (decluttering, tangent in big idea 13, above)
Plenty of the raw, intangible stuff (creativity, big idea 2)
Plenty right where you’re at (right, right now, big idea 17)
In an infinite universe, how about even a surface nod to the bounty of one of its representatives — the internet? This omnipresent hyperlinked cyber domain spills forth plenty of information, associations, connections, and ideas. More than enough “stuff” and more than enough ways to get that “stuff.”
It’s not just having easy access to as many blue dangly earrings and healthy zucchini recipes as your heart desires but as many book marketing ideas, how-to articles, YouTube Amazon hack tutorials, writing support groups, and business templates as well. (Our challenge at times is not to over-stuff our lives — this is where the sufficient meaning of plenty is handy.)
What about this one, which trips up almost many authors?
Plenty of money
Barring true poverty and exceptionally bad temporary circumstances, we all at least know how to have the experience of enough money, whether or not we do it: Save a percentage of our income and live on the rest! (Three of hundreds of quality resources on this one: The Richest Man in Babylon, a personal finance classic told as “ancient” parables; the Profit First book and method, which I write about a lot here; and YNAB — youneedabudget.com — an easy app that helps you stay on top of your finances in a smart, realistic way that supports how you actually live and what’s important to you.) We’ll get to more than enough of anything in a minute.
One important lesson of plenty is to fill yourself up and get on with it. If a deficit or sense of lack in some area or multiple areas of your author life and author business are causing dissatisfactions and driving your behavior in unsavory ways, then those shortages need to be addressed first and head-on. How can you get…have…experience plenty in those areas?
Start with appreciating what you have (big idea 23, gratitude, follows this one) in those areas of life and building from there. Have enough right now — see how these concepts all interconnect? — and be with that. How can you have “more than enough” right now? Here it comes again from big idea 17: Lower the bar! Yes, it’s a mind trick. It’s reframing. But it’s a tool that you can make work for you. Create an artificially low standard that you’re already exceeding and you can mount your campaign for an ideal future of more-than-enough plenty from that full and satisfied perch. This can be especially helpful when we’re talking about such meaty, vital, very human needs like plenty of health, plenty of friends, plenty of support.
Abundance is ours for the taking — first in giving ourselves the experience of it, then in idealizing (big idea 16) what we want, taking responsibility for getting it, and using creativity to help us build it, right now, from right where we’re at.
Coaching Yourelf In Action
⎕ Use a walk or meditation to take a silent inventory of where you have a sense of plenty in your life and where you feel lack. Savor the experience of plenty and make a mental note of what that feels like. Will you be able to recreate it / remind yourself of that as needed?
⎕ In your journal, create a page for every area of your author life where you noted lack. Start by idealizing for each what plenty in that area would be like. Then, return to right, right now and lower the bar (mind trick, remember?) until you have more than enough of this thing. Now brainstorm from this starting point on ways to move towards your ideal. Next? Set an intention (big idea 19) and take action (big idea 20) for each.
Will you do me a BIG favor?
If you have a copy of The Profitable Author and have been enjoying it and learning from it, will you please take a few minutes and leave a review for the book on Amazon? Thank you!
