3 Mental Shifts That Will Help You Become An Unstoppable Writer

Overcome impostor syndrome, perfectionism, and the fear of rejection.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

I started writing online in 2018. Since then, I’ve published over 300 articles, which generated millions of views, tens of thousands of followers, and multiple six figures in income.

In my writing journey, I’ve learned an important lesson:

Your results as a writer are a direct reflection of your mindset. You can’t outperform your limiting beliefs.

There are writers far less qualified than you who are achieving the results you’re dreaming of, simply because they decided to believe in themselves.

That’s why, in this article, we’ll talk about three mental shifts that will help you become an unstoppable writer. 

When you’ve made these mental shifts, you’ll write more consistently, publish with more confidence, and set yourself up for better results.

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Mental Shift 1: Get Rid Of Imposter Syndrome

If there’s one thing I see lots of writers suffer from, it’s imposter syndrome.

It’s that inner voice that tells us, “Who am I to write about this topic? I’m not expert enough. Why would people ever listen to me?”

Imposter syndrome makes you believe that the knowledge, skills, or insights you have are not worthy enough to share online.

It makes you believe that no one will listen to you, because other people have more fancy degrees and credentials than you on this topic.

And if that’s what you believe, you’ll rarely hit the publish button - if ever.

So, how can we get rid of imposter syndrome? 

A mental shift that worked incredibly well for me is to be the guide - not the guru.

Being a guru means you:

• Preach how other people should do something

• Hide your flaws, failures, and mistakes

• Pretend you have all the answers and claim to be the ultimate expert on a topic

(This is where imposter syndrome grows the strongest.)

Being a guide means you:

• Show people how you did something (achieved a result, solved a problem, etc.)

• Are transparent about your flaws, failures, and mistakes

• Learn from people more experienced than you (and share these lessons with people less experienced than you)

With this approach, you remove the need to be an 'expert’ with fancy credentials.

Instead, you're a guide, showing your audience what you learned, what worked well for you, and what didn't work well for you.

You’re not telling people how they should do something, but you show them how you did it.

You’re not pretending to be someone else, but you’re being yourself.

Not only does this approach help to get rid of imposter syndrome, but it’s also a more effective way to build an audience.

People don’t want gurus anymore. That approach might have worked well in the '90s and early 2000s, but it doesn’t work anymore.

These days, people are looking for authenticity. 

They’re looking for people they can relate to.

They’re looking for guides who show them how they did it, rather than gurus who tell them how they should do it.

For example, when I started writing about productivity, I was only 23 years old. Claiming to be a productivity expert at 23 is not very believable.

So, instead of pretending to be an expert, I wrote about:

• My battle with procrastination (and how I managed to overcome it)

• How I replaced bad habits with healthier and more productive ones

• The productivity techniques I learned from books and scientific papers (and whether they did or didn’t work well for me)

• My findings from experiments and challenges (such as doing a 24-hour dopamine ‘detox’ and completing an Ironman triathlon)

I never pretended to be some sort of productivity expert. 

I only shared what I did, what I learned, what worked well for me, and what mistakes I made along the way. 

This approach helped me build a combined online audience of over 80,000 people.

So, if you ever doubt whether you’re expert enough to write about a topic, completely let go of the need to be an expert in the first place.

Instead, write about your own experiences:

• Write about the challenges you’ve conquered - and how you did it

• Write about the lessons you’ve learned - and how you learned them

• Write about the mistakes you’ve made - and how you would avoid them now

• Write about the results you’ve achieved - and how you did it

• Write about the mentors you’ve had - and what they taught you

You can’t be an imposter when you’re being yourself.

Be the guide - not the guru.

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Mental Shift 2: Let Go Of Perfectionism

As Salvador Dali once said, “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.”

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having high standards and wanting to produce high-quality output. In fact, those are great qualities to have as a writer.

But if you’re endlessly tweaking, changing, and overthinking your writing, it prevents you from consistently publishing your work. 

That’s when perfectionism becomes problematic.

Again, quality matters. But a large part of success as an online writer also comes down to publishing consistently. 

You can’t expect to grow an audience and earn an income from your writing if you only publish the occasional article here and there.

You have to show up consistently on people’s feeds (or in their email inboxes) if you want to make an impact and attract a following.

That’s why I always say: 

Published is better than perfect.

Paradoxically, as a fascinating experiment mentioned in the book Art & Fear showed, letting go of perfectionism is one of the fastest ways to produce higher-quality output.

In this experiment, the teacher of a pottery class split his class into two groups.

• Group A: This group had to make one pot a day for 30 days

• Group B: This group had to work on a single pot for 30 days and try to make it as perfect as possible

At the end of the month, the teacher judged the quality of all the pots. 

Without exception, the ten best pots all came from group A (the quantity group). None of the pots in the top ten came from group B (the perfection group).

This experiment teaches an important lesson:

Quantity leads to quality.

In other words, the fastest way to become a better writer is to write more and publish more. 

Focus on publishing consistently rather than only publishing what’s ‘perfect’ .

With every published article, you gather more data, feedback, and insights. You don’t get this when you only tweak and change your work in private.

You have to publish your work - without expectation - and let the ‘public’ decide how good it is.

The problem with perfectionism is that it’s a self-imposed standard we’ve created in our own imagination. But we are often the worst person to accurately judge our own work.

After writing hundreds of articles and publishing them online, I’ve discovered something interesting:

The articles I feel are ‘perfect’ tend to perform the worst, while the articles that I doubt about publishing often perform the best.

It’s a strange phenomenon, and something I’ve heard from a lot of my writer friends. 

But it shows how striving for perfection - a self-imposed imaginary benchmark - is often a huge waste of time.

Remember, published is better than perfect.

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Mental Shift 3: Overcoming Fear of Rejection

The last mental shift you need to make to become an unstoppable writer is to overcome the fear of rejection.

It’s that inner voice that says:

• “What if no one reads my work?”

• “What if I look stupid?”

• “What if people don’t like my writing?”

Publishing your work online means you open yourself up to a bunch of strangers who can disagree with you, criticize you, leave hateful comments, or ignore your work.

To protect ourselves from the potential pain of rejection, our subconscious finds all kinds of clever excuses to not hit that publish button.

(As long as your work isn’t posted publicly, you can’t be rejected, right?)

But part of being a writer - especially a digital writer - is dealing with rejection. 

You will spend a lot of time on an article that you’re proud of, only for it to get ignored.

You will open yourself up with a personal story, only for someone to leave a hurtful comment.

There’s not a single writer I know who hasn’t experienced this. Not a single one.

I wish there was an easy hack or solution I could share with you to quickly overcome the fear of rejection - but there isn’t. 

The only things that help are time and repetition.

As Dale Carnegie once wrote:

“Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

The fear of rejection is often strongest with your first 10 - 20 articles. After that, it gets a bit easier (not easy, but easier). You get used to it more.

But even for me, after years of writing online and publishing over 300 articles, it hurts when my work gets rejected in some form or another.

The most important thing is that you don’t let fear stop you from writing and publishing.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said: 

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

That’s exactly what we as writers need to remind ourselves of. It’s not about feeling no fear, but it’s about realizing that what’s on the other side of fear is more important.

Getting your message out is more important than fear. 

Making an impact on your audience is more important than fear. 

Earning a living from your writing is more important than fear.

So, hit that publish button regardless of any fear you experience.

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