6 negative thoughts that can destroy your fundraising

When I wrote my first book (The Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible Communications) the first official step was to send three sample chapters to the editor. The few days between sending the chapters and hearing back were some of the worst I’ve experienced. I was sure he was going to hate those chapters. And my writing. And me. Somehow, I spun up a scenario where my whole career would go down the drain because of those terrible sample chapters.

Not even close to reasonable. But scary nonetheless.

I was catastrophizing.

A lot of us do that. Especially writers.

Negative thinking can do you more harm than most actual problems. But we all do it. Here’s some help from Publication Coach, at Your brain is lying to you: six negative thoughts that stall writers:

1. Catastrophizing. Things go wrong setbacks happen. They are not harbingers of doom, but sometimes we think they are. Remind yourself that problems can be fixed or you always move on.
2. All-or-nothing thinking. You have a low-progress day. You miss something you’d normally catch. That can make you feel like a complete failure. You aren’t. Progress is better than perfection. Your job is to show up and do your best — not to be perfect all the time.
3. Mind reading. Don’t make up stories about what your reader will think about your writing. Especially, don’t do that before your final draft. Doing that will keep you anxiously stuck on square one.
4. Compare and despair. Someone else seems to be doing so much better than you! You feel like a failure. The only person you should be comparing yourself to is you, a year and more ago. Those other major successes you see mean nothing. And most of them are faking it.
5. The inner critic who discounts the good. It’s easy to remember things you did wrong. And forget things you did well. Remember and learn from both! And keep track of your successes.
6. The tyranny of “should.” There are all kinds of things you “should” be doing. You probably aren’t doing all of them. Nobody is. Self-imposed guilt is a demotivator. Do what you can. When you can. And don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect.