How to Tell if You Are Ready to Write Self-Help

As lightworkers and healing artists, we spend years learning our crafts of healing and recovery, often yearning to share our lessons and tools, yet feeling unpreared to do so.

Because the world so needs our gifts and benefits from our learned experiences, it is important we receive the information and support we need to begin sharing our lives, and our work sooner with those whom we are here to serve.

Additionally, our work is meant to be our own medicine, which is all the more reason we need to get moving on our Divine life mission and purpose.

It is often only the ego's fear that seems to convince us that we are unprepared to begin our work. In truth, you are ready as soon as the desire to serve appears in your heart, mind, or emotions.

I would like to share with you some of the things I've learned along the way, as a lightworker and healing artist myself. Like many others, I spent several years wanting to write self-help before I felt I was qualified to do so. I hope what I've learned can assist you on your journey that you may do the work you came to do, and find joy and healing in it for yourself as well!

Signs You Are Ready

1) No one has written exactly what you need to hear or read. You seek and find several authors who address bits and pieces of issues you care about and can relate to, but no one author or book speaks to your own life experience exactly. This is because it's time for you to tell your story. You are connected to your own network of people who are going through a similar journey as yours. They will be your reading audience and psychic support group. The reason the book or article you seek for your own healing and identification doesn't exist is because you haven't written it yet.

2) The desire to write or create self-help works (such as guided meditation audio recordings as well as printed articles and books), has become so strong in you it actually causes physical or emotional pain. You also are becoming afraid of passing away before you've had a chance to complete your work. These are strong signs you are definitely ready to write self-help. Just let go of the fearful thoughts and allow the work itself to provide the relief you seek.

3) Your peers and colleagues are creating works that you would like to create. People you know who are at your level of education or professional accomplishment are writing articles and self-publishing books just like you would like to. Watching them brings you both joy and pride at knowing them as well as painful feelings of envy and jealousy that you're not doing the same. Let your feelings be your guide. Continue feeling happy for them, and know that their success is a strong sign yours could be next. Let the painful feelings tell you that it's urgent you begin work on your dreams right away. Your peers doing what you would like to do is one of the strongest signs you are ready to write self-help!

4) Your closest mentors are difficult to continue connecting with. If you have a couple of mentors whom you admire so much, and for years you've been able to connect with them via social media, and suddenly all attempts to be in their network seem to go nowhere, if you are finding block after block at getting closer to them, it means you have become them. Let me explain. Usually when this happens you haven't noticed, but several years of psychic mentorship have occurred, during which time your skills, talents, and powers as a lightworker and healing artist have grown to a significantly higher degree. You have written a lot, perhaps on your blog or social networking sites, or on your email list, and you are no longer in a position where it would be healthy to remain only the psychic mentee you thought you were. It is time to create works like your mentors have. The block has occurred because you have now become to your audience what your mentors have represented to you. The blocks to connecting more closely to your longtime mentors are Divine guidance to move along to service instead of absorbing their inspiration. It's time to express your own inspiration to others.

Tips to Begin Now

1) Let go of the need to have so-called “credentials”. Not every successful self-help author has a college degree, let alone advanced degrees. You also don't need to have attended a psychic school nor be certified as an angel communicator, spiritual medium, or crystal healer, etc. All that is required to write self-help is to write down what has helped you and what you hope will help others. The rest will come in time and with the continued practice of your craft.

2) Do not be limited by the idea that you have to complete an entire book/manuscript right away. Some of the best writing is done on personal blogs, and some of the best book deals and publishing/TV/media careers were borne of blogs that grew exponentially. To get you started right away, consider creating your own free blog, at a site like www.blogspot.com, and contributing to a free print or online magazine for self-help and personal growth like this one, or others which you can find by searching online. If you prefer to print, consider self-publishing at any level from desktop publishing chapbooks and printing them at an office supply store's copy center, or online ebook self-publishing using a site like www.smashwords.com, www.lulu.com, or www.createspace.com, the latter of which is Amazon's imprint.

3) To further promote your writing online, you can create your own free website using a service like www.weebly.com or www.wordpress.com.

How to Be Successful

1) First define what success means to you. This will be the groundwork from which all else comes after.

2) Keep making your writing your medicine. As long as you remain true to what you need for yourself to heal, there will be a magnet in your work that reaches those who will be helped by it. Remember, We Are All One. Chances are, whatever you're going through, someone close to you is also.

3) It helps to have as your goal only that you are being of service and help to others and that your work is good.

4) Seek to increase the amount of people whom your writing will serve, and your audience will grow from that good intention. So, also will recompense, recognition, and all other good things that come from focusing on doing good service to others while improving yourself.

5) Continue improving your craft. Seek examples you admire, and follow their best qualities.

6) Seek to be a blessing in your work, not just a celebrity. It is alright to seek fame and fortune, as it is alright for flowers and other colorful creatures to be bold in their beauty. But your fame will grow in the best way when you also seek with your self-help writing to be a blessing to others, and to assist them on their path of healing and transformation.

7) Do not worry about, nor focus on receiving payment for your writing. Focus on getting your writing done and out in the world. Focus on growing your writing, and improving your writing skills. Focus on growing your audience. Focus on increasing your exposure. The rest will come later. As your work increases in value, so will it also attract all the resources it will need to continue its reach. If your work is good, it will attract the money you need to keep writing it. So, if you are writing “for free”, don't be stingy with the quality or the quantity of your heartfelt writing submissions. You never know who is reading your work, and how they are being healed and supported by your writing. Please continue to do your best, so that others may be blessed by your good work, and you will find that the universe generously, powerfully, and lovingly supports your efforts.

Resources & Support

The Lightworker's Way: Awakening Your Spiritual Power to Know and Heal, by Doreen Virtue

The Angel Therapy Handbook, by Doreen Virtue

Love is the River: Learning to Live in the Flow of Divine Grace, by Ann Albers

Whispers of the Spirit: From Engineer to Angel Communicator, by Ann Albers

www.PlanetSARK.com

Becoming a Writer by Sanya Roman

Becoming a World Server by Sanaya Roman

The Pleasure Principle: How to Become a Sexual Healer, by Barbara Carrellas

The Pleasure Principle: Meeting Your Inner Lover, by Barbara Carrellas

Cassendre Xavier is a Leeway Transformation Award-winning Philadelphia-based multi-media healing artist. She is author of Expanding Your Capacity for Joy: A Raw Vegan Comfort Book, Sourcebook & Journal (2009/ARtivist Publications), and the creator of the Affirmations for Survivors guided meditation series (featuring Music of Light by Thaddeus), with “Self-Love,” and “Spirituality” (2007/Amethyste Affirmations), “Sexuality” and “Life Skills” in progress. Cassendre is also the founder and former facilitator of several community initiatives including Sisters Healing Together (a peer support group for women survivors of incest with a special focus on compulsive overeating), and AIM: Artists In Motion (a peer support and accountability group for artists). Cassendre has written for Wisdom Magazine's online edition since May 2009. For more information, please visit http://cassEndrExavier.com.