The Book You Wish You Had Written

Published by Matt Church – Founder on 7 September 2022

As thought leaders running commercially successful practices, I thought we might talk this week about books.

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As thought leaders running commercially successful practices, I thought we might talk this week about books. Specifically, I would like to connect you to an experience we might have shared. Have you ever had that moment where you find yourself reading a book that you feel you yourself could have written? Has this happened to you yet?

Happened just this year to me with The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and surprised me to experience this strange feeling yet again.

This feeling of disappointment is likely sourced in equal parts from at least three places: part impostor syndrome, part nihilism and part comparisonitis. I think though that perhaps it could be exactly this experience that sets us up to write a better book than we could have. I get it doesn’t feel like that when you read the ‘beat you to it’ book.

So picture this …you pick up a book and each chapter feels like a core message from your body of work.

What to do?

Well, definitely don’t break down or give up, rather break through the comparison envy and see it as an opportunity to write something adjacent, nuanced, refined, or more extended than the piece of work in your hands.

What if that book was written so you didn’t have to and instead were now free to explore the edges of your topic of area or interest?

This happens often enough to me and frequently enough to other thought leaders that it deserves its own name.

Perhaps we can call it…

The impatience of inspiration.
As in you didn’t move fast enough for the universe to get it out there. That’s a bit too harsh, self-deprecating and ‘not good enough’ a paradigm for me.

Perhaps we can call it…

Partnered Publishing.
This book being put in the world, yet fully aligned with your work and practice means you have conceptual partners, sisters and brothers on the message journey that you have yet to meet.

I think we should call it…

Truth arising.
Truth appears in the world without possession. Maybe it’s not a great idea if you are the only one to have it.

Be inspired by the company you keep and turn frustration into inspiration. Great ideas emerge on the planet at the same time. Be inspired by the concept that great ideas pass through you for the world not from you to the world. When you do this you realise it makes complete sense that others would share similar inspirations.