Pushing through the fear.

I find that people over-complicate making changes to their lives.  We forget what healthy eating is and instead turn to processed food or a diet gimmick.  We often, at some point in our lives, get out of balance.  We forget that it is important to nourish all aspects of ourselves.  I wanted to help people get past all this.  I wanted to inspire people to make healthier choices, not just today, but in a way that would transform their whole lifestyle. 

This idea was the founding concept of my business, Holistic Wellness with Tracy.  I teach classes on various topics around holistic wellness, I help my 1:1 clients identify small changes they can make to improve their level of health and wellness…but something was missing.  How do I reach more people?  How could I coach people I’ve never met into making their lives healthier and happier?  The answer was through a book.

For years there has been something in the back of my head…something I wanted to do, but put off because I was afraid.  I was afraid of the work involved, afraid of criticism, afraid that maybe I couldn’t really do it, afraid of putting myself out there and yes, I was even afraid of success.  What was I so afraid of?  I was afraid to write my first book, but I was drawn to write it before I even knew what I really wanted to say.

When the concept of 90 Days to Holistic Wellness – balancing your Body, Mind, Heart and Soul came to me, it brought with it a bunch of insecurities.  Could I really do this?   I don’t know!  I’m typically a confident person, but did I really want to take on this project and risk failure (or success)?   I was paralyzed at first.  I had this idea, but I was afraid to act on it.  So I procrastinated.  I let the idea simmer. Then one day it hit me!  Follow your own advice, silly!

I believe in small changes, in baby steps.  So that is how I started my book.  I worked on an outline to see if I could design a complete book concept.  Once I was happy with that, I wrote chapter 1.  Hmm, that wasn’t too bad.  So, I wrote chapter 2.  Then I wrote chapter 3.  You can probably figure out what came next.  Yep, chapter 4…and so on and so forth.   Eventually I had the book pretty much finished, except for a lot of editing.  I had an almost completed book, now what?  Fear started up again.  I needed a publisher, but had read horror stories of rejection letters and feelings of failure.  The thought of that sounded horrible and I really wanted this whole experience to be as positive as possible.  So while I could have pushed through that fear and sent proposals to 25 different publishers, I didn’t.  I chose instead to use a self-publishing company, Balboa Press. 

This of course brings up a whole different set of fears.  Putting up the money myself to publish the books, and hope that I can recoup enough to pay myself back, let alone maybe actually make some profit.  This fear was actually a little more comfortable than facing the fear of rejection…proving to me that sometime you just have to pick the better of two evils and push ahead!

So now, I am so excited to say that my book is available to the public!  I still have a couple more hurdles to jump through – like 2 book signing celebrations!  Yes, I’m a little nervous no one will come or no one will buy my book; but in the end, I know that I did something that was meaningful and fulfilling to me.  I pushed through my fear to create something that I hope will help people…and of that I am extremely proud!

If you are in the area, please consider stopping my one (or even both) of my book celebrations.  Books will be available for purchase, we will have refreshments and giveaways, as well as raising some money for local charities.  Details on these events can be found on my website, under EVENTS.

If you can’t make a book signing but are interested in reading the book, you can order your copy at

www.holisticwellnesswithtracy.com

or from Balboa Press, Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Thank you to everyone that has supported me in this project, especially my husband Andrew, my daughter Paige and my friend/unofficial editor, Diane

Namaste,
Tracy.