11 Aug 100. 4 Ways to Live Your Purpose with Your Book

In this episode, you’ll find out what might be a new way to approach your life’s purpose.

This perspective might help you take some pressure off yourself in your pursuit of that purpose or purposes.

You’ll also discover 4 ways your book can help you fulfill your purpose, however you define it.

For more writing tips and inspiration, follow me on Instagram @candiceldavis.

Mentioned in This Episode

Authors Ignited: Group Coaching Program for Nonfiction Authors

Jump-Start: A free guide to help you jump-start your nonfiction book.

Complete Author Coaching (1:1 Coaching)

Episode Transcript

Welcome to “Nothing but the Words.” I’m your Book Coach, Candice L. Davis, and I’m super excited to be recording this, my 100th episode.

When I launched this podcast, I committed to giving value in every episode.

I wanted to give practical tips and strategy along with encouragement, motivation, and inspiration.

I wanted any listener to be able to listen to this podcast and experience a transformation of some kind.

I think I’ve done that. If that’s been your experience of “Nothing but the Words,” I’d love for you to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts and let me know.

Reviews help more people find the podcast, and my goal is to get this information to anyone who desires to write a book that makes a difference in this world.

That could be fiction or nonfiction of any kind. All well-written books can make a difference.

In this episode, I want to share with you 4 ways your book can help you live your purpose.

Recently, I was on a coaching call with a client I’ve worked with, off and on, over the last seven years or so.

In that time, she’s written four books, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with her on all of them.

It really is a pleasure for a lot of reasons. The first is just that she’s a wonderful human being. But she’s also coachable and committed to writing the very best book she can every single time.

She’s not a perfectionist about it. She can see how she’s grown as a writer over the years, and she knows she will continue to grow.

But she continues to write and release her books in the meantime, and they have the desired positive impact.

As we were wrapping up our coaching call, she said, “Thank you for helping me achieve my purpose with my book.”

That simple sentence summed up exactly what I strive to help my clients do.

Off the top, I have to tell you I look at purpose differently from most of the gurus out there. 

I don’t believe we all get one divinely inspired purpose we have to pursue.

I don’t believe we only get one purpose in a lifetime.

I believe we can live out multiple purposes at any given time and certainly over the 90-plus years on this earth that I’m claiming for you and for me.

I don’t even believe your purpose is necessarily first about how you serve other people.

In my experience, your purpose can be something you deeply delight in doing for its own sake.

That by itself serves other people through its end product or through your example of a life built around joy. 

When I first started writing, I wrote literary fiction, and I wrote it almost exclusively for myself.

I wrote to survive difficult times.

I wrote because I loved the challenge.

I wrote because that was the gift God gave me, and I didn’t know how not to use it.

When I sat down to write, I wasn’t thinking about how other people might be impacted.

I just wanted to write the best story I could write.

Yet, over and over, people told me how they were moved by my work. That wasn’t my intention in the process, but it was a byproduct of me pursuing my purpose.

So if you feel confused about what your purpose is, my suggestion is that you stop letting other people define “purpose” for you.

Choose for yourself what purpose means, and I assure you it will be a lot easier for you to identify your true purpose or many purposes.

Which brings me to you and your book.

Writing your book is one of the best ways to fulfill your purpose, whatever it may be.

In the last month, I’ve coached clients who teach people how to eat healthy and save money, clients who teach people how to thrive when they have a loved one dealing with addiction, clients who tell great stories to entertain people and shed a light on some of life’s greatest lessons at the same time, clients who teach people to invest to create wealth and create true financial freedom, and many other topics.

Most of them, if not all of them, would say they’re working in their purpose.

So where does their book fit in? Or better asked, where does your well-written book fit into fulfilling your purpose?

First, a book helps you reach so many more people in a tangible, lasting way.

Yes, you can reach a lot of people with video or podcasting. But how many of those people will walk away from that content and forget what you said an hour later.

When people have your book in hand, or on their tablet or phone, they have a concrete (or digital) reminder of your ideas. They can easily go back and reference them.

You may never meet or work with all the people who buy your book—I hope you don’t. The number should be too large for that.

But you can have a positive impact on them with the content you include in your book alone.

Second, your book helps you achieve your purpose by positioning you as an expert, which means the people in your audience or in your community trust you more.

When you’ve written a book on a subject, people automatically assume you know what you’re talking about, and they give you a chance to prove them right or prove them wrong.

Prove them right, friend. Let your book open the door for you to get on stages and screens and radios and share the message behind your purpose. 

Third, your book helps you fulfill your purpose by processing, refining, and honing your ideas and philosophies.

That’s a never-ending process for most of us, of course, but capturing your ideas on the page in a way other people can not only understand but also apply requires you to put your ideas through a purifying fire.

If you’re not changed in some way by the time you finish writing your book, I’m concerned.

The writing process should be a testing ground for your ideas, and they’re not all going to make it to the other side.

Those that do, you should feel more confident in than ever before. And that confidence can propel you to living out your purpose at the highest levels.

That’s an opportunity and an invitation to step into your purpose in a bigger, more broadly reaching way.

And fourth, if you work with clients in some way, whether through a product, a service, speaking, coaching, or whatever you offer, your book should lead more of your perfect clients to you.

You might have 100,000 social media followers and a million downloads of your podcast. Those are huge accomplishments.

But there will still be people out there who haven’t heard of you and would love to buy from you or work with you if they only knew you existed.

Your book can not only position you in front of those perfect clients when they search on Google or on Amazon for a book that can help them meet a need or fulfill a desire.

I’m not the book coach who believes everyone should write a book.

There are few things in business or in life that I think everyone should do.

But if you feel called to write a book, I want you to know it shouldn’t be a distraction from your purpose.

Instead, it should be an essential tool in fulfilling the purpose you’re prioritizing now.

That’s all for this episode, friends.

If you’re ready to write your book, I invite you to download my free guide, Jump-Start Your Book, at CandiceLDavis.com/jumpstart.

It’s designed to help you stop thinking about writing a book and finally get started writing.

Thanks for listening to Nothing but the Words. I’m your Book Coach, Candice L. Davis, and I’ll see you next time.

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