01/02/2026
New Year Goals! 🎊Goals.🎊
Before she was a celebrated science fiction writer, Octavia Butler woke at 2 a.m. to write before her shift inspecting potato chips. It was the only time that belonged to her.
She was Black, dyslexic, poor, painfully shy, and she stuttered. In 1970, heavily influenced by Napoleon Hill's self-help book "Think and Grow Rich," she began writing affirmations in careful handwriting, in present tense, as if they'd already happened: "I am a bestselling writer. I write bestselling books."
She covered her walls with her affirmations. Surrounded herself with a reality that reflected she had already succeeded.
In 1976, she sold her first novel, Patternmaster. In 1979, Kindred.
But the bestseller's list eluded her. She kept trying.
Then, in 2006, at fifty-eight, she fell outside her home and later died. She never saw her name on the New York Times bestseller list.
Except.
Fourteen years after her death, in September 2020, her novel Parable of the Sower hit the New York Times bestseller list. Her other books followed.
In order to become a bestselling author, Butler needed to believe she already was one. Did her method fail because she didn't survive to see her dream happen?
Or did she understand that you already are who you believe yourself to be, regardless of what the world reflects back?
I wrote about this in How to Live. If this resonates, please read the full piece before commenting—it's more involved than this Facebook post.
The link to the full article is in the first comment!
