Mindfulness makes you a better writer

Kirsten Back Author

How being present and reflective leads to powerfully meaningful messages

Mindfulness continues to be a buzzword – and rightly so. Some people believe that it’s been around for too long, but I believe that it hasn’t been around long enough – because mindfulness should never stop being present in our lives.

Being mindful means that you are paying attention to the small and subtle things in your life. You are paying attention to the small and rich details in your life and then you process the details to elevate yourself and others.

Details are hugely important when it comes to writing. Providing the right details and the right amount of details can be a challenge. Get the details wrong and your content turns out flat and uninspiring.

Details help you make sense of the information you are consuming. It helps you make connections and the right associations.

DETAILS PROVIDE CONTEXT

Especially in storytelling, details bring the story to life. They allow you to experience situations and access people’s minds to a level where the storyteller’s brain synchronises with the listener’s brain.

When you find a book character mono-dimensional – it’s the lack of details that don’t give you deep enough access to a person or a situation.

We make sense of our world through processing details. Most often we do that subconsciously.

Imagine stepping into a windowless and overcrowded meeting room in summer…

Imagine what you hear, smell, see, sense…

But also think about the context of why and how you are stepping into the room. Do you feel confident, nervous, excited, worried, hopeful, disenchanted? What is the energy in the room? How are the people in the room experiencing the situation? What are their emotions? How do you want to influence their emotions? What is your intention and how do you want to interact in this room?

Think about what details would influence how you and the other people perceive the situation. What are you and the other people bringing into the room? Are you stepping into the room to announce amazing annual results or announcing the next round of redundancies?

Experiencing situations with all your senses and an acute awareness of your and other people’s thoughts and emotions allows you to read situations better and adapt your responses to any given situation. 

Details bring your story to life!

But being mindful of details doesn’t only make you a better storyteller, being mindful also helps you to write better copy and content.

MINDFULNESS CREATES IMPACT

Being mindful opens your perception for understanding your audience’s needs, desires, hopes, wishes, fears, struggles…

Understanding your audience’s emotional world allows you to write content and copy that connects with exactly the right people. People who resonate with what you have to say and with how you want to make them feel.

Being mindful of their desires and emotions helps you with creating real-life scenarios in their minds. You can tap into the dreams that your audience wants to achieve, the person they aspire to become, the relationships they want to build, the experiences they want to make…

By being mindful and being fully present with your audience, you can create copy and content that feels like you are running a hotwire directly into your audience’s brains.

With mindfulness, you sense what your audience wants to hear, what information needs they have, how they want the content to be presented to them, which words and phrases they resonate with, which topics and style they like, which values and views they support…

When you open your mind, you feel their “energy” and emotions as well as the intent behind their actions. And that allows you to create content that provides them with real value because it equips them with the knowledge that allows them to reach their goals and create an impact for the people or the cause they serve.

By being mindful about the people you serve, you also are more tuned in to what is happening in their lives and the challenges they are dealing with. Following what’s happening in their world allows you to offer the right support and solutions when they need it most.

The amazing side effect – you and your clients develop and grow as a person and become even better at what you do.

And lastly – being mindful makes you pay more attention to your message and how you write.

REFINING YOUR MESSAGE AND YOUR WRITING…

When you are mindful you deeply think about your message and how you bring your message across. That also makes you more critical of your style and your writing skills. You pay more attention to the little nuances of language, the structure, and the writing techniques you are using.

The reflection that comes with mindfulness allows you to express yourself better in writing (because you have processed your thoughts already in your head) and increase the quality of your writing.

And that is not only something that gives you a sense of satisfaction but also makes reading your content worth its while. In other words – your writing becomes more valuable and tailored to the specific people you like to work with.

I am not going to add a long passage about how to be more mindful because that would go far beyond what this post is about. But if you start with taking an emotional journey through your ideal client’s day and open all your senses to what they are experiencing – then you have plenty of impressions to reflect on and work with.

If, however, you are not quite sure how to go about this and how to extract the details that make your writing more powerful – then drop me a message and we can talk about how I can help you with that.

Categories: Authenticity, Brand Messaging, Content Creation, Contentwriting, Copywriting, Copywritingskills