Mel Robbins shares how she overcame self doubt when she became an author.

Robbins was a guest on Lisa Bilyeu’s Women of Impact podcast recently. Before becoming a popular motivational speaker and author, Robbins was a lawyer, CNN legal analyst and TEDx speaker.

Robbins TEDx speech has over 20K views on YouTube. Towards the end of her speech Robbins briefly mentions her mindset habit she named the 5 Second Rule to act and move forward towards her goals.

Her 5 Second Rule philosophy became a book that she self-published. Robbins also had dreams of becoming a #1 NYT bestselling author. Next, Robbins promoted her new book.  Shortly, after the book was released it was out-of-stock. Amazon turns off the supply of books when there is unexpected high traffic. This is to confirm it’s not a bunch of ‘bots’ buying the book and to check inventory.

Stay Focused

Robbins started doubting herself when she heard Amazon was listing her books as out-of-stock. She felt like she had failed and was struggling to find a way to get her book to her readers.

It was when Robbins caught herself creeping into Imposter Syndrome (Imposter Syndrome is the belief that you are not as competent as others think you are.) that she decided to flip the script. She repeated in her mind her mantra. “There’s no way that you’ve worked this hard that something amazing isn’t going to happen. You have to keep going. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn’t happened yet.” This encouraging and empowering mindset gave her the resilience to keep going.

Different Paths to Success

Robbins forgot that she had created a self-published audio book through Audible that was released at the same time as the hard copy version of the book.

She received a report about the status of her audio-book. Robbins learned that when her readers went to Amazon to buy the book they downloaded the audio-book. This was the only format that was available.

The 5 Second Rule book became the #1 Audio book of the year for self-development.

Not only was Audible an underestimated path to Robbins success, she formed a new partnership with Audible. This opportunity would not have evolved if Amazon hadn’t turned off the supply of books for fear of ‘bots.’

Dreams Change

Robbins found out that her dream of becoming a #1 NYT bestselling author wouldn’t be possible. It was after she wrote and released her book that Robbins found out that self-published authors can’t get on the NYT bestseller’s list.

Her dream has evolved to help as many of her readers become successful after reading insights from her book.