If any of you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you will have noticed my feeds have been mostly about the Hay House Write, Speak & Promote event recently.

What is this Write, Speak & Promote thing all about?  Well it’s a yearly event that Hay House organise for any budding authors, writers or anyone wanting to work as the face of their brand or company.

Why did I go?   I’m one of those budding authors I’ve just mentioned!  I want to be able to help and share my findings with more people than just my clients and workshoppers alone.  I always assumed that by being dyslexic and not the most confident of people that this was an avenue not for me.  But then last year something happened to change this.

What happened?  I was an exhibitor at an event last year and one of my favourite authors, Dr David Hamilton was there as a speaker.  He had unknowingly helped me through some of my darkest times with my recovery from ME/CFS.  I had read all his books, listened to him for hours on You Tube and CD’s and tried to implement as much of his guidance as possible into my own life.  Anyway, my husband forced me to go and talk to him as he knew what a difference he had made to my recovery journey.  So after I had got over my complete and utter tongue-tiedness I realise (and sorry for this bit, David) that he was actually only human and not any different from me or anyone else.  I hadn’t realised before but I was still having some rather toxic thoughts about myself and my own abilities and still saw famous people like himself as being better than me, when actually they really are only human beings like the rest of us.

Why am I mentioning this story?  That day was a turning point for me; it suddenly became clear that if David could go out there and help all these people with his work that I could also.  Once I made that decision that I was going to write a book everything else just seemed to fall into place.  Within two days I saw an advert for the Hay House Writers Workshop (that I attended last year).  The book idea, name and basic content came to me and I started seeing a client who had been a proof reader.  What also happened was that without a shadow of doubt I all of a sudden knew that Hay House would be publishing my book.  I still do not doubt this and never have, it may not be right now or even this year but they will! …..look out Hay House! ha

What happens next?  So since the Writers Workshop last year I have been working on my book ‘Living a Life Less Toxic’.  This covers the topics of toxic thoughts, foods, home and body care products and our toxic environment.  It shows people cheap and easy things they can do to benefit their own health and that of this beautiful planet.  With this book almost finished and wanting to learn more about promoting myself and my writings I booked myself on to the Hay House Speak, Write & Promote event early this year.

The Workshop:  I have attended several of the Hay House events now, covering many different topics and I always found them invaluable.  Not only do you get to meet lots of lovely like-minded people but you learn from the best whilst there.  They always have some of their top authors speaking at these events, as well as their CEO Reid Tracy attending many of them.  They are a mine of information, really motivating and totally inspiring and this event was no different from the rest!  There was also an added bonus that there were several of their new authors at this event, this was great because it inspired us all that we could be in their shoes someday soon.  There were also plenty of laughs, some tears and lots of new friendship and connections made.

I was lucky enough to have lunch one day with the founder and editor of a wellbeing magazine called Wellbeing World.  If you haven’t heard of this magazine, you can check it out online for free.  It has tons of wonderful article about health and wellbeing.

I had a little ego trip, i.e photo op with Cheryl Richardson, one of the first ever coaches in the States, who had written several empowering books and helped many people (some famous) to achieve goals and results they were only dreaming about before.

I was also very happily surprised to find out that Janey Lee Grace was in attendance and would be doing a little speaking slot on the Sunday afternoon.  As well as being one of the hosts on Radio 2, she used to sing (back in the day) with Wham and is an author and PR specialist herself.  What makes her so fascinating to me is that two of her books have been about looking good the natural and healthy way, so she’s a woman after my own heart.  It was lovely to chat to her for a bit of our lunch break and she was kind enough to sign my book and let me take this below photo (another ego trip, sorry, ha).

So what’s in it for you?  If you have any books ideas or aspire to being any sort of public figure/speaker then I highly recommend one of Hay House’s writing and/or speaking events.  You will come away with an idea of what’s holding you back, how to address this, how to get started on this journey and what to expect from it all.  If in doubt I highly recommend you give their workshops a go.  Not only this, but at each of their speaking workshops Hay House run a competition to award one of the attendees (who submits a book proposal to them) a publishing contract!  That means that you have a one in (around) 200 chance of being published by them rather than a one in several thousand chance (if you submit to a normal publishers in the normal way).

What have I learnt?

You really can achieve anything you put your mind to; it’s only those toxic thoughts holding you back, so why not give it a go!  Plus you can have lots of fun along the way.

The journey is just as important as the goal, if not more, so enjoy the learning/growing process.

Learning to laugh and cry and share some amazing stories, memories and love with a room full of complete strangers is something that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life.