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Welcome to the Author Revolution Podcast.
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I'm Carissa Andrews, author and your host, here to help any authors like you master mindset, harness manifestation, and embrace cutting-edge innovation to elevate your career.
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Let's dive in.
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Hey there guys, welcome back to the Author Revolution podcast.
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Okay, so today's episode feels a little surreal.
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As I sit down to record this, I can feel the full weight of this moment.
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It's not in a heavy way, but in a way that feels really big and meaningful.
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Kind of like the final pages of a really beloved book.
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So six years ago, today, October 29th, 2019, Author Revolution Podcast was born.
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This podcast was my way of reaching into the indie author space, sharing what I was learning, what I was passionate about, and helping you, my fellow indie author rebels, carve out your own path in this wild world of self-publishing.
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And now here we are, full circle.
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This is going to be the final episode of the Author Revolution podcast.
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At least for now.
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So today I want to reflect with you, to honor this incredible journey that we've taken together, to talk about why now is the time for me to let go and to leave you with one final message that I hope sticks, no matter where you are on your journey or where it takes you next.
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So six years.
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If I'm being honest, it still blows my mind.
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I've been showing up here week after week, well, at least until recently, right?
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Sharing strategies, stories, interviews, and plenty of ramblings about author life.
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When I started Author Revolution, I was deep in the indie publishing trenches, trying to figure out how to make this author career thing actually work.
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And like so many of you, I wanted to write books that really mattered.
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I wanted to build a business that felt meaningful and soul-aligned.
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And maybe most of all, I wanted to prove that I didn't have to play by someone else's rules in order to succeed.
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Over the years, I've talked with incredible guests.
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We've tackled hard truths about book marketing, and I've shared my own ups and downs in real time.
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There were high points, you know, launches that went better than expected, courses that landed perfectly, and a community that kept showing up with love and curiosity.
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And then there were also the low points, right?
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Moments where I wondered if I was on the right path anymore, when the energy just felt off and when my heart wasn't in it the way that it used to be.
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About a year ago, something in me started to shift.
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If you've been listening for a while, you probably noticed, right?
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That's when I moved the podcast from weekly to monthly, and I told myself I just needed more space.
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But deep down, I think I knew.
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I was starting to let go.
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It wasn't burnout exactly, or at least not entirely, right?
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It was more like the podcast and author revolution, the way it was built, no longer felt like home.
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I still loved creating for it.
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I still loved writing and coaching and helping authors, but something in me had changed.
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And at first I thought it was just me, that maybe I was outgrowing the platform or the format, but then I started having conversations with other industry leaders, you know, people I trust and respect deeply.
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And I realized that this wasn't just a me thing.
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There are winds shifting in our industry, and honestly, not all of them are so great.
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We're seeing more authors stepping back from the hustle, the grind, the constant do more, be more, earn more narrative.
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And we're also seeing a clear shift in where people are putting their energy and their money.
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Authors aren't spending on their careers the way that they used to, and maybe that's just the economy right now.
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Maybe it's collective fatigue, or maybe, just maybe, we're finally waking up to the truth that performance-based success metrics aren't the only way to define a fulfilling creative life.
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And I can tell you this: once you start feeling that truth in your bones, it becomes really, really hard to keep pretending otherwise.
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Now, over this past year, I started leaning more into what really felt good in my body.
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You know, I've been big into somatic exercises now, probably for the past year as well.
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So it was all about what felt aligned, what felt the most me.
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And what emerged was something I never expected.
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It was my YouTube channel focusing on verbal Reiki, you know, portal energy, full moons, new moons, that sort of thing, and really supporting people through energetic shifts and their scarcity mindset release.
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It might sound like a leap from book
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launches and backless marketing, but it's not really.
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It's all connected.
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At the heart of it, I'm still doing what I've always done: helping people come back to themselves, to trust their inner knowing, to create a life that feels like theirs.
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And you know what?
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It's really honestly been pretty amazing.
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The channel has grown faster than I imagined.
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The feedback has been beautiful, and more importantly, I feel lit up in ways I haven't felt lit up in when I create those videos.
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You know, I feel that alignment, I feel grounded and energized and like I can truly be me.
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And that's the sign, right?
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The nudge, the the knowing.
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And over the years, I've learned to trust it.
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Now I want to be clear about something.
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I had really big plans for 2026.
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As I was retiring all of my old courses, I created three new Author Revolution courses that were mapped out.
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You know, they're all shiny and structured and full of potential.
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And they're they've got, you know, baked in the ideas of how I now operate in my indie author like career, how I look at developing and doing certain things, how I market, how I um outline, how I create my worlds, like everything, like the whole strategy is there.
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And maybe they'll still happen, but I'm not forcing it.
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So I've decided I'm no longer living my life or running my business or businesses based on shoulds.
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I'm listening to my intuition, you know, my guides, my joy.
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And right now, that path is leading me somewhere new.
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So does that mean author revolution itself is gone forever?
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I don't know.
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Maybe I'll return uh, you know, in a new form.
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Maybe it won't.
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That's that part's not mine to really figure out today.
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I do plan on continuing masterclasses when they feel aligned, when they feel like they're a part of, you know, the strategies that I want to be sharing with authors.
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But overall, I don't feel as compelled to continue to create in that capacity.
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Does that make sense?
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So whether or not these courses are going to come about, I'm not quite sure.
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I'm leaving it open.
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I have them, you know, like I said, mapped out.
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They're
in the backdashboard of Kajabi, waiting for me to decide.
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But here's what I do know.
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This revolution, the one that we've been talking about for six years, it was never about me, right?
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It's it's always been about you.
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You are the author of your own story, literally and metaphorically.
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You get to decide how you write, how you publish, how you live.
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You get to choose joy over pressure and alignment over algorithms, authenticity over expectation.
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All of those things matter.
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And I think that's part of the reason why I was so drawn to manifestation and teaching manifestation, because I felt the need, the desire in the collective to remind you that that way of being an author, you know, the hustle, the grind, the publish like a lunatic, that's one way of being, but it's not the only way of being, right?
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It's not the only way to enjoy our creativity and our imaginations and our writing.
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It gets to be whatever we want it to be.
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And we get to create and latch on to whatever it is we actually want to receive via that as well.
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So many of us started this journey, I think, thinking that we had to hit certain benchmarks in order to quote unquote make it.
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But I want to leave you with this truth.
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You get to define your success, no matter how that looks for you.
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You get to build your career on your terms.
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And you get to start your revolution whenever you decide it's time.
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So if something doesn't feel aligned anymore, if something isn't making your heart sing, I want you to give yourself permission to redefine, to take a step back, to allow some time in order to see things more clearly, because sometimes that's what it takes.
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Sometimes we need a step back, even if it's just a little step back, you know, like for me in Author Revolution, it was um, you know, to stepping back from weekly podcast episodes to monthly.
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And then it was dropping some of the calls that I felt like were no longer necessary.
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I was originally doing group coaching calls for some of my courses, and they just didn't feel necessary anymore.
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And maybe it'll be masterclasses next, but it was courses.
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Like I was taking a look at the courses and they no longer felt aligned with the direction which I'm going.
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And it's not to say that all of those steps leading up until this point didn't make me for who I am now, right?
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And they wouldn't still be taught, and that they still wouldn't be taught in some capacity in the new version, which is why I was mapping out those new courses.
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But overall, like we get to decide for ourselves when it feels right.
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And author evolution, you know, over the past probably two and a bit years, I I felt like in some ways, like it was a relationship that was starting to unravel.
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You know, when I think back to my relationship with my ex, I knew it was time to let go.
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I just didn't have it in me for a while to actually pull the trigger.
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And so what ended up happening, it's like you go through the motions and you stick it out thinking that that's the best way to handle this, right?
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But instead, what ends up happening is you start feeling resentment behind it.
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And that's not an energy or a vibration that I want in my daily life.
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It helped, honestly, to talk with other industry experts and hear that like this is not just a me thing.
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It's not, you know, like as my courses and my reach was starting to waver, which felt really weird because as a manifestation teacher, I was trying to go bigger.
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Um, it felt weird for that to feel like collapse instead of expansion.
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And I'm like, what is going on?
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Like, why are people not understanding what I'm saying?
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Or how am I not connecting?
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Or like, why don't my words matter?
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Because of course I always make it like it's a me thing, like something's wrong with me.
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But in actuality, it's it's really not.
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And that's a wound that I've had to work on over the years and still work on often.
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And so instead, I was able to see, oh, there is a bigger undercurrent happening right now.
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There is something shifting, and so it's not, it's not just about what I teach or what I'm doing or offering or how I'm feeling.
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It's a collective, we're all kind of expanding, being called to do something else, something bigger.
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And what that looks like, I'm not quite sure.
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And so my expansion, even though as I feel like it's um, you know, going the opposite direction in some ways, in other areas, I am expanding.
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I am growing and I'm growing faster than I have ever before.
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And so the the growth is there.
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I just had to be willing to let go enough to pivot.
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Does that make sense?
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So if you're feeling this way with your author career, with anything else in your life, whether it's relationships or old, maybe you're you're maybe you're working another job, maybe it's how you're handling your family structure, um, whatever it is, if you feel like you've outgrown its current rendition, its current incarnation, whatever, give yourself permission to look at it a little differently or to take a step back and see what needs to be done and how you feel when you let it go.
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Because sometimes it's hard to let things go fully, like in one go, like just to chop it off and be done with it.
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My husband can do that, but I can't do that.
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For me, I think sometimes it has to be a gradual release.
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It has to be like a blessing in itself where I am able to see everything for what it is, kind of work through the process of it, understand what's happening, why it's happening, and then bless it on its way.
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So that's where we're at.
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That's where everything is at the moment.
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And so, my friend, we're coming up on holidays, we're coming up on a lot of different things, and I just found it so poetic that this episode that I've been kind of toying with playing around with doing actually came out now.
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And it it's kind of interesting because I planned on this episode being the last episode until I realized that like this date, this actual specific date, would have been six years.
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And so what I ended up doing the last, you know, two weeks ago wasn't even a planned episode.
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I wasn't going to do another how-to type episode tying to my master classes because I was going to deliver this message instead.
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But now you get one extra, one extra episode out of me.
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So thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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You know, thank you for being here, for listening all these years, for growing with me, for trusting me to be part of your journey as well.
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So, like I said, this isn't goodbye forever.
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It's just a transition, a new season in my life and maybe yours.
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And I hope that wherever your path takes you next, you walk it with confidence and creativity and that spark of magic that made you want to write in the very first place.
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And right now, if you want to stay in touch, you know where to find me.
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I'm still gonna be creating, still supporting, still cheering you on.
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Uh, you can find me over at manifestdifferently.com or at manifest differently on YouTube.
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You can find me through my books because I'm still gonna be writing.
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Creation feels more like my vibe right now, and I'm returning more deeply to what does that mean?
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Instead of being through, you know, instead of being through the lens of performance and metrics and jumping through hoops, I am here to feel into what my soul is wanting to give and resonating with that and sharing it.
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So for now, this is where I leave you.
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And like I said, it's kind of bittersweet.
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It's wild to think that this could be the last podcast episode ever for Author Revolution and for sure for the foreseeable future.
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If I come back with a a season two, for instance, it will be interesting.
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But right now I have no intention of that being the case.
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So for you, my friend, I want you to write boldly, create from your soul, and always always remember that you get to choose your story now and always.
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So go forth and start your author revolution.