the reader—you will actually end up looking good. [We’ll talk a lot more about this later in the positioning section of the book.] STEP 6: ASK YOURSELF, “WHAT IF I JUST QUIT?” Ask yourself, “If I do NOT write my book, what will happen? Who will suffer, and how?” and write down everything that happens if you quit the book. This is about using your anxiety against itself. If you ask yourself these questions, often your brain reverses itself, and begins to argue for writing the book. This works because of the peculiar way that human brains work. Now that you have “seen” the benefits you can get from writing a book, picturing yourself quitting will trigger one of the strongest psychological reactions in humans: loss aversion. Once you imagine yourself with all these benefits, and then you imagine yourself losing them—things shift in your brain. Your fear doesn’t necessarily go away. It just takes a back seat to loss aversion. This is one of the most replicated findings in social science; people are far more motivated by losing something than by gaining some- thing. By already picturing yourself with benefits and gains, you now want to keep them. STEP 7: MAKE YOUR DECISION This step is very simple: review everything you’ve written so far, and then decide: are you going to move forward with your book? Is it worth it? Make no mistake, this is a decision, and it is NOT assumed or automatic that you should write the book. In fact, there are plenty of times people look at their lists and realize that the risks of the 48 · ThE SCriBE METhOD