I had the most incredible conversation with Ana McKessy on my latest Courage to Create/Voices of Courage live, and I want to share three things that stayed with me long after we wrapped up.
The first draft of your book isn’t your book — it’s your healing.
Ana has been working on her book for a couple of years, and she was honest about something most writers won’t admit. Her first manuscript was written from a place of victimhood. Raw, angry, full of “can you believe what happened to me.” And she needed to write that version. It was therapy on the page. But it wasn’t going to help anyone else. Her second attempt swung the other way — too preachy, too “let me tell you how to fix your life.” The version she’s actually publishing? It’s a fictional story that simply asks: do you see yourself here? I found that evolution fascinating. She gave herself permission to process first and serve second, and the book became something entirely different because of it.
Strategy didn’t change Anna’s life. The inner work did.
After 15 years as a stay-at-home mom, Ana had to restart her legal career in her 40s. She did the practical things — a fellowship, networking, law school reunions. But she told me something that I believe deeply: none of it truly worked until she shifted what was happening inside. She was so consumed with worrying about her ex-husband’s presence, his behavior, whether he’d get in the way, that she had no energy left for herself. The real turning point came when she stopped focusing on him and started focusing on her own healing. That’s when opportunities arrived. Her outer world changed because her inner world changed first.
People are done with gurus — and honestly, so am I.
We landed on something in this conversation that I’ve been feeling for a while now. There’s a collective exhaustion with the “I have all the answers” model. Ana designed her book intentionally to avoid preaching. She doesn’t want to be the expert telling you what to do. She wants you to read a story and find your own truth in it. I think that’s where everything is heading — away from top-down instruction and toward side-by-side discovery. It’s actually one of the reasons Future Scripting™ resonates the way it does. I’m not handing anyone a script for their life. I’m handing them a pen and saying, you already know what to write.
One last thing — Ana needs your input.
She’s at a decision point with her book and I told her I’d bring this to the community. When the novel comes out this summer, she wants to pair it with something that helps readers reflect on their own patterns and relationships. The question is: should it be a workbook — journal-style prompts, self-reflection questions on paper — or an interactive tool that asks you questions and shows you your own patterns through a back-and-forth experience?
Ana’s journey is proof of something I talk about all the time — when you do the inner work, the outer world rearranges itself around you. If you’re ready to start that process for yourself, grab a pen tonight and try her morning journaling practice. Write before you’re fully awake. See what comes through. Then come back and tell me what happened. Oh, and one more thing — drop your answer for Ana in the comments. Workbook or interactive tool? She’s counting on us.
