Bloggers often experience some modest or even mild success but turn around the moment that pressing on the accelerator is the answer.
The excuses may vary.
Life seems to intervene. Maybe blogging seems like too much work when you enjoy some worldly success but need to level up to accelerate traffic and profits.
Perhaps you fear what increased success will appear to do to your identity. Will family and friends who were comfortable and familiar with the old you seem as loving and accepting with the new, successful you? This is an insidiously tricky one to identify. Most bloggers fear success secretly but seem to fear failure on the surface level.
Why do you turn around if greater blogging success beckons on the path forward?
Moving forward accelerates your blogging success. But moving backward by turning around has the opposite effect. How can you succeed by moving back toward failure? I know that moving forward outside of your comfort zone feels scary. For whatever reason, 100 to 200 people began friend requesting me daily on Facebook a few years ago. My intuition told me to begin approving all of these folks at the time. I’ve since moved in a different direction but at that point I needed to face a deep fear and invite in masses of folks. This was part of the blogging journey for me.
Even though I enjoyed making new blogging buddies at the time my ego and its fears felt uncomfortable with the extra workload of engaging, bonding and chatting up new buds as I created blog content through Blogging From Paradise and guest posted.
But…..what did I do? Either I turned backwards toward less and less success or I moved forward toward more success. Turning backward meant I helped less people because I craved comfort. Moving forward meant I helped more people because I seemed willing to edge outside of my comfort zone.
At the end of the day, no question genuinely exists. I needed to move forward because I went too far to turn around in the blogging game. I likely will not blog for the remainder of my human life but I will take this onward and upward to see where it goes. However, many of my fellow bloggers turn back on being blinded by the light of success. Some bloggers fear taking on increased responsibility. Other bloggers fear being pitched. Yet other bloggers fear being criticized or rejected. In all cases, either feel the fear to move forward or resist the fear to move backward.
Why would you move backwards into failure with distractions? Some bloggers experience a tiny bit of success but immediately spend the remainder of their day watching YouTube or Netflix. How can you ever grow your blogging campaign into something meaningful if you give most daily attention and energy to distracting yourself with:
- Netflix?
- YouTube?
- food?
- gossip?
Either you grow or regress. No in between exists, even if you appear to be stuck in a blogging holding pattern. Decide to grow no matter how scary growth seems to be. Growing by moving forward is the only sane choice. Regressing by moving backwards is not sane at all.
Take on Greater Responsibility
I recorded a video reminding you to take on greater responsibility.
Check it out here:
Take on Greater Responsibility
People often fear taking on greater responsibility for some fear of losing freedom. But one can only gain freedom by being more responsible because helping more people allows you to become a more successful blogger. Temporarily, you may appear to give up some free time offline to work more blogging hours but becoming a more successful blogger allows you to enjoy more time offline over the long haul.
Release any idea of sacrifice to understand that increasing your blogging responsibilities feels good because being truly helpful is the root cause of happiness. Feeling good about helping more people frees you from blogging over the long haul because passive success finds generous, persistent, patient bloggers who take on the greatest responsibility for a long period of time.
Move forward by shouldering more blogging responsibility. Never move backwards by trying to lessen your blogging responsibilities. Of course, outsourcing a high volume of blogging work is one way to work less and less while experiencing greater blogging success. But most bloggers do not have the budget or risk tolerance to walk that blogging path.
Begin thinking right side up versus thinking upside down.
Move toward success one small blogging step at a time.
Beware if the mind tries to pull you backwards just as you edge closer to blogging success. Observe self-sabotage. For example, as I update this blog post a few years after the original publish date I felt an intuitive nudge to guest blog again. The mind tries to pull me away from guest blogging toward less effective activities even though I know the blogging drill by now.
What can I do?
Observe the ego tendency to move backward, away from success, and move forward with my guest blogging campaign.
Nobody said blogging would be easy but the freedom and fun of helping people is worth periodic discomfort.
Move forward guys.
Edge outside of your comfort zone toward increased blogging freedom.
Give yourself time to work out the blogging kinks arising as you wade toward increased blogging success.
Level up a tiny bit to slowly but surely free yourself from limiting beliefs.
Keep going!
Keep blogging!
About the Author
Ryan Biddulph helps you become a professional blogger at Blogging From Paradise.