The previous episode of the ProBlogger podcast asked you a very simple question that I think is the basis of all that we do: “how are you?”. How are you physically, emotionally, with your health? Are you blogging from a solid foundation of wellness? Are you taking care of your personal needs?
I shared a very personal story about what happened when I realised I wasn’t doing that any more – and the steps I took to get back on track. Once I re-cemented my foundation of wellness, it had a noticeable impact on my blogs.
Wellness is usually considered to encompass diet, exercise, rest, relationships, spirituality, but also purpose. Having a purpose impacts positively every aspect of your life and health, and it even helps increase productivity – and this is all going to impact your blog.
When my blogs have been firing on all cylinders, it usually correlates with those times in my life when I’m really working from the core of my “why” – my purpose.
Over the years, sometimes your purpose gets a little lost by the wayside. You get distracted from your why. Sometimes the blog runs away on its own and you feel as though in the machine of content creation, internet marketing, fulfilling reader expectations, and you get further and further away from the nucleus of what you wanted to create, why you started blogging in the first place.
In today’s episode, I talk about why you need to drill down and encapsulate your “why”, and how it then impacts your what and your how. How reconnecting with your why can help guide you back to a positive frame of mind about blogging when the inevitable blog slump or burnout happens. How it can raise your productivity and how you can harness it for successful blogging.
I talk about what happened earlier this year when I realised I needed to shut down a profitable part of my business, and how it ultimately set me on the right path, although it isn’t an easy decision to turn off a successful income stream. But it wasn’t furthering me on the path of my why, and I knew that I could be more useful elsewhere (and I discuss what I did instead that has been even more successful than I hoped!).
Click here to listen to episode 39 of the ProBlogger Podcast: What is Your Why?, read the show notes and leave a comment about what you think your why might be.
Hi Stacey,
Freedom has always been my why.
I do what I do to free me. Over the years I got clearer on that reason, deleting 3400 posts (and my old blog in the process) and now I am moving away from prior dominant income streams to open new ones. I love what I do, and what i do feels freeing….and the moment it feels confining, I let it go.
Today I finished writing my 96th eBook. I have 161 products in total on Amazon. Why? I love writing, and I love having 96 ebooks (161 products) generating passive income for me around the clock….very freeing experience ;)
Thanks for sharing!
Ryan
Didn’t listen to the podcast so far but I can feel you. Having written as many posts as you have there always comes this point where you are sometimes bewildered and clueless as to what direction one should take next.
It’s safe to say every blogger experiences burnout whereas they run out of ideas and something meaningful to blog on. This is the time when bloggers need to stay the course and continue creating quality content at light speed. It’s okay also for every blogger to take a break and regroup the train of thought. It helps them to stay passionate about this line of work and dedicated towards keeping relationships sustained between their blog readers and maximizing ad revenue potential.
Sometimes, we usually get lost while trying to do things right without even knowing it and sometimes too, it feels like all our efforts are yielding zero outcome, we feel like everything is not working, we feel like we’re just unlucky and others are lucky, we simply feel like calling it a quit.
I believe that everyone usually come in contact with these kind of feelings at one point in life and its at that moment that we should just stop and ask ourself that question “The Why”. The answer we provide to that will always position us on the right thing and on the right direction to go.
A very thoughtful episode Darren, thanks for sharing.