I learned an invaluable blogging lesson from a herd of mouth breathers today in Central Park, New York City.
Watch the video to see me explain:
If you are like me you probably spent a fair amount of time straining and striving with your blog. Pushing. Hustling. Forcing your way into a successful blogging career.
As you likely learned – either quickly or over a painful period of months or years – force negates. Meaning the harder you work and try now to be a successful blogger the harder things get down the road, making your job 10 times harder.
This is the most foolish, ineffective way to create long term blogging success.
The best way to create sustainable, every-increasing blogging success is to slow down, to calm down and to patiently use power, not force, to become a successful blogger.
7 Mile Mouth Breathers
I ran 7 miles in New York City’s beautiful Central Park. Kelli and I are spending 2 weeks house sitting on the Upper West Side of Manhattan so we often run or jog through the park. Fun cardio.
As I calmly, casually and smoothly ran around the park, breathing only through my nose, I noted legions of mouth-breathing, straining, striving runners whizzing by me. Some of these folk’s breathing sounded as labored as the half ton water buffalo I used to watch carry plows around the rice fields of Central Vietnam.
Absolute beasts of burden, these runners were, PUSHING themselves to the limit to reach some imagined goal, running themselves into the ground.
Meanwhile I coasted along to do my full 7 miles, nose-breathing (meaning my butt is in freaking shape!), not stopping once and feeling no soreness in my legs, back or neck hours after the run.
My relaxed, calm, power-driven strategy (never pushing or *forcing* myself to the point of mouth-breathing) helped me casually coast into the finish line. I may appear to be the hare but 4-5 months from now when I am likely able to run a full marathon of 26 miles a fair number of the straining, striving mouth breathers will burn out, or perhaps suffer injury, from pushing themselves.
My approach is sustainable. I am positioning myself to be a distance runner, for the rest of my life, should I choose to do so. Because I am not forcing it.
The approach of most of the other runners I saw killing themselves is not nearly as sustainable from a longevity or injury-avoiding perspective because they are pushing themselves too hard and inevitably, this will lead to short and long term problems.
Blogging Application
I have written and published 252 blog posts on Blogging Tips.
I have published over 260 blog posts on The Huffington Post.
How?
I am a nose breather. Not a mouth breather. I do not allow my fears to push me into forcing myself to work every day, sprinting for the finish line in exhaustion, because I have been there, done that, and know this leads to short term burnout.
I am the tortoise. Most bloggers are the hare. Meaning when most bloggers quit after publishing a few guest posts on 1 blog I am publishing my 252nd post here and 260th post on The Huffington Post.
I go slowly. I go easily. I coast. Day after day. Takes patience. Takes detachment. But I learned from many highly successful bloggers like Zac that taking the long term approach to building friendships, slowly getting links in and dripping helpful, valuable blog posts and guest posts builds something fantastic for you and your readers.
If you want to really stand out and build a sustainable, thriving, stable blogging business for years down the road, be a nose breather. Not a mouth breather. Take your time. Slow down. Calm down. Think in terms of months, not minutes. Focus on years, not weeks. When virtually all other bloggers burn out you will appear to be everywhere, steadily reaping the increasing rewards of your diligence and persistence.