8:23 AM Thailand time.
I meditated for 20 minutes.
I tossed the ball for Yoda the Thai French bulldog.
Now I sit down to write this blog post.
Does it feel uncomfortable to me? A little bit. I follow my fun aka passion above all else so I began writing on waking a few weeks ago. But fear rears its silly head in my mind, goading me to check my email first thing in the day.
I have developed a neat skill over the years. This skill helped me largely slay a tricky, subtle blogging enemy. The skill is being with fear but still making the fun, freeing, uncomfortable, successful decision.
The enemy: making comfortable but fear-based, failing decisions.
Reading email first thing daily is not necessarily a fear-based, failing decision but it does feel comfortable. Doing so also moves me away from my fun – writing – to do something I’m not quite as passionate about.
But back in the day I predominantly made comfortable, failing, fear-based decisions on my blogs like:
- publishing 60 thin posts between 2 blogs (felt comfortable because I feared guest posting and of course this was a failing decision)
- promoting only myself every day (felt comfortable because I feared promoting other people; I fear losing traffic and profits unless I promoted me all day long)
- avoiding creating my products, services and eBooks (felt comfortable because I feared creating products, services and eBooks for the new skills I’d need to develop to build such products, services and eBooks plus I feared nobody would buy my stuff or hire me anyway)
If these fear-based, comfortable, failing decisions sound familiar to you it’s time to address the tricky enemy that cripples blogging careers before you have a chance to gain some success traction.
37,000 Podcast Plays in 3 Days
My friend Alonzo Pichardo and I released the 2 episode of our Online Success Chats Podcast 3 days ago:
The podcast registered 37,000 plays in 3 days.
Seeing that kinda pop required Alonzo and I to follow our passions for a decade.
But seeing that kinda pop also required us to make a series of freeing, fun and sometimes highly uncomfortable, scary decisions habitually over a decade.
I hated how I looked and sounded the first 30 times I created videos nearly a decade ago. But I knew successful people did highly uncomfortable, freeing things to be successful.
The 3,000 videos I created over my career helped me be a natural on the podcast.
Ditto for Alonzo’s speaking skills. He worked tirelessly for years at honing his presentation skills.
2 guys helping people on a large scale because we both didn’t predominantly make comfortable, failing, fear-based decisions helped co-create nearly 90,000 plays between 2 podcast episodes. When we feared doing stuff we dug down to believe in ourselves – as Alonzo stresses – and practiced, practiced and practiced some more, creating and connecting to the point where our podcasts are getting 52,000 plays and 37,000 plays, the first podcast live for only over a month.
Blogging Success Sits Outside of Your Comfort Zone
When I attended Affiliate Summit East last year I learned how Zac Johnson and 3 other top earning bloggers put in big time effort doing high energy, valuable, helpful things for months before barely seeing a dime early in their careers. One blogger in particular noted making peanuts after publishing 2-3 times daily for close to a year. But he also knew he primed the profits pump by creating generously during these early months.
Do you panic after publishing 1 post weekly for 3 months, and not seeing a dime through your blog? It’s time to make more freeing, more uncomfortable and more successful decisions, even if you make nary a dime through your blog over 12 months.
Success finds bloggers who slay the common enemy of making failing, comfortable, fear based decisions like:
- not buying your domain and hosting
- not buying blogging courses
- not learning and studying blogging
- not practicing writing
Step away from the blogging crowd.
Own your success.
Make fun, freeing, success-promoting and sometimes highly uncomfortable decisions.
Dive into your fears by being led by your passion.
Develop patience, persistent and become a successful blogger.
Video
I filmed a quick 1 minute video from Thailand explaining this topic.
Watch it and subscribe to my YouTube Channel.
