5:50 PM.
New Zealand time.
My neck feels impossibly stiff.
I ran and walked the dogs for 2 hours today.
I chatted with Alonzo Pichardo about how to run a successful travel and food blog.
I published 1 post on Blogging From Paradise this morning. I also published a guest post from Lisa Sicard.
Toss in email checking, going shopping, some networking and other offline stuff and I am a busy bee and tired bee at nearly 6 PM.
My mind told me to mail it in. Time for a nap. Maybe even rest for the evening.
My heart tells me something different; the extra gear is there, RB. Write and publish this post. You enjoy writing. Feels fun. Plus this post may connect with 1 blogger who is ready to receive it tonight, or this morning, depending on where they are on earth. New Zealand sees the day before most of the world guys; close to the International Date Line.
How did I find the extra blogging gear?
Why am I writing this post?
I took 1 deep breath. Slowed down. Calmed down. Relaxed for a few moments.
Then I remembered what I most value: having fun writing, helping people and living a life of fun, freedom and generous service.
What Do You Value
You may value different ideas from me. No worries.
Maybe you value something very different from what I value.
But at the end of the day you make time for and devote energy to what you most value. 100% of the time. Even if you struggle like hell with your blog and claim to want to succeed more than anything you value failing, fear-based, low energy choices and circumstances day after day to be in a struggling blogger energy.
If you wish to know what you value, look at your life. Observe the mirror.
Bloggers who value service, love and freedom slow down, calm down, relax and find the extra blogging gear, even if these folks appear to have reached the top gear.
Life is what you value. If I valued comfort above all, right now, I watch 20 minutes of Netflix and go to bed. Intuitively I know writing the post to help folks and to have fun is what I most value. Finding the extra gear felt easy but a little uncomfortable too. Mainly because I am used to making uncomfortable choices.
Reaching for the Extra Gear Feels Uncomfortable at First
Perhaps you were raised in a family where everybody valued having a roof over their heads and food on the table above all else. Folks who value these basics work jobs to ensure paychecks, food and homes are purchased.
If you only saw this image and learned to value survival basics you will feel uncomfortable choosing fun, freedom, love and service over your own basic needs. But to become a professional, full time blogger you need to change your values from security and stability and survival to fun, freedom, love and service. This means making uncomfortable choices to find the extra gear again and again, especially when folks around you tell you that you’re wasting your time, how you will fail anyway, and that you need to get a real job to pay the bills.
I recall family members telling me to face it; I’d always be an office worker.
Said family members are not staring at the South Pacific now in gorgeous Opotiki, New Zealand, like I am.
You reach this post by finding your extra blogging gear – even if it appears well out of reach – again and again, until you habitually do fun, freeing and sometimes highly uncomfortable things.
I know you’re up to it.