Bangkok, Thailand
My mind training involves two principles perhaps uncomfortable to explore but always liberating.
No private thoughts. No people pleasing.
Don’t get it twisted. Both concepts do not empower or encourage me to act like a jerk and treat people like crap. To the contrary, practicing both principles allows one to treat everyone I come across with love and peace. If I remain true to the concept.
The moment you stop hiding your private thoughts by expressing them to yourself and think from a place of genuine integrity versus trying to make people happy of course you will think, feel and act from a mindset of serenity.
But airing your dirty laundry feels highly uncomfortable in moments.
No one deeply prefers to feel embarrassed, ashamed, like an idiot or perhaps a fraud.
However, anybody who has walked the face of this earth, even ascended masters, had to practice these fundamentals because the world is a place of imperfection.
I share this error to point out a few things. Someone who lives their dreams makes mistakes. Someone who empowers, inspires and guides others only does so successfully because he has intimately personal experience with making mistakes by correcting these errors and moving in a different direction.
Even though perfection is impossible on planet earth, perfect beings would have zero credibility because no one would be able to relate to a person who never messed up.
This is why social media confuses, frustrates and flummoxes most bloggers. Terrified minds attempt to create only an image of perfection and flawlessness through carefully crafted updates. A very imperfect humanity deans these images as impossible to attain and gives up before starting.
Or perhaps you feel terrified as the scum of the earth, imperfect and flawed, to reach out to a blogging god or goddess who appears to be perfect.
Today, you get to see someone who screws up but feels largely free.
Either you’re making this mistake, a similar mistake or may potentially suffer this pitfall in the future. My post can point you in the right direction and save you many sleepless nights.
I’m sharing this to clear my mind and to demonstrate that you can succeed and live your blogging dreams while making mistakes from time to time along the way.
Blog Commenting Benchmark
On and off, I spent years of my blogging career gauging my entire strategy and overall worldly success on how many comments I received on this blog.
Please allow that idea to sink in.
I did not consider blogging income, traffic metrics, referral business or standard professional blogger benchmarks for various stretches of the Blogging From Paradise life cycle.
I zeroed in on how many comments I generated. From there, either I succeeded or failed as a blogger and of course made the damaging mistake of changing my blogging strategy again and again to attempt to generate the most comments possible.
Like most of what all of us do, the fear motivating this tactic and my subsequent actions unfolded on a completely unconscious level. I was mindless. I was a robot. I could not help myself until the moment I looked at my mind truthfully.
This is why you never want to beat yourself up for making blogging errors. Almost all of your mistakes occur from a mindless, unconscious, robotic level that you are completely unaware of until you stop and look closely at your mind and blogging strategy.
Most hate doing this so much that they avoid it, struggle, fail and quit.
A few brave minds choose freedom and peace over being bound, comfortable, unhappy and failing, do the inner work and eventually thrive.
I didn’t think about blogging income much or traffic much simply because mindlessness does not notice what appears to matter the most and chases what does not matter.
Thank goodness that I avoided making this mistake for thousands of hours consecutively over the years. I did experience stretches of snapping out of it and focusing on fundamental business metrics. But then I’d snap back into it unconsciously and go into a downward spiral by chasing blog comments.
I only corrected this error by becoming disgusted enough with various aspects of my blog to look within at the cause of failure.
I finally realized a few things. For starters, I was doing it to myself. My mindset dictated my success or failure. That felt good because I no longer victimized myself to anything or anyone outside of myself, predominantly, at least.
I then carefully observed what I did, how I felt and how I thought. Patiently wading through this process let me spot this fundamental flaw. I actually believed that thriving as a blogger hinged on generating a heavy volume of comments. I subsequently based my strategy on trying to get comments versus driving the highest volume of high quality traffic, being heavily targeted at that, which would then lead to greater blogging income.
Doing this mental leg work goaded me to face, feel and release fears in my mind which prioritized comments and ignored fundamental business metrics.
That didn’t feel too hot because chasing a high volume of comments revealed that I hated myself. People typically want others to like them, to engage them, to support them and to follow them because in their mind they hate themselves and feel like they are not enough. If you loved yourself and felt whole and complete you would never look to anyone or anything in the outside world to complete yourself, would you?
Facing, feeling and forgiving some of this self-hate woke up my mind. I became more mentally alert. From there, I slowly thought, felt and acted on the fundamentals of creating a heavy volume of highly targeted, thorough content and building strong relationships which laid a stronger foundation for my blog and online business.
What was the turning point?
I mentally looked at my glaring, incredible blogging error after getting disgusted enough with lagging areas of my blogging strategy.
It never needs to get to this point. Nobody needs to feel terrible before changing their strategy to succeed and feel better. But if we’re being honest guys, almost all of us have to go through horrible conditions before we finally look at ourselves truthfully. The ego would have it no other way. First, you have to punish yourself with unconscious self-sabotaging fears for a while before you finally see that you are punishing yourself with your unconscious fears and subsequent blogging strategies.
Look at your blogging strategy today. What do you think about it? How do you feel about it? What are you actually doing?
Have you experienced worldly success? Or do you fail miserably? Or do you experience muted success?
Ask these questions. Wait patiently for answers.
Answers feel painful to own, sometimes. Few relish facing the truth.
I am always here to listen guys.
Social media messages are the best place to reach me.
Reach out via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn direct message if you want to clear your mind out and work through this process.
