How on earth do you find motivation when you feel like you just want to give up?
And in particular for me – how do I find motivation for blogging and Instagram when I feel like I am failing. Blogging for lack of time and Instagram from that STUPID algorithm.
But lets focus on the blogging side of life night now.
I am currently having this crisis of confidence – and my main fear is that I have I fallen too far behind the blogging pack to get back up and keep up? I know there will always be room for everyone – but I keep having huge, terrifying and constant waves of ‘oh there is no point trying, everyone else is better than me and everyone is doing so well – why should I even bother’.
A bit of background of how I got into this pickle.
Over the past few months, probably actually close to the past year – life has majorly gotten in the way of blogging for me. I didn’t treat it like my job as I had so much other stuff that I had to deal with that took up my life. I did however, pour my heart and soul into keeping my instagram consistent and up to date – posting daily – thinking that this would keep my afloat enough to continue letting me do my dream job. But I let me blog have a HUGE back seat. And in doing so I feel completely lost about how to start again.
I let my page views die, my unqiue visitors diminished, but the worst part was – I don’t even know how to sit down a engage with my audience anymore. I don’t know who my audience are.
I love my blog, and I was so proud of it, and I want to get back into full time blogging as of TODAY. But I have the fear. The fear of working all the hours again on my blog and then it just not being good enough. I think everyone has the fear of something not working out. But I guess I just have to live by the quote of “Everything you want is on the other side of fear”. And it is true – anything worth having, doesn’t come easy.
So I just need to plunge straight back into blogging, head first. Not worry about what everyone else is doing, what campaigns all my friends are getting, what event invites I am not getting, whose mailing lists I am not on. And go back to why I started – because I loved having a little part of the internet to call my own, sharing my thoughts and glimpses of my life. I need to stop tracking stats and get back to the heart of it.
So how to start again:
1 ) Get up every single day, make a cup of tea or coffee and sit down and JUST START. It doesn’t matter if you only get one like on your tweet – or if you bounce rate on a post is higher than normal, or if noone comments on your latest post. Start from the bottom and work your way up.
2) Write a to- do list. And physically tick it off as you go along for the satisfaction. And make sure you tick off at least 80% of it every single day. Don’t get distracted Jessica. There are will be good days and bad days – but you just have to keep going. Everyone has bad days – and your mama told you there would be days like these – but don’t take the easy way out and give up for the day and watch Keeping Up with the Kardasians. MAKE SURE YOU FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED FOR THE DAY.
3) Set yourself deadlines. Just because you work for yourself – doesn’t mean you shouldn’t meet the 6pm deadline of getting a blog post out, even if you set it yourself. Give yourself targets to complete everyday.
4) Think about the end goal. And just remember that withy every day you are getting closer to that goal. Doesn’t have to be a race.
5) Set yourself targets, long term and short term. And if you don’t meet all your expectations – don’t have a strop and give up – just set another target and work for that one.
6) Stop panicking that everyone is better than you – because you are unique and there isn’t another people like you out there so use that tool.
7) Don’t be too hard on yourself if you fall off track – pick yourself up again and again and keep on going.
Hard work is the only way to get anywhere – so everytime you want to quit and give up because it gets ‘too hard’ or there is ‘too much rejection’ or ‘she got another job I didn’t get’ – just think – would I be happier now if I gave up? If I deleted my blog? If I got rid of the stressful side of blogging it forever? No – obviously not. Having the privilege of calling myself a blogger is such a dream so I wont give it up ever – so if I am not going to quit – I need to give it 1000%. No point going at something half hearted.
I think my issue with motivating myself if just the fear of failing. I just have never felt good enough – is there anything special about me? Am I interesting? Does anyone really care about what I am writing about, talking about? What if I am embarrassing myself by pretending this could work out? But I guess we wont know until I try again and try properly.
I watch my blogging girl boss friends SMASHING life – nailing blog post and post, growing on social media and gaining youtube subscribers every 20 seconds. And I just feel like I am stuck. Stuck on the same following number on Instagram, hardly anyone reads my blog anymore, I am not getting as many jobs as everyone else.
But that is because I haven’t given it my all yet. I know that. But it is still so disheartening (and the instagram algorithm is slowly killing me).
After writing this post though, I have sparked something inside myself to just be the best that I can be. If I don’t try, then I will never know what could of been.
So here goes… Stay tuned kids – and please feel free to send me motivational quotes!
Shop the Outfit
Jacket (sold out) Similar option 1// similar option 2
Skirt (sold out) – very similar option // light denim option
Photography by Rebecca Spencer
Thanks for reading xx
