This is a guest post by our top contributing author and travel blogger Ryan Biddulph. He is the founder of Blogging From Paradise, his course 11 Fundamentals of Successful Blogging and the author of more than 126 eBooks.
5:04 PM.
My ego wants to take a break.
My heart told me to write this post.
I have been a professional blogger for a decade. Hands down, listening to your heart over your head feels incredibly uncomfortable sometimes because professional bloggers are not enlightened beings.
I deeply enjoy helping people. But I also love to kick back, relax and to be comfortable too.
How do you find the proper mix between generous service and a little bit of self-service? Nobody knows. But your heart knows.
I do not advise working 16 hour blogging days. I do not recommend publishing one blog post monthly before putting your feet up until next month. Find the point between rendering oodles of generous service and a tiny bit of self-service to find your professional blogging sweet spot. Or find this point to position yourself to become a professional blogger.
How do you find this critical point? Listen to your heart over your ego. How do you listen to your heart over your ego? Prepare to practice the freeing but highly uncomfortable practice of knowing thyself. Ouch.
Know Thyself
Observe yourself in the light of truth. Own your frame of mind. Become aware of when you think and act from a dominant energy of fear versus thinking and acting from a dominant energy of love. Face, feel and release fears to blog predominantly from love. Rinse, wash, repeat. Fear is selfish. Love is selfless. Move more toward love to be a generous servant.
Observe my real world example.
10 minutes ago, a thought-feeling crossed my mind:
“I already published 2 guest posts and 3 blog posts today. I networked genuinely too. I feel tired after hiking a mountain for 2 hours. That’s enough. Break time.”
Knowing myself and observing my mind as it really was, I noticed my ego’s tabulation of blogging work completed, hike executed and general feeling of doing enough was a self-serving, common limiting belief I need to be aware of. I watched the feelings of fear, discomfort and agitation arise. Ego wants to nap. Ego wants to eat sweets. Ego wants to help itself. Through this ego shouting I heard a small, still voice suggest I write this post for Cori and you rocking readers. The gentle voice told me it’d require 20 minutes of my time and a scant amount of my energy to write and submit the blog post. I listened to this voice because this voice is my heart. But dealing with my ego’s whining felt uncomfortable.
I wrote the post. I submitted the post. I did not push myself to do it (ego) but I allowed myself to be guided to do it (heart) through the simple but uncomfortable act of knowing myself by observing my mind as it really was.
Pros Are Human Beings
Pros find this lesson uncomfortable to learn and honor because pros are human beings subject to fear, selfishness and self-centeredness. I deeply love helping people. I do my best to be a generous servant. But since I am not an altruistic, enlightened blogging being I wrestle with my ego and its selfish motives begging me to hold back versus letting go and giving even more freely.
Note; the lesson I am teaching does not involve working hard, pushing yourself and forcing yourself to blog because all motives fueling these actions are fears of the ego, not love from the heart. I mean to share how observing your mind as it really is lets you know yourself. Knowing yourself lets you face, feel and release fears so you can blog generously from the heart.
Generous bloggers grounded in trust of both self and the blogging process eventually go pro.
eBook
I wrote an eBook that helps you turn criticism into profits. Knowing yourself becomes even more critical as you learn how to process blogging criticism. Few situations teach you about yourself and your mindset like being harshly criticized.
Click here to purchase: How to Turn Harsh Blogging Criticism into Sweet Blogging Profits: 11 Tips
