When I first started my blog, I had a lot of theoretical knowledge about what to expect, as I tried to educate myself as best as I could to have a focused and calm mindset, focused on the long run.
I (theoretically) learned that blogging is a marathon and not a sprint, but until recently, I realized I accepted that as a universal truth but never truly understood why.
Of course, we have the obvious factors like:
It takes time for Google to know what you're talking about
It takes for you to write enough blog posts to have a decent post library
It takes time for social media marketing to start working its magic
It takes time for some Pinterest pins to go viral and get to more people
That being said, it is also very easy to let your mind wander and think that maybe you'll be like those exception bloggers who started making a good chunk of income on their 1st to 6th month of blogging. Blogging wasn't necessarily a marathon for them, right? I guess I was slowly deceived by my innocent hope and delusional expectations.
When that didn't happen, I was very frustrated. That caused me to become more and more demotivated, actually taking a month-long break from writing after a few creative blocks.
What I learned from being away from the blog for a month
I reconnected with my why
The first days and even weeks of not working on the blog felt nice. As if I didn't have one extra chore to get done at the end of each day.
Soon, though, I started missing the one thing that got me to start the blog in the first place. I needed an outlet for my very loud and busy mind. I missed writing about whatever it was I was thinking and how that connected to my growth and my current lifestyle.
Fast growth is the exception, not the rule
Go ahead, talk to any business owner and they'll tell you success came after MANY hours of effort, learning, and a lot of adapting. Even those who seem to have achieved success overnight had "failures" and mistakes on their back to carry them to success.
What you are consistent with will end up showing results
It's not a coincidence that self-help books on habit-building and healthy mindsets are all the rage right now. Atomic Habits by James Clear has been a bestseller for years and if you know anything about this book, you'll know it is centered on consistency, easy and achievable routines, and building momentum by building good healthy habits.
The most important takeaway here is that we cannot control how long things will take to happen to us, just keep at it daily, task by task, showing up and doing the best that we can.
Marathon mindset x sprint mindset
As the different sports have different demands and best practices in real life, so do the mindsets that come with them.
Marathon runners deal much more with fighting their own minds than whatever it is they are doing with their bodies. They have to build enough mental strength to be able to keep going, balance their pace in order to last the whole way, and concentrate not on the finish line, but only on the next mile or kilometer. Small goals are easier to achieve.
Sprint runners on the other hand have their main goal to be more short-term. They have to give their all for a very brief period of time, so they have to be explosive, have an immediate mind-to-body connection, and have a different set of muscles to be able to reach the fastest speed they can, in as little time as possible. And keep it for the duration of the short term.
Don't get me wrong, there are different situations where both approaches are valid. Having a short-term goal you want to work for, such as a promotion at work, a raise, or getting fit for a specific occasion benefits from having the sprint approach. But that is not sustainable long-term.
In the long term, we need to adjust our expectations and our minds to be able to endure more frustration.
Ok, how does that apply to blogging?
Every blogging experience will be different from the next, but it is common sense that we will encounter a frustration or two. That can come in the form of not getting as many views as you hoped for, not performing that well on social media, having more creative blocks than expected, having problems with your hosting network, not being able to quickly get the hang of analytic tools, not knowing how to properly optimize your page, tons of changes in many algorithms, etc...
It is not that we need to be prepared for it all, that's also impossible, but we need to be prepared for something to go wrong and know that that's ok.
We don't need to focus on making millions out of blogging, getting to 100k views, and creating digital products our community loves, we just need to worry about writing one amazing post this month and the next, maybe even promoting one post on Pinterest, building the courage to get 1 post to be shared in your close friends group chats.
And one small goal after the other will take us to the end of the race.
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