My happiness and fulfilment when it comes to blogging relies mostly on two things: how proud I am of the work I’m creating and sharing, and my perspective. When I start to lose perspective and shift into a mindset that isn’t healthy or productive, I can really struggle to maintain my focus along the way.

I really believe that blogging with focus and intention is what makes the difference between a blog with purpose (and ultimately results) and a blog without. This post is for you if:

You’re feeling lost and craving focus: In my experience, when you blog with intention you’re more likely to feel focused and on track along the way. These mindset shifts will hopefully help you to keep perspective, be guided by your intentions, and feel focused and driven as you go.

You’re struggling to take productive steps forward: If you’re spreading yourself too thin, or struggling to make decisions for the future of your online presence, these mindset shifts will hopefully help you to find focus and decipher the next steps that are best for you and your blog.

You’re lacking confidence in your blogging process: If you are your own worst enemy, constantly doubting your own abilities and struggling with the comparison trap, this post will hopefully help you to overcome those roadblocks and find the confidence you need to blog with focus and intention.

How You Define Success

To find focus, make decisions that are aligned with our values and intentions, and work towards a goal that makes sense for our own long term aims, we must first define what success means to us. In blogging I think it can be so easy to feel like there are certain benchmarks of success that we should all be working towards. Whether it’s a specific follower count, traffic milestone, social media audience, or even monthly earnings, it’s easy to feel like we’re all running the same race towards the same goal.

Once we go back to basics and define for ourselves what success means, we can then feel focused in our own path and decisions we make along the way. Ask yourself honestly, what does success really look like to you? (Hint - there are no wrong answers, even if they don’t align with other people’s values, as long as they align with your own is all that matters)

To quit your day job and run an online business full time?
To feel creatively fulfilled and challenged by the work and content you share?
To network with others and make meaningful connections?
To reach a certain amount of traffic and readership count?

My best advice? Don’t chase someone else’s dream. It’s okay to define success in your own way, actually it’s way more fulfilling when we do.

The Comparison Trap

The comparison trap can eat away at our perspective and leave us feeling overwhelmed by self doubt and the fear of not being good enough. To blog with focus and intention we have to find a way to overcome the comparison trap, and the best way to do that is to use it to our own advantage.

Feeling envious of other bloggers is a normal human emotion and something we all will go through from time to time. Allowing that envy to eat away at us and leave us feeling insecure and overwhelmed is how the comparison trap wins, whereas when we turn that envy on its head and explore the real reasons why we can then learn so much more about ourselves and our own intentions and values.

This is a process I’ve been doing with my coaching clients recently to help them move past the comparison trap and really be brave with their blogs.

Write down five blogs who you have been feeling envious of recently.
Ask yourself what it is specifically that is causing the jealous feelings. Is it their success? Their aesthetics? Their content? Their courage?
Explore what it means. We’re usually greeted by the green eyed monster when we see something we don’t have yet. For example, with a client the other day they shared that they were envious of another blog because they saw that the author behind it created without compromising themselves in the process. This showed us that she herself wanted to pursue her goals and share herself with the world but without compromising who she is along the way. It sounds like such a small thing, but by realising this it allowed her to start blogging without any self imposed restrictions.

Focus On The Bigger Picture

It’s very easy to chase instant gratification online, whether it’s a certain amount of monthly pageviews or maybe a follower count, it’s too easy for us to become distracted from the bigger picture. If we spend our days craving instant results, we’ll struggle to feel fulfilled and productive in the long run. This time last year when I read Be A Farmer, Not A Hunter over on the Braid blog it really helped to change my entire perspective around doing the work without instant results. More than just a mantra for money, I think with blogging it’s so important to be focused on a bigger picture and our larger goals and intentions.

So how do we focus on the bigger picture? We stop chasing instant gratification. If we can change our perspective from chasing instant results and instead work towards the bigger picture we can really feel more focused and driven along the way.

Write down two or three of your ‘big picture goals’. What are my big picture goals I hear you ask? They’re what you see as your overall purpose and ambitions for your online space. Do you want to connect and create a community with your blog? Start your own online business? Monetise your blog to support other creative endeavours? Establish yourself in your niche and/or industry?
Next, write down all the areas of ‘success’ and ‘results’ that you’ve been focused on recently. Ask yourself honestly whether or not they work towards your long term goals. For example, if you want to create an engaged community with your blog, does spending all of your time focused on attracting new readers and increasing your pageviews and follower count work towards that goal? Or in reality, does focusing on connecting with the community you’ve already built and creating content and experiences for them make more sense when it comes to nurturing and growing your community?
Figure out which metrics (this post might help) are important for you when it comes to working towards your bigger picture goals, and figure out the ones that don’t actually really matter as all they can really bring is instant gratification instead of long term sustainable results.

Do you struggle with any of these? Will you be trying these mindset shifts?

How We Can Work Together

I work with bloggers & creatives to help them feel focused and find confidence in their blogging process. Whether you want to increase your impact and reach, connect with your ideal readers, launch your blog from scratch, or transition your online presence into a business, I'm here to help you make it happen. Find out more here.

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Three Mindset Shifts To Help You Blog With Focus & Intention

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