6 Mindset Hacks For Bloggers Who Feel Like Giving Up

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I have always wondered, what sets the successful people apart from those who are not? Furthermore, what separates the successful bloggers from those who give up too soon? Here are 6 mindset hacks you can adopt if you're a blogger who feels like giving up.

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Lately, I have been experiencing huge amounts of self-doubt about my blogging business. In my efforts to become the person I envisioned myself to be, my biggest obstacle is my own lack of faith towards myself and my dream. I have always known and understand that the key factor in anybody's success is true tenacity and unwavering believe in themselves. 

In this post, I would like to share 6 mindset hacks you can apply today to maintain your believe in yourself when things get really tough in your blogging journey. These tips are mindset shifts that you can make within minutes, inching you closer towards the success you desire!

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Resources Corner

Do you want to start a blog but don't know where to start? Read this step-by-step post on how to start your blog today.

If you are a newbie blogger on a tight budget, you might also like this post.

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#1 Be genuinely grateful (yes, eat your shit sandwich and be thankful)

Now, this one is a particularly hard thing to do. Most self-help books talk about being grateful, be kind to yourself and “manifest abundance” etc.

I have tried, believe me. I have been grateful and I have been a whiny, complaining whinger. The one key point in terms of being genuinely grateful is to really feel grateful about the shit sandwich in your life, until your heart aches.

The thing I struggle with the most( and I'm sure you do to) is to feel grateful about something that you cannot stand any longer. That is especially true now because I hate my job and my financial situation. This mindset has put me into a lack mindset and a seriously frustrated brain, which is not helpful at all.

So, how does one become grateful of the bad things in life? Remind yourself that the things you still have to put up with are only temporary. It too shall pass!

And repeat after me, I am in CONTROL of my LIFE.

You may not have ENTIRE control of what happens in your life, but you can control your perspective about life circumstances.

Sometimes, when my old mindset comes back to haunt me and I start thinking thoughts like:

“I am not making any money from my business” or

“My blog is not gaining any new followers” or

“This business is not making any progress”.

I find it really empowering to add “YET” to my negative statements and re-word my thoughts. For example:

I am not making any money from my business, YET.

My blog is not gaining any new followers, YET.

#2 Keep working like your life depends on it

Right now, I am in a difficult but exciting phase of my life. I decided to embark on something I have always been too scared to do. Create my own business.

I am now only three months into my Teachers Pay Teachers business and so far I have been making good progress. However, the long hours of investing in building my blogging AND TpT selling business, learning skills and maintaining my existing job (which I hate) has taken a toll on my mental well being.

I found myself waking up this morning lifeless, not wanting to face life.

I sat on my bed feeling tired, alone and dejected. That was when I remembered something I read from the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, a renowned psychologist and author. She said that it's okay to feel defeated when we face challenges. But those who adopt a growth mindset find challenges exciting and even invigorating. That's because people with the growth mindset have a love of learning. Even though they also feel miserable when they face obstacles, but when they manage to work through it, the satisfaction is even greater.

So, I figured that this is good for me. If I am feeling defeated, scared and frustrated, that must mean that I am heading in the right direction. I am growing and improving at what I do! It is just a matter of time before I achieve the success I want.

I just need to keep working like my life depends on it. Invest more time, more money and more energy into what I do, learn from the best, keep improving my skills and I will eventually get there. I believe that you can do it too!

#3 Review your plan (oops! don't have a plan? Write one now!)

When life becomes tough, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. This is especially true when it comes to making money and trying to accomplish something that we have never done before.

In my efforts to become rich and subsequently insanely free, I have embarked on a journey to create an online business and brand, all on my own. One month on into my journey, I realised that I had no idea what I am doing. I had no concrete plan towards achieving my financial freedom, let alone a detailed business plan. That is why my life was becoming tougher and my self-esteem getting weaker by the day. I was also becoming very judgemental of my own efforts because I have lost sight of my self-worth.

So when the going gets rough, it becomes very difficult to believe in ourselves because we start to judge our self-worth by focusing on results and outcomes. When I first started this blog, I had insanely unreasonable expectations. I thought that I wrote very well and provide awesome insights to my audience every day. It was my flawed perception that I deserved a huge audience and money coming in because of my diligence.

That was when I remembered a quote I have read somewhere on Pinterest:

Losers have goals, winners have plans.

And then I thought to myself, uh-oh. I don't even have a concrete plan for my business. How can I even expect success when I do not even know what I am doing?

That is why when the things get difficult and dung hits the fan, it is time to review your plans. Not your goals, but your systems towards achieving your goals. Is there anything in there that needs tweaking?

#4 Growth-mindset the sh*t out of your tough time

Before the touch screen mobile phones came along and rendered us all phone-zombies, I was a high school student with no means to entertain myself. Going to government departments to renew my passport takes ages back home.

While I waited for hours and hours with my dad, I read books and observed other people. Sometimes my eyes get tired after sitting down for so long, thus I would play a game called “What Can I Learn?”

Little did I know that I had the growth-mindset back then. Even when I hated doing certain things such as attending coaching classes, going to school and doing chores, I tried to keep a positive attitude about doing things I did not particularly enjoy. In order to do that, I had to pretend as if everything that life throws at me is an opportunity to learn something.

I cannot tell you how much this mindset of mine has saved my life. Of course, I am not perfect. Just like you, I get stuck in the victim mode and become stuck in a rut for LONG periods of time. But when I start to lose faith and feel like giving up, I will apply the growth-mindset to my situation. That usually puts me in an abundance mindset, in which I remind myself that I already have an abundance and richness in my life that I am thankful for. I try to think of my situation has part of a bigger picture, that I was becoming the person I wanted to be to attract the success I yearned for.

#5 Look at time in a longer perspective

As a musician and music teacher, I have always felt inadequate in my piano playing and teaching skills. I have been teaching professionally for around 7 years and learning my instrument for about 15 years. I thought, gee. It has been a long time, so I should be good at it by now!

This was way before I read Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule from his book Outliers and Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You. From these books, I have learnt about famous and successful people who have absolutely faith in what they do and have so much passion about their work.

One example that really stood out for me was Steve Martin. In the book So Good They Can't Ignore You, which was actually a quote by Steve Martin, he thought about mastery in terms of decades. He said if it took him 30 years to master his instrument, it would not matter. He did not aim for success, but he focused on being literally so good that people cannot ignore his mastery.

In his recent interview on National Public Radio, when asked about his “success”, Steve Martin replied nonchalantly, “I never aimed at success. I focused on the task at hand. I wanted some success, but I never thought about it.” This brings me to my next tip.

#6 Focus on being really skilled at your expertise( not success)

Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. ~Viktor Frankl

One of the biggest traps most people fall into is the pursuit of success and happiness. It is very easy to be enslaved by success when in fact the focus should be on doing what you are doing, becoming extremely proficient of it and in turn gain the “side effects”, which is the conventional idea of “success”.

I fall into this trap over and over again, but the good thing is that I do not linger in that trap for long. Bouncing back quickly and focusing on my skills have saved me a lot of time and energy. That is why I am writing this post to help you avoid the same trap.

When you start to lose faith in your business or anything that you are trying to achieve, remind yourself that if you are really good at something, then the people you want to attract will find you. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising!

This is especially true when you provide a service. Whenever I browse articles on Pinterest to look for articles about affiliate marketing, one particular online course always gets mentioned. Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. There is a possibility that these bloggers who mention the course are affiliates with the online course. However, I truly believe that if you are “so good they can't ignore you”, the right kind of audience and clientele will find you eventually.

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Are there any other mindset hacks you adopt as a blogger? Feel free to comment below.