Top 5 Things I’ve Learned Over The Past Two Years of Blogging
The reason blogging is so cool is because not only is it a way to share your thoughts and inspire people all over the world but it teaches you a lot about yourself along the way. Here are the top 5 things that I’ve learned over the past two years of blogging:
1. You have to work on getting to know yourself
Just because you are yourself doesn’t mean you know yourself. I lived 20 years of my life without “fully” knowing who I was. I had to decide one day that I wanted to spend time getting to know myself. What I mean by this is that I started interpreting how I responded in certain situations, took personality tests, figured out what truly made me happy, figured out what made me different from everyone else around me.
2. Community is crucial in every part of your life
What I mean by community, is people who understand you and support who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. You want to surround yourself with people who similar morals and values.
What has changed my life the most is the people that I surround myself with. I like to say that I am independent and people don’t always influence my decisions, but they indirectly always do.
I started getting rid of people in my life that were leading me in the wrong direction and started focusing on spending time with people who were going to challenge me to be a better person.
Specifically, in terms of blogging, this is what keeps me going. I’ve realized that being part of a blogging community and having other friends that do what you do is extremely important. Occasionally, if I’m in a rut or am just not feeling inspired with my work I’ll text one of my blogger friends and they always know exactly what to say to help.
3. You don’t get what you don’t ask for
I have never been the aggressive type when it comes to anything. Going back to point #1, this is something I realized about myself. I kept seeing all of these people around me getting all of these great opportunities and it was just because they were asking for them. People don’t know what you want unless you make that clear.
In terms of blogging, I always thought brands had to find me and reach out to me to collaborate, but that is definitely not the case. When you are a smaller blogger you need to be the one reaching out to brands and doing the work of outreach.
Bigger brands may not be able to find you, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t value you.
I always remind myself when it comes to asking for something that the worst response that you could get is a “no” and the best case scenario is a “yes” to an opportunity you would have never had in the first place if you didn’t ask.
4. Patience is KEY
Becoming successful over night just doesn’t happen to most people. Becoming successful in a just a couple of years doesn’t typically happen either. For most people to get where they want to be, it takes hard work every single day for years on end. That is why it is extremely important to be patient. You need to make sure you are passionate about what you are doing and focus on making the most out of each individual day.
5. Sometimes you need to take a step BACK to take a step FORWARD
Over the past couple of years, I’ve seen dealt with this multiple times. Sometimes I get to a point where I realize I want to rebrand or recuperate and doing so may mean losing followers, but if that’s the direction I ultimately want to go in then that is worth it for me.
Going backward when it comes to short term is definitely worth it if it means there will be long-term growth.