This is a guest post by Timo Kiander.
Many people live their lives without understanding, that there is a giant potential inside them. In fact, if they would realize this, they would achieve so much more in their lives.
This is where the personal development comes into play. Once you get involved with different self-improvement topics, your mind starts to change and you’ll start seeing everything differently (the people, the world, the events).
What I love about personal development is that it can be applied to many areas in one’s life. When you improve yourself first, you can have better results in whatever you do.
1. Build Confidence
Having a strong self-confidence is essential for any successful blogger. If you don’t own this trait, you are building invisible obstacles of your path to success.
To build your confidence, you need to take action and go outside your comfort zone – constantly. I know, this may not be very easy to accept for some people, but this is the only way to do it.
However, it is relieving to know, that you don’t have to make a huge leaps at once, when you are testing the boundaries of your comfort zone.
For example, if you want to start guest posting, but are afraid to give it a shot, start by submitting your posts to smaller blogs first. As your blog posts get accepted, move on to the bigger blogs. Finally, you have enough confidence to submit your guest post to big blogs too.
Once you have stretched your comfort zone a bit, you will feel more confident to take even bigger steps outside the zone. Finally, you realize that you have a rock-solid confidence and you are not limiting yourself from success.
2. Build Persistence and Consistency
If there are two characteristic that every blogger needs, they are persistence and consistency. Although I could have separated them, I feel that in many ways they go hand in hand.
When you start building your blog, you need to have persistence so that you are not quitting after the first setback. You also need to be consistent on your blogging efforts by creating high quality content – on a consistent basis.
Persistence and consistency build on top of motivation. You need to have a reason to move forward, even if at time you don’t feel like it.
If your goal is to be a successful blogger and an authority on what you do, it is going to take you more than just a sprint – it is going to be a marathon.
Whenever I have felt lost, I have remembered the lessons in various self-improvement books about truly believing in my end goal. Since the goal still resonates with me, I have been able to get back on track and move forward.
3. Get Rid of the Fear of Failing
Do you know what separates unsuccessful bloggers from successful ones? They are not afraid of failing. They have courage to be who they are and they take full responsibility of their actions.
Also, they are not afraid of negative feedback. Essentially, that’s what any blogger can expect at some point – in a form or another.
A very common lesson in personal development is that there really aren’t any failures. Rather, it is a feedback mechanism that helps us to improve ourselves further. Also, in many cases “failing” is success in disguise. It belongs to your journey from unknown blogger to a well-known blogger.
Many people are afraid of failing or receiving negative feedback. Instead, they should evaluate the events and see the positive potential in them.
No matter how well you plan something in advance, be prepared for setbacks and incidents that take your off-track. At the same time, be willing to learn from them and find out a way to turn that negative feedback into your advantage!
4. Control the Time
When I started blogging, I never realized how much work there is involved. I’m producing two posts per week for my blog and even that requires quite a bit of effort from my side.
Time management skills are essential for any blogger. Especially, if you are blogging part-time, it becomes even more important to learn the skills well.
What I have learned is that you should dedicate and prioritize time for those activities that matter the most. When the blogging is concerned, the most important one is naturally content creation.
You have to focus as well. For example, focusing on just the most important traffic sources related to your blog is a much better way to operate than trying to work on 20 different traffic-generating methods at once.
Focus also means cutting all the extra distractions to minimum when you work. You should develop a focused mindset so that when you create content, that’s all you do and everything else can wait.
5. Build Motivation
What keeps you blogging if you don’t see any comments on your blog posts or if people are not singing to your e-mail list?
It’s the motivation and faith: You have a compelling goal you are after and you are motivated enough!
Motivation is a very common theme in personal development. No matter if you set end goals or define visions – if you don’t have energy to “travel the path” from start to finish, you are going to quit.
Obviously, motivation is also faith. Even if you don’t get the results right away but you are still willing to work towards them consistently, you cross the finish line at some point.
6. Find Your Purpose
Finally, knowing your true purpose is one of the most fundamental aspects of your life. There are countless of books, training courses and coaches out there to help you to define and clarify your purpose.
If you are willing to take time, do some soul searching and testing different possibilities, your vision and purpose starts to become clearer and clearer.
In most cases, finding your purpose is going to take time. However, if you are willing to find it, your life can finally make sense to you.
When you take this concept to blogging, I feel that blogging should reflect your purpose in some ways. When you have a purpose and passion, blogging is a great way of documenting that.
Not only is all this important for yourself, but it is important for others too.
At some point, others start to notice your passion and they are willing to join you on your journey. You are not just a blogger anymore, you are the blogger on your market.
People rely on you as an expert by asking questions and advice. Also, you feel confident and grateful, because you are able to help people.
