I’ve spent some time trying to find the right accountability/mastermind group to belong to in a quest to get some support with my blogging.
I’ve found it to be a little difficult.
One of the reasons seems to be that it’s very common for guilt to be used to try and motivate people to working harder. You know, by saying things like “We all have the same 24 hours in the day” or “If you have time to relax, you have time to work.”
<sigh>
That may work for some people, but I don’t find that to be motivating. I find it to be degrading. I find it to be not helpful.
I find it makes me want to have a huge discussion on why their 24 hours is NOT the same as my 24 hours and why relaxing is important to our health.
It does nothing to for my blogging.
A little background about me. Dog training is one of my hobbies. I love training my dogs for different dog sports.
When I first started training years ago, training methods were more coercive. Then positive reinforcement training began growing. It completely changed how I trained my dogs. Instead on concentrating on the mistakes that they made and correcting them, I concentrated on reinforcing what they did right. And they loved training time and wanted to keep training.
I’m the same way. Reinforcement and feeling supported are what make me feel confidant and want to move forward. Trying to guilt me into feeling like I’m not doing all that I can to move my blog forward, turns me off. It makes me feel like I’m failing because I am not meeting someone else’s standard. And feeling like a failure makes me stop blogging because if I can’t meet those standards, why even bothering blogging.
Don’t let yourself fall into the guilt trap. Finds ways to reinforce yourself for working on your blog. Know that it is okay to not feel like you are failing if you don’t use all your free time on your blog. Taking time for you is important.
And if you are looking for support and people to tell you what you are doing on your blog is awesome, come join the Moonlighting Bloggers Facebook group.