It can be a challenge to feel good about yourself when you work in a field that heavily utilizes social media for marketing. Scrolling through an endless feed of other people’s perfectly curated images is a recipe made for confidence disaster.
I’m speaking from personal experience of feeling like I’m never “doing it right” when it comes to blogging. I (used to) spend all day wishing I could make my life as beautiful as the bloggers whom I looked up to as creative mentor’s “highlight reels” on Instagram. I wasted so much time feeling bad about my content and trying so hard to create a similar look or feel to my Instagram that I was spinning in circles, wasting a ton of valuable time, and not growing or learning anything of importance. It took me months of feeling this way before I realized what was happening. If I wanted to have any success with my blog and my business I needed to change my mindset ASAP, and re-organize my priorities in a big way.
I’m sitting on my couch as I type this up eating some left over Teddy Grahams from my toddlers’ afternoon snack, and reminiscing of a time where I felt like an impostor in the blogging world. At that particular time in my life I really felt like I was not supposed to be blogging, everything felt wrong and weird. It was confusing because I had one time loved blogging and creating, and now I hated feeling like it was a job. The best part of blogging full time is that it is already one of my favorite things to do, why was I feeling like I didn’t want to do it anymore?! The answer is because I was doing it all WRONG.
Let’s go back to the beginning, I know I talk about this a lot but it was only 2 short years ago that I started my blog as a creative hobby to give myself something to do outside of my life-consuming work as a manager at Nordstrom. When my blog and Instagram started to grow, I started to get offers and make money from my efforts which is such an amazing feeling! I didn’t even know this could be a job at the time, so it felt so wonderful that I was being rewarded for my creative efforts and hobby! As I started to do more research and dig deeper into this industry I started to make friends with other bloggers, gain inspiration from amazing creatives who have huge followings and beautiful Instagram feeds and seem to do it all so effortlessly. I didn’t see myself slowly declining into a hole of self-doubt and comparison.
This year has been an interesting time of self-discovery. I was forging a new path of my life as a mom, I had quit my long time career to stay at home with my new baby, and I had decided to take on blogging full time. I did a lot of thinking, meditation of sorts. I wanted to spend time with myself since I now was giving a lot of my physical body, brain power, and mental state, not to mention every waking hour (and much of the sleeping hours) to this new baby. I reflected on many parts of my life but I really wanted to re-focus my blog, take it back to basics and amp up the content and photography I was creating so I could not only feel proud of my work, but also really provide valuable information for others, or even just a place to stop and casually hang out for a bit. I also wanted to be sure I was fulfilled by the creative efforts I was putting out. This is something that I lost when I got off track temporarily. I began creating posts that were superficial, un-informative, un-important and I was never super proud to share them with people because I wasn’t impressed with my own work. I was trying too hard and it was having a negative effect all around. It’s weird to look back on that time because I truly feel like I’m in such a great space now. My mindset is positive, growth has been steady, and I am feeling great about the content I’ve been putting out!
I really didn’t intend for this post to get so in depth, but it feels great to get this all out, so thank you to you lovelies who have stuck around to read the whole thing!
To sum it all up, I’ve created some new goals for my blog which you can read about in this post HERE , and I have changed my mindset to focus more on my own content and care less about what other people’s content looks like. I don’t like to whole “un-follow people who make you feel bad” thing because I still love to support people’s beautiful content. I think it is more important to understand where your feelings are coming from and teaching yourself to re-direct the energy for a positive outcome that will benefit YOU. If you’ve never meditated about your life before, take some time in the morning and just lay in bed, or sit outside with a cup of coffee, no phone, no music, nothing but your mind, and think about your life! Think about the things you want to change, and the steps you need to take to achieve your goals. If you do this every day for a few minutes, I promise you will feel so much better about yourself and you will also have a better understanding of what you need to do to get to where you want to be.
Now I want to share the most confidence inducing jeans I’ve ever worn! If you love premium denim but don’t love dropping $200+ on a pair of jeans, Madewell is where it’s at for a quality pair of denim that looks and feels premium but without the insane price tag! These ones are super high waisted but they have so many types for all different shapes and sizes!
Thank you to those of you that have supported me on this journey, through my trials and tribulations I see you and hear you and appreciate you SO much! I hope you all are loving this new leaf as much as I am, thank you for sticking it through with me.
xo
