Blogging can bring about amazing things in your life:
♦ A sense of purpose
♦ A community of like-minded people
♦ Creative expression
♦ An outlet for your voice
♦ A career path
♦ and so much more
It’s this magical journey of connectedness that pulls you in but if you’re not careful (read: mindful) it can also become just as stressful as it is joyful.
If you’re a blogger then you know that even if you love it, bloggin’ ain’t always easy. If you’re newer to blogging, it’s likely that you’re in charge of everything. You write the content and then it has to be edited, posted, promoted (if you want readers!), designed, etc. In addition, blogging is a very vulnerable journey. You’re putting your words out there for anyone to read. Readers may like it, love it, hate it, share it, or sometimes? Not even read it.
Blogging is a journey and just like any journey you’d plan for, it’s important to have a set of tools to help guide you, bring your perspective, and keep you healthy and happy along the way. I practiced meditation and mindfulness long before I was a blogger and now that I’m in the blogging world, I’ve seen a huge benefit to having this tool of mindfulness in my back pocket and I want to share these benefits with you.
Here are the top 3 benefits to implementing a mindfulness practice into your life – for the sake of your blog:
Increase Focus
When you have 100 things to do (and what blogger doesn’t?) it can be extremely hard to prioritize and focus. In the blogging world, we are often interrupted by the many notifications and urges that we get: the urge to check the comments one more time, the urge to check the analytics one more time, the urge to constantly promote our blog on social media. The distractions can truly be never ending.
Dictionary.com defines mindfulness as: “a technique in which one focuses one’s full attention only on the present, experiencing thoughts, feelings, and sensations but not judging them” — When we learn to observe our thoughts without judging them, it becomes easier to let our thoughts go because we no longer attach so much meaning to them. Mindfulness, just like mediation, is exercise for your brain. It’s intense focus on the present moment. Eventually your mind will start to wander and when you become aware that your mind has wandered, simply bring it back to that intense focus on the present moment. This “focus – wander- return to focus” routine can help you learn to focus without getting bogged down with the urge to check stats, comments, emails, and notifications.
Build Resilience
Because mindfulness places an emphasis on non judgement of thoughts that appear, by practicing mindfulness, you’ll learn to let go of thoughts that no longer serve you. There are quite a few thoughts known to plague the blogging world: comparison, holding onto feedback, marketing, unpleasant comments, no comments at all, etc. Of course, some of those thoughts are beneficial. I’m a huge advocate of self-awareness and looking back to learn from your mistakes but the emphasis here is to not let this stuff trip you up to the point that your confidence and content is sacrificed. We’ve got to learn to keep moving with understanding, learning, and grace. Mindfulness can help you do just that.
Get More Done
We know already that practicing mindfulness will increase our ability to focus and help us build resilience to keep on moving forward. Therefore, getting more done is a natural result of practicing mindfulness. This step will happen naturally when you are uber focused on accomplishing the first two. We’ve already established that bloggers have a million things to do. Capitalize on your time in the focus zone to accomplish more in less time.
These are just 3 blogging benefits of starting a mindfulness practice but the truth is that mindfulness can help improve all areas of your life. If you’re interested in learning more about how to start a mindfulness practice, I have a few articles on my blog that emphasize not just the benefits of mindfulness but how to get started with a practice.
Author Bio: Amy K Hall is a Leadership, Career, and Life Coach with over 10 years of experience in the field of personal growth, goal setting, and leadership training for new managers. She shares weekly insight on her blog, motivational quotes and all things Brooklyn on her insta, and you can book a free consultation here.
I’ve been researching and practicing mindfulness for years now as a means of coping with anxiety, but it can really be applied to anything. I haven’t directly considered the impacts of mindfulness on blogging before now, but I can completely understand what you’re saying; it can help with focus and drive and just putting aside all the noise around you to be productive. Thanks for sharing this perspective!