Why Asking the Blogging Money Question Signals Future Struggles

Bloggers often claim blogging to be super hard, but I disagree.

I once bench pressed 350 pounds, during my bodybuilding days some 25 years ago in college. Attempting to bench press 350 pounds now would be incredibly hard, absurdly difficult and nearly impossible. “Hard” means physically nearly impossible, a feat your body cannot achieve, because you have not trained yourself to physically acclimate your body to complete some taxing task. Based on this definition, blogging is not hard at all. Anyone can open a WordPress backoffice, type words and tap a publish button. But confusion arises because bloggers wrongly associate the word “hard” with the feeling of “uncomfortable”, or “scary”.  Feeling uncomfortable emotions seems to be a complete 180 degree turn from something being hard.

Imagine if I told you to bench press 400 pounds even though you never picked up a weight. Immediately, you know the task will be incredibly hard and pretty much impossible because your body cannot physically do it. But imagine if I told you to open your WordPress backoffice, write and publish a blog post. Most bloggers inaccurately say that doing so feels hard, which seems totally untrue to me. Anyone can tap keys and write words. Such action is never hard BUT may feel uncomfortable, scary or stressful. Never equate physically hard activities with physically easy but highly uncomfortable activities. Blogging is not hard. Blogging is physically simple and easy but mentally, blogging feels highly uncomfortable sometimes because you need to face subtle and deep fears again and again. Of course, most bloggers err in believing physically simple and easy actions feel hard because few have the mental clarity to define facing fear (aka being uncomfortable) as a different situation than trying to do something nearly physically impossible.

Blogging Is Simple But Highly Uncomfortable

Imagine clinging to deep fears concerning losing money for most of your life. After writing and publishing your 20th blog post, you scan your blogging profits and see the number: 0. Panic arises in your fear. Deep, pulsating fears surface. Your mind races. Shortness of breath ensues. YOU FEEL ANGRY! YOU WASTED SO MUCH TIME AND LOST OPPORTUNITIES TO MAKE MONEY AND NOW YOU WILL RUN OUT OF MONEY AND FEEL ASHAMED AND EMBARRASSED!!!

I capitalized all words because these thoughts and feelings feel terrible, aka, highly uncomfortable. But feeling terribly uncomfortable feelings is not hard like trying to bench press 500 pounds if you never even lifted a 5 pound weight. The latter is nearly impossibly hard, the former feels terrible but only for a few moments. Bloggers screw up because bloggers stop doing simple, success-promoting things after refusing to face deep fears, panicking and bailing, wrongly believing blogging is too hard or difficult. Never believe these lies. Successful blogging is doing simple, usually easy things but facing subtle and deep fears on this blogging journey. Facing strong fears feels terrible for a few moments but the sensations pass fast. Does that sound like trying to bench 1000 pounds or trying to run a 26 mile marathon when you never leave the couch? Of course not.

Blogging is not hard. Trying to run 30 miles after never walking for 1 mile is hard, quite physically impossible, even. Blogging is simple but highly uncomfortable because you need to face and feel terrible feeling fears – quickly – to succeed. Make a distinction between hard and uncomfortable to accelerate your blogging success.

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