Growing beyond your current mindset is needed for growth and success in blogging.
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m doing everything they tell me to and this just isn’t working for me” or “I just don’t think I can be as successful with my blog as other people”?
You probably have, most people do from time to time…
Many years ago, I took a course on growing your blog (like we all do), and while I had already reached $100,000 a year from my site, I wanted to keep learning and growing.
The course didn’t end up holding much new information for me, however, I did get hit in the face with a huge wake-up call during the section called “Fixed Mindset Vs Growth”.
Fixed versus Growth Mindset in Blogging and Business
So, I asked you early if you’d ever thought to yourself, “I’m doing everything they tell me to and this just isn’t working for me” or “I just don’t think I can be as successful with my blog as other people”?
Or do you say, “Well, that didn’t work. What else can I try?”
You see, one is a fixed mindset while the other is a growth mindset.
A fixed mindset leads you to believe that your character, intelligence, and creative ability are fixed where they are. This means that they can’t be changed in any meaningful way and success is determined by your fixed levels in those 3 areas.
This mindset is maintained by always achieving success (the next income goal, the next page view goal, and so on…) and trying to completely avoid failure (stressing daily over stats).
Failure in a fixed mindset is catastrophic and very difficult to come back from.
A growth mindset thrives on challenges and is always trying new things!
A person with a growth mindset sees failure not as proof that they are lacking, but as an opportunity to grow! These are the people that will succeed at whatever they attempt because they don’t give up until they succeed!
And even then, they don’t “give up”, they just re-group and continue on.
Failure is not really failure with a growth mindset, it’s just another challenge and another opportunity to grow!
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You might be thinking, DUH, this all makes sense. And you’re right! It does!
But I think it’s easy to lose track of these facts as we face the daily challenges of running an online business.
When I first started working my blog like a business it was only making $5 a month – but my husband had been downsized and we NEEDED it to be making more.
So, I dug in, buried myself in the world of blogging, read and tested everything I could find until I found what worked for me, and within 4 months I had replaced his entire income.
And then something happened…
My growth mentality, the one that had made me scrappy, that had allowed me to grow from $5/month to over $12,000/month in less than 15 months – disappeared.
I became so bogged down by what had worked for me in the past that I didn’t know what to do when things stopped working or weren’t working as well.
When my income and page views stopped growing at the rate I wanted, I doubled down on what had been working in the past and began to wring my hands and wonder why things weren’t working for me like they were for others.
Hello, fixed mindset much?
So, I had to analyze what I had been doing to stay in a fixed mindset and make a conscious effort to shift back to a growth mindset.
Avoiding or Shifting From a Fixed Mindset
You may read this and know that you are in a growth mindset, yay!! And if you’re not, now is the time to shift and change!
If you are currently in a growth mindset, it’s going to be important for you to remain there! I never would have thought that I’d slip out of my growth mindset, but hey, it happened.
So, a good thing to do would be to find an accountability partner who can help you register if you are shifting to a fixed mindset!
If you don’t work well with others, or don’t want an accountability partner, you can also just keep an eye out for key phrases that might signal the shift.
Such as “I’m doing everything I should be and it’s just not working for me” or I’m never going to make this work”.
WARNING SIGNS. Stop if you hear yourself or others saying or thinking these things and adjust back to your growth mindset.
If you know you are in a fixed mindset, here are a few things to do to shift to a growth mindset:
- Understand that you are not perfect and that’s ok! We all have weaknesses and we can grow through them, instead of being controlled by them.
- Shift from seeing challenges as obstacles to seeing them as opportunities. Don’t let things that come up in your business permanently keep you down, but instead, dive in and find things to change. Test, review, tweak, and continue. (Remember what I said yesterday? Yep, still true!)
- Stop working for validation! This is a big one for many people, they work hard because they want approval and validation from those in their lives. Stop that. Work hard, learn new things, and grow. Do it for yourself and for the love of learning, not for someone else.
- Going through the process is just as important as reaching your goal. Results are great, but what you learn along the way will help you in other areas of life and business as well. So, enjoy both the journey and the results!
- Make sure you know WHY you are working hard. This will give you a purpose, not just a number, to work for… and it makes it much easier to keep everything in perspective.
- Don’t stress about the daily “stuff”. You might have a down income day, or week… your page views might be lower than they were last week, but all it is is a bobble. And you’re never going to grow if you just complain about what’s not working. Get up, dust yourself off, then kick a-double-s and find what DOES work for you.
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Ok, well this post was CRAZY long and way longer than I thought it was going to be… I’ve been writing this thing for 2.5 hours! ???
But, that’s ok because I’m so excited about the shift that’s happening in my own mindset and I wanted to make sure to pass it on!
For established bloggers, this is crucial information for us… we get set in our ways and think we don’t need to keep up with current ideas or practices. Then when we wake up and realize things aren’t working like they used to, we feel lost and overwhelmed.
Let’s all avoid that and just live in the growth mindset instead!
Even More Blogging Growth:
Ready to grow and learn? Here are 3 courses you can take at your own pace that will help you achieve your blogging goals quickly!
- Crystal Clear SEO – Grow your SEO rankings with ease!
- Truly Evergreen Newsletters – Set your newsletter up with simple automation that will free up your time and grow your reader loyalty!
- Crystal Clear Products – Create and sell products that your readers will THANK you for!
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