A fellow blogger friend of mine asked me how to stay motivated to keep blogging the other day. So I thought, why not blog about it?

Blogging saved me because I needed an outlet. It’s fun to think about starting a blog, because it gives you your very own personal space in the web world. But as we all know, the upkeep can be tough. And that’s not the only problem.

Your well of ideas for posts run dry.

Every single post takes so much work.

You have to think, you have to schedule, you have to come up with stuff constantly. Sometimes you feel like you have nothing more to say.

Then there are the awesome blogs, who are doing amazing with so many followers and so much traffic, and you feel like you can’t even keep up with them and what’s the point of even trying?

But the worst of all of those, is no one really visits this wonderful precious thing you’ve created. It becomes this daily, tiring task of thinking of good topics to write about, and figuring out ways to drive traffic. And still no one visits. And you’re putting all this time and effort into it! Where is the motivation to continue, when no one is taking interest in all that you’ve accomplished? In all of the important stuff you have to say?

I’ll tell you where the motivation is, and you’re going to love it, because it’s so easy.

It’s within you.

If there’s one thing Stephen Covey taught me from his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it’s that you can’t depend on other people for your happiness. You can’t depend on men to make you happy. You can’t depend on your job to make you happy. It’s not their responsibility. It rests solely on you, and can be found within you.

Here’s how this ties into finding the motivation to keep blogging.

If the only part about blogging that makes you happy, is thinking about how successful it might be one day, it’s hard to be happy with what it is before that success. It has to be about what blogging does for you when it’s not popular. Without the audience. Without all of the comments. If blogging is one of those things that fills you up, makes you happy, and gives you lift, even if no one is visiting, you’ll find the motivation to continue. Just like we find the time to brush our teeth every morning, and shower every day. And true, the post ideas may not come like wildfire, but the point is you keep going because you enjoy the hell out of it.

If there’s something about your blog that you love, something that motivates you, be it bringing wisdom to other people or sharing some cool shit that you learned, that’s what’s going to motivate you to keep doing it.

Now that’s not to say, just because you aren’t head over heels in love with your blog you won’t go far. But when you’re looking for motivation to continue, you have to revisit why you started the blog in the first place. What cool stuff did you have to share? We all have a story to tell. Often that’s why we start the damn blog in the first place.

If you were excited to begin, and excited to share your knowledge with the world, then that’s what is going to fuel you to keep at it. Maybe blogging isn’t your heart and soul and maybe it doesn’t fill you up, but you like doing it. That’s why you started it. Tap into that fire that first got you started. Tap into it because at some point it brought you something powerfully poetic, new, and fulfilling.

And I have to say, once you start focusing on things you love, the following builds. Because love is contagious and people are attracted to it. Self-love especially. I don’t know the physics behind it, but something in our brain chemistry wires us to adore people and things that have the right kind of love at heart. That’s why love rules the world. And that’s why love is all there is.

So that being said, do it for the people, the whole blog thing. But do it for yourself too. Do it for yourself mostly. Someone out there cares about the same stuff you do, I guarantee it. And those people are going to flock to what you’re talking about like wild geese.

And as Forrest Gump would say, that’s all I have to say about that.

Well, I could probably say more. But I’m watching the Dodger game. And they’re winning. Go Dodger blue!

Talk to you soon!

Keep Reading

I Survived My First Blog Panel: Here’s The Aftermath

Coping With Lost Subscriber Syndrome (LSS)

Blogging Got Me Through 2012: Here’s What Else Did

• Author
• Recent Posts

Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

Latest posts by Monique Muro (see all)

• See Ya, Twenties! [1 Day to 30] - August 25, 2015
• This Is My Official Goodbye Post [2 Days to 30] - August 23, 2015
• We Made It Perfect [3 Days to 30] - August 23, 2015