If you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and need a fresh way to stay motivated, you might absolutely love starting your own blog. Yes, it takes a little work to set up and get running, but once that’s out of the way, you’ll have a dedicated place to share your own personal thoughts and opinions, as well as celebrate achievements.
Before I got my own blog up and running, I was, without a doubt, in a motivational rut. I’d stopped working out, was treading water at work and with my writing in my free time, and I’d even started to isolate myself from my nearest and dearest.
Conscious that this wasn’t how I wanted my life to pan out, I dragged myself to my computer and set up a blog. Why? Because as an aspiring writer, I wanted a space for all of my stories, and I needed some kind of system for accountability. But I’ll tell you more about that soon.
If you put together a personal blog, all of your posts will likely be much more meaningful than plain old social media posts. You’ll also have complete control over your content. You get total control over your words and you can tweak the entire website design to fit your exact taste. What’s more, having your own space for your blogging is better for encouraging consistency, as each and every post adds an extra step to your progress.
In the end, looking back on your blog can feel really inspiring and it certainly does for me. That’s because it shows how much you’ve learned and achieved over time, creating a collection that reflects your interests and personal development.
But that’s enough for the intro, let’s get into the specifics of why sharing my personal thoughts through blogging revived my motivation, and why it could also improve yours.
Building Positive Habits Through Writing
Most of the time, we build motivation a little at a time by committing to habits that support personal growth and help us improve a skill. It could be learning a musical instrument or hitting the gym and the exact same idea applies to writing.
If you’re an aspiring writer like me who’s looking for simple ways to develop your craft, then committing some time every week to plan, write, and edit your work is probably one of the best things you can do to get better. After doing it for just a few weeks, you’ll probably already find yourself in a rhythm that’ll only become easier to maintain as time goes by.
Before starting my blog, I was an aspiring fiction writer who hadn’t written a single word of fiction for just under a year. I could feel the distance between myself and one of the most fulfilling aspects of my identity drifting further and further apart.
I was at a point where I could almost see my past self shaking his head in disappointment. But instead of judging me, he reached out a hand and helped me get back up so I could move forward.
I went from writing one story in 11 months to writing over 120 in just under 3 years. When I started the blog, I didn’t think that would ever be a possibility, let alone make it an actual goal. I was just doing something that I loved, like someone else who would do their favorite sport for a few hours a week.
Through the blog and the self-imposed accountability, I built my own positive habit. Not only did I become a better writer who cut my teeth on writing a piece of short fiction every week, but I also reconnected with a former aspect of my life that made me, well, me.
If you start your own blog – it could be for anything, like improving your health, improving at a particular skill, or just having a journal to chronicle your life.
Every single entry you complete will give you a rush of satisfaction that will only increase more and more as the quality of your writing improves and as you continue to hit your short-term and long-term goals.
Celebrating My Progress Along the Way
When you do it right, a personal blog builds a clear timeline of your entire life. Or at the very least, it tracks your journey in a specific area, like a professional pursuit or an interest that you’re passionate about.
Every post that you write will capture a snapshot of your knowledge and experience at a specific moment in time, so over the weeks, months, and years, your blog will become a testament to your development and your investment in yourself.
I celebrated my own milestones at the 50-post mark, 100-post mark, and at the 1-year mark and 2-year mark. Every time I did, I made a point of reflecting by going back and reading some of those early stories. In doing so, I was able to see just how much my style had evolved.
Seeing that progress with my own eyes was extremely motivating. In fact, after doing my blog for a year, I actually went back and rewrote my first story with my improved writing skills and intuition.
Applying everything I learned to that very first piece gave me a massive boost of motivation. I could actually see exactly how much I had already improved. So I kept going at it, wondering what the next year might hold for me and how much more I could continue to sharpen my skills.
Sharing My Passion With Others
Now here’s a point that I think is a little underdiscussed. Writing a blog about your favorite topics gives you a completely rewarding creative outlet. You finally have a dedicated space to talk about your biggest passions and share them directly with people everywhere.
When a blog really takes off, it sparks great conversations and creates a unique space of its own online. Becoming a trusted voice in your space gives you a massive boost of motivation. It is also a fantastic feeling to know that your writing is actually reaching people and making a real difference for them.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that my blog was insanely popular or anything. But after a few months of consistent posts, knowing that there are people on the other end of the internet who value your words is yet another incredibly motivational aspect of creating a personal blog. If you keep it up, you can continue to grow your own loyal readership over time.
Like a Diary, But With More Accountability
When you share your own personalized blog, you have your own corner of the internet where you can chronicle your challenges and insecurities, as well as the solutions you come up with to overcome these obstacles.
These obstacles can be internal or external. And sure, you could argue that this makes your personal blog essentially the same as a diary. And although you’d be right to point that out, there’s one key difference: accountability.
Whenever I’ve tried to write a diary (or journal, if you want to seem more manly or mature), I’ve struggled to remain consistent. It’s all too easy to make an excuse for putting off writing once, twice, three times, then before too long.
I feel intimidated by the sheer amount of work that I need to do to get back on track. But the nature of a personalized blog, what with it being a public blog, with a fair amount of work and time already invested in it, most people would feel more incentivized to stay consistent.
Although my blog was firmly focused on motivational, health, life, and storytelling, I still posted updates from ‘behind the scenes’. This was often the case if I was running late with a post, or if there was a reason I was unable to post that week.
What’s more, consciously or not, it was often a part of my process to think about my struggles in any given week. I would then apply them to a character in a setting that was specifically designed to challenge that struggle.
In a way, my stories were like diary entries. Each one wrestled with my personal hardships at the time. Going back and reading them reminds me all too well of what I was going through, and it was both satisfying and motivating to express those difficulties by transforming them into works of art.
My Experience
I’ve continued writing my own personal articles for the last 3 years. It wasn’t anything crazy ambitious; I just wanted a place to write a new motivational article or short story idea every week. Getting the website up and running is often a tricky early obstacle, but I used BGN, a local web development agency, to set it all up. After that, I just needed to write.
I’m by no means a professional; by day I work in marketing. As much as I wanted to be a writer, I couldn’t just change my career overnight, so it was something I’d aim to do on a Sunday afternoon before going back to work. And most of the time, it was an absolute joy. I ended up cherishing those 2-3 hours a week I spent concocting a zany 2000-word story.
But it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, life just got in the way, and I had to play catch-up on Monday or Tuesday. Or, occasionally, I just flat-out wasn’t in the mood to write. Whenever this happened, I just employed the 10-minute rule. I gave myself 10 minutes to get into a flow, and if I didn’t come up with anything, I would officially allow myself to move the writing to Monday. I’m proud to say that I never had to move the writing; I just needed that push to get started in the first place.
After almost 3 years of blogging my short stories, I often find the seed of a new beginning. With that blog chapter behind me, I’m already planning something new.
My Final Thoughts
If you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and need a motivational boost that can help get you back on track, then a personal blog might be the missing piece.
Committing to writing your own personal blog can help you flex the muscles needed to build positive habits more broadly, as well as help you with an area of development that you want to become more serious about.
But don’t forget that this is also about having fun. Your blog can be whatever you want it to be, whether that’s your very own cozy nook on the internet or a blank canvas for your creative ideas.
Having done it myself, it’s an experience that I would truly recommend to anyone. So why not get started today?
