Growth doesn’t happen when you dabble
True story
In July 2020, I changed the way I began to approach my business. It was time to stop chasing things that didn’t bring me joy (or clients) and work instead on things that did.
It also made me realize that I was happiest when I wrote regularly, so I did that as well. I took a break from social media (chiefly, Instagram) and turned to writing daily on Medium.
And true to form, growth happened: on both counts.
As I wrote more regularly, I fell back in love with the idea of writing for its own sake. I wasn’t worried about how many people read what I wrote, how many claps I received on my posts or even how many people saw the fact that I’d updated my Medium blog.
Interestingly, the post on how I broke up with Instagram got picked up by Medium’s editors and also got me into The Startup, Medium’s largest publication.
Simultaneously, I noticed another upward trend- this time, in my business. As I worked deeply on work that helped my ideal client, I saw my bank balance grow steadily, with some surprise, I’ll admit.
I went from making some money in August, 2020 to 6 times that amount in December, 2020.
All through those 5 months, from July to December, 2020, I’d only done two things: Written regularly and worked on my business regularly.
While doing so, I also noticed a rather large sense of pressure rolling off my chest. I wasn’t chasing numbers anymore, either on the blog or on social media and it became easier for me to speak with conviction when I told people to stop worrying about likes and followers on these platforms.
In other words, as soon as I stopped dabbling, growth became both comfortable and natural. I didn’t have to go looking for it.
It just happened.
In early January, I started inching back to Instagram. For one thing, I’d added the app back to my phone and I thought I had a handle on the time spent on it. Hey I’d done it before, right? How hard could it be?
Before I realized it, it had sucked me back in and earlier today, I took a good, long, hard look at the app and asked myself, ‘Is this REALLY how I want to spend my days? Haven’t I learnt my lesson yet?’
And so, I am back where I was in July, 2020 and yes, I’ve removed the app again; but this time I am not doing it from a sense of disdain. Instead, it is with a sense of conscious thought that I look at this and other social media channels. They are merely tools and need to be used as such.
The minute we allow ourselves to be drawn back into their hooks is when we sacrifice growth at the altar of ‘busyness’.
True growth happens when we can look at our mistakes, learn from them and then do the uncomfortable things.
Because it is in that sense of discomfort that we begin to embrace the wonder of our being, learning and growing way beyond what we’d dreamed possible.
As a blogger and coach, I’ve been writing off and on since 2007. I talk more about blogging, social media, productivity and habit building over on my blog. If newsletters are more your thing, sign up for my free Friday newsletter here.
