Why Blogging Is Like Kids and Cars

I have a 3 year old niece. She has been on planet earth for 40 months.

She is fun, energetic and pretty darn smart. This little one happily recounts stories I tell her from my travels, relaying in a clear, 6 year old, non baby talk voice, with proper diction. She has been speaking since she was a little north of 18 months and has already seemed to master sarcasm, jokingly calling people jerks, garbage and trash.

My favorite apology of hers (said sheepishly): “I’m sorry I called you garbage.”

Of course I am biased, but when you see enough people’s eyes open when she talks and how she speaks, you know she is pretty advanced.

As clever and precocious as she is, if I handed her the keys to a La Ferrari super car, she would know how to open the door and likely, how to put the key into the ignition. But she would not know how to start the car, drive the car and make the engine hum.

She is not ready yet.  The little one is too tiny; plus she has no driving skills, let alone skills to make a super car engine sing.

She just turned 3. Driving a Ferrari super car is not in the cards for her, at the moment.

Driving Your Blog With Confidence

Guess what? I am not ready yet. I have over 200,000 miles of driving experience in crowded, sometimes intense, New Jersey. Dealing with impatient or sometimes insane drivers to the tune of 200,000 miles gives me confidence to drive anywhere on earth. But I would need to learn manual before firing up a Ferrari engine, then, I would need at least 1-2 hours of practice in a parking lot or on a quiet side road to drive this sexy beast on the street.

My point?

Blogging is like driving a car. Becoming a happy, successful, pro blogger is like driving a super car.

You need to practice diligently to prepare for the blogging big time, and if you have only been a 9-5 employee, starting a blog is like being a little kid learning to drive. You need to learn how to blog. You need to practice blogging. You need to hone your blogging skills. Then, after you follow your passion, blog for fun, create, connect and trust in the process, and only then, will you make your blog hum like a La Ferrari engine, becoming a well known, successful blogger.

New Bloggers Screw It Up

If you bought your domain and hosting today, and want to know how quickly you can begin earning money, it is like a 3 year old asking when they can get a La Ferrari up to 220 MPH. Not now. Years down the road. You will succeed more quickly than it takes a 3 year old to master driving a super car but it takes years of generosity, detachment, trust, practice, service, and patience, to become really, really good at blogging.

New bloggers want to make money fast but have no skills, experience and blogging practice. Uh….DUH! Money ONLY flows to you when you have skills, experience and blogging practice. These qualities require time, and also, trust.

I am still learning how to do it right to take it up 10 notches and I have blogged for 10 years. I am still uncovering fears, mental blocks and all types of issues as I dig deeper, detach, and learn how to trust in myself and in the blogging process. This gig takes a pure love for blogging, for covering your blog topic, for helping people and for being fully invested in service and for being little invested in money or traffic stats.

Adults You Are Not Immune

Let’s say you are a 40 year old who wants to drive a La Ferrari. You have experience driving average cars for 22 years. But stepping up to a super car requires learning how to drive the car, practicing driving in an empty lot, and when you do hit the road, driving super slowly because this is super car, capable of amazing but dangerous things.

Crawl, walk, jog, run.

If you never blogged before but ran a few online businesses, you have solid experience online but learn quickly; blogging requires a different skill set. Be patient. Learn how to blog effectively from a happy, generous, trusting energy. Enjoy the ride. Your learning curve is much less than a prior offline employee but you still have learning, practice and trusting, to do, to become successful.

How Long Does it Take to Make the Ferrari Engine Sing as a Pro?

Nobody knows how long it will take you to become a happy, prospering, successful pro blogger. Why? Every human being has mental blocks aka fears to unearth, face, feel, and release, to reach their next stage of growth.  It takes some time to keep unearthing these fears. Visualize peeling layers from an onion. Except the process continues for your blogging career.

No worries though; if you blog to have fun and to help people, the fear-peeling plays a necessary but small role in your success. Your gig will be mainly about having fun, practicing, creating and connecting, and trusting in the process, as you see greater success.

Is It Hard Work?

No.

Force negates. You work hard because you want to overcome poverty, struggle or failure but since where your attention and energy goes, grows, you keep experiencing poverty, struggle and failure if you keep trying to overcome these fears.

Being a skilled, relatively detached, blogger requires you to feel good FIRST, then you take good-feeling actions and detach largely from results flowing from these actions. This has been by far my toughest challenge blogging-wise. I am learning to do it in a genuine way 10 years into my blogging career. Some bloggers do it easily. Not many, though. Most of us must suffer, then, we try working harder, and keep struggling, because most are taught to work jobs just to get money, even if you feel bad (aka dislike your job) because the outcome aka money is most important.

NOOOOOOO!

Do NOT adopt this mindset for your blog. You will never calmly, patiently and confidently develop the skills to become successful, and skilled, as a full time, happy, pro blogger.

Feel good, then blog, then feel good as you blog, detach largely from outcomes, trust yourself and trust in the blogging process. You will succeed.

I’ll see you on the highway.