Life and the society are not making it any easier for us with their norms, judgements and meanness. And it is quite easy to get bogged by all these negativity, but hey, we can’t give in, can we? So here are a few tips on how to feel better about yourself even on your bad days.
With all that is going on around the world, this year has been really hard for all of us. And instead of worrying and feeling bad about it, get on with your quest to finding out how to feel better about yourself starts with yourself.
Identify your triggers
Knowing what made you feel bad about yourself is very important to figuring out how to feel better about yourself. Create a list of words, comments, people and their actions that can potentially make you feel down.
Did someone say something poor about you? Was it the social media that affected your mind?
Write them down. Identifying who or what the trigger was and removing or reducing their presence around you will minimize the chances of it recurring and will help you feel better about yourself in the long run.
Assess criticisms objectively
Yes we are going to be criticized and judged all through our life and we can’t get away with them totally. Trust me, we all want that.
But what we can do is control our reactions to them.
Instead of spiraling down the self hate lane immediately, stop a minute and give a thought about it objectively and honestly. Sure that is difficult but try to understand why they are saying what they are saying.
Is it really coming from the right place? Are they being affected by your “whatever they are commenting about”? Is it something that you want to work on? Is it even worth going the trouble of pulling yourself down?
Watch how you talk to yourself
Keep a close watch on how you talk to yourself. The way you see yourself matters a lot, even if you don’t realize it. Every time you find yourself saying something negative, STOP.
And make it a point to keep the language positive.
Surround yourself with people who bring you up
It is not just you and your self talk that affects your mood. Surround yourself with people who genuinely like you and bring up the best qualities in you.
Sticking with people who have seen the better version of you and boost you for those qualities instantly make you feel better about yourself. It goes a long way in improving your self esteem too.
Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
When you keep yourself in the midst of amazing talented people, it may be possible that you are comparing yourself and your success to theirs. And that can be a reason why you are feeling low often.
We just get to see just a part of others’ lives. So unless we walk their walk, there is no way to know what they actually go/went through to reach wherever they are now.
So stop comparing yourself to others and save yourself a heart break already.
Dress up your game
Start paying attention to what you wear and wear something that you like seeing yourself in. It doesn’t have to be a red carpet wear but ensure it makes you feel better about yourself.
Also you may want to start with a daily self care rituals to remind you that you love yourself, even when the going is not smooth.
Keep Going
The only way to get out of a dark tunnel is through it. So keep moving ahead, even and especially when you don’t feel like it. Don’t stop your routines because you have a bad mood.
The daily monotonous grind is what will keep you from crashing on those days that you are feeling down, and eventually YOU WILL feel better and avoid overwhelming yourself.
How are you really doing? On scale of 1 to 10, how are you feeling about yourself, right now? What are your go to solutions on how to feel better about yourself? Let us talk.
Social media is fun and entertaining. Unless you are a content producer or a blogger trying to use it for your business. Well, then it is a chore and is definitely soul sucking. The balancing of your social media presence and your blogging schedule is a constant struggle.
But you do see so many big accounts do this so seamlessly and still are on top of their blog. It is an absolute sorcery and mere mortals can’t achieve it.
Blink twice if you have tried to balance between your goal to get a huge following on social media, churn out content as your calendar and trying to breathe, and failed miserably. Well, you are not alone and this post especially for you, naïve one.
Balancing Act of Social Media and Blogging
It is hard to balance social media and blogging, when your work and business are mostly online and it is exhausting to say the least. There is no way out, in this age and technology but you can still try to stay sane by following some of these techniques.
With all that is going on in life and your blogging schedule, it gets harder to sit down and do things that require your focus and deep work.
The more your sweat over small things and your routine, the harder it gets to any planning or focused writing done. And that is why it is important to set aside a particular time block each day, away from distraction from the pesky social media messages or Netflix binges.
Use this time to create, write and do things that require your uninterrupted attention. Extra points if they add up to your long term goals.
Create a social media strategy
Keeping up with the news and staying relevant is one of the vital points as a blogger and a business. But doing that all by yourself is definitely impossible.
And that is why you need a social media strategy that includes
The social media platforms that your blog will be active
The number of times you will post per week
The number of hours you will spend engaging, re-sharing and commenting on the platform
What is your goal for each platform – short and long term?
How will you track the progress?
Creating out a social media strategy might seem too pretentious if you are a micro blogger or a small business, but writing out them in detail would hold you accountable and give you more clarity on what you do.
Automate whatever you can
Once you have set your goals and task lists in stone (or paper) automate, automate and automate. Use a scheduler like Buffer or Hootsuite to send out your posts on premeditated time.
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You can allocate a specific time to schedule posts for the following week. Scheduling for a week will reduce the amount of time you spend on social media for promoting your blog/business.
Batching similar processes
Another great time saving technique is to batch similar processes together and get them done together. For example, instead of spending time creating graphics or images for each social media separately, batch them out together and do it when you are designing the header image for your blog post.
As you automate things and spend time away from social media creating and building your business and blog, keep an eye over your analytics and traffic. Watch out for what kind of posts work and what performs better.
You may even spend a dedicated time every week (or whatever works for you) to analyse the data and tweak your posts.
Put yourself first
This is the single most important thing I learnt in creating a balance between social media and blogging is putting myself and my mental health first.
How much ever we plan there are going to be days when nothing goes as per our plan and that might overwhelm us. We should have to understand that and keep ourselves prepared for unplanned breaks.
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Also, plan for some self care routines into your day and don’t forget to take some breaks.
What my social media schedule looks like
What my social media schedule looks like
As a book blogger, I try to be active on Instagram (though it offers little to no traffic to my blog), Twitter and Pinterest. I also schedule posts on Facebook, but I am not active on FB, personally or for blog promotion.
I post four times on my blog per week and share the posts on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest as soon as the post go or some time on the same day. To be honest, I am not really strict on the time for this process.
Weekly once I spend an hour or two to choose the posts from the book blogger community to reshare on my social media platform during the following week.
Next I spend another 15 to 30 minutes to choose posts from my blog to promote all through the next week.
On Monday I schedule these links (both from my blog and the ones I loved from the blogging community) to publish over Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest at different times with customized messages for each platform.
Every day I spend about 15 to 30 minutes on each platform to talk, engage and make friends. Usually I spend about 60 to 90 minutes on the whole each day.
That is it. This is my minimal schedule to allow me to stay on top of social media and blog promotion and breathe as well.
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Well, sometimes these schedules don’t work and that is okay too. I stopped worrying too much about it, because I know I have a routine that works for me, most of the days and I can get back to it soon enough.
The trick to balancing between social media and blogging is knowing what you want and when to say enough.
If you like my posts about social media and blogging aspect of it, you should try some of these related posts.
How do you keep balancing social media and blogging content? Does it ever get overwhelming for you? What does your social media schedule look like? Let us talk.
How often do you find yourself losing track of time, only to find that you have run out of time in a day? Saying we need more than 24 hours in a day is no longer a joke, since everyone is feeling that these days.
And it is called time management for a reason, because no matter what we say there are only so many hours in a day. Measuring is the first step to managing your time. Without understanding how and where we are spending our time, we can’t try to control it. And today, let us talk about how to find more time in a day by doing a time audit, to track our day.
As someone who works from home, on a computer and a phone all the time (read as on the couch, in front of the TV) I know how easy it is to get distracted and lose track of time. One minute you are allowing yourself to watch ten minute of Friends re-run and before you know it is dinner time. With a bunch of deadline reminders.
Happens to all of us. But it is time to take control of our 24 hours and manage the heck out of it.
What is time audit?
Time audit means we are gonna track everything you do in a day down to the T and understand where your time flies, as we keep saying. We are going to find out what is your most time consuming activity and what is your optimized schedule like.
How to track and manage your time?
What are planning to do is: track your activities every thirty minutes every day for a week or two. You don’t have to change a thing about your schedule, but just note down what you are doing every 30 minutes.
Sounds interesting? Let us dig ahead.
Setting up a system to track
Setting up a time tracking system is not difficult. While there are numerous (free and premium) apps that would help you track your day for you automatically, I prefer a more mindful approach.
In the first columns, write down what your standard day looks like. Again, it doesn’t have to be your 100% productive day, but it has to be achievable regularly.
Estimate the number of hours you plan to spend working and sleeping. Give yourself breaks and pauses to breathe.
Make it easier to track
Okay, so the goal is simple. Stop whatever you are doing and check in every 30 minutes or so to write down what you were doing. Also take “stop whatever you are doing” with a salt.
You don’t have to pause cooking in the middle but you should be noting mentally how long it takes for you to cook. Note what you are doing every 30 minutes and write them all down on the sheet as a batch.
Use your discretion
And when I say write everything down, you can be as specific as you want. Do not forget to fill in your meal times, coffee breaks, commute, and other regular activities.
You probably will be tempted to say ‘blogging’ but it is better if you write down ‘Writing post for Friday’ or ‘graphics for Friday post’. So now you will be able to see how long it actually takes for you to create a Friday post from coming up with the idea to actually scheduling or posting it.
At the same time, use your discretion when it comes to using acronyms and batching things. ‘Emails’ sounds good enough for me, rather than writing ‘replying emails and emptying inbox’. But you do, you.
Analyze the results
Here comes the most interesting part of the exercise. The result.
While it is good to wait till the end of the week or time period you have chosen to audit yourself, it is quite natural to take stock of your activities by the end of each day. It is a good way to plan for the next day, right?
So be it a week or month, once you have a list of activities and the time you spend on them on average available with you, identify the activities that are
Time wasters
They do absolutely nothing for you and you didn’t even know you were doing it. Well, what a waste of time. This is not to be confused with things that you do for fun (like those ‘Friends’ reruns) Example: mindless scrolling on social media, Waiting for a reply email
Distractions
These activities may not give you much returns but you do them because they seemed like a good idea then. Or a great way to procrastinate what you ought to be doing. Example: Checking inbox or phone for mails and messages
Procrastinated repeatedly
Identify what kind of work or activity that you keep putting off until the last moment and why. Is it fear of failure or something else.
Involves deep work
These activities are best done when you have fewer distractions around. You can find out when you are at your best, based on your time tracking sheet.
Unscheduled
How much ever you try, there would be some things that are unanticipated. Say, a new request in your work or a last minute change in your design, may have to be accommodated.
But your time audit sheet will help you know if it was becoming a trend. If so can you do something about it.
Routine tasks
Identify the routine tasks and habits that work like a clockwork for you.
Often when we get into our to do lists and plans, we tend to forget the big picture about if we are working on the right direction and pace. Conducting an audit of our habits, routines and tasks in terms of the time spent is a perfect way to start taking control of our time.
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Let’s chat
Have you heard time audit as a time management tool? How do you track and manage your time? What are the activities that take most of your time? Let us talk.
Do you often start projects/habits/hobbies passionately, and then leave them unfinished and unforgotten? Been there, done that. But what matters is do you do this too often? If yes, what are you doing to finish what you start – be it a new personal project, a business or a hobby?
Why don’t we push ourselves to finish what we started?
While there are different reasons ranging from “I forgot about it” to “life happened” for each of us giving up on various things, the underlying reasons can be only one of these
Found a new shiny thing to do,
Realized it was harder (in terms of time, efforts or resources) than you assumed, or
Before starting a project, think through. Why do you want to do the project or start a new habit? Do you have the time to add in a new hobby to your life?
Envision your end result. What are you going to achieve through this additional project? Is it going to add to your portfolio or add in a new stream of revenue? Is it going to help you be a better you and if so, how?
Be choosy of your projects
Speaking of connecting the means to an end, if the project doesn’t add value to yourself, say no to it recklessly. This is very important when it comes to large projects.
Credit: Gifer
For instance, a few of my friends wanted to started a podcast earlier this year. I joined them because, FRIENDS! We spent hours and days on perfecting it but eventually life happened and one by one we all dropped out.
The time, effort and resources we spent on it, could have better utilized elsewhere.
If you are accepting to do projects that you really want to finish, your completion will be higher.
Break into action plans with deadlines
Now that you have chosen what you want to do and don’t, let us break your large projects into size-able chunks.
You know what the end result of the project, say learning basic Korean in 60 days. Split the goal into action plans and assign timelines, say learning 50 new words each week.
You can go further and break it down to tasks for each day, if possible.
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These weekly goals will help you assess your performance and change course of action. And mainly to keep you on track.
Estimate what you need to finish
Another main reason for people quitting new projects is that they grossly underestimate the resources in terms of money, effort and time the project will demand.
So even before you start a project do a deeper investigation into the requirements. Basically, do not be me while I was in the quick BuJo phase (and let us not talk about my shelves that are not filled with pens, tapes and notebooks).
Also if you think you will need help from or have to coordinate with someone else, ensure they are available and discuss your goals and timelines with them also.
Track progress
Sometimes we lose motivation when we don’t see the ball moving. If our efforts do not turn into tangible results, why should we slog our asses off?
This is why I insist on tracking and rewarding progress towards a goal and just completion. Read 10 pages in a book? Give yourself a pat on the back, even if you have not finished the book yet. Now you have an incentive to read at least ten pages each day.
Announce your goals, or don’t
When you start a project, commit to completion. When that doesn’t seem good enough, get an accountability partner, maybe a friend, family or announce via social media.
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Ask them specifically to hold you to your commitment by frequently checking on you.
But for some people, like me, just talking about their goals to others is enough satisfaction that they never go back to working on it.
Figure out what works best for you and use that strategy to keep yourself accountable.
Understand YOU play the major role
But understand that you are working for yourself. It is YOU who wants to finish the project. And it is YOU who wants to break the pattern of not finishing what you start.
And that motivation should be coming within YOU, not from others holding you responsible. Or the peer pressure about it.
Just think about how YOU would feel after you finish the project and how it would help YOU in terms of your larger goal in life.
Perfection is not enough
One excuse people often give when they don’t get to doing what they started is that they are waiting for it to be perfect or the fear that the result won’t be as perfect as they imagined it to be.
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First of all, STOP THAT.
Realize while you are waiting for perfection, others are doing something about it and you are missing out on the lead.
And you can always edit, change and perfect it once you are done. All you have to aim is for “good”. It need not be perfect, right now.
Perfection is the enemy of the good!
Also, unless you keep doing good enough work repeatedly, you will not become best or even better.
It is okay to quit
When all is said and done, it is okay to fail and okay to let go.
Our interests change and our priorities shuffle. And it is quite normal to drop the projects once in a while. You are a mere human, for that matter.
And I know this might happen after you have spent a considerable time working on the project, but all is not lost, right? Whatever you have worked on should have been a learning experience and who knows, maybe some day you might pick it up again.
But just ensure to study why and what made you leave the business unfinished, and that it is a rational decision.
What projects have you stopped abruptly and never worked to finish? Do you know the reason behind it? What are your tips to finish what you start? Let us talk.
One of the major concerns for indie authors when hiring a beta reader is about the safety of their manuscript. Can beta readers steal my work? Will they publish my manuscript as theirs? Will they rip my beloved characters off me? These questions must plague your mind, and for right reasons.
As someone who is producing digital content on multiple channels every single day, I understand your concerns. I worry on similar lines every night about my posts and graphics.
I get it.
How can you just hand over your manuscript that you have spent weeks and months on to some random stranger off the internet?
As someone who attempted fiction and poetry writing many moons ago and struggled at it, I have a great respect towards you all.
To come up with a plot and an outline is hard. But to sit down and pour the words on a paper (or screen?) is just mind blowing. You don’t deserve getting your hard work stolen/misused by anyone.
So if you are worried if the beta readers whom you entrust your manuscript with, can steal your work, I am here to put your concerns to rest.
The answer is no!
Professional beta readers do not steal your work because their job is dependent on their integrity and trustworthiness.
Things to do to avoid your work getting stolen
That being said, one can never be too cautious right? So here are some things you can do put your fear of getting your work stolen by your beta reader
1) Get to know them
Getting to know your beta reader would be a great way to start a relationship with them.
Go through the testimonials of their previous clients.
Have a conversation via mail or through call. Meet them over a coffee, if that is something you are both comfortable with.
2) Get someone who is not an author
Another way to minimize the risk of your work stolen by the beta reader is to avoid sharing your manuscript with a writer who is writing in the similar genre as you, or just avoid peer authors altogether.
I know this sounds a little too extreme but one can never be too careful when it comes to the internet right?
Many professional beta readers are willing to sign a contract and a Non Disclosure Agreement before they even receive their advance and your manuscript. I sign up these NDA, too
The contract binds them legally from discussing or sharing your manuscript, plot or anything from your work with anyone else or using your plot, character or words for any other purpose.
It explicitly states that the manuscript is for their eyes only.
4) Get a professional beta reader
Many a times, authors share their manuscript with other authors and the members of writing community for a feedback in exchange for feedback on of theirs.
Well, the system works.
But is it the most safe and effective method? That is arguable.
On the other hand, a professional beta reader is someone who has been doing this for a while and they have a track record. This automatically improves their chances of not being professional aka they don’t have to steal your art/product.
Despite all these precautions, it is true that someone else can steal your work or misuse your manuscript and call them their own. But the chances are quite low.
I am sure you will find someone whom you can trust to get a relevant and honest feedback from.
I am sure feeling lost when it comes to starting new conversations is pretty common – be it online or in real life. I hope these bookish questions would be help you kick start new topics. Let me know if these bookstagram questions are helpful.
Here are some bookish “question of the day” (qotd) that you can ask your followers on social media like bookstagram or just write a blog post on. I will keep these bookstagram questions coming if they seem helpful to you. So let me know in the comments.
25. Do you read dystopia? If yes, name one dystopian fantasy that you can relate to our current world.
It is no secret that I love talking about books, writing and everything in between. Of course I talk about it on my blog and all over the social media. And in real life, to whomever would listen, including the book club meetings.
So if you are ever looking out for bookish question of the day (qotd) to talk on your bookstagram or blog, you know whom to ask. * wink wink*
Are you on Instagram/bookstagram? Do you ever get stuck looking for questions of the day (qotd) or captions to post? Would these bookstagram questions be useful? Let us chat.
