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How to Develop Your Willpower to Blog

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Yesterday I wrote a blog post where I shared the 5 simple rules I created for myself which have helped me to blog daily for over 6 months now.

Today I want to expand on this a little bit more and share another little secret strategy I’ve been using to develop my willpower to help me blog.

First of all, one of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to willpower is that they don’t realize that willpower is a MENTAL MUSCLE, and as such it has to be treated like a muscle.

What happens when a person is hospitalized for a long period of time, such as if they go into a coma or are bedridden for a long period of time?

Their muscle waste away and they get weaker.

What happens when astronauts go out into space where they aren’t subject to the gravity field of earth as strongly as they are on earth?

Their muscles get weaker.

What happens when someone with weak muscles starts a strength training program with a personal trainer and sticks to it consistently for a long period of time?

They develop and grow their muscles and they get stronger.

Well, WILLPOWER works the same way.

So many people say “Oh I just don’t have the willpower to do that!” and they use that as an excuse not to do that thing, as if willpower was some kind of genetic thing you’re either born with or not.

Willpower is a mental muscle that you CAN develop if you choose to.

If someone says to me “I *want* to blog daily but I just don’t have the willpower” my first thought is “Of COURSE you don’t have the willpower to blog daily.  DUH!  If you did, you would be blogging daily!”

The question is not whether you have the willpower to blog daily or not, but rather “Are you willing to develop your willpower to the point where you are able to blog daily?”

If you are willing to develop your willpower I can help you do that by joining my Empower Network team now and getting mentored by me.

When I first started my fitness and diet plan about 10 weeks ago I didn’t have the willpower to workout 2-3 times per week.

If I had that willpower then I would already be working out!

Right?

So knowing that I didn’t have that willpower, and also knowing that I wanted to develop it, I started working with a personal trainer who has put together a whole exercise program for me and has been coming to my house every week to make sure I’m doing those workouts.

Because I was willing to make the decision to DEVELOP my strength training willpower by working with a trainer, I have now had 10 weeks of SOLID “willpower training” in the area of body fitness.

I’ve done more workouts both with my personal trainer and outside doing full body workouts by landscaping my yard in the last 10 weeks than probably in the last 4-5 years COMBINED!

If you want to build your willpower to blog on a regular basis or to start making money with an online business, you’ve got to start working with a coach / mentor who is going to HELP you develop the willpower that you need to develop.

What’s awesome about willpower too is that when you develop willpower in one area of your life, you actually start to have more willpower in ALL areas of your life.

For example, the willpower I developed over the last 6 months as a blogger, is helping me to develop my willpower to exercise on a regular basis.

Lately I’ve been doing some kind of full body workout – be it outside landscaping, or working out with my personal trainer – almost every single day!

In fact I’d have to check my calendar to see when was the last day that I didn’t get any exercise.

How did I go from living a sedentary lifestyle of always sitting in front of my computer for the last 4 years to now exercising almost every single day so quickly?

Well, I leveraged the willpower MENTAL MUSCLE I developed by blogging daily for the last 6 months and I combined it with a the right training and strategy from hiring a personal coach / mentor / trainer to help me!

If you want to develop your ability to blog and make money online, I recommend you do the same.

Click here to learn more about getting started with my team, and let me help you build your willpower as well!

 

5 Simple Rules Which Helped Me to Blog Daily for Over 6 Months And Still Going

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I originally started blogging way back in April of 2006.

I remember when I first started my Blog I wanted to build the habit of blogging daily.

I managed to put together a few streaks throughout the years where I blogged for 10 days straight, 20 days straight or even 30 days straight …

… however, I was never able to stick to blogging daily for more than a few months.

Why?

For some crazy reason, SOMETHING always came up!

Meaning, I would be blogging daily for a period of time, and then one day some weird thing would happen like some emergency or some kind of unexpected situation where I wouldn’t get home until 2am in the morning, or I would have to travel somewhere last minute and I would miss one day of blogging.

Once I missed on day of blogging, that was it – my streak was broken and it became WAY easier to not blog for two days in a row…

… and then three days…

… and then my daily blogging habit would pretty much disappear…

And then I would re-start again, and go through the same cycle until I would have that ONE DAY where I would miss one post, and then my streak and habit would be broken.

I did this for almost 9 years of my blogging career, never being able to establish a daily blogging habit.

However as of Dec 30, 2014, just a few days before New Years 2015 I started a new daily blogging habit and have now maintained it for over 6 months without missing a single day.

Here’s how I did it…

Rule #1 – No Blog Post, No Sleep.

I started off by setting a rule for myself.

I can write my blog post at any point in the day, or night.

Knowing my schedule, I knew it wouldn’t be realistic to try to set a specific time during the day when I had to write my post as that would never work for me.

Too many things change in my life, day-to-day, for me to stick to a specific timed schedule.

Instead, I just made the decisions to not allow myself to go to sleep until my blog post for the day is done.

For example, I’m writing this post at 12:34am.  I could be in bed sleeping right now, but I’m not allowed to go to sleep until my post is done.

If I write my blog post after midnight, I set my publish time back to before midnight the day before so that my blog post publish dates are always one day apart.

This way I don’t have two blog posts showing up for one date and zero posts on another date.

I also allow myself to write or create video blog post post on ANY TOPIC and it can be ANY LENGTH, so technically if I wanted to I could write a one sentence blog post and publish that and then I would be allowed to go to sleep. 🙂

By giving myself this option to write any blog post or even to just embed a video as my blog post for the day, it eliminates ALL excuses for not being able write a blog post.

Rule #2 – No “Making Up” Posts

Another thing that tripped me up before was the belief that I could “Make Up” blog posts if I skip them one day.

Meaning, I used to think that I could skip one blog post one day and think to myself “Oh, I’m really tired, I’ll just skip this one post today, but tomorrow I’ll write two blog posts.”

That NEVER works!  It’s not the same thing.

If you skip one blog post, you break your streak and that’s it.  It’s over. 🙂

So this time around I told myself that I’m not allowed to even entertain such thoughts.  I either write a post TODAY or I break my streak.  There’s no “Making Up” crap allowed in my plan.

Rule #3 – No Shiny Object Chasing Allowed

Another thing that tripped me up before was that I would be happily blogging on a daily basis and then I would watch a video, or take some course from some Internet Marketing guru and they would teach some kind of super amazing marketing strategy for making money online which was supposedly better than blogging.

I would then look at that strategy, think about it, and think to myself “Hmm…this DOES sound like it could be more effective than blogging.  Let me put my blogging on hold for a bit and let me test this system out for a few weeks, and see what happens.”

And you know what?  Whatever that new strategy was, I would try it out and it would usually produce some quick results short term but then within 30, 60 or 90 days it would fall apart and I would then have to go back to blogging and start my momentum from scratch.

So this time around, what I told myself is that I would Blog daily and if I encounter any marketing strategies or business systems that are supposedly better and more effective than Blogging, I am totally allowed to try those strategies out and test them – BUT I have to still blog daily anyways. 🙂

This way, if the strategy works great, then that’s awesome, but no matter what I still do my daily blogging.

And if the strategy is a flow, then I don’t have to start all over again as I was still blogging daily even while trying out those other strategies.

Rule #4 – Surround Myself With Blogger Energy

Yet another thing that tripped me up before was when I would blog on a consistent basis for a period of time and then I would start hanging out with people who are NOT into blogging and their opinions and energy would affect my thinking in such a way that I would lose my interest in Blogging.

So this time around, I joined Empower Network – which is a community of like-minded bloggers, and every single day I plug into training, hangouts, audios and facebook wall updates from people in Empower Network who are also blogging and making money as bloggers.

By plugging myself into this type of energy, I stay inspired to keep blogging on a daily basis.

Someone once told me that if you’re an eagle, but you surround yourself with turkeys and you hang out with turkeys, pretty soon you’ll start to believe you’re a turkey and they’ll eventually convince you that you can’t fly!

So instead of being an eagle, surrounded by turkeys, I put a lot of energy and time into making sure I surround myself with other eagles who are making money as bloggers. 🙂

Rule #5 – No Excuses

For over 8 years I kept making up excuses for not blogging daily.

I can tell you though that every single excuse that I had seemed like a 100% legitimate “reason” for me not being able to blog that day… NONE of them seemed like excuses.

This time around I just told myself “no excuses”… NONE!

Not even the ones that seem “legitimate”…

… and you know what… in the past 6 months I’ve had about 50 situations come up which I could have EASILY used as a “legitimate excuse” (there’s no such thing) for not blogging that day.

Life gets in the way.  Stuff comes up.

But I don’t allow myself any excuses…not even the so called “legitimate” ones. 🙂

What’s cool about this rule is that once you make the decision not to allow yourself to have any excuses, your mind stops making so many excuses because it knows it’s a futile process of making them up.

The interesting thing too is that I hear other people who want to blog daily making excuses every single day.

Something always comes up.

The only decision you have to make is whether you’re willing to blog daily DESPITE things coming up every day, or will you allow those things to stop you?

What’s REALLY funny to me now is that it’s so clear to me how all my past excuses were all just a bunch of BS.  None of them were “legitimate”.

I mean, in the past when I would skip a day from blogging, because supposedly I didn’t have time to write a blog post, I still somehow found time to respond to emails, and post things on facebook, but somehow I didn’t have time to blog? No, that makes no sense.

I see it all the time today as well.  People tell me they don’t have time to Blog, but throughout the day they post 15 facebook wall updates, and 5 new pictures onto Instagram. 🙂

Blogging daily is not for everyone…

… but if you DO want to build an online business and you want to use the daily blogging strategy that has worked for so many ultra-successful bloggers, you MUST DECIDE to not allow yourself to accept ANY excuse your mind throws at you, regardless how “legitimate” the excuse is.

Summary

This is it.

These 5 simple rules I created for myself have been my secret strategy for being able to blog every single day for over 6 months now.

I created them, and I stick with them, and so far it’s been working out great for me.

What about you?

Are you blogging daily?

Would you like to be?

Leave your answers in the comments below.

How to Make Money Blogging Without Feeling Overwhelmed

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Are you looking for a way to make money blogging without feeling overwhelmed?

In today’s episode of “Driving With Paul” I discuss how to do just that.

Check out the episode right here:

If you’d like to join my Empower Network team, and get your personalized plan setup and executed, click here now.

How to Visualize Freedom From Your Job

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I’m a huge believer in visualization.

Not just the type of visualization where you close your eyes and try to see in your mind’s eye something that you want, but rather the type of visualization where you use your imagination to immerse yourself in whatever you’re visualizing with all your senses.

The type of “visualization” where you can imagine seeing something in your mind’s eye, and you can imagine hearing it, and you can imagine feeling it, and maybe even tasting and smelling it.

Just imagine this for a second…

… imagine going to your fridge, and opening the door, and finding a large yellow lemon…

… and imagine taking that lemon out of the fridge, and putting it on a cutting board, and taking a large knife and slicing that lemon right in half…

… and imagine looking at one half of that lemon and noticing that you sliced one of the seeds inside in half…

… and now imagine picking that seed out and just seeing a perfectly ripe and juicy lemon…

… and now imagine cutting away the peel carefully, so that now all you are left with is just the juicy lemon…

… and now imagine taking that half a lemon and putting it in your mouth and biting down on it…

Could you imagine that?

Did you mouth water a bit imagining that?

Could you taste, smell, see, feel the lemon? Could you hear the knife cutting the lemon?

It is this type of visualization which I believe can help us to achieve our dreams.

The more we engage in this type of visualization, the faster we can manifest what we desire.

But how do you visualize NOT having a job?

The challenge with trying to do that is that when we try to visualize NOT having a job, the first thing that pops up into our minds is OUR JOBS!

We start thinking and visualizing in great detail all the things we hate about our jobs!

By doing that, we are doing exactly the opposite of what we want to do.

You can’t manifest what you want, by visualizing what you HATE – LOL.

So how do we do this then?

Well, here’s the trick.

When you’re trying to visualize freedom from your job, stop thinking about your job altogether.

Instead pick 3-10 things that you LOVE and ENJOY doing, an visualize yourself doing those things instead.

For example, one thing I love doing is blogging and creating YouTube videos and music so I visualize myself doing that.

Another thing I love doing is hanging out with my wife and my pets so I visualize myself doing that.

Another thing I love doing is building a painting tabletop miniatures so I visualize myself doing that.

See what I mean?

You can’t manifest what you want to be doing with your life, by constantly thinking about what you hate about your job.

So you have to switch things around in your mind… just completely forget about your job, and visualize what you’d enjoy doing instead.

Don’t worry about HOW you’re going to be able to ever quit your job, or replace your income, and just focus on what you want.

People and opportunities will show up in your life which will help you to get there, but first you have to get good at visualizing what you want your life to look like in great detail.

Visualize what your days would be like if you had the financial freedom to no longer have to work a job full time.

Try to engage your imagination the same way you imagined that lemon.

Make it that real, or even more real than that!

When you can do that, things will begin to shift for you very quickly.

But only if you can keep your mind off of what you don’t want, and focused on what you DO want. 🙂

How I Saved 384 Hours and 58 With This One Trick

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I’m a huge training videos junkie.

I love watching training videos of all kinds.

Being part of Empower Network definitely keeps me busy with a tonne of amazing training content related to Blogging and Internet Marketing.

One question I often get asked by people is “Paul, how do you find the time to watch all this training!?”

Well, I have one little secret weapon.

It’s called Enounce MySpeed.

 

Enounce MySpeed is a small utility that you install on your computer which allows you to speed up the speed at which you watch your videos.

You see, the human brain can usually process audio information at about 1.5x – 3.0x the speed that it can speak it.

This means that when you’re listening to an average person speaking, your brain is basically only working at about 25-30% of the speed that it can for processing what it is hearing.

Which also means that you can SPEED UP the speed at which someone is speaking by 10% – 100% or maybe even more and still comprehend EVERYTHING perfectly, as long as you’re paying attention.

Enounce MySpeed is a utility that I use which allows you to do just that.

It allows me to watch a 60 minute video in about 30-35mins.

If you look at the screenshot above you can see that the utility has already saved me over 384 HOUR of time!

That’s almost 10 weeks of working at a 40 hour/week full time job!

Isn’t that crazy?

What’s really cool about Enounce MySpeed is that it allows you to watch streaming videos, such as the ones from YouTube or other streaming services at faster speeds without the voices on those videos sounding like the chipmunks!

When you first start using the utility you may only be able to speed up your videos by about 10% – 20% before you start to miss things, but over time you can condition your mind to hear at 1.5x – 2.0x or even higher speeds.

I’ve been using this software for a while and 2.0x speeds are super easy for me.

When I started, I would usually listen at 1.5x regular speed.

Try it out yourself.

You can get a free trial of Enounce MySpeed by clicking here.

I highly recommend it!