“The ones who need to hear it will hear you” – Joshua Sprague
Happy New Year! I haven’t written in a while due to the end of 2022 being quite challenging for me. I experienced a personal loss and went through a sort of mini-depression. I feel like I am out the other side of it now. It took a while but I never stay down for too long. That has always been one of my gifts in fact! No matter what life throws at me, or how many challenges I face, I always get back up again. The inner light in me can never be extinguished. No matter how many people may try to dim it and believe me, there has been many! My strength is a blessing.
I lost my motivation to write towards the end of the year while I was grieving. Initially, when I first started writing the book proposal for my upcoming book, my mind was brimming with ideas and I was inspired and enthusiastic about my new website and YouTube channel to promote my platform. I felt like there was never enough time in the day! As the year progressed, I became a bit overwhelmed with everything and doubts started creeping in. It started to dawn on me the length of time it would take to create a solid platform and the volume of work needed to create content. There is a lot of effort that goes on behind the scenes. Creating, planning and developing content is no easy task, not to mention the bulk of research needed to create a book proposal such as statistics and competitive analysis.
When I faced a recent deeply sad personal circumstance at the end of the year, my enthusiasm dwindled away and I lost my drive for a while. I didn’t write anything for over three months! Now that it’s a whole new year, I’ve made a decision to get going again and finish what I started. It wasn’t easy to push myself to start writing again and creating new schedules and goals but I did it. What initially inspired me to get going again was an idea I read in a weekly email I receive from James Clear who wrote the excellent book ‘Atomic Habits’. He said, “It only takes five minutes to break the cycle. Five minutes of exercise and you are back on the path. Five minutes of writing and the manuscript is moving forward again. Five minutes of conversation and the relationship is restored. It doesn’t take much to feel good again.” As soon as I read that, I thought, “He’s so right!”
I tried exercising for five minutes to start with and did a few bicep and triceps exercises in the house with some hand weights. Once I started, I wanted to keep going and lasted a whole hour exercising. Now I am back at the gym four times a week, feeling good and watching my energy levels return. It’s so good after a day of work to get back into my body and give my mind a rest. My teaching job role requires a lot of thinking and analysis and my head can feel so ‘busy’ at times. Sometimes I have to force myself to the gym, as I can feel tired at the end of the working day after sharing my time and energy with so many people (I’m a natural introvert at heart) but I never regret going to the gym, not once! I feel so much better afterwards. My mood lifts and my body feels energised.
This new year has allowed me to feel like I’m starting fresh again. Ready to commit and be consistent with my goals. That’s all that’s required for anyone to succeed. Commitment and consistency. My mind is overflowing with ideas about new content, topics to write about for my blog, ideas to add to newsletters and YouTube video creations. I have to write them all down as my mind flows so fast from one topic to the next, I can’t keep up with myself. Once the desire in me starts building, it is unstoppable.
I have recently been contemplating how finding ideas and inspiration isn’t what the problem is for me, it’s getting it down on paper and into something solid and usable. I need to ‘download’ all this ‘head information’ and make it into something tangible. This is where the effort part is needed. It takes so much time to do it but I know it will be worth it overall. “Rome wasn’t built in a day” so the saying goes!
I have learned from other people’s vulnerability and openness too. People, who have tried and failed, then tried again and succeeded. A friend of mine who I haven’t spoken to for years has recently had some success via YouTube. He initially didn’t get many subscribers with his first channel so deleted it and started two more channels that have been a massive success. His experience has inspired me to start a second YouTube channel called ‘Body Talks’ which is science based and will include lots of information on the human body and all the body systems such as the cardiovascular, endocrine and immune systems. There are so many people out there studying various courses such as nursing, healthcare, physiology, anatomy and science, to name but a few! I am hoping they will find my new channel helpful and interesting and it may draw some of them towards my other personal YouTube channel to help promote my book.
You can visit my new YouTube channel ‘Body Talks’ by clicking on the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcv9AXaBUAIVmeoDAM5bZpw
I recently heard from another person that he occasionally gets messages from people saying how they don’t like his emails or that he emails too much to promote his business. He said for every message he receives with a negative comment there are hundreds of messages saying how much they love his content and how they joyfully anticipate the next one. His take home message was that you can’t please everyone so just keep showing up, speaking your truth and doing your best to promote yourself and what you have to offer. His message was exactly what I needed to hear as I received negative feedback from one of my videos on my personal channel and it put me off posting anymore. I took the comments too personally and I have to remember that people are entitled to their own opinion and I shouldn’t let it affect me. I need to stop worrying about what other people think about me! I can’t change that. The only thing I have control over is how I think about myself.
Another friend of mine who promotes spirituality and new age concepts and who has been tremendously successful in his business says he has received a few negative and hateful messages from ‘keyboard warriors’ but he doesn’t let it hold him back or stop him from living his truth and sharing what he knows. I love that! It helps me to know that there are wonderful people out there who want to help others and even they get negative feedback from some people. People who probably don’t want to help or inspire others and are just sitting at home not doing anything with their lives. Therefore, my message to myself and anyone reading this is to keep being yourself, keep showing up, keep pushing ahead no matter what. Those that need to hear your messages will be drawn to you and it’s those people you want to reach. Forget the rest.
I’d like to encourage anyone else out there who may be struggling to feel inspired or excited about their life, plans, projects or anything else that has fallen to the wayside to just keep going! Read the above quote by James Clear, write it down and stick it to your fridge, just as I did! It truly does work! You just have to push past the first five minutes and your back on track, I promise! My two main points of focus for 2023 are ‘commitment’ and ‘consistency’. Those are the only two things that have been standing in my way. I invite anyone reading this blog to examine what has been standing in your way of achieving your dreams and aspirations. Contemplate where you are now and where you ideally want to be by the end of this year. How can you make that a reality? It is the start of a whole new year. There is really no other better time than now to get started. Do it now!
Lots of love
Thureya x
You can visit my personal YouTube channel by clicking the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcv9AXaBUAIVmeoDAM5bZpw
You can visit my new YouTube channel ‘Body Talks’ by clicking on the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcv9AXaBUAIVmeoDAM5bZpw
Find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/thureyaroberts/
Find me on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/thureya.roberts/