If there's something I've learned about life, it is that it doesn't happen in a straight line!
Lately, it feels like nothing has been going well. Our lives are filled with unexpected expenses, bills are piling up, and it seems like we are working forever harder for fewer returns.
No, I'm not talking about Steemit here, I'm talking about the external life of daily work and paying bills.
As a self-employed person I'm pretty deep down inside the numbers and statistics of how my home businesses are doing, from year to year.
In the last 60 days or so, I have made more new product and services available for sale then I have an any previous 60 day period in my 30 years of being self-employed, yet the sales results from that same period are among the poorest I can remember.
It's like people love the stuff, but they are just not buying it.
Now, let me assure you that this post is not about crying in my soup about how bad things are going but rather an invitation to explore how we stay positive about what we're doing when we are busting our butts and yet getting absolutely no results.
In this day and age of instant gratification, many people find it very difficult to struggle for a prolonged period of time even though that struggle may simply be part of the normal business and life cycle.
Maybe the closest I can relate it to here in this environment of blockchain social media and cryptocurrency is the way we sit around and try to stay inspired to create content even though the Steem token basically has been going sideways and/or down for a really really long time.
And I will be the first to admit that it's very easy to fall into a pattern of just giving up because it seems like nothing good is happening.
Counterintuitive as it might sound, bad times are actually the best times to work really hard at whatever business or project you're into!
Most of the reason for this can be attributed to the fact that when times are bad a lot of our peers are in fact going to give up and leave the scene. If you're selling something, that means that it might still be harder to sell than during good times, but you have a larger share of the market to call your own. On a venue like Steemit it means that fewer people might be publishing because they don't see the reward as being particularly significant anymore so they leave, but that leaves those who are still here as a smaller number participating in sharing the same pot.
What we can do during difficult times is not necessarily build a huge success, but lay the groundwork for having a far greater relative success when things turn around.
I have to remind myself of this whenever I start to feel down and like I just can't be bothered to show up every day, anymore. And I will be the first to admit that some days I have to dig really deep in order to pull myself together and show up!
Even if it feels like nothing is going our way I like to think that if we continue to work diligently we'll end up building enough of a — you might call it— overstock to where you're going to reach "critical mass" and then your desired results will suddenly arrive in a great flood when the markets start going up.
Until then, we just have to be patient and keep going!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
How about you? Are you good at keeping going even when things feel negative ALL the time? Or are you more inclined to stop and wait for the trend to turn around? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)
Created at 2024.10.21 01:41 PDT
x866/2100