‘I have to do all of this, over and over?’
I asked myself as I saw the progress bar stuck at 1% on Adobe Premiere, my video editing application. I let out a sigh and felt my shoulders unlock from their usual propped up position. Judging from the cracks I heard from my back I had been at work for at least a few hours, but even this relieving moment of respite wasn’t the end of the content creation process.
Waiting for the video to export, my eyes wandered onto anything that could distract me from the boredom. I queued up all these different websites, waiting for them to load. By the tenth cycle of the screen loading wheel, I realized that the video export process had taken all the resources of the computer and my pages wouldn’t load.
I held my phone up, opening and closing the familiar apps as I had done over and over. I needed an escape. Escape from what though? That question entered my mind for an instant. What am I escaping from? Boredom made this question worth exploring.
I want to escape from situations I don’t want to be in. For example I want to escape from awkward conversations with people I don’t want to talk with. I want to escape the situation when I need to complain in a restaurant. I want to escape from the jiu jitsu competition when I already lost one match.
So what situation do I find myself in right now? It’s the situation of being forced to do this thing called “content creation” over and over again. I need to bring out my high resolution camera. I need to figure out the lighting. I need a script. I need to record until I have all the takes I need. I need to move the files to my computer. I need to edit them in Premiere. I have to export them for all these different platforms in different resolutions. I have to upload them. I have to figure out the captions, thumbnails, and the SEOs. THIS is one rep of content creation, and I have to do this over and over again.
Or do I?
Let’s fast forward to now. It may be my biased view or the effects of my algorithm, but I happen to be the most prolific creator I know. Whether it be writing, videos, courses, or programs, I’m always creating something. In between the time when I was contemplating whether or not to continue this over and over vs. right now, something has changed. Something must have changed, because I can’t imagine myself doing content creation with that kind of a mindset over and over again.
So the “something” that changed is not my stress tolerance. Had stress tolerance been the only thing I worked on, I still wouldn’t be immune to the dreaded phenomenon of burnout. No matter how deep the bucket of water is, as long as water continuously flows the bucket will eventually overflow.
Is the “something” skill improvement? Did I just do enough reps of the above process to make it like second nature to me? Sure, I won’t argue that I regressed in the actual skill of creating things. But the primary feeling I wanted to escape from was feeling like I HAD to do something. Even if that something was dancing like nobody is watching, I still don’t like having to do it like a chore.
What is this thing that changed? And could I get YOU to learn the same, when you are struggling to create something? Especially when you know you want to create, but you keep finding yourself stuck in ideation? When your passion and interest keep fizzling out mid-recording? When you critique your work as mediocre or sub-par during the editing process? When you wonder for the nth time, “should I just give up on this”?
The change is available to you now for $20 in the latest self-study edition of my content creation program The Middle Way. Michelle and I had a blast delivering this throughout September and October and wanted to offer this experience as a self-study course so it’s available to more people.
It’s not just a “mindset shift” that you need to just blindly apply to yourself without any concrete actionable steps. It’s also not just a sequence of action items to follow for best results. Like the name implies, The Middle Way is a holistic pathway to the most important point of everything in the first place: being happy. If you’re going to create content, I want you to create HAPPILY.
I invite you now to take a look at your life, notice what cycles you’re spinning on. Breaking any cycle is hard, I know from my personal experiences. I’m a Buddhist, and we Buddhists specialize in breaking cycles in a happy way. Are you willing to take a happy break from your cycles and loops? It’s just one decision away.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
