Reclaim Monday morning, or how to escape from past success.

My love/hate relationship with Mondays.

I write this on Monday morning. My office is behind a beauty salon, which is closed on Mondays. I love Mondays because it’s quiet. I can think easily without having to block out the sound of hair dryers, clippers or local gossip.

Monday also seems to be the day I face my fears head on. Monday is when all the stats for The Collective reset. I try to evaluate reader stats weekly, monthly and quarterly rather than daily.

Your Mondays may be a different day of the week. Your Monday may not be a day, but a looming deadline. You Monday may be your best sale of the week, month, year. Your Monday may be the great conversation with your trouble employee, child, spouse.

Monday is the typical day I live what I term 2nd Novel Prison.

2nd Novel Prison

Escaping 2nd Novel Prison is the title of a post from The Accidental Creative. The title is what I love best about the entire post. It sums up my fear.

The writer explains how he has written his first novel, and now is in the process of attempting to finish the follow-up. He’s swallowed at times by fear. Fear it won’t be as good as the first. Fear it won’t be received by his fans. Fear it will be a failure.

This is the damning thing about success.

More pointedly, it’s the damning thing about placing personal worth in success.

Last week was the most successful week in terms of visits, visitors and page views on The Collective. Great news! Right?

It should be great news, but Fear tells me it’s horrible news.

Fear says the reason it was so great was Lori Nordstrom sent out an email linking to her post (thanks Lori!). Fear says too many of the page views were from the same visitors reading all of Amy Knollmeyer’s posts on her successful senior photo biz (thanks Amy!). Fear says I just was lucky.

Fear says I won’t be able to recreate that success this week or this month. Fear says I can’t.

Practicing what I preach.

My post from this Monday (written last week), shared 4 steps to take when you feel like quitting. It probably is just as accurate to say 4 steps to take when you are afraid. A quick summary:

1. Know yourself.
2. Step back and evaluate.
3. Do what your passionate about.
4. Expect resistance & crash.

Step 1. If I allow it, I can throw myself into depression over these fears. I know this.

Step 2. This post is me stepping back. It’s part of evaluating what’s happening, so I can move forward.

Step 3. I believe in this website, business, and purpose, so I’m writing.

Step 4. The fear that comes from 2nd novel prison is resistance. It’s the push against creativity that says I’m not good enough. It’s the voice inside my head that says I can’t. I can. I just have to push forward and continue. The main concept of this step comes from the book Do the Work by Steven Pressfield. I highly recommend it.

My Purpose

The purpose of The Collective is my purpose. Bring life…in everything I do. Photography. Business. Life.

So today, I bring life.

I bring you life by facing my fears, moving forward, and creating this post. If nothing else, I want to show you 1 thing.

You can do it too.

header image courtesy of stock.xchng

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