Lennon Bone reflects on the pressure creatives feel to be everywhere on social media. She contrasts years of anxious, unfocused hustle with a recent shift toward making videos for love and service instead of ego and FOMO. She's made more videos in three weeks than the previous six months.
So I've kind of fallen on two sides of the fence of this consistency thing at different points in my online presence. And the first being this just going hard, getting really sucked into the hustle mentality and doing it non stop for about a year, being really consistent and not seeing, like seeing some return but not return in the right ways. And mainly that was a lack of focus. That was me not really knowing what I wanted. So that makes sense, right? And then I've been on the other side of this where it's like, okay, now I'm not consistent at all. And I feel really pressured to get back into it. But it almost is too much pressure. There's the paralysis analysis that starts to come into play where it's like, okay, I've done this thing, I've been consistent, it didn't work well. Now on the other side of this, it's like, holy cow, you know, I want to do it well, I want to do it right so I don't have this whole thing again. And recently I've had a bit of a change. And it's been nice. It's been nice. I've made more videos in the last three weeks than I have in the last six, seven months. And that's been. And it's been fun. That's the thing is, it's been fun. And I had a click moment in my head the other night that I want to tell you about because I found this really beneficial. I don't know if you guys know the Calm app. So I use the Calm app for meditation, for guided meditations in the morning. And this Saturday I woke up. And on Saturdays they're my days of rest. So I try not to do anything. I usually sleep in. But on this specific morning, I decided that I wanted to go ahead and wake up and just have some me time, just alone. Before the kiddos got up, before my wife got up. But not forcing myself to do the typical routine. But I still decided to have like my prayer time and meditation time. And during the meditation, she told this story at the end and she's. And I'm going to butcher this, but you'll get the idea. There was an old man where he was talking to his grandson and he told his grandson.
There are two beings in my mind, two wolves that are fighting each other all the time. One.
Represents fear and ego and pride and.
All of these types of things, you know, all the stuff that gets us tied up in ourselves. And the other wolf represents love, caring, patience, kindness, all of these kinds of things right and.
They are always at war with each other. And his grandson said, so which one will win? And the old man said, whichever one that you decide to feed.
And that was a moment. That was a click moment for me in terms of how I'm showing up for people, how I'm showing up here on the channel, how I'm trying to show up in creating content that helps artists and creatives just change the way that they see their own personal worth. And the reason that shifted is because what I found is that the stuff that makes me feel anxious or this pressure is usually revolving around feeding the wolf. That has to do with ego. That has to do with all, like, pride. Because usually where it comes from for me is that this consistently, like, this consistency, hustle thing that we hear about, you know, if I show up in that way, if I show up every day for 60 days, like, I'm proving something to somebody. But what I'm learning is that proving something.
Doesn'T do anything except create more of that same anxiety and want for that type of thing. But when I show up in terms of feeling like, okay, today this video is all about serving somebody. It's about showing up and sharing something that I'm passionate about. It's about creating and sharing love and opportunity and optimism. Then it changes my entire perspective on making a video.
So I just want to ask, you know, a, what. Why do you do what you do? Why do you show up? Why are you trying to build your audience? Why are you trying to build your creative business? And then, B, if.
The stress that you're having is coming from trying to feed the beast, the wrong beast, then outline what that beast looks like. And for me, it's fairly simple, because there's usually a gut feeling that's happening, like it's fear. There's a fear that's in there where I think, if I don't make this thing today, if I don't get on Instagram today, if I don't make sure that I'm testing out TikTok, I'm missing out on something. I'm missing out, right? That fomo. And what I'm slowly starting to understand is that FOMO is typically, that's me trying to feed the wrong beast. That's not me trying to show up and deliver something that is valuable. That's me trying to show up and deliver something that could potentially give me a return, right? And what I'm again learning, slowly but surely, is that the return happens when I give freely, when I truly internally give freely, and when I give freely when I feel good about it like this. Like when I'm making a video that I just want to make that feels right.
I don't care as much about the outcome. I care more about how it impacts somebody. Right? And that's been the shift. And so what I want to tell you is that it's okay to take a break. So I took a break last night. I was going to show up last night, and then I got some work done, and I did it for the workshop that I'm running right now. And it was really good. But it felt like I had. Like, I'd given what I could. And I was like, if I show up and do a video, it's me showing up to feed the wrong beast. And so I didn't do it. And nothing was broken. Nothing changed. People didn't yell at me. Nobody's frustrated. Like, we paint these pictures in our mind that can be really dangerous. And usually if we're painting those pictures that are causing us stress and anxiety, it's because we're feeding the wrong wolf. So take a look at those things. I thought this was a really cool concept. I'm curious what you think about it. And as you're doing this, as you're coming up with content strategies, take a look at this video, because as we start to show up more authentically, we do have opportunity to show some really cool parts of ourselves that make people connect on a deeper level. So check this video out. I think you're gonna find it really valuable, and I will see you in the next one.
