255: Beating Writer’s Block As a Content Creator For Good - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast I share ways for you as a coach, mentor, trainer, or if you're a content creator, how to monetize using subscriptions, memberships, courses, coaching programs, you name it. If you want to sell digital products online and have success doing so, I've been doing so for 21 years, successfully as the main focus of basically everything that I do, and I want to pass on to you those lessons as well. Now this. I took a little bit of a hiatus off of doing the podcast for a while, and some of you might wonder the reason why. Well, let me explain. I've talked about my therapy journey for a while and how I've been learning and growing in my own mental health. I had one of the biggest therapy breakthroughs of my entire life. But here's what ended up happening was it made it very difficult for me to articulate on camera a lot of my thoughts for a few months. And this was really hard for me. I was like, oh, my goodness. I could do webinars, I could do my coaching calls, but when it came to creating content like this, I felt like a fish out of water. And so what I want to do for you here today is I actually want to help you when it comes to creating organic content and give you some ideas for how to create content, how to not run out of ideas, and also how to help your brain when it comes with writer's block. Idea block. Sometimes we say writer's block, but it's actually like you're blocked with what you say or you're just not sure or confident in what you're saying. Now, one thing that I do want to show you is that we are actually also doubling down on YouTube right now. I just started doing this a couple days ago. We're going to be having multiple videos per week. I've got these kind of cool people, call them the Think Media style thumbnails that are on here. But what they are, each one is going to be an extensive training that's on YouTube for free. Free. That's really. It's like, like a, like beyond the podcast, the podcast, they're not going to be super long episodes. The YouTube channel is actually going to be like mini courses that you can go through and you can check out for free that will walk you through one key aspect of building your business online. And particularly, a lot of people ask us about Facebook ads and paid advertising. And so I'm leaning into that. We're Also going to be talking about the best ways to make money online. We're gonna be talking about how to make sure that your business actually works. Some of the functionalities of running a business, I've been helping building, running businesses, been CEO of businesses for years. And so that's. I'm walking you through on here. And we're gonna really be leaning into using YouTube as a resource for you in the coming months. All right, so this podcast episode, how do you get to the place where you feel confident when it comes to creating content? Right. We want to make sure that it's content that helps make us look good. And that's one of the biggest things that I think that we're. That we're really concerned about is how do we appear like somebody who's trustworthy, some of the people actually want to listen to. How do we manage our reputation in a positive way? Well, if you've ever listened to me for long enough, you know that I have a love hate relationship with the term manage your reputation. I'm starting to understand a bit more of what people mean by it. Your character, being a person of your word, being somebody who actually does what they say they're going to do, having integrity. I'm all about those things. Okay. However, you got to let go of being concerned with what other people think about you all the time. And that can take a while, especially if you're somebody who was traumatized, has CPTSD or whatever diagnoses that maybe people have, and you're dealing with these things internally because of stuff that happened to you. If I told you my story, which maybe another time, we'll share that with you. I don't want to make this about my story. I want to make this about strategies for you that can help. But I experienced a lot of things, not just in childhood, but even as an adult, with friends, with family members, with co workers, with bosses, with people at church that just wired my brain to make it nearly impossible to be the person that I was born to be, that I was called to be, that I wanted to be. And some of you might be listening to this right now, saying, no, Jeremiah, that's just a crutch. You're just making excuses. You were just lazy. You just, you know, you just need to get over yourself. Well, I get that, and I understand that because a lot of people didn't experience the things that I've experienced. And I actually don't talk about 95% of my traumatic experiences to people. Okay. And so again, there are some people that are out there. Not everybody. And I, and I'm starting to see this more and more. Not everybody, but there are some people where it's not that they lack integrity. It's not that they lack discipline. I didn't lack discipline. It's not that they lack drive, motivation, desire, or even the know how at all. It's literally that their brain is wired to make it impossible for them to take action. And so that's why working with a therapist really helped me as far as that goes. And. But there was one key lesson that really helped me the most. And I'm just going to pass this on to you right now so that you don't have to invest weeks and weeks and months into therapy. How many want to know what that is? Right? I'm sure all of you are like, okay, wait, Jeremiah, there was one thing that you learned from a couple years of therapy that you could summarize it all up into one thing. Here's what it is. Tell you. And if you start to apply this, you will see changes in your life. However, I gotta, I gotta leave a little warning here. You may see some things may not go how you want them to go, but eventually they will start to work out. Okay? And I think you're gonna realize why that is. When I tell you what this secret is. It's learning to love yourself the way that other people who made you feel the safest in your entire life loved you and providing that safety for yourself in every moment. To where when I wake up in the morning, to where, when I'm in a tough situation, to where, when I'm at my lowest point. The way that I did this was there's, there's different men and women in my life that have been mentors that I've looked up to, that I've known personally, friends, family members, and I would think about if I was sitting down with them in my hardest moments in time. And I would do this during my hardest moments in time. Side note, there's also a book by Mel Robbins called the High Five Habit. It kind of breaks down a very similar concept of at your darkest moments, giving yourself a high five, congratulating yourself, showing love to yourself in those moments. And you might be saying, jeremiah, what does self love have to do with creating content, coming up with ideas for content? I believe it has everything to do with it because your, your self esteem and what you believe about yourself directly correlates to your output when it comes to your business because you are able to get out of fight or flight you're able to hear your inner voice better, and you're able to really show the world those deeper parts of you that you've been hiding. And that, my friends, is what is effective when it comes to creating content, when it comes to building a business online, is showing those vulnerable parts of you that you have not been willing to show other people for the longest time. For me, there were parts of me that I wasn't willing to show people. I wasn't willing to show up in a certain way. I was constantly in defense, constantly trying to defend my position, trying to prove to other people how smart I was. And people are like, jeremiah, we know you're smart. You don't need to prove it. Isn't that interesting, right? I've actually had to sort of dumb myself down, actually get out of the smartness and get to where it's like, okay, I can just be a normal human that has fun and enjoys life and hangs out like I do with my friends and family, and I don't got to try so hard. And when you get out of the trying so hard moment, you know, there's actually a term in video games. I love video games. As you can tell, there's a term in video game playing called a try hard, and it's sort of a digit. But if I think about it, I've always thought about it, and I'm like, you know what? That's so true is that when you're trying so hard, you're operating out of like, 5 to 10% of your capacity. And this is what I see a lot of people doing when it comes to their business is they're just trying way too hard to do all the stuff, to show up in a way that's gonna work for them. Their need for results ends up demanding of them to try harder, to push harder. And listen, I know that that works for some people. And there are times where you need to lean in, where you're going to have to do the hard things, where you're gonna have to say, you know what? Suck it up, buttercup. Do the tough stuff. Okay? I'm not negating that. I have to do that all the time, literally. Sometimes getting up in the morning is like that. It is. Okay, but in the. In the big picture, when you're struggling to have ideas, especially when you're creating content. For me, I create content mindlessly right now as I'm talking to you right now. And my very best webinars, sales copy campaigns in my business. And content are always done mindlessly to Where I'm not in my thinking brain, but I actually have what a lot of people sometimes call mind, heart coherence. And I'm doing a stream of consciousness type of a thing to where I'm listening to my inner voice and my intuition and instincts all at the same time. And that is what's coming out on camera. Okay? And so when you can get to that place where your inner voice, your intuition and then what you end up typing, speaking, don't have a lag. What's lag? Lag is where. Think of it this way. How many of you all remember the old days with computers or cell phones or like you would open something up on the Internet, right? Dial up Internet and it would take a while for it to load. A lot of us, that's what it's like when it comes to our ideas. We have a lag time and a hesitancy when it comes to implementing our ideas. When in fact what I find and I would challenge you to do. And by the way, gosh, I'm like literally kind of teaching a new way of a lot of the stuff that Mel Robbins teaches people. Mel Robbins is amazing. By the way, how many of y' all love Mel Robbins? I think that like, just follow her content. She's awesome. Not everything she teaches, but that you can't find anybody that you agree with everything they say. But she really talks about like, like this is awesome. The language of lying. How to catch a liar. This is great. This is a good thing that you want to learn, right? 7 signs you have high functioning depression. And by the way, I guarantee you she talks about the fact that like, not everybody's lying. You know, some people have trauma and things like that. Neuroscience, how to end struggle and stress and anxiety. I love any of the stuff that she does with Jay Shetty. You know Jay Shetty's book Think like a Monk? So good. But Mel Robbins books, really a big fan of these. The high five habit. And as well, she has this concept called the five second rule as well. She likes the number five a lot. As you can tell, the five second rule is this, is that when you have an idea or a thought or an instinct to take action on it. Go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then take action on it without thinking, without hesitating. And this, my friends, is one of the number one strategies that I can tell you that. Listen, I listened to Mel's books. I disagreed with like half of everything she said. I listened to Jay's book Think like a Monk. I disagreed with 80% of what he said in it. And then what ended up happening was the 20%, the 30% that I did agree with. I started applying, I started doing, and I started seeing the changes in my life over the course of about three years, ending my addiction with punishment, self punishment, self loathing, disliking myself, and actually learning to like myself. And if you also. My faith is in, in God and, and in Jesus Christ. But I also believe that there are literally also laws of the universe that God created and that have, that he has put in order. It's not that I'm worshiping the universe, I worship the creator of the universe. But there's an order and a structure to how everything is created in creation. And I think that one of those things is the beauty of our minds, our brains, and the fact that we don't fully understand how our brains work. But there are some things that are truths that we can understand. And one of the truths is this, is that when you can learn to hear your inner voice and you end up learning to calm your nervous system down to where you're not in fight or flight, where you're not afraid all the time, where you're not worried what's going to happen if. And answering this question right here, this is a question that I actually got from one of my mentors is what am I trying to avoid by not doing this thing? By acting this way, by speaking this way, by punishing myself, by disliking myself, by overthinking all the stuff before I take action, by hesitating, by having that lag time, by being stuck. Some of us are actually. We find our identity in the hesitation, we find our identity in the stuck place. We find that we feel the best being stuck and that if we became unstuck, it would challenge everything that we believe about ourselves and what we have thought, thought to be true about the world around us. This was the case for me, is that I saw myself as somebody who was very calculated, very well put together, and I had to literally create a Persona in my business with like how I have the design behind me. This is literally on purpose, by the way. I mean, a lot of people in business, they think that this is a sign of a lack of self discipline. No, this is literally on purpose. All of this is designed this way to attract the right clients in my business and to connect with the people that I'm meant to connect with. I've been so curated in how I do everything while creating a veneer, a very fragile veneer that I don't really care that much that I am unconcerned when the truth is that I am one of the most concerned people, probably with how I look, with how I appear, with how I sound to people, with how I'm received by people. Because I know that. I know that. I know that I can impact people and that I know that there's a message inside of me that has to come out, and I'm passionate about it. And if there are things that I can do to make it more effective to do that, I'm going to do them. But I also spent a lot of time around millionaire and multimillionaire coaches and mentors that had millions of followers, people who listened and hung on every word that they had to say, that were incredible, incredible leaders that I followed, that I am friends with. And I look at what do they do differently than what I'm doing? Because if they're at where I want to be, there's something that they know that I don't know yet. And I began to look at that, and I would find they had charisma. They were confident, they were out there. They were bold, they weren't passive. They weren't afraid of what everybody thought about them. And a lot of us are like, well, yeah, they got there, and then they had the confidence. Can I challenge you in this? And this is something that I. It's a hill that I will stand on. You need to believe in yourself first. You need to believe that it's possible for you to succeed. You need to start to see yourself doing the thing before you do it, Start visualizing it and really own it in your being. And anything that comes in the way of that, that's called a block. Okay? So we all have these blocks. And oftentimes, again, this is where a therapist can help. I would say not everybody a therapist works for, and I get that. And it's not that they need that. Some people literally just need to take action and find the blocks and find the triggers and just be like, okay, this is no longer gonna stop me. I'm gonna stop operating in this way. I'm gonna stop reacting. You know, my marriage got better when I stopped reacting and defending myself whenever my wife would point out something that I could improve on. Some of y' all who are married are like, heck, yeah, you. Good on you for learning that, right? Wish I, you know, been, been married. Been with my wife for 10 years. Been. Been married. I think we're coming up on seven years. And wish I knew that on year one. Took me 10 years of struggle to learn that, you know, and now there's thriving, there's peace in our home. It's beautiful. It's an amazing place. It's a place where I'm excited for my kids to grow up in. The house I grew up in was not that way. And that's what I'm creating in my life today. And so can I tell you this? You can grow in skills that you're not good at. You can learn new things that maybe are not your forte. But I want you to start to lean into your strengths. And I think that this is a powerful thing, that we all have inherent strengths, and these are the strengths that show up to the people who really intimately see us, the people who really support us. There's a lot of haters on social media. You're going to get haters just by simply showing up and existing. You can't change that, you can't affect that. You can't avoid that. Okay. In fact, can I challenge you on this? The more haters you get, the better you know that you're on the right track. Now, eventually you'll refine your message to where you get less and less and less. And I have found that to be the case as well. But that also shows that you're in a comfort zone. If you're not getting haters, you're in a comfort zone. And sometimes it's good to be in a holding pattern. Sometimes it's good to sustain what you've built, but other times it's time to push the envelope. It's time to stretch yourself. It's time to do something that you have not felt the most confident in. And I would say for most people, content creation is that for most people it's creating an offer. It might be launching a podcast, putting a book out there, it might be creating a landing page, it might be writing some sales copy, it might be growing your email list. It might just be creating a 60 second video for Instagram. I want to challenge you on this, is that what if you weren't afraid? What if you didn't let fear stop you? And then what if you learned a skill set that I'm going to teach you in about five minutes right now, and then we're going to wrap this up. That's going to help you when you go out there to create content. Let me encourage you on what this is. So for me, whenever I go out there to create content now, and I did this in the beginning and then I stopped doing it because there's so much crap. Crap out there that people say, you shouldn't be doing this. I literally had mentors in my life telling me to not do this. And I'm like. It's literally like the best idea ever is lean into what inspires you when it comes to creating content. I want to challenge you on this, is that when it comes to anything, really, in your business specifically, oftentimes we separate professional from practical from what works. And sometimes it's like, okay, this works, but I'm a professional, so I can't do that thing. And I have learned systematically how to merge them all, how to merge what is effective in my life with what is practical with what is professional. And so for me, what I do is I figure out what lights my soul on fire, makes me excited, stimulates me to the highest degree. And specifically, it's not always the same thing for each moment in time. Okay, so, for instance, different things will stimulate me, depending on what I'm wanting to go do. Okay, let me explain this in practical terms. For me to show up as the best father for my son, there are different things that will inspire that in me. And it takes me usually a couple of minutes when I. When I got to transition from making content like this for you guys to then, you know, gonna go play with my son. They're wait, they're waking up right now. There's a little bit of a transition period for me. I think there's, like, some neuroscience that. That men have a little bit of a longer transition period than women. I've been learning to shorten that transition period. I don't know if that's true or not, though. It kind of sounds like a weird thing that people just say, who knows? But neurologically, I have to transition from one stage to another, and for me, it takes me about five minutes. It used to take me weeks, sometimes months. I would get stuck in a mental loop of a way of operating sometimes for months or weeks, and I would be living in a memory or a feeling or something that I was trying to avoid for the longest time, and I would be stuck there for months. In fact, I just thought of something right now where I've been stuck for almost six months right now at this moment in time that I'm starting to gain clarity over the last couple of days on how to get unstuck out of. It's been one of my things that I've been focusing on in the background, and I've learned that I can transition between different modalities and states of mind more quickly. And here's what's funny. I've actually never like learned this part of it from Tony Robbins or anything like that. A lot of people like, I guess Tony Robbins teaches a lot of this state management. I've heard him talk about that, like on Dr. Oz or things like that. Maybe I need to study more of his stuff on the side of it. But you know, he talks about literally if you just roll your shoulders back for three minutes, your testosterone goes up. And by the way, testosterone is a great hormone in your body that creates confidence. It's a powerful thing, it's a good thing for you. And so literally, if you're not feeling confident, just one thing you can do is roll your shoulders back, hold your chest out and hold that and kind of stand there. Have you ever noticed, like bodybuilder guys, they walk around like this. It's because it increases that testosterone by doing that. And literally the body is really just a combination of neurochemicals, hormones and all of that. And did you know that media can trigger your hormones differently? I have proof of this. And I realized the proof came from a place that most people don't want to talk about. How many y' all know that there are certain content on the Internet that is adult rated as well as certain books, romance novels, things like that that have adult rated material. And you feel a certain way if you read or consume that content, your hormones are being triggered by the content. And I thought about this, my brain was like, wait a sec, social media is doing this. If I see a baby versus a cat, video versus a video of a sports car versus something about a political candidate that I don't agree with, I feel a certain way and I realize my hormones are being manipulated even by the feed, by social media, right? And then I realized that literally everything in our world around us creates stimulus that triggers different internal chemical responses inside of our bodies. You don't need to understand the science behind it. I'm going to make it real practical for you. Find stuff that makes you feel the most excited, the most inspired and the happiest. And oftentimes this is something that I've noticed that a lot of content creators, coaches, mentors and trainers don't do. They they confidently say, I don't consume video games, I don't watch movies, I don't watch TV shows. And I challenge them to say, you know what? You're going to become better at the things that you're wanting to become better at by possibly leaning into different forms of media that can trigger and Inspire different sort of internal neurological and chemical effects for you. So here's how I do this. Sometimes if I'm really, really struggling to create a certain piece of content. Yesterday I had to make a training on video editing. Absolutely hated doing it. So I started watching content on my TV on YouTube. I opened up a game on my phone and started doing strategic distractions of stuff that I knew would make me feel happy temporarily. And I. And I've trained myself that as soon as I feel that dopamine hit and that happiness from certain forms of media or things like that, that then immediately I turn the media off. And this is the part that I think most people, they don't understand because they get sucked into the media and they go deeper and deeper and deeper, and they get really addicted to it. And then they're watching 10 episodes of a TV show, and then they haven't made their. You don't want to do that. Sometimes I'll literally watch like 10 minutes of a TV show. It might be a documentary on soccer players. And I'm watching the coach lead the players, and I'm getting amped up and I'm getting excited about them, what they're doing. Or I'll watch race car drivers or baseball players. Sports helps me a lot, things like that. And then it starts triggering ideas in my brain for the content that I want to create. And I. As soon as I start getting those ideas of how I want to start the content, I turn off the entertainment and I immediately press record on the content. I literally did that before this podcast episode. And what that does is it gets me into that brain heart coherence state to where I'm unstuck, and I'm excited to take action, and I'm no longer afraid or worried to do the things that I've been avoiding. I even started doing this in my. In my daily life to make me more productive when it comes to things like washing the dishes or cleaning things in my house. I noticed that certain types of music would trigger me into being more likely to want to clean my house. And then I realized that some of that music was actually related to some of the favorite genres of music that I had when I was younger. And so I just want to challenge you in this, that sometimes becoming more whimsical, becoming more playful, learning how to tap into having more fun is actually the key to you feeling more confident, showing up as your best self, and not being so stuck or hesitant all the time. You might hesitate to do what I just said in this video to Consume some form of media or content. One of the, probably one of the safest ways that we all use is scrolling social media. You know, we talk about how that's a dangerous thing and it's addictive and it's something that we want to be careful of, but you can actually strategically use it. If you're feeling anxious about making content, you can scroll social media a little bit. I'll do it for five minutes. And then as soon as I'm no longer feeling anxious, I turn it off, I put the phone down, and then I go do the thing that I've been procrastinating on. And if I still can't do the thing, I start asking myself in my brain, okay, what do I really want to do right now? You know, I saw, I saw a post that says that, you know, a writer who has writer's block always comes up with distractions. And listen, distraction is one of the number one things that actually stops us from succeeding. I'm not talking about actually distracting yourself with stuff. What I'm talking about is using. Basically they talk, they talk about this when it comes to like drugs and stuff, microdosing distraction, so weird, but like, it's actually what it is. We're micro consuming distractions in order to trigger just enough of the neurological and chemistry inside of our bodies to then drive ourselves and pivot ourselves to go in a direction that's going to help us do the things that are going to help us. And so this is something I've been using, I've been doing. It has made me way more effective in my marriage, made me a better husband. It's made me more effective in my home, made me more organized. It's made me much better as a coach, as a mentor, as somebody who I now feel super confident in my time management. I'm literally getting more done in less time by learning to just enjoy life more, to not be so stuck on trying to do everything perfect, to not hesitating before I take action and then utilizing different forms of media, whether it be fiction, sometimes it's nonfiction. There's an incredible nonfiction book that I'm reading right now by an author. Her name is Michelle Oshman. Right here. What would you do if you weren't afraid? Really, really great book that I'm reading right now. Discover a life filled with purpose and joy through. Through the secrets of Jewish wisdom. And by the way, some of what I just shared here today, I even learned from that book this week, which is amazing. Literally, lessons that I learned. Reading that book inspired Me, stuff that I knew inside of me that I'm feeling more and more confident in sharing with people because it was validated by hearing another leader that I respected and wanted to listen to share it. Okay, so some of you, you've not listened to any audio books, you've not consumed any content. Listen, if you don't want to consume entertainment, start where I started. Listen to podcasts. Listen to this podcast. Even the previous episodes of the podcast are absolutely incredible. They will inspire you. They will give you ideas and clarity and focus. This podcast right here could literally be the catalyst for you to go to the next level in your business to help inspire you, because then you get to be around my energy, and you get to attach to this energy, and then what ends up happening is your energy starts mirroring this. The mirror neurons in your brain start firing, and then you start showing up in that way when you start creating content as well. And so my goal is this, is I want you to actually get to where you can create content mindlessly, to where you're not overthinking the process of making content, to where you feel inspired to say things. You're not hesitant. You're willing to even say the crazy things. You're even willing to say stuff that maybe you don't have the most evidence or proof for. Can I tell you that? And you're willing to say, hey, listen, I'm not an expert in this. These are my experiences. It's one of the best ways that I find that if I don't have, like, clerical evidence for something. Right. I said it a few times in this podcast. I'm not an expert in a lot of the neuroscience stuff like this, but there's a few things that I know that are true, and I was able to just share them from the perspective of what I've learned in my experiences with you. And so we don't need to be afraid anymore. We don't need to operate out of fear and worry and shame and guilt. And when you can get out of that shame, fear, worry and guilt cycle, you become more effective. This is what ends up happening. We're trying to maintain our sense of safety, the time, because whenever we felt shamed or guilty or afraid, we felt unsafe. And then oftentimes, when it comes to building our business, growing our business, creating the content that we want to create, we end up operating in this cycle of shame, guilt, fear that then wires us to where we're trying to control that. We're trying to control the perceptions of us. We're trying to manage and maintain other people's opinions of us. We're trying to manage our reputation way too closely, way too tightly. Right. Like I said, character is important. Integrity is important. Being a person that does the things that they say they're going to do is important. You need to start doing those things. Absolutely. But you also need to do the stuff that you've been avoiding, that you've been procrastinating. And I can tell you right now, like, so confidently, if you can get this, start loving yourself the way that the most protective and safe person in your life showed love to you and protection to you. And wrap your arms around yourself in a hug anytime you feel unsafe. Watch what happens. It'll impact you in a positive way and you will see incredible positive changes in your life. Life. All right, everybody. This has been the Grow youw Life podcast and this has helped you share it with somebody. We got an incredible episode coming up here that I did with one of my clients as well as an incredible man. I'm not going to blow it all for you right now. But what it is, we had an incredible conversation that we recorded this past week with. It was a three way conversation that we had online all about deeper ways to implement a lot of what I talked about here today. It's like, it's like step two to what I just talked about. And I think you're gonna really like it next week. So plug in, stay plugged in, follow me on YouTube, watch the content, and start implementing and building your business. I believe you can do it. I don't just say that. I know that if you start applying this stuff, you're gonna see changes in your life. All right, talk soon, everybody.