WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF SPIRALING FAST INTO A NEGATIVE HEAD SPACE, TRY DOING THIS:

The last week+ have been hard for me personally … I’ve been incredibly sick (we’re talking flu/pneumonia vibes … YUCK), which already sucks because I hate not being able to work and do things I love to do … but even worse? It’s spring break for my kids … which means not only are they home while I’m sick, but I am a big time bummer on their vacation and we can’t do anything fun … which leads me to feel:

DEPRESSED.

There is a certain ‘depressed feeling’ that takes over us when we are sick … do you know what I’m talking about? It’s when the fog of ‘just sleep sleep sleep’ wears off and you are stuck just staring into the void of being stuck in bed … you aren’t well enough to get up and be a part of society, but you aren’t sick enough to sleep all day … and for me, that’s when the sad feelings of ‘woe is me’ start to kick into high gear … and last night, I reached my ROCK BOTTOM of that head space … I started to do this:

SCROLL INSTAGRAM FEEDS OF MY DIRECT COMPETITION AND TELL MYSELF HOW MUCH I SUCK AT WHAT I DO.

Wait what?????? Bad right??? I literally sat there for at least an hour having a pity party of looking at all the websites my direct competitors are designing and decided right then and there:

I SUCK.

And what’s funny is that right before I got sick, I was feeling on top of the world! I currently have the most amazing clients and am designing some of the best work of my career … I know I don’t suck … but in that moment, I defined myself as ‘not good enough’ … and it could have gone much further and gotten much worse … but I stopped myself and did this instead:

I CHECKED OUT OF THE FEEDS OF MY COMPETITORS AND WENT TO MY OWN INSTAGRAM FEED … AND I SCROLLED AND I REMINDED MYSELF OF WHAT I DO.

Look, spiraling out of control into the ‘I suck’ world is easy to do … we can all find someone who is way way better than us at our craft … but guess what: the people you compare yourself to also have moments when they look around (maybe even at your work!!!) and say those daunting words: I’m not good enough.

Last night when I forced myself to scroll my own feed and remind myself of the things I’ve accomplished and the work I’ve created and the clients who have chosen me as their website designer, I regained what I always try to hold onto:

TO BE MY OWN BIGGEST COMPETITION.

Does that sound weird to say? I want to be my own greatest competitor always. I never want to ‘peak’ … I want to see what I did last year and the year before and I want to strive to be different, to come up with new and even more inventive website design ideas, to disrupt this industry even more than I did the previous year … one of my favorite lists for business owner success << is at that link …

Last night when I got tangled up doing a deep dive of my competition and their work, it took me away from that goal … if I’m focusing on their work, I can’t focus on having myself as my biggest competition.

If you are feeling like you are in a negative head space and the voice in your head is saying:

EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING SOMETHING WAY BETTER THAN I AM.

I recommend trying to focus on your last 5 or 10 awesome moments as a business owner … FORCE YOURSELF to meditate on those times … what came before, how you achieved those goals, what you were doing when you accomplished them … and then look at your current work or social media feeds and see if you are on pace to do better now … and if you aren’t, it’s not too late to turn it around!

Here is a list of things I do during a creative rut that might be a good follow up to this post :)

XO~ Heather