How to Beat a Block and Build Your Personal Brand with Daily Writing in 30 Days?

Let's start with a big question.

What's the highest leverage habit in personal development?

Daily writing.

I have tried daily writing before. Enough times to conclude that it wasn't for me. Always starting as an excited horny teenage boy, and then giving up when it became too difficult. Before I would know it, I was back to where I started.

Part of the reason was that I had always started alone. With zero accountability. In a way, I was doomed, to begin with.

All the fancy dishes I made were rotting in my kitchen, nobody wanting to taste it. It's a terrible metaphor for how nobody was reading what I was writing.

I don't know what else to say, except telling you what fixed the hard bit.

A couple of years ago, in 2018, I came across 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron, where she revealed the secret to a clearer mind, better ideas and less anxiety about the creative life.

The glorious secret was Morning Pages.

It does sound like something Robin Sharma would come up with, as a part of your new transforming morning routine. Although it's Cameron this time.

Two years ago when I first read that Morning Pages can help me renovate my creative soul, I threw two pairs of my dirty underwear in the bin and burned them.

It was my way of saying, "Fuck You! Cameron. Don't promise me a transformation. Give me the truth."

Part of the aggression was because there weren't many rules around Morning Pages. It's a three pages long stream of consciousness. Ideally the first thing in the morning--in my case, with my early morning black coffee.

Morning Pages are not high art. Just put down your thoughts for three pages and then come back tomorrow. There is nothing more to it than that.

If you haven't tried Morning Pages, the clear question would be how putting down my daily rants on my life could unlock the chain of my mind. How would it unleash the creative monster in me?

Here is a short answer. Morning pages help you discover your creative side. It centres you and clears your mind, which makes you less anxious. You generate better ideas. You get out of the block. It gets you going. It works.

God bless Cameron for that.

I have been writing Morning Pages for more than two years now. Of course, I haven't been consistent, especially in the past six months, but it has already done the magic Cameron has intended.

Morning Pages are the mighty Red pill that breaks the spiral of your personal Matrix. This is where the sex scene between Neo and Trinity starts.

I found the best way to do it is by making a Notebook on Evernote. I have named the notebook 'Constant Life,' which does sound like I am tired of it.

In the initial days, the pages on Constant Life were as useless as the first draft of your first fiction story. The thoughts were complex. My incapability to translate my emotions were apparent. I mostly talked about the physical world, completely ignoring how I was feeling, how my relationship with work was turning out.

Any MFA program in the country could have used those pages as an example of absolute bad writing.

The real emotions were absent from the pages. What was the cause?

I think it was just the struggle of initial days of translating emotions on to the pages.

But sooner than l thought, my Morning Pages assumed a form of sanity. They became more organized, almost as if I was planning my days and weeks by writing about them. I would also use the Morning Page to repeat the lessons that I had learned over the days, and try to put them down so I could revisit them.

Over the months, it transformed into a side project where I was documenting my life, structuring it, prioritizing tasks. Instead of making it a mindless activity where I ranted on why my clients were delaying my payments, which in itself is not the worse topic. Noted.

Anyway, that's the story of how I beat the block. And once I could write, I started my own personal brand. It's called Seasonal Friend, a freelance content marketing service specialized in copywriting, editing, and marketing strategy for small to medium-sized businesses.

Through my personal brand, I helped tens of clients over the last two years and ghostwritten hundreds of articles to establish unknown names into influencers.

It's ironical how I help my clients with their audience and haven't been working on my own. The old trap of preaching vs setting an example.

So I decided to demonstrate how you can grow your personal brand in 30 days, and double your income with consistent publishing on any platform of your choice.

The idea is simple. Publish one piece of thoughtful content, every day for the next 30 days. Your aim here is to show your commitment to your art.

Here you share value through free content to attract potential prospects and convert these prospects into buyers of your service.

A professional writer knows how consistent publishing is a complementary process that goes hand in hand with creating.

Consistent publishing, not the flowery writing, is what impresses the editors, clients and bosses.

Also, I was serious when I said you shouldn't start alone. You need a tribe.

Many online groups and communities encourage people to build a daily online writing habit and publish new content every single day. Pick one and stick to it.

My current favourite is Ship 30 for 30, where tens of online writers have come together to discover the magic of daily publishing. In fact, I got my own kick from them. To do this.

If you need resources for writing, editing and growing online, you can go to Masterclass, where they teach you the skills to write consistently.

Or if you think you're ready enough, we can start it together, here.

A personal brand is not the number of blog subscribers or LinkedIn followers you have managed to gather over the years. Those are poor metrics, especially when you don't have that many subscribers. So let's reframe the definition to accommodate more of us.

A meaningful personal brand is a way of providing value to the people in your industry so people could start associating your name with the solutions to the problems they face. That's how you establish thought leadership in your niche(s).

Building a personal brand takes a lot of work. But if you're ready, let's start today. Or just sit and witness my 30 days streak and see if it really works.

I recently read on a YouTube comment that we cannot use tomorrow unless we use what we have today.

Let's use what we have today.

Have a question or want help with your content marketing? You can directly message me to get in touch. Seasonal Friend helps small businesses in creating useful content--the kind that helps businesses reach their goals.