In this day and age, content creation has become one of the major pillars of existing as a human in the modern world. Not to swing the “When I was younger” image, but I still remember vividly how fun it was to film myself in the bathroom mirror, show holiday pictures on SchuelerVZ (the German equivalent of Facebook back in the day ;)) and play out scenes of fan-fiction that I liked, meeting more like-minded people in the process.
Playful and fun
To me, content creation was almost like a natural continuation of my childhood. Barbies and books were replaced by the first personal computers, and the internet slowly turned into a place to have fun in. Yes, those are the words that come to mind when I remember it: fun and playful.
Over the years, it feels like things have taken a detour.
Fast-jump to today, it’s hard to count the amount of ads I’m presented with, telling me to “jump onto the wagon”, “become a content wizard” and “generate powerful leads”. What has once been all fun and games, has now somehow morphed into a strong and indisputably important business tool, without the mastery of which you shouldn’t even bother heading into the world and offering it anything.
Stress overload
More and more coaching clients approach me with topics such as: I know I need to create more content to drive my business forward, but it’s just such a chore. I need a better framework. Better routines. More discipline.
Do you feel the fun being sucked out out of these lines too?
No wonder they are stressed. The more tools are available to all of us, the better our skills get – and while being exposed to all kinds of content creators within the world wide web, the more we realise how much the sky has become the limit. We should be making more reels, more glamour, more narration, better and more advanced storytelling. Should, should, should.
Honestly, I’m fed up with subscribing to that. Basta.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent enough time in my life analysing “how to do things right”, “how to be good enough” and so on, that more often than not, I ended up completely missing the point: simply starting.
The scoop: just get started
You might have heard it a million times before, but more often than not, the only way to get truly good at something is to simply go ahead and make one poor draft after the next. None of them will be perfect. But that’s also not the point. Because through all of them, ever so slowly, will emerge something that no shortcut or masterclass can teach you: your own voice.
Through simply starting where you are and putting your first drafts out there you will learn things that you can’t learn any other way. What you like and what you don’t. What works only in theory and what truly works for you. Who you want to be and who you’re becoming.
Another beautiful side effect of “putting yourself out there” (whatever it means for you) is that you’ll go into interaction with the world. You allow people to read and see what you’re about, have reactions on it. Some things they’ll like and some things they may not, but at the least they’ll get a sense of you: what you’re about and what moves you. And maybe, just maybe, this very thing that you share will be enough to move someone else too, changing one tiny thing about their day and having a ripple-effect on so many more moments in their life, in ways you can’t imagine.
Living out loud
Whenever I imagine what I would do if I had unlimited money, status and love – I always come back to the idea of “Living out loud”.
To me, this means putting out what you’re interested in. Capturing how you see the world. Capturing what it means to be you, here and now. A little in line with Liz Gilbert’s beautiful “Big Magic”, it means creativity in its broadest sense: Writing a blog post, filming and uploading a video, going to a meet-up and allowing yourself to meet new (and possibly like-minded) people, making a coffee and truly pouring your soul and attention to it. It can be creativity your way, and only you are the judge of what it is.
But if there’s something you’re longing to do and it feels a little scary and ticklish and like something big is on the line, chances are, this is your next step. And let’s be honest: perhaps on the other side of this won’t be a crazy amount of followers. Perhaps no more fame, no magic solution. Instead, it may be something way more valuable: the feeling of being alive.
And isn’t that something?