Today’s New Thing:

I’m really good at providing a service, but I’m less good at running a business. Today I decided to take some small problem solving actions in the direction of “Search Engine Optimization.” I’m not planning on doing anything weird (!) but, it was time I invested some time in this.

SEO basically just means making it easier for my blog content to be found on Google. For example, I’ve tended to write my blog post titles with people who are already regular readers in mind, without really thinking about whether the titles will rank well in search engine results and entice people who are scanning Google search pages to want to read the article.

As usual, taking problem solving action prompted me to try to identify what specific thoughts have been causing me to avoid doing this.

The two thoughts that I came up with were:

“You’re probably not going to be very good at it”

and

“What if you put a ton of time into it and it makes your search rankings worse rather than better, or doesn’t improve them at all”.

Balanced / Self-Compassionate Alternative:

“Well, no wonder you’ve been putting it off if you’ve been having those thoughts. That’s understandable. But – those thoughts might not be true. They’re just thoughts and might not be reality.

The right thing to do is to give it a go. You might not be good at it, or you might be. If you’re not good at it – no one can be good at everything – but there is every chance you can be good at it.”