Are you creating… or coasting?

A few years ago, I realized something.

I’m also reminded of it time and time again.

See, at the time, I still owned my original tech site – PCMech.com. But, the site was past it’s prime. The niche had changed quite a bit. Google had kicked the site around. Overall, it was just more difficult. Still making money and doing it’s thing, but… coasting.

More importantly, though…

I wasn’t interested. The site was coasting because I wasn’t particularly interested anymore. I was tired of the niche. Where my real interest was was with the Blog Marketing Academy.

What it came down to was…

I wasn’t CREATING anymore.

We tend to think about the cycle of life as birth, change, then death. The cycle is:

1. It starts.
2. It persists.
3. It dies.

Whether it be our physical bodies, a business, a family, a blog… the same cycle applies.

But, I think the cycle is actually a wee bit different than that. It is…

• Initial moment of create. (The decision).
• Continual creation.
• The moment where you STOP creating, or create something counter.
• It dies.

In other words, the creation isn’t just the moment you start something. That creation must continue. Over time, you are taking constant, continual action to CREATE that thing in the vision that you desire. At some point, though, you either stop creating (aka begin “coasting”) or you begin creating something else. And, at that moment, the dying process begins.

Does that make sense?

Our bodies go through this. The body is born. But, then throughout life, we have to constantly create our healthy body by taking care of it. If you ignore that or create something else (an unhealthy body), then you’ll get it. Until you die.

Relationships work this way, too. Two people meet and there’s that initial spark. The relationship blossoms because both parties are creating it by dating, etc. Perhaps they get married. But later… husband and wife stop creating. They… coast. Or, sadly, one of them does something to create something ELSE… and eventually the whole thing falls apart.

Our businesses and blogs run on the same cycle.

For our blogs and businesses to do well, we must be continually CREATING them.

Like an artist creating a beautiful painting, we must have the same mentality with our businesses. We’re creating them, every day. We’re shaping and molding them into the visions we have decided upon.

We build our businesses like an artist creates a work of art.

Create, create, create.

Until…

You stop creating. Or, you get busy creating something else. And there, the dream dies.

That’s what coasting does.

And that’s what happened to my tech site.

Once this realization set in, I decided it was time to bail out. I had to stop pretending I wanted this site. I had stopped creating it because I wasn’t interested anymore. I was creating the Blog Marketing Academy instead.

So, I sold that site. I didn’t want it to die, but it would have with me because I decided I was done creating it.

Are you CREATING what you want?

Are you creating it when the same passion you had when you originally started it? Are you, every day, approaching it in a spirit of an artist and crafting it in the vision you want it to be?

OR…

Are you coasting?

– David