What to do when you fail to meet your expectations.

I’m sure we’ve all had moments where we feel as though we’ve given it everything, “Man this is by far the greatest piece I’ve ever written”; only to have it fall short of expectation.

It’s annoying, disappointing, and utterly demotivating.

But…it’s part of the process.

Sometimes, and I do this way too often, we form expectations of what our creative work will result in; only to have our estimates be crushed.

Doesn’t mean the piece was bad, by any means.

It doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world either.

There’s things we cannot control, and it’s certainly easier said than done — to not worry about the outcome.

It’s part of life, but there’s moments where I’ve just hit publish and not thought at all about the end result — I’m amazed by the response.

For example, I wrote this one whilst I was half asleep and nodded off shortly after — by all accounts, I never expected it to reach the response it did (it still gets views to this day) and I’m deeply grateful for it.

Whilst writing that particular piece, I wasn’t thinking about the “Right Tags”, “Right Title”, or “Right Image”.

I put my thoughts down, hit publish, and fell asleep.

Waking up to a plethora of notifications blew me away; I actually slapped myself to test if I was properly awake.

As I stumbled my way to the bathroom, washed my face and finally collected myself.

I walked back to my computer to check “What the hell, that thing got THAT many responses?”, no explanation for it.

I still can’t explain why it resonated; maybe because I wasn’t writing it for the views, it was brutally honest, and wasn’t worried about the outcome?

All I know is, I hit publish, and took a nap.

Thus, being content with just publishing and not worrying about the outcome too much; grew my ability as a writer, because I was no longer expecting or constantly checking my “Stats”.

I developed a “So what?” attitude to my writing, I’ll put my thoughts down — and if it gets even a single read, I’m satisfied.

No reads, no problem — take a nap.

Thank you for reading.