I was reading a post by @stellabelle who's title started out with "Money Cannot Replace Integrity" and it gave me the idea for this post. Her post has the focus of using our Steem Power on bots instead of voting for a well-made post. It is an interesting read so check it out when you have time. Integrity is what we all should aim for and her post has a great point of view on voting, money, and Steem.
The Pits
We all want fulfillment in all areas of our life but fall into the pits. These pits are the temptations we have that are selfish in nature. The biggest one within Steem is greed and the love of money. We all need money and money is not evil. Many people misquote the Bible to say that money is the root of all evil but this is not true.
The verse is 1 Timothy 6:10, and it says:
For the love of money is the root of all evil...
It is the love of money that is the issue not money itself.
Since Steem is open with how much money a person makes on every post, it is easy to make the money our focus. This will not fulfill us as bloggers and many of us may never earn more than a few dollars on our work. This pit will swallow us up faster than you can believe and the climb out is long and hard.
When we give the motive of financial gain power over our work we lose. We could even see the money rolling in, our Steem Power getting puffed up, and we are no longer considered a minnow. It will feel great! However, as we write in this new found influx of money we become unsatisfied with what was once a good payout.
The pit swallows us faster.
Now we write only what we think will pull the most cash instead of what will have the most benefit on the community. We drop what we love to write about and put the pen to paper just to better our chances at another dollar's worth of steem. This gets worse and worse as we fall through the pit until we hit the bottom.
At the bottom, people find out our motive changed from genuine to selfish. They no longer trust us or our actions within the platform. Best case we can climb out of the pit by showing genuine sorrow and the desire to write to our strengths again. We could reject all monetary kick back while we rebuild our brand.
There is always the chance that the walls of the pit are too slick for us to climb out. If this is the case our blogging career is over and it is time to move on. Taking these lessons with us on our next adventure whatever it may be. This is what we want to avoid and while we can never please everyone we should do what we can to be the best version of ourselves.
Five Steps To Fulfillment
Purpose
The first is to have a purpose with what you are blogging about. This needs to be something you will not get sick of writing about. What are the passions you go back too year after year? If you are doing creative writing this is a little different but you still need to define your passion.
That way when the funds don't flow one day you won't panic. Our purpose gives us the drive to continue creating even when no one will read. Steem is a unique place with a lot of great people but there will still be days when the up-votes seem dry.
Goals
Once you have your purpose figured out, it is time to set goals for your blog. These are up to you and what you want to get as you give your all to the readers. Don't set up-vote, comment, follower, or dollar goals. These type of metrics are out of your control and make lousy goals whether short or long term.
Setting goals of this manner will only leave you discouraged when you see little movement. Let alone when a person similar to you in some fashion looks to be gaining these statistics faster. A good goal is one such as "I will post three days a week for a month" or "I want each post to be five hundred words long".
Honesty
We all know it is not good to lie and being lied too sucks. So it is not a good idea to lie in your posts but let's take this a step further. Honesty is a deep concept the more you look at how we use it in our day to day. It is more of a personality trait than not lying.
When you write, do it as you. Unless you are ghost authoring or portraying a character. Use you tone of voice and the language you would if talking to a friend. I don't mean your native language, there is no issue writing in English if you speak Spanish. What I mean is the word choice. Don't sit there and find a better word if the one you would use naturally fits the bill. This is different when working on a creative piece like poetry or a story.
Humbleness
Humbleness is easy to have when just starting out but will get more difficult as your influence increases. As humans it is easy to become full of pride when we see the numbers climb. I am in this situation now with my podcast. Some days the show gets over a thousand listens. Talk about nuts since I started a little over a month ago. It helps me stay humble to remember that these numbers only exist because of the people listening. Without them I am just talking to myself.
Compassion
We talked about this in great detail in the post called "Without Compassion You Will Never Succeed" so check that out if you want to dig deep on the topic. However, to quote myself:
I am not a big player on steem and you might not be but that's all right. You don't have to be huge to help people but you must show compassion when you write. This will happen by thinking of the person spending their valuable time reading your work.
People are taking time out of their day to read what you said. Whether in a story, poem, or educational post we must keep in mind that no one is obligated to read our work. Write for people not for money.
Hey Thanks!
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or feed back you know where the comment section is. I'm also always open to direct messages on all the platforms out there so reach out! Oh, and if you have a topic you'd like me to cover please let me know and I'll add it to the list.
<< J. R. >>
Other Steem Exclusives:
Formatting: Tested Ways To Improve Your Content
Jealousy: How to tame the green-eyed monster.
Forgiveness: The Crucial Virtue
Criticism & Opinions: How to conquer your emotional dragons
Without Compassion You Will Never Succeed
Rocket Yourself To Genuine Growth
You Need More Patience