After close to 30,000 sales of my 7 Figure Marketing Copy Guide (thank you!), several years of development, and making just about every mistake you can make I’m finally getting it ready to bring to print! More updates on this soon, but in this post I want to share some key insights about this whole creation process. Insights you can leverage when you’re facing your own “Mt. Everest” sized creation goals.

[Creation Insight #3] Avoid The “Motivation” Trap.

This is a tough one, I constantly have to remind myself of this: Action is the cure to confusion, and man is creating something new and useful confusing. You will find yourself stuck over and over again. You will stare blankly at the screen with tears of overwhelm welling up in your eyes. It happens to anyone who really cares about what they’re creating… At this point we are often tempted to start a side quest of ‘self help advice’ or motivational stimuli to “get us back in action.”

Maybe if I read that book on how Gary V hustled his way to the top again I’ll figure out why I feel stuck…

THIS IS A TRAP.

Gary isn’t gonna get you there, heck Gary would tell you to put down the dang book and get back to work. You’re stuck because you’re about to make a ‘breakthrough’ (hey that’s probably why they’re called that!) – stopping now will kill your momentum.

While there’s nothing wrong with self help or motivational content consumption directly, turning to it (instead of doing the thing we should be doing) is at best escapism, and at worst will completely derail us from what we need to do.

It’s all too easy to rationalize this move – maybe we’ll stumble upon something that can get us going! But I imagine you have seen time and time again that this isn’t the case. You’re simply giving yourself excuse-bate for not doing anything.

The alternative? Remind yourself that the thing you’re resisting doing isn’t about doing it successfully or failing; it’s just about doing!

The act of attempting (fail or succeeding) will teach you everything you need to know about how to do it right, and how to stay motivated to keep going. If you succeed, great, problem solved. If you fail, great, now analyze what’s happened and try a different approach.

More importantly you won’t give into your lesser impulses. You will show your mind that you are in control of your actions, and over time it will become easier and easier. 

Now, you may need a break. Burnout is real, and you need to take care of yourself. If this is the case take a walk, call a friend, eat something to give your brain something to burn. But don’t digress into ‘searching for motivation’, it’s not out there – it’s created, not found.