Thursday 18 December 2014

Finding Your Feet in the Blogging World

Friends come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.  Some are small and perfectly formed; some are tall and can help you pop the star on top of your Christmas tree.  Other friends are a collage of pixels crammed into a postage stamp sized photograph – yes, I’m talking about our online friends.  Tweeters, bloggers and our Facebook friends are just as important as our face to face contacts.

This blog will celebrate its second birthday on the 1st January 2015, and its success is thanks to a mixture of people.  My holistic health spa clients who enjoy my ramblings, my family who gets to find out what I’ve been up to and my friends who support me in everything I do.  Then there are my fellow bloggers; the army of online buddies I have made along my journey.  A ‘like’ here, a ‘comment’ there, a re-blog, a Facebook share and a tweet.  The blogging community is one of the most supportive groups I have ever had the privilege to be a part of.  If you were contemplating starting a blog as a New Year Resolution – don’t think, just do!

Over the past two years, I have watched my fellow bloggers closely.  I have read their posts and commented, I’ve shared their links and words of wisdom.  In return, they have reciprocated and taught me how to improve my content and marketing.

 

“When the student is ready the Teacher will appear.” The Buddha.

In 2013, this blog was home to my crazy year of challenges.  Twelve New Year Resolutions completed over twelve months.  From fighting flab to zip wiring through Sherwood Forest.  It was a whirlwind of blogging content and became the basis of my debut non-fiction book, How I Changed My Life in a Year.

In 2014, my challenges were over but I was having so much fun blogging that I didn’t want it to end.  I spent a year sharing my interests and writing accomplishments.  It was fun but lacked direction and in recent weeks I have been pondering!  I didn’t even know I could ponder and yet here I was pondering!  What was next for Resolution Challenge?

I turned once more to my online friends.  My ‘favourite blog’ list is quite varied; I follow many authors and writing blogs, and I enjoy personal development and inspirational blogs.  I have also been known to frequent the occasional beauty blog.  One thing they all have in common – they know where they belong, and they offer their readers a perfected product.

My blog has bobbed along quite happily throughout 2014; I have shared many stories that received positive feedback and some posts that were a total brain dump.  What I didn’t have was a clearly defined direction.

In 2015, I shall be taking yet another leaf out of my fellow bloggers book (I do love a good cliché).  I’m finding my path and I’m excited about the future of my blog.  I hope it will be able to help many people over the coming years.

Running my holistic health spa and teaching my motivational workshops puts me in the ideal position to share my work.  We all need a helping hand occasionally - that may be learning how to manage our time or to set our goals, creating a vision board or discovering a new skill.  These personal development topics are needed all year round – not just in time for our New Year Resolution list (oh but I do love a good list!)

·         Fear busting

·         Inspirational reads/blogs

·         Slow living

·         Learning to laugh more

·         Turning your life around

·         Journaling

·         Me-time

·         Meditation

·         De-stress techniques

These are just some of the topics I will be covering in 2015.  I do hope you will join me for this journey of discovery. 

Over to you – What would you like to see here on the Resolution Challenge blog?  Do you have a topic in self-help or personal development that you would like to know more about?  Maybe I’ve covered something in the past that interested you, and you’d like to know more?  Let me know in the comments below, and we can make 2015 our best year yet.

Thank you to all my readers for staying with me over the last two years, I look forward to sharing more with you in the future and getting to know one another better.  You can also interact on the Resolution Challenge Facebook PageShelley x
 
 
 

13 comments:

  1. Hi Shelley,

    Have you thought about doing a post on networking and ways people can meet other people. Perhaps you could share any tips you might have found useful for making connections online.

    With loneliness being quite topical in the media as I write this, it could be a way to give people a helping hand to make new connections if they weren't sure of how to do it. It is something I am thinking about talking about on my blog too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for the idea Jo. As I run my business from home I can relate to the loneliness theme. Networking is such a valuable topic and I will happily add this to the blog content. I look forward to reading your blog on the subject too. :)

      Delete
  2. Always enjoy your inspirational blog, Shelly, and what you have in mind for 2015 sounds great.

    A very happy Christmas and have a wonderful 2015

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's good to set a sankalpa, an intention. Whatever you decide, I shall enjoy reading about it and joining in. x

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Shelley,

    I have just finished reading your book "how I changed.." and I wanted to say how great it was. So easy to relate to and very inspirational!

    I thought the timing was perfect as well as I could start my own 12 month challenge at the beginning at 2015.

    I had some concerns though and I would really appreciate some advice: I really like the idea of having a blog more so than a personal diary to keep track of the progress, but I'm not sure I would be 100% comfortable with my work colleagues for e.g. to be updated on my progress, especially for some of the more personal resolutions.

    How would you tackle this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Cristina, thank you so much for your wonderful feedback. I'm so pleased you are taking on the challenge.

      When you start a blog you have the option to be very public about who you are (as I did!) or be private/guarded. Your readers will be interested in your engaging content and will want to interact if/when a story resonates with them.

      I follow Rosie Amber's blog, Rosie is a book reviewer but includes many inspirational posts. If I passed her on the street I wouldn't know it, her profile picture is a girl wearing a hat which covers her face. Is Rosie her real name? What I'm saying is, you can be 'the girl online' (to steal the hugely popular Zoella' s debut book title) your work colleagues can follow your blog but never know it's you!

      If you add any photographs then choose appropriate images to represent your challenge. You don't have to be in them. For a great selection of free images try freedigitalphotos.net

      I hope this helps. If you need any more assistance don't hesitate to shout. I'm on Twitter (@ShelleyWilson72) and Facebook www.facebook.com/resolutionchallenge

      Good luck with your blog. X

      Delete
  5. Thanks Sue, hope you are having a lovely Christmas and your 2015 is full of fun and magical moments x

    ReplyDelete
  6. I just stumbled across your blog this morning, thanks to #MondayBlogs, and I'm glad that I did.

    I'm just starting my blogging journey ... and my novel writing journey ... and my nonfiction book writing journey. Do you think I'm trying to do too much?! LOL

    I raised my son as a single mom and worked the 60 hour work weeks, and suffered from burn out on more than one occasion. So, while I'm used to doing a lot, I also fear burning out again.

    Along that vein, perhaps an area to explore on your blog might be overwhelm and balance. Overwhelm seems to be something I create for myself quite effectively; the challenge for me is in finding balance. I wonder, why is it easier to make myself overwhelmed than it is to remain balanced? And, is this an experience that many of us have because of our social conditioning around 'having it all'?

    PS - As a Canadian, zip lining through Sherwood Forest sounds so awesome!! I haven't been to England since I was ten years old, so I have a long list of things to do when I get there, and that has just been added to the list. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Welcome! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment, #MondayBlogs is a fabulous source for bloggers isn't it.

      First of all may I congratulate you on what you have achieved so far. Being a single parent isn't the easiest and I do believe 'burn-out' comes with the territory haha.

      I love your idea of dealing with overwhelm and balance and I do hope to touch on this topic in 2015. I am so similar to you, adding more to my agenda than I can cope with and then wondering why I want to go to bed at 6pm!

      It took me quite a while to find the work, life balance I was looking for and yet I still tip the scales every now and then. It's human nature I think!

      I would love to hear more about your blogging journey so please do leave us a link to your blog and we can all share your journey. As it happens I don't think the blogging, novel writing and non-fiction book are too much - my debut fiction book is due out any time and I have one to edit, two to write and one to outline in the next 12 months. Yep, told you we were alike! ;)

      Give me a shout when you land on our shores and I will happily hold the camera for you when you hurtle down the zip wire! :)

      Delete
  7. Can I say, Wow!! Sounds like you plan like I do! :)

    My blog is: http://nevertoolatetowrite.com.

    I challenge the notion that it's too late to pursue our dreams of a writing career as we approach what I like to call our "second act". The blog will be part inspiration, part practice/how-to, and part 'my journey' as I explore and find my way into my own writing career. Essentially, as I learn, I'll share, and I hope to build a community of people that will do the same.

    You sound like you're well on your way there!!

    ReplyDelete