Protecting Your Mental Health as a Content Creator
You may have experienced it before, the feeling of being uninspired and unmotivated. You’ve started noticing that content and platforms that once brought you joy are leaving you feeling empty. Your mental health is suffering, which starts to affect your creativity, which makes you feel guilty, which affects your mental health. It ends up becoming an endless cycle often resulting in unhealthy habits and a creative drought! According to Vibely, 90% of content creators say they are experiencing burnout. Over 71% of them said it made them consider quitting content creation altogether. Lack of inspiration and dry spells can happen but they don't have to. With May being mental health awareness month we wanted to provide you with 5 ways you can protect your mental health and your creativity as a content creator!
Control and Edit Your Feeds
First things first, you should only be following accounts that make you feel good. You can base that on what you’re struggling with at the moment. It's important to know what's currently affecting your mental health. If you're struggling with body image then maybe you need to take a step back from that one follower who always seems to make it to the gym on time. If you're trying to save money, you might want to mute that blogger that always has a new designer bag. Your feed should be curated to expose you to your interests and sources of inspiration. Once your feeds become a place of comparison, it's no longer doing its job. If you notice that a certain account, whether brand or person, starts to make you feel inadequate or insecure then you should unfollow them. Do you feel like hitting the unfollow button is a little too harsh? Then opt to mute them for a little bit instead. If you’re unsure of whether or not your feed needs a cleanse, here are a few signs:
You no longer enjoy interacting on social media
Social media leaves you feeling overwhelmed and drained
You began to experience feelings of envy and jealousy towards other accounts
Block Certain Words
We’re sure you’ve heard the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind!” That statement rings true when it comes to protecting your mental health. Did you know that you can block content associated with certain words? Along with editing your feed to only show content that helps you look and feel your best, you can eliminate content that's associated with your trigger words. Social platforms are trying to help you avoid your triggers by implementing different tools that will help you censor the content that you have access to. Try making a list of words or phrases and situations that trigger you. Put those filters into place on various platforms and watch your relationship with your feed change immensely. According to Medium, here are a few ways various social platforms allow you to block certain words:
Instagram: Instagram automatically filters out most offensive comments from your account (bye trolls) but sometimes automatism isn't enough. You can maximize this feature by adding your list of trigger words as keyword filters. This will automatically hide comments that contain these words.
Twitter: This app is known to be the worst when it comes to online abuse. It's doing its best to combat that by providing a feature called advanced muting. This feature removes tweets that contain certain words from your timeline.
YouTube: Some platforms don’t have built-in censoring features but rely on third-party apps instead. You can use TubeBuddy to help avoid any unnecessary negativity on your Youtube channel. This uses a built-in filter to find comments with negative sentiment, profanity, etc. It also allows you to handle them in bulk which comes in handy when they’re headed straight for the digital trash bin.
Check-in with Your Support Group
There's nothing like having a group of people who can relate to exactly what you're going through. That's why it's so important to surround yourself with like-minded creatives that will support you during your creative journey. If you're a mommy blogger, chat with other moms to see what tips and tricks they used to stay motivated while balancing their busy lives. If you're a style or beauty influencer, you can bounce ideas off your fellow influencers to get feedback, encouragement, and inspiration. If you don't have a support group, do your best to create one that includes two to three trusted individuals to that you can be vulnerable during tough times. Your mental health flourishes when you feel supported by colleagues and friends.
Set Realistic Goals
Goal-setting can seem daunting, especially if you feel like time keeps passing by and you aren't accomplishing anything. It's not just as simple as writing down an aspiration on paper and hoping and hoping that it comes to pass. Goal-setting requires strategy and perseverance. Consider taking the SMART approach to creating realistic and attainable goals:
S-Specific: You want to make your goals as specific to your situation as possible. This may look different than someone else. Being specific when you’re setting a goal makes them easier to accomplish. You may have to revisit your why and mission statement.
M-Measurable: How do you plan on measuring your progress and what situations will serve as milestones to success?
A-Attainable: Make sure that you can ensure that you will accomplish your goal within a specific time frame. You don't want to create goals that are out of your reach.
R-Relevant: Your goals should line up with your values and long-term objectives.
Time-based: Set a realistic end date for task prioritization and motivation purposes.
Maintain a Work-Life Balance
Creating a balance between your work duties and the leisures of life is imperative to maintaining your mental health. You can start by eliminating screen time in the morning. We don't know about you, but we're guilty about rolling over and starting to scroll. There's no meditation, no morning routine, just blue light. By implementing this simple step, you will being to notice an immense change in your mental health.
Find opportunities to create joy daily. If you're working from home, visit one of your favorite coffee shops during lunch to decompress and take a break. Create a schedule that allows you to relax and be creative without a deadline obligation. This is a simple way to inject energy into a monotonous schedule to find balance.
It's easy to get caught up in our content creation duties and forget why we fell in love with content creation in the first place. Don't let your deadlines and obligations steal joy from your passion. It's important to protect our mental health as we're on our content creation journey to ensure that our creativity and zeal for the topics that we cover shine through to our audience. Remember, you won't be able to inspire and uplift others if you're operating from an empty tank. Let’s do our best to prioritize our mental health, not only this month but every month. We hope these tips will help you preserve your mental health as you continue creating!
Always In Your Corner,
The Content Queens
