404: Habits for Creators: A Gratitude Practice for Your Business

Alexa Peduzzi: This episode is sponsored by Clariti, that’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com.

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Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Bjork Ostrom: Hey there, this is Bjork Ostrom. You’re listening to The Food Blogger Pro podcast. Today’s the final episode in a short solo series, solo meaning it’s just me talking into a microphone, solo series on habits. And habits that we can think about as creators, as business owners, as people who are striving to do well in the world in whatever way we might consider implementing that in our lives.

Might be within our families, might be within our personal life, might be within our businesses. But generally speaking, people here in this community are creators, are doers, are publishers. And so these habits, while they can improve your personal life, and definitely there’s an element to that, also, we think about it from the context of building a thing, and creating things in the world.

First, we talked about the habit of a monthly review. So taking time to step back, and to look at things, and comb through all of the metrics, and the numbers, and the information. And forcing that, doing that on a monthly basis will help you understand your business better.

And it’s a great way to build in a rhythm around not only the finances, but also any of the important metrics within your business. So that was the first one, the habit of a monthly review.

The second episode, we talked about that habit of continual learning. And if we don’t continually learn in a year, in two years, in three years, we’re going to be in the same place. We’re going to have the same information, the same perspective on the world. And so it’s really important to build in that habit of continual learning.

In the last episode, we talked about the habit of who, and how important it is to build out that board of directors. Not an actual board of directors where you’re sitting down on a monthly basis around a table, but kind of that virtual board of directors or personal board of directors in your personal life, to think about who you are going to when you have questions that are sticky, or difficult, or hard to navigate, and you come up against the wall. So who is it that helps you solve those problems? And building in a habit of asking that question of who.

And then today we’re going to be doing a short episode all around the habit of gratitude. And what I’ve found when it comes to gratitude is that my brain, and I don’t know if you can relate to this, is wired in a lot of ways to find issues or problems, opportunities which maybe are a version of problems. But I’m not very good at seeing the things that are really good, and reflecting on those things.

And especially when it comes to my personal life. I think I can look at externally, and see what other people are doing and how great that is. But internally, within my own life, I think it’s easy for me to see all the ways I could improve, or I could be better. Or the way that I could be doing something at the next level, that I could level up.

And part of it might be personality, but I also think part of it is just how our brains are wired. We see problems easier than we see solutions, or things that we’ve figured, out or the progress that we’ve made.

And I think there also is a lot of truth that sometimes we, to ourselves, don’t treat ourselves as good as we would treat other people. And what’s been helpful for me, when it comes to the pursuit of a business, or the pursuit of building a thing, is to build in a gratitude and affirmation into those things.

Talked about a little bit in the last episode, that idea of the gap and the gain. But really, I think that gratitude at its best is a habit. And James Clear, who I’ve talked about before, he has a book called Atomic Habits. He talks about the habit that he has for gratitude is, every day before dinner, he sits down with his family, they talk about one thing, they’re grateful for that day.

And he said what that does is, it just reminds all of them, all of the great things that they have in their life. And amidst the chaos of living in our normal day-to-day lives, I think we can lose that.

And for me, I do something called the Five-Minute Journal. And we actually did an episode with one of the founders of the Five-Minute Journal. It’s way back in episode 124. So if you go to foodbloggerpro.com/ 1 24, you can listen to that.

Five minute journal is just this very simple journal. And one of the things that it has you do, one of the prompts is three things that you are grateful for. And that’s been a habit for me that I’ve done for many years that has allowed me to reflect on a really consistent basis around things that I’m grateful for.

And what I would like to do for you is encourage you to think about that within your business. So as you are working on building a following, or building a business, or getting traction, whatever it might be, what we can do is we can see all of the problems, or the issues, or the things that are really difficult. Or maybe things that are sad, like a mean comment, whatever it might be. And we can get wrapped up in those.

What I would encourage you to do within your business is to think about the things that you are grateful for. Think about the progress that you’ve made, the things that you’ve learned, the connections you’ve made. Maybe it’s digital, or at a conference. The new opportunities that have opened up because of what you’ve been doing.

So focusing really on the gratitude, and doing whatever you can to shield yourself from the negative. Which is hard to do, and it’s hard to shield yourself from the gap. When we talk about the gap in the gain to see where we could be, or where other people are, it’s really easy to focus in on that.

But as much as possible, I’d encourage you to think about, what are you grateful for in your work? And what are you grateful for in terms of what that work has given you, or the things that you’ve learned from it, or ways that you’ve maybe become more creative.

And if you can build that in as a habit, I think it will serve you really well. And you could do it like James Clear does, where before he sits down for dinner every day, they all share one gratitude. You could do it in a more structured way, like doing a journal, a journaling prompt where you talk about three things that you’re grateful for, or maybe some other creative way that you want to come up with it.

But I think what you’ll find is, maybe even in this episode, you’ve thought about some things that you’re actually really grateful for and you’ve felt your mood shift, or your mindset shift. I think that’s just a small example of what this can look like on a recurring basis. Even for myself, as I was getting ready to record this episode, I thought of the things that I’m grateful for because I was getting ready to record this episode talking about gratitude, and I could feel a shift.

It was like, oh yeah, there are some incredible things that I’m so grateful for when it comes to my work and just my day-to-day life. So that’s the last prompt. The last thought that we have around habits is the habit of gratitude.

And just to recap one more time, the last four episodes we talked about the habit of a monthly review, how that can be really important for your business. The habit of continual learning, and why we think that’s so important. You are already somebody who’s doing that because you’re listening to the podcast. So good job, check, you got that done.

The habit of who, thinking about whenever you come up against a sticky situation, or you’re struggling to figure something out, think about, is there somebody I go to for this? Who is my who in this situation?

And then lastly today, the habit of gratitude. Building in some type of habit, some type of routine, to remind yourself of the good things that exist in your life, and the good things that exist within your business. And I think if you take some time to think about that, you’ll be able to come up with a lot of those.

So this was a fun series to do. We’re going to be back to our normal scheduled podcast interviews after this, and we’ll keep chugging along. Thanks so much for tuning in. Make it a great week, and we will be back here. Same time, same place one week from now. Thanks.

Leslie Jeon: Hello, hello, Leslie here. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. We really hope that you enjoyed it. Before we sign off, I wanted to mention quickly a little bit about the Food Blogger Pro Forum in case you don’t know how it works.

So if you are a Food Blogger Pro member, you get full access to our wonderful forum, which is one of my favorite parts of the community. So on the forum, we have lots of different areas, such as building traffic, photography, video. And in all these forums, you can chat with your fellow Food Blogger Pro members. You can connect, collaborate, and troubleshoot with them.

Maybe you just want to get some advice about your site, or maybe you have a question about core web vitals. The forum is a fantastic place to bring those questions and chat with others in the community.

Our industry experts are also always popping into the forum to share their expert advice, whether that’s Casey Marquee or Andrew Wilder. And they’re always willing and excited to help our members out with their questions. So the forum is just a fantastic place to learn from others, to chat, and have a community. To really engage with other food bloggers, and just really to show that you’re not alone on this journey of growing your site, of growing your business.

So if you do want to join Food Blogger Pro and get access to this community forum, you can do that and learn more by going to food blogger pro.com/join. And there you can learn more about our membership, and feel free to join us there.

All that being said, we really hope that you enjoyed this episode and we can’t wait to see you in the next one. But until then, make it a great week.