How can you balance creating content with your mental health?

In my 13 years as a full-time creator, I've learned that balancing content creation with mental health is like managing health and mana bars in a video game. We must constantly monitor our resources to ensure we can 'stay alive and win.' Focusing too much on metrics, views, revenue, and fame can deplete our 'health' and 'mana.' It's crucial to know what percentage of these resources we're operating at and what activities or practices will help restore them. Engaging in hobbies, spending time with loved ones, or taking a break from the digital world can bring joy and rejuvenation. Setting clear boundaries and goals, like deleting socials from my phone, can lead to a long and successful career. (Try deleting all socials off your phone!!!)

In my short 8-month experience of creating mental health content, I've learnt to practise mindfulness. To not get too carried away by the number of likes, views and subs to my content. Setting aside time for creating content and connecting with the real world, which is indeed an essential part of mental health.

Firstly, don't push yourself. Publish, create when you are feeling creative. Second, see your posts as an act of service, to help others. Thirdly, meditative time can give you great creative ideas as well as keep you calm and grounded.

If you're friends and loved ones seem worried, be worried. Record 5 minutes of everything you do, edit it all together at the end of the day. Pick the best 5 minutes from all of the recordings from that day. Post that. Return to the living. Live, Love, Create

"Creating content" is a huge umbrella term so it's really important that you define *exactly* what it means to you, right from the get-go: Do you want to post a weekly blog to your website? Are you going to commit to a certain number of posts per day or per week on certain platforms? Will you be shooting and editing video? Or are you planning to orchestrate a sophisticated social media campaign for the next year? Then there's the big question of "WHY?": who are you doing this for? who are you trying to reach? Once you can articulate all that and identify what ''success" looks and feels like for you, then you can go about planning and reverse engineering your process to break down tasks into realistic, manageable chunks. Easy peasy:)

In addition to planning and prioritizing tasks, it's crucial to establish boundaries. Define specific times for work and rest to prevent burnout and maintain mental well-being. Allocate moments for relaxation, hobbies, and spending time with loved ones. Also, don't hesitate to seek support from peers or professionals if you're feeling overwhelmed. Prioritize self-care practices like exercise, meditation, or journaling to recharge and stay creative. Remember, your mental health is as important as your content creation journey.

It's impossible to separate our physical and emotional health since everything we do toward one affects the other. You can't go wrong with the basics: eat well, move around regularly, drink water, get adequate sleep, cultivate a strong, growth mindset, breathe deeply, get plenty of natural light. Surround yourself with colors, images and people that boost your energy and allow you to work and create with clarity and confidence. Nurture your network of trusted folks so everybody always feels seen, safe and supported, especially when challenges arise.

In my experience, it's been so helpful to create a morning routine, where I practice mindfulness, gratitude, and meditation. When I begin, my day is this way, anything that I choose to do during the day goes much more smoothly. It's so important when you're creating content or running a business or being in life to create habits that support your emotional health

When I have a content creation block, I know that trying to think my way out of it isn't going to work. Taking time out to enjoy a hobby or in my case, it's usually going for a walk by the sea, can reset your mind. Creative ideas pop up when I least expect them. Going for a walk allows my brain to wander, relax and reduce beta wave activity. This downtime is needed to regulate my nervous system. Recognising the need for this in the first place can be difficult. The very nature of content creation and social media creates the urge to always be 'on'. We need to cut ourselves some slack and enjoy momentary pleasures and take time for our interests away from the screen!

While I have found all of these tips and tools, inspiring and creates a great guidebook for content creators, I am adding my personal experience: Keeping up with engagement is the mental strain. In my opinion, creating content, taps into my magical, creative flow and adds to my mental well-being and keeping up with engagement can take away from my mental wellness. So my advice is to schedule replying to engagement and detach from engagement outcome. I know this because I grew a Facebook page organically to over 800,000 fans with constant likes and comments which created burnout. I abandoned my page and kept it going with the help of a VA and after years have finally gone back to it.

Detach from engagement outcome is good advice.. I’d add with positive or negative as positive can feel great but it’s short lived and a dopamine hit that can drive behaviour to keep wanting praise .. which can also create burnout.

Plan ahead. Map out the year and start writing 3 months ahead. From there schedule posts and design and then you can focus on other things. Figure out 4 themes of what you want to write about and start jotting down ideas and schedule weekly topics for a year.