Day 6’s challenge was to break my beautifully curated instagram feed and post something after a 1.5 year hiatus.
Why Take On This Challenge?
My instagram is highly curated, both visually and subject-wise. I only recently allowed myself to add “coding” and “keto/paleo” to my bio. My bio used to strictly talk about lucid dreaming.
Every post here took a massive amount of time:
- Setting up a tripod and other equipment
- Posing for and taking the photo myself
- Hours of editing
- Creating the text content, all of which was related to lucid dreaming, often containing references to scientific papers
A year and a half ago I made this image of myself and I’ve been waiting for the perfect occasion to post it:
The occasion never came. I never thought of the perfect text to post with it.
My life is visually messy, not purple-y blue rainbow like my instagram. So how could I ever post anything? Unless I spend hours on a post, I’d break my feed! If I post about anything outside of lucid dreaming, I’d confuse my audience!
In truth, I knew I wanted to experiment more with my content for a while, despite the advice of many Instagram gurus. But taking the leap was just too uncomfortable.
So I decided to break my feed for this challenge.
What Happened?
I posted an image about my discomfort challenge linking to my first blog post.
As a discomfort bonus, I shared a selfie of me on a particularly bad face day.
I actually lost at least 5 followers from this post. Which is totally ok with me.
Short term, I expect to put off some of my old followers. That’s ok. Some probably don’t even remember me. Some might not like my new direction. I’m looking for my true followers. I wouldn’t want anyone to follow me if my content doesn’t bring them value.
What I learned
The need for perfection increases discomfort. Be a little messy and experiment, even though it’s uncomfortable. It’s ok to take some loss in the short term.
I was surprised how much I didn’t care that people unfollowed me. In the past, it would bother me. Maybe because I expected it this time? Maybe because I’ve seen that being genuine doesn’t get you a lot of likes immediately, but with consistency you find followers who truly resonate with what you’re about.
Join The Challenge
For more information on the challenge, see the 30DaysOfDiscomfort challenge page.
Want to interact with other participants of the challenge? Join the Discord chat group
Share your experiences on twitter with the hashtag #30DaysOfDiscomfort