One brain block you MUST overcome to make big money writing online

Feb 19, 2024

Building a business of any kind — writing, video, HVAC, whatever — is hard enough as it is without your stupid brain interfering.

OK, I shouldn’t call our brains stupid.

They are just trying to protect us from danger.

Our brains are naturally built to be risk-averse, because when we were all in loincloths wandering around the forest, we were constantly in danger.

But what was an active mind in that context is now an overactive mind in modern society, and it prevents a lot of us from achieving our dreams and building the kinds of lives we really want.

It sees risks everywhere, but it can’t differentiate well between the ones that will kill us and the ones that will just make us feel dumb or embarrassed.

Not gonna lie. This is what it feels like being a content creator some days. (Licensed by the author under the Unsplash+ License)

When doubt creeps in

Take me for example.

I like my brain. It’s fine.

It’s ADHD, but I’ve learned to manage that over 42 years.

And the inquisitiveness and obsessiveness that comes with it can actually be quite beneficial when directed in the right way.

But it talks a lot, and the narrative isn’t always positive — especially when things aren’t going the way I want them to.

In those times, it often asks me the same annoying question:

“What’s the point of this?”

It popped up again a couple of weeks ago.

I was coming off a travel hockey tournament, and I was gassed both physically and mentally.

I didn’t get much work done over the weekend, and the posts I did publish … I just knew they weren’t going to earn that well.

In fact, I can show you on a chart from my Publish Every Day project exactly where my brain piped up with that unhelpful question:

Day-by-day earnings of my Publish Every Day project (Fatigue plus a down week = negativity gaining a foothold)

The dragon speaks

In the unbelievably great book written just for creatives like you and I called The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (affiliate link), author Steven Pressfield boils success down to defeating one great and powerful enemy.

Your foe in these pursuits is a dragon called resistance, and its only goal is to keep you from fulfilling your creative destiny.

It will push you, pull you, lie to you, soothe you, cajole you, trick you … it’ll do anything it can to stop you from doing what you know you should be doing.

And it’s no surprise that, at the top of Pressfield’s extensive ranking of pursuits that face the most resistance, you’ll find:

Any artistic pursuit (writing, painting, dance, etc.)
Any entrepreneurial venture

(Side note: if you want to get really fired up about your creative journey, I’d highly recommend the audio version of Pressfield’s book. It’s read with great gusto by the author and I’ve listened to it countless times as inspiration. If you’re new to Audible, you can listen to it for free by signing up with my affiliate link here).

Your brain is in an almost constant state of resistance.

And until you train it otherwise (or trick it into doing what you want), building a business, writing online, whatever you’re working on … it’s going to feel like a slog.

And even when you think you’ve defeated said dragon, it’s always lying in wait, ready to singe you if you let your guard down.

Pity party

This is what happened to me a couple of weeks ago.

I let fatigue and a big change to my routine throw me off, and as a result I started questioning what I was doing with my time (and my life lol).

But the best way I’ve found to get past these points is to think about … nothing at all.

Recently I wrote a piece about a little morning trick that actor/guru Arnold Schwarzenegger uses to get himself into the gym and stay ripped at 76.

Here’s what he told a panel discussion recently, as quoted by People Magazine:

“I feel good in the morning. I get up and I feed my animals, Lulu and Whiskey, and my little pig, Schnelly. I feed the dogs, then I go to the gym.”

“It’s because you’re working out and having done something physical where you kind of really sweat and you train hard.

“(It) makes you feel good because you’ve done something early in the morning.”

“And so this is why I say to people, ‘The key thing is in the morning, do right away something.’

“Don’t think when you get up because stupid stuff comes into your mind and negative stuff.”

“I said, ‘Just roll out a bed, get on your bike and start riding the bike and work out and do something physical.’

“And then afterward you will feel much better about yourself and about the world, the way you look at the world and everything like that.”

I know when I get down, when I get negative, I need to turn off the thinking mind and just get to work.

One of the great benefits of starting a project like Publish Every Day — my quest to quit commuter life within a year by publishing on various platforms and investing my earnings — is that it builds a very strong habit.

And when you build a habit, it feels wrong not doing it — regardless of the outside noise and resistance.

So even though the dragon was whispering in my ear that what I was doing was stupid and a waste of time … I had to sit down and write.

And in doing so, I went from this:

Back to this today:

Publish Every Day rebound chart — Publish Every Day rebound.

At the end of the day, you can’t fixate on stats or numbers.

You just have to slap that clown dragon in the face, get your butt back in that chair, and do the work you were always meant to do.

Looking for something else to read? Here are my top 6 trending today :

James Julian's Publish Every Day

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