To Blog or Not To Blog… 8 Ways that Writing a Blog Can Change Your Life

Blogging is important from an SEO and marketing perspective. Regularly posting new original content can grow your customer base and your bottom line. But what can a personal blog add to your life? There is a therapeutic aspect to blogging just waiting for us to explore…  
The actual word ‘blog’ was entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2004. This momentous occasion indicated that creating and keeping a blog wasn’t a phase that we were testing out. Rather, blogging is a creative and personal outlet for individuals to harvest and cultivate snapshots of their lives, thoughts and emotions to share with an audience of their own choosing.
Blogs can be widely read, but most are for a small targeted audience, and some not even aimed at anyone at all. I’ve even seen blogs that are used as placeholders for a new domain that they haven’t decided what to do with yet. That’s the magic of blogs – they can be anything you wish them to be. It’s entirely up to you!
To celebrate blogs and their wonderful and benefits they offer, I have compiled a list of eight terrific reasons to keep a blog. I challenge you to read to the end and not start blogging immediately.
 

• Make new friends.

Once you start to write, trust me you will eventually want people to read it to offer feedback. One great thing about search engines is that whatever you write about will be found by people who like what you like. Once like-minded people find your page, they say “hi”, you say “hi”, and before long you have a list of new friends. Did I mention that the internet is a beautiful thing?
 

• Stay connected with those you love.

Keeping a family blog with multiple logins can create a platform of communication between loved ones near and far. Imagine being able to visit a website (and one that’s not Facebook) where your family keeps all members informed or just to record your favorite memories. Photos, videos and personal accounts can all be archived to look back on years from now as a personal keepsake, safe from fires as well as a three-year-old’s greasy fingers!
 

• Learn new stuff, tons of new stuff.

When writing you will begin to want to fact check yourself (hopefully) and through that simple “Am I right?” process you will begin to learn – a lot. Curiosity will take hold because next you will wonder “Has anyone else talked about this?” and so on and so on. Before long you become an expert on whatever it was you were thinking of in the first place, and then you’re off to your next topic.
 

• Become a better thinker.

Writing directs thought processes logically. In the time it takes you to write a sentence you have mapped out exactly what you are saying and what you plan to say next. Not only will you vastly improve your writing skills, but this form of psychological organization will spill over into other areas of your life creating a logical, organized and calm thought process for everyday business and life.
 

• Make a few bucks.

Now don’t get your hopes up too high about this one, I’m not saying you will get rich quick (although it is possible) but any money at all is better than what your other hobbies may pay, right? When’s the last time you made $40 hiking or scrapbooking? By throwing a few affiliate ads on your blog you can at least create the potential of getting a free dinner here and there, but mostly it’s fun knowing that getting your words on a screen made you money.
 

• Find meaning in life’s small events.

Someone once said, “Leading a happy life is in the small details” and this is absolutely true. Blogging is about capturing small moments in your life that you can later pass on to others. Bloggers train themselves to closely examine their surroundings and emotions for later recall. Your trained eye will slowly learn to search through everyday moments for importance and meaning. Finding gratitude for small or seemingly insignificant events sets a tone of gratitude for your entire existence. You will then proudly be able to write, “I lived this, I wrote this, and I am happy!”
 

• Gain confidence.

Through the process of writing, a therapeutic cleansing occurs. Anxiety abates and organized thought emerges resulting in a calmness and confidence that comes naturally. In finding your voice as a writer, you also find yourself. Blogging can create an assertiveness not known before exploring content creation built on small steps of uncovering one’s true feelings and ideas. Now I know, this sounds incredibly cheesy, but it is true that writing helps create balance within chaos.
 

• Create a legacy of yourself.

Odds are someone is going to be interested in your life, whether it is a sibling, child or great-great-grandchild. By storing information on the World Wide Web you create a path of your existence for others to follow. By making an account of your thoughts and ideas throughout your life you are actually leaving a legacy for a loved one to learn from somewhere in the future. I truly wish that I had access to the experiences and hope from lost loved ones – it would be truly priceless.

So what are you waiting for? To create your own personal path to happiness today create your blog at Midphase.com