Hey, Dani here! I used to write fun blogs but I just kindof – stopped recently. I stopped it all. I recently stopped being interesting, fun, showing myself, showing my processes, I put a huge wall up so that no one could hurt me or take advantage of me if I was intentionally robotic.

“Are you ready for growth on a public scale? No really – are you ACTUALLY ready?” is a line I heard from a fantastic podcast last week and it reminded me of what I’ve been through with my business being on social media and these channels being the sole driver of how I make a living.

To be honest, I thought I was ready for growth on a public scale (trust me, I know I’m still quite small), but I SOOO wasn’t ready. You need to be mentally and emotionally strong when you have a business that is on social media – one where you put yourself and your work out there. Wouldn’t it be just amazing if everything you put out there, people were just soooo nice and supportive about everything you do? Well, that’s not the way it goes.

95% of the things people say are wonderful and I thank you so much for that, but are you truly ready for the horrendous things people say 5% of the time? If you’re an empath like me, the words people say can cut 10X deeper than someone with an “I don’t care what people say” attitude. It happens in every business, regardless of how rainbows and sunshine you and your work is. Because you can never make everyone happy and you’ll never be for everyone.

Here’s my first little story – around December 2020, I thought I was putting myself out there enough on social media, and then I decided LET’S MAKE A YOUTUBE CHANNEL TOO! So I did! I did it for 6-8 months religiously. It’s coming up on one year since I released my YouTube channel. I poured sooo many hours into these videos and content. I know a lot of you loved them and I’m so sorry I pulled the rug out from under you and took it down. Some of the comments that came in were pretty nasty and I just couldn’t take it. I wasn’t cut out for this type of foolish behaviour at that point in my life. I also realised I love using my hands to paint and create, and to put out YouTube videos you’re staring at a phone or computer screen for like 8-10 hours, not to mention remembering to film every single detail. It sucked the fun out of my painting process. Let’s just say – filming this content and doing these videos made me really unhappy. I was striving for a goal for more XYZ, but the actual process I wasn’t in love with. You have to enjoy the process. I was making others happy but I was miserable! I know I could have had a path that could be “successful” doing that sort of thing, but I’m always an “only do things if you’re aligned and happy”. I asked myself – do you like this? I said hell nahhhh. There we go. I deleted the channel without much thought or guilt. I was really close to start monetizing. I didn’t give a flying fadoo, it was liberating! I wanted to light a match to that chapter of my story and move along. It was a good decision for my mental health to pull that from my job title – YouTuber. Nahhhh. Katie Scott does a much better job and she’s amazing. That is her destiny! Not mine.

“Here we go – just another thing that didn’t work out, again”. I feel like I’ve tried sooo many things and failed – and publicly, too. Probably my worst fear – to fail publicly or say something horrendously wrong and my business crumbles because of some sort of backlash of something I did publicly wrong. It’s a scary thing that I’ve seen happen to someone I had been following for years. Seeing my very own worst nightmare happen to someone I had admired made me want to be so super safe, robotic and put a wall up so that no one could ever do or say anything to judge me or use it against me. That was my hardened soul. I obviously needed time to heal.

Now here’s another fun thing that happened in the mix too. While everyone was summoned with stay at home orders, they had lots of time to tune in every day to my stories and my painting shenanigans – I used to show a lot! I liked sharing, it was just natural to me. It was cool to be watched and that people were intrigued in what I was painting etc, but people would enter into my inbox DEMANDING answers to everything and how I do every little thing I do, etc. It completely burnt me out and left me feeling taken advantage of because I have e-courses that teach the very questions they were asking. I just wanted to share what I wanted to share, it was my platform. No questions, please. Haha, that’s me being funny. It’s not reality though. “But why pay someone for their expertise, I DEMAND your knowledge for free!” is how I pictured every one of those DMS back then. That’s how I felt. Hardened soul.

Just know that was an old selfish version of me. That ego is gone. I’ve healed. I can tell people are back to work now lol – I don’t get many messages anymore like I used to. Maybe like 1/20th per day of what I used to receive. It’s kindof nice. Now when someone enters into my DM space, I have the time to genuinely be present and I always know it’s an opportunity to make a good connection and that they were meant to be in my DM’s for a reason, to touch them in some way. Before – I was attracting a needy, angry, demanding type of person at the time of my meltdown. I know most people come from a really good space with good intentions. But other times I can really feel that I’m being taken advantage of and I no longer respond. I’m learning. I’m using my intuition to guide me.

Social media is a wonderful but also UNNATURAL thing. To have your phone binging and dinging and focusing your attention on many conversations at once, how does one get the work done – the work that you do that actually makes the money? Scroll scroll scroll, see some stuff that makes you so angry it changes your day. I can’t believe a little glowing rectangle box is doing this to us.

I took a one month social media hiatus in summer 2021 from being or doing anything. I had no idea what was in store for me, I just knew I needed to reset and ONLY do things that made me happy during that time period. No story-ing, no posting, no cares, just living. I did create behind the scenes and it was sooo fun and joyful. Sometimes we get so wrapped up with showing off to and for others that we forget to ask ourselves if we really enjoy what we are doing.

Social media has been a part of me since the very start of my business in 2015. To not do or be anything was weird. But I needed a reset to remember who I am and how I want to show up. No more garbage vibes coming from me. No more walls to protect me. No more censoring myself to please people who will never care anyways. No more taking crazy angry comments/DM’s personally because it’s not about me, it’s about them and not healing themselves. No more doing things that don’t make me happy.

If you’re a happy and positive person, I love to connect with you all via comments, DM’s. That is what social media is for. I believe the best in everyone unless proven otherwise. It’s amazing how healing myself and changing my outlook has naturally repelled the vibes I did not want, and instead has helped me attract the most wonderful people. If you’re reading this, you’re one of them!

I say – only follow people who bring you joy. Stop following people or news outlets that consistently make you mad, worried, sad, etc. That’s definitely one of the key takeaways from my one month social media break.

What part of this message made you think of yourself? I’d love to know in the comments!