Write for Yourself, Inspire Others
People who blog sometimes share advice, myself included. Advice about life, careers, relationships… anything, really. If it’s something someone has lived through, chances are they’ve got insights to offer. Sure, some might call it unsolicited advice, but you’re free to read it or skip it, so it doesn’t matter much in the end.
Here’s the secret: the advice bloggers give? It’s often as much for themselves as it is for you.
And that’s no surprise. Writing is often called therapeutic, meditative, or an exercise in self-reflection. All of those are true. As we write (as I’m doing right now) thoughts that we hadn’t even realized we had come bubbling up. Sometimes, these thoughts take the form of advice. Advice that’s just as relevant to us as it might be to anyone else.
So, is it a problem that the advice bloggers write is actually for them? I don’t think so. It’s obviously helpful for the bloggers themselves, who apparently needed it in the first place. And for readers, it could be just the advice they’ve been searching for, without knowing it. That’s the beauty of blogging: you can stumble upon a story that really speaks to you. Reaching just one person with a story is already a success.
So go ahead. Write your story, and put it out there for the world to see. There might be someone out there who truly needs to read it.