No amount of followers will ever make you truly happy. So stop obsessing over it.
I feel like this is a lesson I've learnt fairly early in my content creation journey and I thank everyone and everything that made me see this. It's one of the most important ones I've learnt with respect to the social media and content creation world and I want to share my take on it with you. I hope that this gives you some clarity and hope for your own journey.
Whether you're a content creator or not, the chances of you having some sort of social media presence are very high. The very fact that you are reading this post means you probably have an Instagram account because that's where majority of my traffic is from. (and WhatsApp too, but that doesn't really help my case so let's just ignore that for now haha)
So, coming back to the statement I made :
No amount of followers will ever make you happy.
Now, why is that?
I have my own theory on that, and that's what I want to put forward in this blog post.
The reason why no amount of followers will ever make you happy is simply because every milestone you reach is a relative one.
When you start out with 0 followers/ subscribers your first goal is to get to 100. You work hard for it. And then one day, slowly but surely, you get there. And you feel amazing! Yes you finally did it. 100. That's huge for someone who started with nothing. Seriously. Congratulations. You feel all this rush and happiness.
But that lasts for about 2 days. And then you think: Okay, we have 100, now let's get to 500. And so you hustle again. You work hard. You push out good content. You are doing everything in your power to do it.
And then! One fine day, you wake up to 500 followers. What! Unbelievable. You finally did that! You reached your goal. Congratulations! You're feeling that same rush of happiness again!
BUT.
This time too, it lasts for about 2 days.
On the third day you wake up and think, okay now that we have 500, let's make it 1000!
You see what's happening here?
The goal you achieve becomes that starting point for your next goal. You're basically resetting the scale every time you get to a milestone and you go through the same set of feelings over and over again for each of those milestones.
And this is just when you're comparing to your own self.
Let's talk about comparing with others for a second.
There is always going to be someone who does something similar as you do and has more followers than you do. Lets suppose you have 100 and they have 1000. Since you're in the same field, you feel relatable to them and you want to get to the point they are at. So you try and you try hard.
One day you realise that you made it to their level! You now have 1000 followers. Yay!
But then you look at their follower count. And now that has risen to 5000. So now to catch up with them, you gotta get 5000. You realise what's happening here? The loop exists here as well.
Whether your competing with yourself or someone else, this is a never ending chase. Infinity exists and hence we're always going to want more if we don't keep ourselves in check.
And this post is to remind you just that.
I believe that getting stuck in this chase is pointless. Does this mean we stop growing?
No, not at all. Let your numbers grow, you deserve that, but don't let them define you.
Your content, your intentions, your hustle matter much more than the numbers and that's what we can focus on. That's what we should focus on.
You could gain or lose thousands of followers overnight but your hustle is always going to be yours and that's what you own. That's what you have control over.
So let's get off the follower wagon and embrace wholesome and balanced growth. Growth as a person, as a creator. Let the numbers be.
All the best!