"If I am in alignment with my spiritual path, why am I not seeing my channel grow?"
It's very easy to compare ourselves to others, especially on social media where we’re exposed to channels with thousands of subscribers, and videos with millions of views.
Have you ever compared yourself like this, and felt that you're just not good enough, or that you can't be in alignment with your spiritual path because your subscriber growth is painfully slow?
The Meaning of Success
In the world of social media, subscriber count and video views have become a modern day 'score' of success. But this is an illusion that many of us have bought into. The algorithm doesn't care about your spiritual growth. It is simply interested in feeding people the content they want to watch or read, so that YouTube, Facebook or whichever platform you use, can sell them advertising.
Social media has skewed our perception of success and what is meaningful by convincing us that it’s all about how many views, subscribers and 'likes' we can achieve. This is not 'success', it is simply vanity.
Vanity - noun
- Excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements.
"It flattered his vanity to see so many people subscribing to his channel" - The quality of being worthless or futile.
"She added another video to her channel in vain"
How interesting to see that vanity embodies two extremes of self-worth; on the one hand, we can become too full of ourselves (“I’ve got a million subscribers... I'm amazing!”), or on the other hand, we can feel worthless (“I only have 6 subscribers… I’m useless!”).
Helping Others And Yourself
Remember that even if you only have one single subscriber who watches your videos or reads your posts, then you are still making a difference, both to them, and more importantly, to yourself.
Imagine a world where social media doesn’t exist. One day, you invite a stranger into your house. You welcome them, and they listen to what you have to say on your favourite subject for several minutes. Then they leave feeling uplifted and grateful that you shared something that was exactly what they needed to hear.
How amazing would that feel? Personally, it would make my day!
By creating content that feels good to make and 'putting ourselves out there', not only do we help others (even if it is just one single person), but we are also expressing our authentic self, whilst working on improving aspects of ourselves such as confidence, openness, allowing ourselves to release control, and - this one is a biggie - realising our self-worth.
I was discussing this with my lovely wife, Lee-Anne, the other day. This morning she came bouncing into the room having just had a ‘lightbulb’ moment during her meditation. She had just realised that the YouTube algorithm was exactly matching her parents’ attitude to her by not acknowledging what an amazing, wonderful and beautiful being she is.
The algorithm was only ‘giving’ her a handful of views for her videos, not many ‘likes’ and her subscriber count had stalled. Mirroring this, she reflected how, over the years, her parents have consistently failed to acknowledge and accept her authentic self-expression.
These experiences led her to feel invisible, not only to her parents and YouTube, but also to the world. Inevitably, her narrative became, “Without the approval of the world, how can I feel approval and acceptance of myself?”
“I get it now!”, she exclaimed. “It doesn’t matter what other people think of me, they can take it or leave it. What matters is that I matter regardless of other people. I am important, special and AMAZING!”
Lee-Anne had suddenly understood at a deeper level than ever before that she doesn’t need approval from her parents, YouTube or anyone else. She can simply allow herself to be, and enjoy being her authentic self. She went on to explain that during her meditation she had also heard the phrase, “Dance as though nobody’s watching!”, which I thought was a beautiful and succinct way to illustrate this important realisation.
Ultimately, we are all accepted and have approval from an infinitely deeper and more meaningful level than any here on Earth - that of the Divine… And the Divine is inside every one of us.
YOU are important, special and amazing. However you choose to express what is in your heart and however you decide to give your authentic self to the world - that’s what really matters.
Whether you have 6 subscribers or 60,000, it doesn’t matter. If you are truly in alignment with your spiritual path, then you will feel the joy that comes from how you express yourself, whether that’s making a YouTube video, singing a song, or making a chair.
So give yourself permission to dance as though nobody's watching.
Thank you for reading - I hope you enjoyed this article. If so, please feel free to leave a comment below and share with others.
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