Embrace the Dip (By Zooming Out)

Over the course of the past year, I’ve uploaded over 250 videos to my business’ Youtube channel and grown a small audience.

Almost every day there is a trickle of new subscribers and comments.

But yesterday, I net lost a subscriber and had no new comments. Ouch.

This isn’t the first time that’s happened either. But every time it does, it’s hard not to feel discouraged. Like all my efforts are wasted. Like the YouTube algorithm gods don’t like me. Like I’m doing something wrong with my content.

And when I get multiple days of negative growth in a day, it makes me wonder if my business will even work (the majority of my clients find me first on Youtube).

But then I zoom out. For every day that I’ve lost subscribers, there are probably 10 where I gain at least one. And when I zoom all the way out to the first video uploaded about 13 months ago, I see that the subscriber and watch time graphs look like a ramp rising steadily up and to the right.

And so it is with other things in life.

• Stocks: they might have a bad day, a bad week, or a bad quarter. But zoom out far enough and healthy businesses rise over time.
• Fitness: if you’re consistent with training, you’ll be getting stronger over time but there will be days where you seem to have lost strength. But zoom out, and you’ll see that you’re significantly stronger than when you began training.
• Skills: if you‘re working on developing a skill like playing an instrument or learning a language, and you’re consistent about practicing that skill, there’ll be days where you feel like you’re back tracking. But zoom out, and you’ll see how far you’ve come.

Embrace the dip. It’s part of the process.

Zoom out and see how far you’ve come to inspire yourself to keep going.