How to Keep Going When You Aren’t Seeing Results

Things I do that help me through the tough times.

You decide you want to lose weight.

You start hitting up the gym, you clean up your diet, but a few weeks later — you look the same; you’re just a little sore and tired.

You get pissed off about your lack of results and go back to not exercising and eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s every night. You decide it’s time for you to finally pursue your dream career.

You want to be a blogger. You spend hours setting up your site. Maybe you invest and pay someone to do it for you. You’re beyond excited to finally pursue this dream of yours.

However, a few weeks go by, and the response is… underwhelming, to say the least. You feel discouraged. You stop posting.

It’s incredibly hard to keep pushing when you feel like you’ve given it your all, and yet months, or even years later, you haven’t been rewarded for it.

This is probably why you’re not seeing any results

Consistency is that one little thing that will take you from where you’re at right now to where you want to be.

And, it’s most likely the missing ingredient to your success.

It’s easy to stay consistent at first. You’re fired up about what you’re doing and stoked to see the results. But when you don’t see those big wins, you start being inconsistent.

This is where most people give up. You’ll see this in the next few months with all the people who make “lose 10 lbs” their New Year Resolutions. They’ll be in the gym daily, stealing your favorite stair master but once February comes around, the gym will be a ghost town.

Why? Because working out isn’t easy, especially when you don’t see the results you want. Most people aren’t willing to stay committed to doing the work.

The key to seeing results

Act like a professional and take your commitments seriously. Show up daily despite how difficult it gets, and you will start seeing results because consistency compounds.

Consistency builds momentum, and while the results won’t come immediately, little by little, you’ll start seeing small wins that will inevitably turn into big ones.

By staying consistent, especially when things get hard, you’ll start building self-confidence in your work, you’ll be more proud of yourself, and you’ll feel like you’re inching closer and closer towards that finish line.

On top of that, others will see it too. People notice when you pop up on their newsfeed frequently. They start to remember your name, what you look like, and what you’re providing them with.

I’ve been on YouTube for nearly three years now. I started out by posting daily, and that fire quickly diminished when I experienced the difficulty of growing my channel firsthand.

It’s not easy. It’s also not easy knowing how much work you’re putting in and not getting anything in return.

When I feel frustrated or feel like giving up, I remind myself that most successful YouTubers have been working on their craft consistently for over 10 years, and the same goes for every other successful individual.

How to keep going when you don't see results

When things get tough, don’t take it as a sign that you should give up.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I hosted a Friendsgiving dinner. I caught up with my closest friend, who I haven’t seen in a while, and I asked her how her work was going. She’s a waitress/aspiring YouTuber.

“Oh, it’s okay… I’ve been so busy with work, and you didn’t tell me how hard creating videos was! I don’t know how you do it. I’m taking a little break. It’s too overwhelming.”

One of the biggest differences between an amateur and a professional is not how long they’ve been in the field or how much experience they have; it’s how they react when things get hard.

Someone who wants to succeed but won’t will likely see challenges as a sign they should quit. They’ll say things like, “It’s too hard,” or “It takes up a lot of time,” or “I’m not making any money from it even though I’m putting in the work.”

Someone who wants to succeed and will succeed views challenges as a way to improve, and quitting is not an option for them. They understand that success is often on the other side of the challenges.

What I do when I feel frustrated with my lack of results

“I am so stressed out.”

This was the line I wrote in my journal this morning.

I turned on some journaling music on Spotify and spent 10–15 minutes pouring my soul out on the pages. I wrote about how overwhelmed I feel with contracting work and how it’s incredibly time-consuming and taking time away from my writing.

I wrote about how I’m frustrated by my YouTube growth and how some of my influencer friends often brag about their success with YouTube, and it always brings me down.

I wrote about how nervous I am about finances and how sometimes I get scared to check my bank account.

After I do a quick run-through of what I wrote, I try to address my anxieties and stress by jotting down a single action item.

• I’m overwhelmed by the amount of contract work I have. It’s taking away from my writing.

Action plan: Time block my week and give myself 1 hour every morning to write.

• I’m frustrated by my stats on YouTube. I’m not growing.

Action plan: Don’t look at your stats. Focus on creating great content this week.

• I’m nervous about my finances.

Action plan: Look at your bank account. Don’t avoid it. Identify if you can make a little bit extra this month or cut back on something.

Try this exercise out and when you make your action plan, follow through with it.

If you’re like me, you tend to dwell on your anxieties and keep them in the back of your head all day long, but this is the point of your action plan, you come up with a solution, and you move on.

Worrying about it won’t help you; it’ll only make things worse.

Bottom Line

I know it’s hard to go after your dreams and goals when you’re not seeing a payoff. I know it’s hard to get out of bed every morning and go to the gym. I know it’s hard to create content for an audience that you feel isn’t there.

I’ve been writing, creating content, and working hard daily for the last few years, and I can’t tell you how many times I wondered if it’s all going to amount to something or if anybody even cares about what I have to say.

When I contemplate giving up, I consider the consequences of that:

• If I give up on my writing, I’ll never write and publish a book.
• If I give up on my health and fitness, I’ll be unhealthy, and I probably won’t live very long if I don’t take care of myself. I also won’t ever get my dream body. lol.
• If I give up on creating videos, I’ll never be able to connect with people in the way I want… also, I’ll never be able to edit another video. editing is my favorite.

Showing up every day makes me feel better.

If you want to start seeing results, start by being consistent and stop letting the hard moments get to you.

By being consistent, you’ll set yourself apart from the crowd and you’ll be one of the very few who can actually say, “I did it.”

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