Why are you doing it? 

I don't mean your initial answer. I mean the answer behind your answer.

We, humans, are notorious for fooling each other and ourselves. We think we are doing something for one reason, while subconsciously, we do it for a reason we are unaware of. This is the reason behind the cliché that we buy with our hearts and justify with our brains.

An example is someone buying a nice car.

They may say it's a better car objectively or safer, but deep down, that's not why they bought it. Instead, they bought it to signal something. Whether that's "Hey, I have money!" or "I drive a Tesla, I'm stylish and care about the environment. And have money."

I see this happen a lot in content creation.

Most people say they create content to help their audience or bring value. Sure, that may be one reason, but I doubt it's the main reason. 

Likely, your goal is to drive pipeline with it. No shame in that; just be honest with yourself.

This recently happened to me.

I was uploading the 3rd episode of my podcast, and I was "nervous." I felt a weird amount of resistance when posting about it on LinkedIn. My mind told me no one would care, which is fine.

My reason, or at least what I thought was my reason was, for creating the podcast, was to learn from and connect with intelligent marketers.

Then why was I shy to promote it? I shouldn't care if no one likes my post or even listens. The reason for doing it was already accomplished, right? Maybe I'm fooling myself.

And that brings me to the climatic question:

Is there something you're doing in your life that you think is for X reason, but maybe if you dig deeper, you realize it's for Y reason?

As the famous American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman says:

Let us not fool ourselves.

🧠 + ❤️ // JO