Balancing Mental Health and Goal Achievement with Ben Schoeffler and Caitlin Zarrella

Every action changes the biochemistry of your brain. Not many of us think about that when running errands, slogging through a 9-5, or scrolling mindlessly on social media. But as creators, the way we work and manage our mental health can mean the difference between a thriving side hustle and another creative project left by the wayside. 

ConvertKit team members Ben Schoeffler and Caitlin Zarrella are both passionate about mental health and pursuing creative endeavors. As they can attest, without a boss to hold you accountable, give you praise, or help out when your workload gets tough, finding ways to stay motivated, passionate, and happy about your creative pursuits is tough.

In this episode, Miguel, Ben, and Caitlin discuss the ways in which creators can pursue goals without succumbing to burnout and discouragement, the simple art of successful goal-setting, and how creators can transform stress into fuel and dread into dopamine. 

Key Takeaways

• [00:52] - Have you heard? 
  • [01:00] - Creators can now buy insurance for their Instagram accounts. 
  • [02:45] - Creators.Google is a community blog with advice for creators. 
• [04:14] - Balancing mental health and goal achievement. 
  • [04:47] - Learn to manage stress before your side hustle becomes a full-time gig that’s twice as stressful. 
  • [10:28] - The pressure to always be creating or iterating on your craft can cause resistance to the hobby you originally loved. 
  • [11:28] - When it comes to battling depression, continuing to move and stay active with hobbies can improve your mental health significantly. 
  • [15:47] - The pandemic led many creators to burn out because the endless time had no structure and therefore no boundaries. 
  • [18:01] - Struggling to push through a learning curve prevents many of us from acquiring new skills. 
  • [20:03] - Reframe the learning curve as teaching yourself how not to do something versus telling yourself you’re unskilled.
  • [21:01] - To prevent immediate discouragement, pick a date or milestone and don’t evaluate your progress until you’ve hit that milestone.
  • [22:18] - Train yourself to fall in love with practicing because that’s how most of your time will be spent until you’re an absolute expert. 
  • [26:03] - Your perspective on the activity that’s difficult impacts the amount of dopamine your body releases while striving to accomplish it. 
  • [30:00] - Spiking your dopamine to the max will ultimately leave you feeling depleted. Focus on activities that push your dopamine without raising it through the roof.
  • [31:08] - What you consume online impacts your brain chemistry just like the food you consume impacts your mood and biochemistry.
  • [36:43] - Break big goals into smaller pieces so you can celebrate small wins and keep moving forward without frequent discouragement. 
• [38:37] - Angel at ConvertKit does great live workshops. The next workshop is Thursday, July 14th. 

Quotes

[05:27] - “Not everyone has a side hustle, maybe they're just in the incubation phase. Being able to manage your mental health with your hobby right now is kind of like the training grounds, so that when you do make that leap, if you decide to, and start maybe charging for services or products, that steps things up a little bit and makes it so you’ve got more skin in the game so there’s more stress involved. If you can really manage that stress in the beginning, it makes things a lot easier.” ~ @BenSchoeffler

[34:33] - “I still have my Instagram account, it’s active, but I don’t have it on my phone because it consumes too much all the time. And if I do want to pursue these goals of learning the piano or l