How do you stay positive while creating courses?

Each week, we are showcasing one of our 5 community values to celebrate what makes our community of instructors unique. This week’s value is “Be positive.”

Online teaching is full of ups and downs. To succeed in the long term, we focus our energy on the positives and share our achievements and encouragement with our peers.

“I have high hopes that my course will encourage people to go ahead and develop their own Solar Off-Grid system to unplug themselves from the pressure of increasing utility energy prices, ultimately becoming energy independent on one end. On the other end, I really hope that unprivileged people in remote areas are provided with a life changing opportunity to have clean, renewable and permanent energy supplied to their homes. I hope this course has a massive reach, but if I get only one of my students to achieve this goal, my work will be considered successful.” - Leandro (Argentina)

Tell us about a time when you stayed positive even when things didn't seem to be working out.

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Comments

GregReverdiau

Reading the messages and reviews from students who said you changed their life is a good way for me to stay positive. Also, thinking about how much safer people will be doing what I teach is a big motivator. And if I have a down day, I just go to one of my videos and I watch myself while played at 0.5x the speed. Then I start laughing because I sound drunk.

MasterK77

Hi I have to agree with Mr Greg...getting Great Feedback from a Students really helps me Stay Positive...I personaly can't stand listening to my own voice when I test or playback my course-im very critical but then I have Students that Love it and say so,and say Its Calming! even tho I sound like a Farmer lol

Personaly I am a very Positive Person both in my Life and in my Teachings! This is the way I have Unprogrammed and Reprogrammed my Mind! A Client that was going through a bad time in his life-once came up to me and asked me how come I was so Happy and Positive all the time? my reply was this=I have conditioned my Mind to love everything I hate...this leaves nothing to waste my Mental Energy on...I also Don't use a Mobil Phone/Listen to News/or believe second hand information...so I am Fully Awake! I also Maintain my Mind/Body and Spirit every Day! Grounding...Meditation...Breathing exercises and so on...its Amazing how Humans look after so many different things but not their Mind/Body and Spirit! Balance is the word...Have a Beautiful Day MK

SharonRamel

I begin everyday in a positive space. On waking I lay in bed and thank the elements, the stars the moon for accomapying me through the night. I go through the dreams I had during the night to see what signs and metaphors are hidden within them. We are farmers so usually up just before dawn - this is such a magical time of the day - we always greet the rising sun. Then onto the yoga mat for meditation and yoga. After this coffee in hand we usually run through the tasks of the day. We use Steven Coveys quadrant to keep on track and away from time wasting.

My Udemy day starts with reveiws - and I cannot get more positive than that - it is an honour to be able to help people. Next I answer any questions and then onto the assignments - messages received and last the revenue! Each day has a business goal - eg today was YouTube and researching/writing/rehearsing what will end up as 30 minutes of course time in 5-6 videos. This will be reviewed tomorrow, rehearsed and tightened plus filmed and hopefully edited.

In front of me to motivate me is book staring at me "how to shoot video that doesn't suck", along with a Swedish hand made and etched silver box that contains simple beautiful sayings, a photo of my sons from eons ago, my Pixie from Finland is smiling at me, two of my witches swords to remind me to "cut out time wasting" (ps thanks for closing down FB...), some crystals and rainwater to sip. Outside I watch the trees sway in the breeze and the changing landscape with the seasons. The funny part in this bucolic dream I have painted is it overlooks every farmers dream ----- the rubbish dump of abandoned farming equipment and odd bits...... that may come in use "one day". Screen Shot 2019-03-05 at 5.35.27 pm.png

MasterK77

Excellent! Blessings...

KarolyNyisztor

How I stay positive? It's easy! After 20+ years of aimless struggle in the corporate world, now I know that I'm finally doing what the Universe expects me to do.

Feels like arriving home after spending a couple of decades in a hostile country.

FrankKane

It's all about perspective. It's easy to let the latest brutal review or demanding student get you down. But just take a step back - go filter your review dashboard for 5-star written reviews and bask in them a bit. Go look at LinkedIn and see how many of your students have gotten better careers or more fulfilling lives - thanks, in part, to you. Visualize how big of a room you'd need to teach all of your online students in person, and reflect on the impact you're having. And if you're lucky enough to be making courses full time, remind yourself what corporate politics and commuting was like, and feel thankful to have left that behind.

Just remember you're helping people out at massive scale, sharing your knowledge, working on your own terms - AND getting paid for it. I mean really, an online instructor can't complain.

MasterK77

Wow! What a Great Positive Answer!

TameraDion

Speed yourself up in like, premier. Then you sound like a chipmunk!

SimonSanchezArt

Money, portfolio, improving my english skills.

Sadly Udemy didn't paid me last month because of an error, they told me they will pay me this friday, let's hope so

GrahamNicholls

The last 2 weeks I have had the flu and pretty much lost my voice..... no voice, no recording, these can be tough times! However, the one and only way I stay positive during this, or any other time is to remember the end goal, the purpose behind the reasons I am here:

- To help people on a much larger scale than I could have imagined

- To create a better world, in my own way, by encouraging my students to go on and help others

- To ensure that I have the time, energy and resources to look after my wife (who has a major spinal injury) and family.

If I every need a shot of positivity..... those three things give it to me every time!

MarkTimberl006

First step is defining 'positivity'.

If we treat it as an emotional state, then it won't last 5 minutes.

But if we treat it as an intellectual principled continous process, then positivity takes care of itself.

So here are some principles that will lead to success.

1. Diligence - the single most important principle, there are not many people at the top of the mountain, as most people give up climbing quite early, so keep climbing.

2. Master the craft - work on all the skills needed to be an online educator and improve continuously (which means being honest about your skill gaps).

3. Self development - study the habits of succesful people and adopt the clear principles that lead to success.

TameraDion

One way we keep positive is simply seeing how many we are helping. Each student that posts about how they were able to pass their exams keeps us going, each one that tells us they could not grasp the subjects until they came across our courses is inspiring. Even on the days when negative reviews come in, knowing that the positives vastly outweigh the negatives helps us continue creating and improving our courses.

All in all we follow Dory's advice though.

Joeel-Natalie

Great thread! I believe that in life you have to be intentional about what emotions and mental state you want to experience regardless of external factors. Of course there are times that we will all face challenges in life wether it is in course creation or in any other aspects of life.

There are a few things that I do to stay positive.

First I always start my day going over several things that I am greatful for before I even get out of bed so that I can start with a state of gratitude. I also visualize my day and things that I will do that make me feel alive.

As I eat breakfast, I usually listen to music or something inspirational. After I eat breakfast I always go for a walk in nature and during the walk we brainstorm on our priorities.

When a challenge does come up, the first thing I ask myself is what can I learn from this experience and remind myself that life is happening for me and to me. Therefore, the challenge is there as a learning experience.

At night I take a few minutes to reflect on the day and what I was greatful for.

Lastly I write down as my “todos” all the thing that keep me in a positive state alongall my other responsibility to make sure that I take time for them.

One of the times that things where not working out was when we had committed to several projects and then we had a hurricane turn into our area and we had to evacuate in the middle of the night. We took the expereince as an adventure and assess what we could actually do and could not work on while we where on the road. Then focused on what we could control. We where on the road for a week. During that time we continued our patterns of reflecting on things we where greatful for, taking time to walk in nature to brainstorm, and spending time listening to things that inspired us and help us grow. Since we could not record we created all the content on the road, build the frame work, created the promos, and everything else that we could do so that when we got home we just had to do the recording. With the other projects such as our group programs we just did it at the hotel and had a great time sharing our advenutre with our community.

MarkLassoff

I don't know why no one ever says this: If you don't like making courses, go do something else with your time.

There's no imperative to make a course. So, if you don't enjoy it, and it gets you down, go do something else. No one will be disappointed that you decided to spend more time fishing, hanging out with your family, or playing soccer than making courses when you don't like to do it.

Life is too short to spend time doing things you don't like.

I don't have any trouble

TomOphir

I feel its important to focus on the long term story of what is happening with our courses, have meaningful goals and and not always get bogged down in the day to day happenings... as another member, said it's easy to get jarred by an occasional negative review. My courses tend to sell steadily, modestly within a niche marke... but after six months hard effort I now have a bestseller amidst my courses, and Udemy is doing a great job helping to promote my courses. So keep on going...