Much is said across the blogging community about developing your authentic voice. Less is said about how blogging helps you unfold your authentic self.
As many bloggers will agree, finding your voice, your own unique style, format and way of sharing with your audience takes time. The six months to one year of initial blogging is a steep learning curve from trial and error as you experiment with different styles, formats and ideas to find out what works for you.
In the midst of this, you are learning to a articulate your thoughts, ideas and develop your brand in a clear and entertaining way. You begin to discover insights about yourself and the way you express yourself that you were never aware of before. You’re always considering how your real-life experiences can be used full translated into valuable and compelling resources for your readers. Suddenly your entire life become a walking, talking research and experimentation unit.
As you become clearer on the messages you want to share, you also become clearer on who you are as an individual and how your viewpoint affects yourself as well as others.
Blogging in itslef creates a spectrum of continuous self-awareness, asking questions and building your knowledge base. Not only are you growing the spectrum of your blog, you are growing as a person. Each time you publish a post, you reveal a little more of yourself, you increase your own awareness as well as grow the knowledge and awareness of your audience. You share your talents and skills on your blog in order to help others and simultaneously seek to help yourself. Blogging, after all, is the art of solving people’s problems in this wonderful age of information. And our problems, we realise are also the problems of our peers, friends and communities.
So how does blogging make you a better person?

• You become a better communicator. You are continuously learning to articulate and express your message in several different formats so that all kinds of people can be reached. This practise alone makes you more aware of how different people absorb information differently which is subconsciously translated into your daily life. (I recently wrote a long letter to my mama and finished it off with bullet point to surmise my main arguments just to make sure “she gets it”… Ha!)
• You develop your unique authentic voice. It is said many time over that the best way to create compelling content is by being completely yourself. This requires a bit of soul searching wherein often the process of blogging helps to navigate you to that point of figuring out who and what you are in order to share your authentic voice.
• You learn to better deal with the highs and lows of life. Blogging comments, google analytics and social media give you a good idea in the real-time realm how you, your brand and your ideas are coming across to your audience. Some people will love you, some people won’t. You learn that you can’t please everyone and that most importantly you must remain true to yourself.
• You learn to react quickly in intense situations and your problem solving skills rocket skyward. A link is broken, your site is down, something has gone wrong. But it’s ok. You take a deep breath and figure out how to solve the problem and perhaps come up with a solution so it doesn’t happen again. You know that sometimes these things happen and that it’s not the end of the world.
• You meet likeminded people. Internet and the blogosphere have become one of the best ways to meet wonderful amazing people who are on the same wavelength as you. Like attracts like in cyberspace and suddenly you will find yourself amongst a group of the most fabulous and fascinating friends imaginable who totally “get you”.
• Self awareness spurs on self development. The two move hand in hand. From all the analysing and collecting ideas from your daily life to share with your audience comes the automatic response of building and growing on that which you already are and know. You are continuously taking your thought processes deeper and wider in a wild array of topics, developing your own knowledge and how that this reflected in your life experience.
• Blogging makes you a happier person. Not only are you giving value to people and contributing to the world, but you are sharing your art, you passion and wisdom with those who choose to seek it out. Now that gives everyone a good sense of fulfilment!
• The commitment and constancy that blogging brings to your life gives you a well-rounded sense of achievement. Human beings thrive from having to complete something on a consistent basis, especially if and when the rest of their life may be a sort of unexpected chaos, and research that a practise of anything (such as blogging) improves your general sense of self and wellbeing.

Not only are you giving value to others but you are also giving enormous value to yourself. Each and every single time you hit that publish button.