I recently had an extremely frustrating week with Instagram. I created a new Instagram account to publish programming and career related content and advice. I ran into a lot of issues where I kept getting errors and timeouts trying to create the account, then I keep getting my account disabled for no reason at all. I had my account disabled with no content in it. I posted content and still got my account disabled for no reason. I would appeal the decision, submit the verification needed and within minutes my account was back up with an apology. Ok. Except, this happened at least once a day every single day for over a week after my account had been created. Appealing and verifying to get my account back only took a few minutes, but that is still an extremely frustrating thing to encounter on a daily basis. I submitted bug reports, but I’m not sure anything actually got to a real human.
The silver lining is that this experience reinforced the value of patience and persistence. It was very annoying and at times I did consider just giving up and posting only on LinkedIn and Facebook, but I knew Instagram would be a good place to gain exposure and build my audience. It would have been easy to just let my frustration overtake me and give Instagram up as a bad job.
I was patient and persistent in appealing the baseless disabling of my account. I knew the content I would be posting provides value and I wanted to share it with any programmers who might be interested. It’s been a little over 10 days since I created my account and I’ve been consistently sharing value driven posts. I’ve gained 12 followers and have reached just under 450 accounts so far. I want to share my knowledge and help as many people as possible. Instagram is one platform that will help me reach these people to do that.
Patience and persistence paid off and I haven’t had to appeal a baseless account disable in about 2 days. Fingers crossed that experience with Instagram is over.
How was I able to remain patient and continue to push forward with Instagram despite these frustrating setbacks?
I focused on my goal. What was I trying to accomplish? Why was I trying to accomplish this? I believe in my goal. I believe what I know can help others and I believe in my ability to share my knowledge and reach my audience. That belief fueled me to keep pushing forward. When I get incredibly frustrated with Instagram, which happened pretty much every time my account was disabled, I would take a deep breath, focus on my goal, and appreciate everything that was currently going well.
Taking a deep breath helped me calm down so I wouldn’t act from a place of rash emotion. Focusing on my goal helped me realign my mind with what was important and why I was doing this. Taking a moment to appreciate everything going well in my life helped me shift my perspective from one of immense frustration to one of gratitude. Yes, Instagram was being extremely unhelpful, but there were a lot of other things that were more than making up for that. I have so many other blessings that Instagram acting up was really a trivial little issue. Was it still frustrating? Exceedingly so. Did that mean I was going to let it ruin my day or prevent me from accomplishing my goals? Hell no!
Patience and persistence pay off. If you struggle with either of those things, try taking a deep breath, focusing on your goals, and appreciating all the things in your life that are going well. You’ll find it much easier to be both patient and persistent after that.
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