ralphcarlsonblog.com

Is Failure Bad?

In popular culture, failure is called a bad thing. Failure is the end of the game. You lose. When you fail, you become a loser, a failure. Average people think failure is the opposite of success. Of course we know that success is a process not a destination. Failure is not a destination either. Failure is actually a status report on your success path. It measures how you compare to where you planned to be, how you measure up to your goals and your schedule. It means nothing without a reference point. If you don’t have a goal or a plan, you can’t fail. You are where you are- nowhere. The only people who never fail are those who never set a goal and never make a plan. What do we call those people? We call them average.

Aim High

So when you set out on your success path, expect to fail. Set up ambitious goals. Aim high. When you do, you will always accomplish more than when you aim low or don’t aim at all. An easy goal allows you to be complacent. It doesn’t push you to use every one of your abilities. It doesn’t make you grow and learn. When you set ambitious goals, even goals that seem unreachable and you commit to work the plan that you make, every one of your talents is focused and you find power and resources you didn’t think you had. You soar.

Fail Magnificently

And then you fail to reach your ambitious goal. Does that make you a loser? You failed to reach your goal. Popular culture says yes. You failed. But the level you reached struggling toward your ambitious goal took you way beyond the timid goals and accomplishments of the ’successful’. If you are on a success path, you seek to fail because it means that you are pushing yourself to do more, be more and achieve more. That is what extraordinary people do and they fail and fail and fail again on their success path.

Failure is a badge of honor

Don’t be afraid to fail. Always remember that failure is a badge of honor. It demonstrates that you are challenging yourself, aiming high. And when you fail, don’t stop and feel sorry for yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. Learn all you can from that failure. What could you have done more of? What could you have done better? What did you learn? Then revel in your accomplishments. How far you soared. How close you got to the goal. And then set yourself another impossible goal and fail again.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Technorati Tags: ambitious goals, success, success path

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Getting Started.

I gave my blog the imaginative name you see here for a reason. It was to give me, Ralph Carlson, credibility on the web. Not Ralph Carlson the country, western singer. Not Ralph Carlson, one of several college professors. Me, the retired utility executive turned web entrepreneur. This was my second blog. When I started blogging, it never occurred to me to give it my name. I called it From LA to El Dorado with the idea that I would chronicle the transition from urban and sophisticated Los Angeles county to rural and hickish El Dorado county. By the time I burned out with FLATED, I had established a new mission for my web presence. I was going to make money on the web by helping people build home-based businesses. The first step was to be a credible web presence.

One of Us.

I think this is what Chris Brogan would call being ‘one of us’ but at the time I was too green to know about Chris Brogan or anything else in the web community. So Ralph Carlson Blog was born. It was a step up from my original blogspot blog. I bought a domain and set up hosting for it, then installed Wordpress and picked a stylish theme. Now I was a real blogger. Only it wasn’t so easy.

I Stumbled.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a niche. I didn’t know what to blog about and I certainly didn’t know what other people might like. My only principle was that I would not discuss politics. So I started with interesting items that I found on the web. I hoped that others would be interested. They weren’t. I shifted my focus to my self-development efforts and insights. It didn’t help. I still couldn’t attract readers. I enrolled in the 31 Day Blogger Course from Problogger. I learned a lot but still had no readers. I was getting frustrated. But I didn’t quit.

Finally, I got it.

At long last, I begin to understand what was creating my difficulties. I was missing two important things:

1.  People.

The first was that everything in my blog was about me. It was my blog, my insights, my cleverness. Me, me, me! There was no way that I would ever be seen as ‘one of us’ by other bloggers when I couldn’t stop looking in the mirror. I needed to be interested in others and engage with their thinking.

2.  Putting in the time

The second thing I was missing was putting in the time to make the connections. There is no way to fake a human connection. You have to read and engage what other bloggers are saying if you expect to add to the conversation and become a part of the community.

Learning from Examples.

Of course I had heard this before and I thought I was doing something but it wasn’t until I learned from examples about how it is done that I was able to change my behavior. It isn’t that it is hard to do, it’s just that when you are focused on you, you don’t see anything else.

So, how about that name?

Now, circling back to the title of the post, is the name of my blog a handicap? Would I be better served with a different name? James says yes and since he has been a great example as I stumble along with my blog, I take his suggestion seriously. Does anybody else have an opinion? Tell my if my blog name is a handicap.

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We Listen to the Wrong People.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uncleweed/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

I think we learn the wrong definition of success because we mostly know unsuccessful people. To unsuccessful people, success is reaching a level of accomplishment above their level and which they believe is not possible for them to achieve. They view it as an end state; the destination, the end of the road, the pinnacle. But they are wrong. Success isn’t like that at all. It is a process. It is a way of living.

Success is not a Trophy

Success is nothing like a trophy that you can put on a shelf and admire forever or keep in a safe deposit box. It can’t be captured. It can’t be preserved. Yet we continue to misperceive it. What we think of as success, whether it is a level of income or recognition, an elected position or important job, happens because of a way of thinking and managing life that gets us there. If we mistake any point on the path (those accomplishments) as success and forget the process that got us there, we won’t have them for long. When the success process is abandoned, the accomplishments will fall away. Only by doing the things that got us to the top can we stay at the top or move on to another accomplishment. Think of the politicians that forgot the constituents that elected them. Think of the people that strive to reach a job level and then relax. They don’t stay at that level and they quickly fall back.

Don’t be fooled.

So don’t be fooled into thinking that success is an accomplishment because this is setting yourself up for failure. Instead remember that success is a way of thinking that focuses on self-improvement and self-mastery to make the most of your abilities and the opportunities around you. And don’t forget the positive attitude that looks for opportunities in a field of challenges.

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Lists are good.

Lists have been hot here at RCB over the past week Both the top 10 reasons to post daily and the top 10 reasons not to post daily roused some lively comments and an interesting exchange about the right policy. Those comments provide the life blood for a blogger, feedback. Information about what the readers found in a post, what they liked and often a fresh perspective.

Lists can get better.

For long months as I began blogging, those comments weren’t coming. I had readers but they were not leaving any information about what they thought. Problogger told me that readers like lists and that they are more likely to respond when you ask a question. So I began posting lists.  Today I would like to ask a favor from my readers. Take a look at these two list posts from last year. Give me some feedback and any ideas you have to improve them. What did I leave out? What should I leave out? Which do you think is the most important item on each list and why. Leave your comments here or on the posts. It’s all good. Thanks

Number 1 is my speculation about why readers don’t leave comments.

Number 2 is my list of ways to make your marriage better.

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I have never used my stats as a measurement and encouragement in my blogging. This is just one more activity that wasn’t on my radar. There are several reasons. Probably the first and most important is that my readership was not growing. Who wants to measure something stable.  A second reason is that I didn’t have any goals because I didn’t want the frustration of failing to achieve them. Well, one of the things I have learned recently is how to get readers to come at least once.  A bigger trick is to have contents that make them come back again but it seems that I have some ability there as well.  So, bottom line, my readership has been growing.

I have to credit James for this improvement but following James is not for the weak and flabby. He continually raises the bar.

So what are those stats?

I have been following my stats with StatCounter so lets see what the story was for yesterday, Saturday January 30. I had 94 visitors up from 82 the week before. 79 were fist time visitors and 15 were returning visitors. The stats for the week before were 68 and 14. I am not so sure where these visitors are coming from. I added StatPress to my blog to get the same stats that James is using but I can’t seem to find them. I am pleased with this growth, however, from whence it might be coming. I am even willing to set a goal for February to double those stats to 200 visitors and 30 returning.

But what about posts?

Now to go a step further and look at what readers like on RCB, the stats tell me that my most popular posts are these:

70 views for my reminiscences about our 1959 Chevrolet convertible

23 views for the top 10 reasons to post daily

22 views for my reminiscences about our 1950Chrvrolet pickup truck

Now I need some help.

I know that search engines are responsible for the visit to the car posts and I suspect that those are readers who don’t return regularly but I don’t honestly know. I don’t have comments from those posts so there is no reason to think that after arriving from Google, they stick around to sample the other posts but I don’t know. I need some help here. If anybody came to RCB through searches that led to my car posts and stuck around for some of the other items, let me know.

Otherwise, has anybody got any ideas about how to use those hits to entice readers to other posts and finally do my periodic nostalgia posts (cars mostly so far) add value to anyone?

I’ve taking up James challenge and revealing my stats so far. Now I need help from readers to know how to channel my efforts going forward.

Popularity: 2% [?]

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photo credit: woodleywonderworks
photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Last weeks post about The Top Ten Reasons for Posting Daily was popular and received the most comments so far on any post (29 comments so far) and provided some spirited conversation. Several commentors suggested that a blogger may not want to post every day and provided examples of successful, moneymaking bloggers who post infrequently. I certainly wouldn’t want to get in a fight with James about this. I will leave that task for Allyn and Steve. It is clear that it is too simple to define a successful blog by the quantity of posts and that quantity of posts will never compensate for poor content. With all this new insight under my belt, I went back to my notepad and drafted a new list:

The Top Ten Reasons for not Posting Daily

1. You will run out of material too quickly

2. It will take readers less time to get tired of you

3. It will give you more time to work on each post

4. It will give you more time to promote your blog

5. You will have more time for comments to accumulate

6. Frequency may detract from money making success

7. Readers will anticipate your next post eagerly

8. Readers will be less likely to miss posts

9. Alexa won’t care so long as readership is high

10……..

I was on a roll there with help from Steve and Allyn but when I wrote down that list, I’m still missing that blinking number 10. Help me out please. Tell me what should be the 10th reason and what is your best reason for not posting daily? Thanks.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, success

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Small gifts are big.

Eleanor with her blog Give a Brick is a great example of how helping people is not just something for the wealthy and powerful. She shows how small contributions from ordinary people can change the world, or at least a small piece of the world and give great satisfaction. She says “Give a Brick” meaning give a small amount that you can afford and see how it can make a difference, help people and promote causes. A brick is a small thing but get a lot of them and you can build a cathedral. If you don’t know Eleanor, you should visit Give a Brick and get acquainted.

Give a coffee

In the spirit of Eleanor, I am suggesting today that we all Give a Coffee to CommenLuv. Almost every Wordpress blogger will know that CommentLuv is the wonderful plugin that adds your latest post to the information provided when you add a comment. I am new to CommentLuv and am loving it but like a lot of people, I am happy to take free for granted and haven’t made a contribution to CommentLuv to let it’s author know how much I appreciate the effort.

Lately, CommentLuv has been slow in reflecting the most current post causing me to complain. How is it that this wonderful FREE service isn’t quite current? I came up with a couple of hypotheses:

1.  CommentLuv is so successful and has so many users that the resources are strained.

2.  The author of CommentLuv has to focus attention on other activities to feed small children at home.

These are just my ideas and may be completely wrong but it suggests that perhaps CommentLuv is not feeling the ‘Luv’ from it’s users in a way that makes it easy to keep operating smoothly.

Show the Luv

My solution today is to Give a Coffee to CommentLuv. Not literally but metaphorically like Eleanor’s Bricks. A fancy coffee in the US is about $4.00 so I just sent the value of a coffee to CommentLuv just to let the author know that I’m ‘luvin’ it. And I urge any of you that are loving CommentLuv like I am and haven’t given yet, give a coffee too. CommentLuv is worth way more than $4.00 but sending a coffee is a way to say to the author that I value this service and appreciate the work behind it. What about you? You can do it here.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: plugin, small gifts, WordPress

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