Ralph Carlson Blog

Obstacles are normal

It is normal to think that obstacles stop us from achieving our goals. At least that is what the majority thinks. Everyone knows that obstacles are a barrier to success and many of us use them as an acceptable excuse for not achieving success. You have surely heard people say, “I don’t have time to……” or “if only I had more money, I could….” In normal life these statements are used to justify a ‘get by’ life. They provide an excuse for staying where you are.

Luck has nothing to do with sucess

The average person thinks that successful people somehow don’t have any obstacles in their lives and that is why they succeed. They imagine that all the stars align and allow successful people to move confidently and easily to their goals. In their minds, luck makes it possible to succeed and most people, including themselves, are not lucky.

Obstacles and success are linked

In fact, successful people have their share of obstacles. They just don’t let obstacles stop them. They figure out a way to keep moving forward toward their goal.. In fact, they become stronger by working through these obstacles than they could ever have been without them. Sometimes the problem becomes a reason to push them to success. Sometimes solving the problem requires growth and becoming a better person by mastering new skills.

Don’t listen to unsuccessful people

Talk to a successful person and you will learn how many obstacles they overcame on the road to success. They will tell you how overcoming those obstacles made them stronger and better individuals. Talk to an unsuccessful individual and you will learn how obstacles prevented them from succeeding. Most of us never talk to successful people and therefore never learn that lesson. We do talk to unsuccessful people and therefore continue to have the wrong information about obstacles and success.

Challenge yourself to overcome obstacles

So, if you find yourself thinking that you can’t be successful because there are too many obstacles in your life, change your thinking and your associations. Read books by successful people and learn about the obstacles they overcame and the thinking that helped them do it. Follow people you admire on the web through Facebook and Twitter or on their blogs. Ask yourself how others faced those same obstacles and were able to succeed? Don’t let the obstacles control and limit your potential. Challenge yourself to master the obstacle so that you can reach your goal.

Popularity: 5% [?]

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achieving success, blog, facebook, obstacles, success, twitter

Sharing my personal branding experience to encourage others.

I am continuing to audit my social marketing on the web following the suggestions from the Personal Branding Blog. I was pretty miserable at Twitter but have been working to improve my score over the past week.   Today, I am taking on Facebook where I score a big 5.  This means that I am not in the ‘pick yourself off the floor’ group but merely in the ‘needs improvement’ group. I have all the pieces in place. There is a picture and my profile is complete. I connect with Facebook when I post a new item on my blog and it updates my status.  I have my name registered making it my Facebook URL and finally I have my privacy configured.

What I’m not doing is using the status updates strategically to develop my brand. I have joined some groups but the groups don’t build the brand either so I don’t get a point there. I don’t have my own page either personally or for my business. Finally I haven’t tapped my community for any reason anytime.

It’s basically the same situation as with Twitter. I understand the framework but not what it can do or how to make it do something that promotes my brand.

I’m not a master of Facebook for Personal Branding but I’m getting there and if I can do it, anybody can do it.

In fairness, I should note that commenter’s (about 50%) disagreed with using Facebook professionally. They preferred to let Linkedin provide all the brand building and keep Facebook personal. I’ll stay neutral on that point, mostly because I just don’t know. I do want to have Facebook contributing to my brand and my goal is to be making money on the web.  You may be only interested in the social networking.   I would really like to know some other opinions however. Have you found Facebook useful for more than just personal connections?  How?

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Business, facebook, personal brand, social networking

Why I started

About a year ago I began to hear about Web 2.0 applications and social networking.  People said that the future belonged to Web 2.0 and that the individuals who mastered it would control their niches.  At the time I was beginning to form a plan to develop a business network using the web.  I believed the buzz and began to explore social networking.  I joined Facebook. I set up a Twitter account.  I started this blog as a personal statement of who I am.

I can’t say that I had a vision of where I planned to go or how the pieces fit together.  I was borrowing visions from others who seemed to know what was going on with the expectation that things would sort themselves out along the way.  I am an optimist after all.  The blog is coming along; the business network or even the social network, not so much.

My experience so far

So how is it going?  I wish I could say that social networking is working for me.  Or that I could even understand what it would mean for it to be working for me.  When I say social networking, I mean Twitter and Facebook.  Right now I have a Facebook account and two Twitter accounts.

Facebook

Facebook has produced some results meaning that I have connected with people from my past and exchange some casual information with them.  I know things that I didn’t know before about people who weren’t in my thoughts until Facebook.  That isn’t a bad thing but neither is it a good thing because my relationships with them are just above superficial.  I have picked up some people that I have work relationships with now and some with whom I had previous work relationships.  I have not picked up any new relationships from Facebook and I haven’t developed deeper and richer relationships or pushed them in different directions because I don’t see how to do that.

Twitter

Twitter is quite different.  As soon as I joined, people started following me.  I have no idea why.  Somehow I selected some people to follow.  I don’t even remember how but some of them were the people that decided to follow me.  Maybe that’s the reason they followed but what escapes me is what benefit anyone has from having me follow them.  I have found some people that I respect and they often Tweet links to web posts- either theirs or someone they recommend.  Occasionally, I Tweet with some kind of status update- like anybody will care but I feel bad about not joining the community.  Twitter advocates suggest that you can ask questions and someone will answer.  Not true in my experience.  Apparently you can search for Tweets with keywords but so far I haven’t been able to rouse myself to the effort.

What was I expecting?

I was expecting something unexpected.  I don’t know how else to put it because Web 2.0 is supposed to open a whole new world of social networking.  It actually turns out to be not unlike regular networking at which I suck.

What am I missing?

One of the life lessons that I keep rediscovering is that most of my limitations are self imposed.  I have stepped up the effort in many areas of my life and pushed myself to learn and do different things.  I think that part of my problem is that my vision of the potential of Web 2.0 is limited by what I know right now.  The people that are advocating Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 vehicles see farther or pick up a richer color spectrum that I am missing.  Has anybody broken through this barrier and taken themselves to a higher level with Web 2.0 and having done that provide me some clues about what efforts or techniques I might use to break through myself?  If so drop some breadcrumbs in my comments.

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blog, facebook, social networking, twitter