Chris Brogan has helped me from time to time as I make the transition from employee thinking to business owner. One time, he even found my blog and left an encouraging comment back when comments were rare at RCB. I will always remember that gesture and retain a very positive feeling for Chris as a result. I read his book and learned some very real lessons from it and him about building a presence on the web.
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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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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.
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As I search the web for bloggers that are good communicators and have insights and knowledge that can help me in life, one valuable find is The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur. Andrea J. Sternberg explains in her About Page how she discovered Social Media and over time began to understand how and why to use it. Now she sees her mission to help others take that same step.
“Currently, my real passion is to help Baby Boomer entrepreneurs overcome their fear of marketing. In particular, I am working to show them how to integrate social media and other technologies into their overall marketing strategy.”
Baby Boomers have difficulty making the transition from marketing yourself with badges and trophies (degrees, certificates and jobs) to value-based transactions using social media. This is a journey that I have barely started. You can learn a lot from Dan Shawbel or Chris Brogan but if you are starting from an obsolete perspective, it can be a big help if you can learn from someone like Andrea who knows where you started from. She is a great resource for Baby Boomers who are learning the ways of Social Marketing. If you need persuasion, just watch this video from her blog. Then head over to The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur.
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Lately I have been struggling with this very important question. It is difficult because all through my Life, I thought I knew the answer. When I was a student, I defined myself by the school I attended. After school, it became the job that I held. Occasionally, I would define myself by my family. Today as I struggle to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24350382@N07/ / CC BY 2.0
determine what is important to me; what makes my compass point north and how to unleash my passion, I wonder how I was ever satisfied with such superficial statements. What is it about our society that teaches us to value ourselves by association? Perhaps it is just clever marketing by the education establishment and corporations but I do think that human beings crave the comfort and security of associating with powerful institutions. I don’t know any statistics but I do notice that for most of my life a dependent relationship (job) was the preferred choice for most of us.
Now that it becomes clear that the promises that made dependency look so attractive were lies, we see different choices. Some are seeking another kind of dependency by electing statist politicians who will create a cradle to grave nanny state by taxing away entrepreneurs. Others are fleeing the empty promises of a life commitment to a corporation and becoming independent contractors providing value then moving on to another situation.
In this environment, it is important to know who you are and you can’t shortcut it with a job title or degree. It is all about how you treat people and what information or services you can give and the quality of that interchange. I don’t think this means that I must become a different person. It is just that these qualities never seemed to be the important part of the definition of me – until now. In this new world, none of these qualities will matter if the statists win but until then what is important about me is how much I care about what I can do that provides value to others and the way that I relate to those people to add value to their lives. Maybe Seth has it pegged.
Are any of you struggling with this as well? I’d like to know your take.
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It has been just over one month since I decided to retire. I expected that I would accomplish so much with the time freed up from work. In fact, it seems that things pop up to fill that time and when I look back, I find that I have not been very productive. The truth is that the freedom from my job schedule has allowed me to slack off. I suspect that I have gotten less done than would have happened if I were still working. This is not acceptable!
Originally, I expected to develop a regular schedule that would accomplish much more work on my blog and my money making ventures with my newly freed time. It hasn’t happened. Looking back, it is clear that unless I sit myself down and demand some self-discipline, it’s not going to happen. I made a commitment to myself that I would replace my income over 2010. I think that it is a reasonable expectation…….. but it is not going to happen without a plan and some hard deadlines. I will just continue to drift.
Discipline is not my strength. I let myself off the hook all too easily and my attention flits from one task to another when what I am doing seem too much like work. I can tell myself what to do but it is much harder for me to actually crack the whip and hold myself accountable.
One problem is that I avoid making commitments and that makes it easy for me to rationalize when I don’t make real progress. So tomorrow, I intend to make a plan with some long and short term commitments, goals and deadlines. Within that framework, I will then establish a work schedule incorporating weekly and special commitments with enough time dedicated to the important tasks to accomplish them on schedule.
I don’t expect this to go smoothly. I don’t expect that I will change my nature. I do expect to become more focused and aware of my progress – or lack thereof. It is my life and if I don’t decide what to do with it, someone else will.
Is this an issue that anyone else has? What have you done that helps you stay focused and goal driven?
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