I look at life sometimes and wonder what effects those articles have on people. I have often wondered what takes place in the mind of persons who find themselves consuming article after article on how to make money.
One thing I realized is that if you don’t have enough, the ‘make money online’ talk can make you loose your sanity. It only takes a few months to find yourself on the brink of self-destruction. It takes a few weeks for bloggers and other entrepreneurs to feel like what Marcus Sheridan describes in his blog on top blogger lists.
Sometimes these articles just bring some people bad luck. They do nothing but spoil the chances of one becoming successful. Oftentimes they cage one’s happiness and the next two things that I am about to discuss here should be considered carefully.
1. When you find yourself going after the wrong things and loosing direction, you can decide to turn things around.
2. When you find yourself aimlessly implementing things that suck all your energy, you can decide to do more of the same in the hope that things will work just fine. (I hope you will, in most cases, decide to stick with #1).
I have read my share of ‘fill your bank with damn beauties doing what you are passionate about’ posts. They are good. They can easily motivate a being that’s almost loosing hope of ever realizing their dream of becoming financially secure. They can make a person start using their gifts to benefit others. They can also make a person do their fair share of ‘add value to the lives of others’.
However, when reading such articles, your mind can easily turn into a double-edged sword. You can destroy yourself. You can end up destroying others and hopefully, you can achieve great success.
How can you harm others?
In the vain attempt to help others, self-interest can become your number one priority even without you realizing it. I know that you have to be in good shape to serve others well, but sometimes you can end up pushing in more junk down your throat on a daily basis without ever thinking of taking some time to exercise. You know what that does to your body, right?
In an attempt to make a million bucks, you can find yourself voluntarily giving bad advice to get your bank account filled quick. You may find yourself deviating from your earlier promises. You can find yourself forcing innocent people to shed tears just because you have to make two bucks every minute.
You can also devise ways to stop others from taking away a chunk of your market share. You can find yourself calling bright ideas trash because you feel threatened.
You can find yourself treating people badly: blaming them when they have done nothing wrong, putting them on a diet of constant lies (hiding the truth), not giving credit where it’s due or intimidating them.
How can you harm yourself?
Well, you can stick to what you know doesn’t work for you and loose big, then make no attempt to learn something. You can also start feeling that no one understands you and therefore deny other people access to you and all the love and knowledge in your heart and brain.
You can also decide to read more and more articles but do nothing, you know, getting obsessed with the success of other people and failing to allocate enough time to make yourself successful, too.
So what should you do whenever you read ‘make money’ articles
1. Appreciate the fact that someone worked so hard to achieve the success you are reading about. You could find yourself wondering how someone ended up making so much in just one day, one week, one month or one year. You could then try to copy paste the strategies they used and wonder why things aren’t working fine for you.
What I do believe in is that even the overnight successes you have read about several times took years to realize. What am I talking about?
If you hear the stories from the mouths of people you consider successful, you’ll hear them mentioning things like
I realized that…
It took me quite some time to…
My friends/parents/siblings/people thought I was just destined to…but I believed…
I asked God to…
I found people who were ready to help me do…
Sometimes I felt like…
I knew I had to…
I didn’t realize that…
I learnt how to…
I sure hope that you notice the elements of realizing something that one considers important, determination, support, doubt, patience, feelings of rejection, belief in God etc.
2. Your experiences doesn’t have to be the same to someone else’s. Just because Brian Clark built Copyblogger doesn’t mean you also have to do the same things he did. If he used blue biros to write some of his most popular articles, it doesn’t mean you should do the same. You can dictate or use a pencil.
A few stones that you’ll need to become successful are already in your brain and just because they look different from what you have heard or read out there doesn’t mean that you have to smash them to pieces. If you don’t like how they are shaped, do something. Make them look just the way you want them to be.
See what you can pick from the make money articles you have read so far and don’t treat your brain like it doesn’t have gems of its own. You have to find them even if that means doing the boring stuff of asking yourself hard questions and giving honest answers. Examples include:
How does this make money strategy/success story/research/article make me feel?
What are my current/ future make money strategies?
How do I want my make money success story to be like?
What am I going to do now/next?
3. Thank God you learnt a lesson and get back to your make money strategy. Don’t get obsessed with reading the bits that make your eyes glow. Create something that will also make people’s eyes glow.
And remember never to forget that it is not always about money. Think about how much value you can offer and I am certain that value will get you way more money than you ever thought possible. Give away part of that money to deliver even more value. This doesn’t mean that you should work your way to making losses or bankruptcy.
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What do you think? Got any experiences you want to share?
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