Do Your Belief Structures And Behavior Patterns Block Your Success?
Are You Aware Of Your Blind Spots?
I’m a fence sitter. This can at times be a hindrance, but if balanced well, it’s an advantage.
What I mean by this is I don’t 100% commit to a point of view. I have a point of view, but it’s not so rigid that I will default to it without being capable of seeing other points of view.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. No doubt thanks to learned behaviors and pure animal instinct, I do default to certain behaviors in given circumstances, but for the sake of this article let’s focus on issues that we can consciously make a decision about using our awareness. These are areas of our lives that are open to interpretation.
My fence sitting stems from an understanding that everyone sees the world through different glasses. We all perceive things differently, and in our own minds we make choices based on how we see things at the time. There is no right or wrong, only perception and choice, which is how we drive our entire lives.
Since you can’t share someone else’s physical experience (you can’t borrow their senses or mind and see what is it like to “be” them), you have to go with your own perception, which unfortunately can be very dangerous if you start to form rigid belief structures.
Are You Open Minded?
Most people, especially in liberal cultures gifted with plenty of freedom, like to think of themselves as open minded. You likely feel the same, saving your judgments until you’ve had a chance to weigh up the options, opinions and data until you feel comfortable enough to make a decision.
Open mindedness is good, however it can slow you down. If you’re willing to assess information before making a conclusion, you have to invest time and energy into the process. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time to do this and that’s when intuition and experience, or as Malcolm Gladwell calls it – a Blink moment – comes in handy.
A Blink moment refers to the ability of the mind to process data at instantaneous speed, forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion in a matter of seconds, if that. Malcolm Gladwell calls it rapid cognition.
The idea here is that the mind is capable of taking all kinds of inputs, including what data it is receiving from the body’s senses in the moment, plus previous experience, to decipher a conclusion. This is why your first answer is usually the right answer.
While you might think of yourself as open minded, if you’re human your response is instant judgment. We judge at the speed of blink, very quickly forming opinion based on what we see, hear or feel, using our own personal preferences to decide what we like and don’t like and how we respond to a situation.
There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s important you are aware of it. We like to bend the world into the frame that best matches our present state. Our snap judgments are reflections of how we choose to see situations at a given point in time. We want to make sure we are “right” in what we are doing and thinking based on our current opinion. If you aren’t aware of these tendencies, you can find yourself trapped into patterns that may make you blind to seeing things in a different, more beneficial light.
This is why fence sitting can be an advantage. Although you have to be careful not to sit on the fence permanently, as not making a decision can be detrimental, having a flexible world view gives you the power to adjust and respond to things as needed. It gives you control and thus freedom over your reality, as counter intuitive as that might sound (a dichotomy).
Your Patterns of Behavior Are Anchors
Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
This is part one of a series on how to create positive change in your life based on what has worked for me, what hasn’t, and what I’m currently learning. Rather than write one of my usual 4000+ word monster articles I’m breaking it down for you into more manageable chunks.
This is going to be a very important series if you’re ready to arm yourself with some powerful tools in the battle for happiness, success and contentment in your life, so get ready. Here we go…
This Is Who I Am
As a blogger you are at times more open with your thoughts and feelings online than you might be in person, even with your closest friends and family. Despite knowing that thousands of people read this blog every day, I find it easier and I’m much more succinct, when I share my thoughts and ideas here, at least when it comes to certain subjects.
One of the wonderful, if surprising at first, experiences as a result of being open with people through a blog is that eventually you gain some kind of notoriety for being good at something. When I started Entrepreneurs-Journey I wanted to share my business experiences simply for the sake of sharing and to see whether other people found what I had to say of value. Some people did find what I had to say valuable, so I kept saying things, and more and more people found me and started listening.
Eventually my perception online became that of an “authority” in my niche, at least to a small sub-segment of the population. I became a “someone” rather than an audience, in one little corner of the universe, in this case as a blogger who talks about entrepreneurship, marketing, and personal development.
This is a great event for all kinds of reasons, but the most important reason, and be sure to underline this, is that with authority, more people actually read what I write. With the attention that authority gives me, I enjoy the privilege and honor of being able to influence people. This is power and it’s something you have to be very careful with as power is trust, and you don’t want to abuse people’s trust.
What’s a little strange for me is that I’ve not really done anything to enjoy my position other than tell you what I think and do. I haven’t been officially trained to do this in any way, I didn’t go to school to learn to blog (I started one instead), nor was I instructed along the way about the right way to do things. In reality I’m pretty much exactly the same as you are right now, except I’ve spent the last five years sharing aspects of my life through this blog over and over again, week after week.
The Challenge That Is Changing Yourself
It’s Time To Reduce Your Stress
I was sitting at the bus stop the other day. It was a Friday. I had spent the day leisurely – some work in the morning, then off to the city after lunch for some writing on my laptop at an Aroma’s cafe for a couple of hours. I had plans for a game of tennis with my friend Alborz for 7 PM that night.
I left the city to go home before tennis with what I thought was plenty of time to spare, at about 5 PM, a full two hours before I was due at the courts.
On the way home I got off the bus early to stop by the supermarket because I was almost out of milk.
I don’t like to play tennis without eating beforehand otherwise I run out of energy. I wanted to get home to have something to eat before playing.
I had to catch a Citycat (a river ferry) to get over to the tennis courts.
The mixture of these transportation variables and activities I wanted to do before tennis combined to create stress. Yes, I know you are probably laughing at me – “That’s not stress, I’ll tell you about stress!” you are thinking. I admit it wasn’t significantly stressful but in a life like mine this is about as stressful as it gets – enough stress that it sparked the concept for this article.
It’s All About Timing
I was standing at the bus stop to finish my journey home after buying my milk and a few other items from the supermarket, frustrated because I was hungry and annoyed that I managed to make a few activities stressful when I really didn’t need to. It didn’t help when I only had a $50 note for the bus driver and he couldn’t provide change.
To cut the story short, I managed to get everything done, had a snack, dressed for tennis, caught the ferry over the river, walked into the tennis centre and looked at my watch – 6:35PM – I was a full 25 minutes early. I couldn’t help but chuckle at myself.
While I was on the bus I was thinking about my “previous life” as a university student. Now those days were stressful. Exams, assignments, tutorials, lectures, lots of public transport and of course studying topics I really didn’t care too much about, combined to create tonnes of stress.
I thought back to one of the worst times – exam block – those few weeks when you have a bunch of exams at end of semester all at once. At around that time every year (right about now actually as I type this), at the end of May and early June, I would get sick. I’d get the flu and have the added pleasure of feeling physically miserable while I did assignments and studied for exams. My own personal hell that I’m sure many other university students are going through right now.
I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but ever since I’ve been my own boss and worked on precisely what I want to work on, I don’t get sick anymore (touch wood!). It could be that I no longer go to a university campus infested with other sick students all coughing and spluttering on each other, sharing the same computer equipment and congregating in small square tutorial room boxes in close proximity to each other.
Or it could be, and I think this has more to do with it – I don’t really get stressed anymore, and well gosh, I’m pretty happy most of the time too, which is not something I could say about my university life. Being happy, having no stress and being in control of your emotional state combine to create the most powerful immune system boost you could ever have.
You Are What You Think
I’m a firm believer that your mindstate very much influences your physical state. You can literally make yourself sick just by the way you think and the prime culprit of illness inducing thinking is stress. I’m fairly certain that if I asked you right now about when you have been crook (unwell) in the past, it almost always coincides with a period of high stress in your life.
The mind is powerful. I’m living proof of this as I’ve managed to change my thinking process so dramatically in the last few years that what used to be the biggest cause of problems in my life, is now the most powerful asset I have for dealing with potential negative influences. As I discussed previously in my article – The Key To Happiness – your self talk, self-awareness and the choices you consequently make, dictate your happiness (and other emotional states).
One of the main influences on my choice to work towards self employment as an Internet marketer was to remove all time based deadlines from my life. I didn’t want to be anywhere at any time unless I specifically chose to be. I constantly make choices that remove any deadlines from my life because I know for me, the way I work best, is to have no rigid deadlines.
No Deadlines (The word “Dead” is enough of a hint to avoid them…)
People are asking me when Blog Traffic School will be released. I answer by saying I don’t know. I have some loose likelihoods – the month I hope to be finished – but I am not committing to any specific timeframe because I’d rather give myself the time necessary to produce my best work, rather than rush something because of a deadline. That would create stress and reduce my output quality.
I’ve turned down speaking and networking opportunities that start before 9 AM because of my sleeping patterns. That one 9 AM start would ruin a full day for me because I’d miss some sleep and my output is terrible without sleep. I almost always choose my own physical health over anything else because I know that is the most important consideration for my success. Without my health I can’t achieve what I want to. Therefore, and this seems so logical to me, yet millions of people everyday make the opposite choice, I will always opt for a good nights sleep or a quality meal instead of pushing myself to work to meet a deadline, which in the grand scheme of things, has very little impact on my happiness, while my health certainly does.
When people look at my “working lifestyle” they are amazed at how relaxed it is. An hour or two of work here, another hour or two there. As I’ve written previously I don’t call it work, it’s what I do for enjoyment and satisfaction, but the label of “work” is necessary in order for most people to understand what I do. My average day has NO stress and I am not driven by deadlines, I’m driven by comfort and happiness. Can you say the same?
I used to get stressed when students would send in editing jobs to my business BetterEdit with short deadlines. I’d have to arrange projects sometimes with only a few hours before the deadline. Back when I was very gun-ho to get my business going I’d take on every project and I’d feel terrible if I couldn’t meet a deadline.
We’ve both matured past this now (that’s both me, and BetterEdit the business). When a job comes in I ask my editors if they can do it and respond matter-of-factly to clients “I’ll do my best, but no promises”. I won’t create stress in order to complete a $100 job, it’s just not worth it.
It’s amazing what happens when you disconnect yourself from what you have been trained to value so highly – money. Don’t create stress and make your life mentally and physically painful just for an extra buck. It is never, ever, worth it.
Is Time An Illusion?
I’m sure you have heard the phrase “Time is an illusion”. If it really is, then it has to be the most powerful illusion ever not to exist. Time is the single biggest cause of stress in our western culture. It’s amazing how much value we give it, how much influence it has on us and how it, or a lack of it, makes us sick.
Deadlines at work, during studies and in our social lives make life rushed. You feel as if you are running from place to place, meeting one deadline just to start work on meeting the next. During the worst times you feel as if you no longer have control over your own life, you forget why you created the deadlines in the first place and just work as fast as you can like a mindless automaton. You are always busy and if you are not you start to feel guilty. There has to be something wrong with that.
Then of course you look at the big picture and once again we seem to be rushing to achieve certain goals before we are 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 or 65 years old. Am I the only one who finds it funny that we count down our lives using a numerical system that just seems designed to make us feel like we are useless, out of date and underachieving? I’m constantly trying to forget my birthday so I can just be Yaro rather than a 26, nearly 27 year old male who should be earning so much money now and doing certain things because society says I should (and my peer group are too). It’s hard to forget how old you are though because you get presents on your birthday 
How You Can Start To Remove Stress From Your Life
People have told me that some stress is a good thing. You need stress in order to push yourself to achieve things. I don’t agree with this, or at least I don’t think “stress” is the right label for it. You need desire, motivation and passion to achieve success, not stress. Stress is the result of letting time and money influence the way you live your life.
If you break things down, really evaluate what is important for you right now in this single moment, during this one day, then you will quickly realize most of the causes of your stresses are because you are running as fast as you can towards false idols. Don’t be in a hurry to get to tomorrow because you have been socially conditioned to do so. Don’t convince yourself that you HAVE to achieve something by the end of this year, resulting in stress, dissatisfaction and potential sickness, for the next six months. Don’t make stress because you want more money, that shiny new boat/car/house, just because the TV commercial told you it will make you happy or your neighbour just got one. No physical item has ever made anyone truly happy.
Adapt your life to what works for you. Afterall, you can only do the best you can with what you have been given. Each and every one of us has been given a different situation in life. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, freedoms and limitations. As you are the best judge of you, all you need to do to reduce your stress is to start listening to your feelings.
Flag the events, thoughts and situations that create stress. Figure out why they do (probably because of time based constraints or limitations or expectations you have created), then work to change these situations, remove them altogether if necessary. Then start hunting for the opposite – find what relaxes you or energizes or motivates, but doesn’t create stress. Work to imbue your life with more of these situations and you will find your life will slow down, your happiness will increase and your health will improve.
Stay Relaxed
The key to eliminating stress from your life is to relax. Doesn’t the polarity between those two words just seem so appropriate? Relax, don’t stress. Be in control of your emotions and your life. Don’t let your life control your emotions.
Do you hear this phrase repeated over and over from self development teachers and spiritual leaders?
“Enjoy the moment”
It’s true, so very true. If you enjoy the moment, the deadline doesn’t exist. If you take a step back, connect with where your true happiness comes from, you will realize that nothing has to happen today unless you want it to. Tomorrow is just as good, or the next day, or the next.
Yaro Starak
Living Today
Life Lessons Lead To Business Solutions
Or…Business Solutions Lead To Life Lessons
This article was started in July 2005 and I intended it to become a piece on how to avoid confusion and paralysis when choosing how to educate yourself. I think I may have added it to once sometime since and continued writing it again today. Writing tonight, about halfway through the article, not intentionally, a self development angle became apparent. I’m not one to stop myself when this happens because I believe it often carries the most powerful and helpful (and often confusing) message so I continued writing. Consequently this article may seem a bit disjointed and disorganized but I like it that way, and it has a good message, so I hope you like it too.
******
How do you like the idea of making money from the Internet without lifting a finger? Yeah, me too. They call it passive income. Pure passive income comes from Internet business when the process of prospecting, selling, converting, signing-up, payment and delivery are handled automatically. The customer only interacts with your systems and you wake up to payment received notification emails each and every morning. It’s a beautiful thing.
I’m working to diversify my income streams and reduce my current dependency on Internet business which requires my active participation to operate. This means creating more streams of income that leverage assets I create that function without ongoing inputs from me. I also want to increase my affiliate income since it’s very passive and can leverage the same assets.
Fresh Faced Internet Marketer
I’m young and while I’m not new to Internet marketing I am very much just starting out making it my main source of income. I’ve got a fantastic start given my experiences but there is so much more to learn. Based on emails I receive from many visitors to this blog I suspect you, my reader, are quite likely in the same position as me. You are eager to start earning but you aren’t sure where to begin. If you are smart you will have realized that the best place to start is through education (that’s why you are here right?). You have to learn before you can earn (rap music charts here I come) but even after that decision is made you still face a roadblock – information overload – where do you start studying?
I work in an industry that is saturated with marketing gurus and their information products. It makes sense of course, since if you teach people how to make money online using information products then you would naturally use those same techniques to sell the information. That means whenever I go hunting around to “get educated” I’m bombarded with options. Each and every step of the Internet marketing process has been broken down into minute detail with information products available on everything from the name-squeeze technique to opt-in newsletters, to affiliate marketing, website traffic, search engine optimization, copywriting, keywords, PPC, niche marketing, product launches and all the sub-categories that follow. It’s a crowded marketplace.
Thankfully I’ve made a decision to commit myself to a particular niche market so the concept of “what” I’m selling has solidified. Combined with other forms of income, some online (affiliate programs) and some offline (shares) I’m comfortable with where my income is coming from. I have lots of work to do because not all of those assets I’m going to leverage have been created yet, but that’s the fun part – creating fantastic content for my audience. I’m writing many articles behind the scenes for my products and marketing systems which, combined with my blogging output, will be my pillars for the future.
The problem comes when it’s time to set up new systems and start selling. Some of my important decisions have been made and lessons learnt. I’m happy with AWeber as my email autoresponder and it’s not likely I’ll be changing services any time soon. I’m happy with the companies that host my websites and I register my domains with. I have access to designers and programmers I trust if I need anything done beyond my skill-set. I know how to use Pay Per Click advertising and I’m comfortable that my search engine optimization techniques over time will lead to good results. I have the basics covered but I’m about to head into uncharted territory.
It’s A Brave New World
I’m about to do some things I’ve never done before. I’m about to be a presenter in a teleseminar series (if you want more news about this join my blog traffic school email list). During this year I’ll be writing salescopy for my own products, doing product launches, looking for joint venture partners, creating affiliate programs for my own products, using name-squeeze pages, long sales letters and setting up membership sites. I may not do all of these things but I definitely need to be familiar with them, know the best service providers for them and understand how best to implement them.
And of course, every one of those activities has many information products available that I can buy, study and presumably get educated about. I could collectively spend thousands of dollars and fill my days with reading and listening to newsletters, e-courses, e-books and podcasts. If I did this I wouldn’t have any time left to actually implement the things I learnt and I’d be broke as well!
Life Has The Answers
They say in life all things are the same. This concept is regularly reinforced in my life, sometimes blatantly obviously and at other times more intuitively or spiritually.
Paulo Coelho, author and spiritual leader, teaches us that we are part of the soul of the world and we can communicate with it through everything.
Perry Marshall, Internet marketer and Google AdWords guru, notes that AdWords is like a tree, with keywords as leaves, adgroups as branches and campaigns like stumps. As corny as that may sound to you he’s right and I suspect Perry understands intuitively a lot about life that helps him immensely as a marketer and teacher.
Buddhism teaches that we are all of the one conscious, everything is the same, and if we can exist in that awareness we have no fear and our purpose is simple – to be who we are and create our own reality (cryptic hey )
Why do I bring these examples up? Because for me it’s important to rely on my intuition, my experiences and my awareness to guide me when it comes to making choices. This applies equally to business decisions as it does to any other decisions.
It’s not hard once your self awareness aligns correctly, once you become personally congruent and you calibrate your actions with your inner self. Choices are made by knowing what makes you feel good, simple solutions work best, your strengths are harnessed, you learn as you work and there is no such thing as failure – only experience.
The 80/20 rule works not because of mathematics, or case studies or historical data. It works because that’s how the world intends it to work. That’s how humans work. That’s how life works.
When we do what we are best at, when we focus our energy on what we are enthusiastic about, our output is amazing. It’s effortless, joyful and our path is clear and simple. All external inputs are ignored, there is only the moment and we are being the best we can be in that moment.
Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) is a phrase often applied to business situations. The phrase, much like the 80/20 rule, mimics life. We perform best with one task to complete at a time, when we choose one or few options and aim to make them our specialty.
Does this remind you of something? Yes – isn’t that like Niche Marketing?
It’s all one and the same, everything follows the same set of rules and once you know them, understand them and can align yourself with them, life for you becomes a lot of fun. It’s not rocket science, in fact it’s not scientific at all – it’s about being receptive to what is blatantly obvious, what you already know and experience every day.
Awareness Cancels Out The Noise
The web is massive and there is a stupid amount of people using it. As humans we can only compete effectively by narrowing our focus on specialties. We become the best or at least very good at one or two things so others come to rely on us for them, while we rely on others for different things. We succeed because other people perceive us as having unique talents, albeit in a very narrow area (the long tail anyone?).
When faced with a plethora of choices, information overload and too many paths to select from, STOP. Stop watching what everyone else is doing and start doing something yourself. Cancel out all the inputs and start focusing on your outputs. Look inside yourself, you already know what feels like the right thing to do, so darn well start doing it.
Nothing Is Original
Take blogging as an example. There are millions and millions of blogs out there and people are accusing other people of rehashing content over and over again. And they’re right. Everyone is rehashing the same content over and over again. This article presents messages that you would find at other blogs like Steve Pavlina, mixed up with a bit of Darren Rowse and perhaps some Seth Godin and all the other inputs and experiences that have influenced my life and my blogging output.
Once again I’ll reiterate – it’s all the same.
Your Place In This Space
Your responsibility is to do one thing – what you are meant to do. Yeah, it’s another cryptic answer but if you are reading this and you are doing what you are meant to do and you “get it” well then you simply “get it”. It will make sense and in fact you would have probably heard it already a million times. It’s old news, but I’m sure you appreciate being told again, I do no matter how many times I’m told because each time the delivery method is unique. Hearing it now from myself once again gives me a sense of peace and purpose.
If you don’t understand or you don’t follow, don’t worry, your okay. It’s all part of the learning process and well, life. Just remember to follow your heart, take a few risks, do what “feels” right and also “makes sense”. Keep it simple, avoid excessive inputs, focus on yourself and your perception but always look to expand your awareness. Just be sure to do do something – to give just as much as you get – and you’ll be fine.
Yaro “I knew those mushrooms weren’t normal” Starak
