Hey you 🙂 How are you today? How are you feeling? Great? I hope so.
In today’s blog post I’m going to address something I’ve seen often, and I think it has to do with people’s selfconfidence. It’s always better to feel more secure about yourself, and that is a thing that has taken me many years to learn.
It helped a lot to meet a super good-looking guy with a psychotherapy background and getting married to him, LOL.
Have you ever seen questions like the following?
(I’m making them up from memory, by the way, but this is the way they go.)
- Can I use a 500×500 picture in the info module on Squidoo?
- What will happen if I click on that button?
- Should I use a pink or a purple color?
- Can I use HTML code on Blogger?
When I see such questions, I alway think: “Why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just try and see what happens?”
Because if these questions get answered, I often see answers like:
- Yes, you can, I just tried to insert a 500×500 image, and it worked.
- If you click that button, you’ll go to an opt-in form. I just tried it.
- I tried both pink and purple, and I prefer the pink, but it’s up to you.
- I just tried, and yes, you can use HTML on Blogger.
You learn a lot by experimenting, but many are afraid of that. They want a proven blueprint to follow.
Let me tell you something: You don’t need a proven blueprint.
Yes, it’s nice, often, if you can save time by using already tested methods, but if it’s only a minor thing, like testing if you can use another size image, then try it.
Don’t be afraid.
The world as we know it, and the Internet, is not going to end.
But you’ll feel stronger every time you step outside your comfort zone.
So the next time you encounter a minor problem, instead of asking for help, try your own  ideas out.
If it works, fine, then you have learned something and grown stronger.
If it doesn’t work, try something else. Or search the Internet to see if somebody else have had the same problem and solved it.
If that still doesn’t work, then ask for help.
But don’t let the fear of trying something stand in the way between you and the solution.
Have you been afraid of trying something lately? Confess what it was in the comments 🙂
I’m technically oriented and experiment all the time. But when it came to moving away from my obsessive ghostwriting, it was very difficult. I actually had angst about it. How would I make a living? What if I couldn’t do anything else?
But I have filled the gap with Squidoo and my web site. Now I am going to step out into another effort. So far so good. The income will soon start building, I think.
But it was an interesting few months of worrying.
Cheers
Joanne
Yeah, I can imagine 🙂
I quit my day-job in 1995. A few months later, I did freelance teaching adults on how to use a computer, and then I started to write books about the same topic. I got a long-term contract with a big school in Denmark, but after a few months, it became very unsatisfying to teach there.
Nothing worked. Their computers were slow, with too little RAM, and in general not functioning. Their printers didn’t work. Nothing were ever there on time.
Once they asked me to take over a class that hadn’t learned what they should because of a bad teacher. After a few evenings, the team was almost back on track, but they wanted an extra evening. I asked and got a go for it. So I taught them four extra hours.
Then they told me that they wouldn’t pay me for these four hours. I got very angry.
Cyril, my husband, said to me that I was complaining more and more about that school and that this last drop should make me quit on the spot.
“But what about the money?” I asked. We had to pay our mortgage, car, children’s school, etc.
“Something else will show up,” he said. So I quit on the spot.
The next morning at 7AM the phone rang. It was a new school who wanted me to teach, and I wouldn’t have been able to do so, had I still had the old job. This one was even better paid.
A lot of people who want to make money online still have their day-job. And they are not that motivated to get started. Or have the energy. Having a 9-5 job takes a lot of energy.
I was lucky. We had just moved to France in 2000, and I didn’t even try to get a job there with my limited French. So I had to make money in other ways, and that got me started as a writer and affiliate.
Your few months of worrying will pay off. It’s taking the leap of faith that lets you grow. Well done!
But I’m curious: What new effort are you heading into now?
I’m going to really dig into writing Kindle fiction — after I learn a bit more about marketing my kindle series.
My plan is to have Amazon income that continues to grow while I build up a fanbase for my fiction….
Dreaming but happy,
Joanne
Oh, that sounds excellent. I wish you all the best 🙂 It takes courage to write fiction 🙂
You know I remember a time when computers scared me…even during the first few months as a computer programming major at the University I was always worried that there would be a button I’d push or a program I created that would completely wipe out the school’s entire system.
But it never happened. So I kept doing what they told me to do and it STILL never happened.
Outside of that I’ve always been a “fly by the seat of my pants” gal. I moved to AZ the first time when my son was 4…with no place to live and no job. The second time, I had a job, but no place to stay till we got here.
When I lost that job, I started a business. Broke, no job, had just bought a house and had only been in this state for 3 months so I didn’t know anyone. I made it work. I HAD to.
Now, I find myself hesitating. I want so much to just get rid of my job and take this on full time. But this time it’s not just about me. I drive team with my sweetheart so if I quit, that puts him out of work too and he just doesn’t have the vision for this that I have.
So, I’ll keep moving forward, slowly but surely until I can get this consistent enough that he can feel ok about my going full time while he finds something that HE’S passionate about.
Yeah when you have to make it work, you make it work 🙂
Your situation is different now. Can you decrease your working hours together or something like that? Or is it all or nothing?
Nah. It’s sort of an all or nothing. They hire to run 2 runs per week, occasionally 3. And there’s really no way to cut hours on that. It’s a set drive from San Diego to San Antonio and back.
The good news is that this job gets us home weekly (usually 2 days but 1 in recent weeks), plus we got a week off for Christmas and we’ll have another week off in June or July cause the Toyota plant shuts down for re-tooling. So as trucking jobs go, this is the best one we’ve had. 🙂
A lot of people are afraid to make mistakes, which is why they just don’t do it. My take is if you haven’t made any mistakes recently, then you’re not taking enough risk, and, as you state, Britt, you won’t grow stronger.
Very insightful comment, Leo, and since you mention it: What mistakes have you made recently? Confession time? 😀 Okay, I go first. What mistakes have I made recently? I made one in December, which was big. I set up a new product for sale on a private forum. I paid for the thread and a few minutes later, when I got my first sale, I suddenly remembered: OMG! I’d forgotten to make a test purchase! I already sold this product through another funnel, and I’d totally forgotten to test it the new way. Obviously, there were several errors that had to be solved, LOL