As we talk right now about setting your goals for 2011, we should also talk about what happens when life gets in the way, and you stumble off your track due to health issues, family issues, or just because you can’t take another minute and need a break. This happens to all of us, and if you deal with these types of setbacks properly, over the long run, they will be very small blips in your pathway to success.
The first thing to internalize completely, is that you are a human being. You are not perfect, and frankly, wouldn’t life be boring if we all were perfect. Ho hum! It is our imperfections that make us human, and interesting. However, when we want to build a business of making money online, then we need to figure out how to build these imperfect moments into our regular routine or stride.
You will have bad days. You will have days that you do not complete your tasks. You will get sick, and you will get frustrated. There will be periods of time that it will seem like all of your hard work is not getting you ANYWHERE and you are ready to throw in the towel.
Please do not be too hard on yourself. Accept yourself as the unique person that you are, and BELIEVE that YOU can be successful.
Give yourself some slack and if you need a break, take a short break and do something physical. If you are at home, do a load of laundry, take a walk, mail some letters, call a friend. Then after enough time to take the edge off, go back to work. It is not the need for a break that makes people fail, it is the failure to go back to work. Once you have broken away for 10 to 20 minutes, go back and work through your anger, frustration or whatever and keep working on your tasks for the day. The act of going back to work, and working through your bad day will give you a lot of satisfaction, and you may find out that your day isn’t so bad after all.
Pair your determination to succeed, your belief, and your goal planning with action. The implementation of your plan will culminate in the success that you are looking for from the minutes, hours, days, and months that you continue to plug away at reaching your goals step by step, lens by lens, sale by sale.
If you get off track, that’s okay. Pick yourself up, and get back on track. You missed a day of work due to a family issue? It happens to all of us. Time to focus back on your goals. Yesterday was a really bad day? We all have them. Start over today. This kind of consistency is what makes people successful. You will not find one successful internet marketer, affiliate marketer, lensmaster, or any other kind of business person, that has not put in their time in order to succeed.
This is what has to be done.
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Paula, great advice! I am now going to break off and go and wash my hair, while I plan a strategy to survive a day where I am going to have to juggle like crazy in order to achieve what I need to achieve.
For me the decision is often the choice between what I want to achieve and what I need to achieve – today I want to achieve publishing a new lens. However, what I need to achieve is the purchase of new school uniform for a child that just will not stop growing and who is due back at school tomorrow.
Ah well, I’m human – the lens can wait another day……
I know, they do keep growing out of clothes, don’t they? I keep telling my girls that they are really expensive.
I have the same choice as AJ often… although not with the uniforms, since I homeschool. Sometimes I want to accomplish one more lens or whatever, but I really need to sleep, so I have to force myself to turn off the computer and stop.
Usually that happens at 3 AM though.
I have forced myself to not work on Sundays (except when there’s a Survivor finale or other timely event for a niche I regularly cover). That helps.
Some days I am all over the place and can’t seem to focus. I try to create a new design for one of my zazzle stores and it looks horrid and I get discouraged, or the sales notices decline and I begin to think that no one likes my products any more. It’s so easy to be negative! I have a friend at Zazzle who I e-mail almost every day and we “build each other up” when one is having a decline in sales. I think it’s good to have online friends who will inspire you, like this post.
Pam, what you are describing is what happens to most of us, and one of the drawbacks of working by yourself. It is during those times that you need to get up, take a break, breathe some fresh air, exercise, just do something to break the pattern, then after you have gotten free of whatever is holding you back, get back to work. It might mean working on something else for an hour, then getting back to what was bothering you.
It is so easy to get sidetracked. I figure I can come back and start/finish what I was doing AFTER I deal with what sidetracked me. The reality is, I usually forget! LOL
I am a list person in that I work and accomplish so much more with a list. Striking through the items, one by one, gives me a great sense of accomplishment.
Now, I just have to make myself write the lists before the ideas fly away…