You may be a little confused.Yesterday I wrote an article about Gary Vaynerchuk and how his constant hard work is paying off as an incredible business strategy.He works non-stop and is reaping the rewards.In the past, I have also written about Tim Ferriss who I would say is almost the exact opposite of Gary Vaynerchuk.Tim looks for any way to minimize his actual work and automate processes so that he does not have to be involved.The only thing they have in common with each other is that they are both huge success stories.
Opposite Strategies But Both Successful
Both Gary and Tim are huge successes in their own right and I would say that the reason is that they are both consistent.They chose a strategy that worked for them and they stuck with it.I don’t think Gary would consider closing down his brick and mortar store, stopping to vlog and quit participating in social media to automate an online store.At the same time, I know that Tim Ferris is careful not to spend too much time on social media.When he started using Twitter, he followed 0 people and was heavily criticized since twitter is a new media communication tool meant for conversation.He finally caved and started following a limited amount of people but still believes that he shouldn’t be spending too much time in the social media space.
Dabble and You will Flop
Too many people dabble in so many things and become somewhat of a jack of all trades and a master of none.This brings me back to people striving to be average when the only way to get ahead is to be above average.It doesn’t make much sense but many people use messed up logic such as “John has an online store and is successful, therefore if I open an online store, I will be successful”.They go and open an online store, flop and then wonder why they failed, not even thinking about what John does that they didn’t do.
Seth Godin Likes to be the “Best in the World”
Seth Godin doesn’t have a Twitter account. Seth is one of the top marketing gurus out there and he does not participate on twitter because he will not participate in something that he cannot be the best in the world at.Seth has his own strategy and is successful as well.
Mixing Diets is a Recipe for Disaster
Imagine you are a few pound over your ideal weight and you want to start a diet.You look around for a diet and many times you start a diet because someone you know just lost a ton of weight on that particular diet.After suffering through a couple of months on the diet and not getting the results you’d hoped for you start to wonder “why didn’t it work?”.Chances are, you used some of the logic I spoke about earlier.“Well, the Atkins diet says I can have as much protein as I want but no carbs and the South Beach diet is very similar so it must be okay to have fries since they are ok on that diet”.People mix and match the parts they like and fail to stick to a single strategy.
Stick to One Strategy
You can be successful at almost anything but you need to choose a single strategy and stick to it.Don’t get sidetracked by shiny objects.You can work 20 hours per day like Gary Vaynerchuck or you can work 4 hours per week like Tim Ferriss and be successful.Just don’t mix up your strategy and you’ll be fine.
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In general, people are very “happy go lucky”.They have their beliefs and values and everything in their life pretty much falls into place based on the systems they were brought up with, or have set for themselves.Cognitive dissonance comes into play when you have two beliefs or values that come up at once and contradict each other.People don’t know how to react so they are forced to alter their beliefs to accommodate the contradiction.For example, Michael likes to save money for his retirement and therefore never spends more than the absolute minimum on anything he buys.Then one day his computer breaks and he goes to the store to buy a new one but ends up buying the most expensive computer in the store with the most features, memory and storage.He then convinces himself that it was a “good buy” because it will last longer and after all, it’s a business expense.What Michael actually did was slightly modified his values so that he can be comfortable with his new purchase.Conflicts of these sorts are in most cases resolved by a change in values or beliefs that will do the least damage to the person’s ego.
Did you ever get an email from a millionaire in Nigeria who needs help getting his money out of the country?All he needs is your bank account and he will give you a cut of the money.It is common knowledge that giving away your bank information to a stranger is a bad idea.At the same time, just think of what you could do with 10 million dollars, especially since you just lost your job.The reason that this sort of scam is so popular is because it works.People are blinded by the thought of making so much money that they are willing to risk it.It’s sad that most people who lose money to these scams don’t report it to the police or anyone else because they are embarrassed.They knew that giving away their information was a bad idea and can’t believe they did it anyway.
Salesmen often use cognitive dissonance to make a sale.When I was looking to buy my first car, I was brought in to the dealership by an advertisement I saw for the car that I wanted at an incredible price.When I got to the dealership, they told me that it must have been a mistake because the price is much higher but they will show me the lot and help me pick out a similar car at my price point.Once I was already there, I figured I may as well look around.
As I looked around, I started to get excited and as the salesman saw it, he began a few other little tricks up his sleeve.He lowered the price on the cars that I wanted, he spoke to his manager so that he can give me an even better deal, he even told me he liked me so much that he would give up his commission to give me a better rate.As we were talking, he asked for my licence so that he could start the paperwork “just in case”.I should have seen him playing around the whole time but I wanted the car and I had already invested an entire day over there.I convinced myself to keep going.After many more of the salesman’s little tricks, like making me wait for hours to speak to the financing guy, I was finally exhausted and wanted to drive off the lot and go home.I was given a pile of papers to sign and told, “as soon as you sign these papers, you’ll be the new owner of your car and can go home”.I asked what percentage of financing they were giving me and they told me not to worry about it.I insisted and finally they said 12%.I have excellent credit and told them I wouldn’t go for it.They pretended to look at their computer and said “oh yeah, ok I can give you 10.4%”.At that point, I told them to jump in a lake and I walked out to everyone’s surprise.A couple weeks later, I bought a newer version of the same car from another dealership for less money than I would have spent with their financing.
Wikipedia has a great example of cognitive dissonance on smoking:
Smoking is often postulated as an example of cognitive dissonance because it is widely accepted that cigarettes cause lung cancer, yet virtually everyone wants to live a long and healthy life. In terms of the theory, the desire to live a long life is dissonant with the activity of doing something that will most likely shorten one’s life. The tension produced by these contradictory ideas can be reduced by quitting smoking, denying the evidence of lung cancer, or justifying one’s smoking.[3]For example, smokers could rationalize their behavior by concluding that only a few smokers become ill, that it only happens to very heavy smokers, or that if smoking does not kill them, something else will.[4]This and other forms of chemical addiction are not so clear-cut, but this analysis may be valid for those wanting to start smoking.
This case of dissonance could also be interpreted in terms of a threat to the self-concept.[5]The thought, “I am increasing my risk of lung cancer” is dissonant with the self-related belief, “I am a smart, reasonable person who makes good decisions.” Because it is often easier to make excuses than it is to change behavior, dissonance theory leads to the conclusion that humans arerationalizingand not alwaysrationalbeings.
As you can see, people play games with themselves to make themselves feel that they are doing the right thing and to rationalize their behaviour.Nobody should even open up an email from a stranger in Nigeria.I should have left the car dealership at the first bait and switch they pulled.Smokers should admit to themselves that smoking is bad for their health and contradicts their want to live.To get lucky, you need to be true to yourself and take a slap to your ego.Otherwise, you will just continue to fool yourself and open yourself up to being scammed even more and putting yourself in positions that you don’t want to be in.Cognitive dissonance prevents us from getting lucky and moving forward in our lives by making us protect our egos over doing what is best for ourselves and our future.Once again, slap that ego into place and do what’s right and you’ll start to get lucky.
I was just thinking about Nickelback’s song “If Today Was Your Last Day” and it really struck a chord.He talks about the best advice that his friend gave him to live each day like it’s his last since “each day’s a gift and not a given right”.I agree that living on the edge is the only way to live and get lucky but you have to take that advice with a grain of salt.
You need to think about what if today is not my last day.How am I going to eat, pay rent or plan for the future?After all, most of us are optimists when it comes to staying alive.We would prefer not to think about our final day so we convince ourselves that it’s far away and we have plenty of time.Once we convince ourselves that we have all the time in the world, we get lazy and “push off today what can be done tomorrow”.
In previous articles, I mentioned that the way to success and luck is baby steps.It takes many small goals and could take six years to become an overnight success.That said, you can’t follow both sets of advice without going insane.Andy Dufresne summed up my advice in my favourite movie of all time, Shawshank Redemption.You should “hope for the best but prepare for the worst”.
By hoping for the best, you have plenty of time to live. When preparing for the worst, you might as well live each day like it’s your last.Use each day to the fullest to prepare to get lucky in the future but make sure to do something each day as if it was your last.The song gives several examples such as “call those friends you never see”, “reminisce old memories”, “forgive old enemies” and “find that one you’re dreaming of”.Go ahead and do something crazy each day to get your blood pumping.Take 30 minutes out of your TV watching schedule (all the good shows were cancelled anyway), get off the couch and live.“It’s never too late to shoot for the stars, regardless of who you are”.
There are so many reality TV shows where you can watch other people do what you want to do.On the shows, people lose weight, get a job, start a business, become a top singer or model, find a spouse or countless other activities. You can waste precious hours each day watching other people live their dream or follow their heart.It doesn’t stop there, most people that watch reality TV, continue to watch the same shows season after season.You can literally sit on your couch for years watching other people live their lives while your life is passing before your eyes.
The Biggest Loser
My wife enjoys watching “the Biggest Loser” because it makes her feel good that people are doing something positive with their life.There are cases of people who have been on diabetes medication all their lives and now can all of a sudden get off the medication because they no longer need it.There are people who can hardly walk up the stairs to their houses and now can run up staircases at work.The show is inspirational and we should all take a lesson from it.The lesson I suggest taking is a little different from what most people would think at first.My favourite part of the show is when someone is kicked off and they show him or her 6 months later after having lost an additional 100 pounds.The most inspirational part is seeing what people can do on their own if they are determined, not what people can do while being pushed on public television.
The Lesson: Do It For Yourself
So take that lesson from the show.You are not on TV and you’re not competing for a prize.Everything you do is for yourself, your health and your happiness.So get off the couch and start doing what you want to do instead of watching others do it.
I was once told that a wise man was not a man who knew everything, it was a man who knew where to find anything.At first I didn’t really care for that statement but as time goes on, I see that it is completely true.
I learned everything I needed to know.
Thinking about all of the skills I have developed over the last few years from business, management, marketing, web development and social media to name a few, my number one skill is knowing where to go to find out what I need to know.I taught myself most of what I know through necessity.In my last position at my old marketing firm, I started out knowing nothing and as each event and project came up, I would do some research and find out everything I needed to know to do a great job.
I would not consider myself an expert in any particular field but I am confident that I can always pull off expert results because whenever there is something I don’t know about, I know exactly where to go to find out everything i need to know.
The A/V Tech Failed.
Just yesterday I was visiting an organization where they were trying to set up a video conference with one of their supporters somewhere across the world.The A/V tech at the organization must have set something up wrong because the conference was working perfectly from the other side but on the organization’s side, the sound was not going through.The Tech refused to admit that the problem was on his side and continued to play around with all the wires.I offered to help but was told that he can handle it and didn’t need any help.I knew his assistant so I took him over on the side, opened a browser and typed in “troubleshoot” and the video conference system’s name into Google.The first result gave a list of things that should be checked if the sound was not working properly.At the end, it gave a phone number for support if all else failed.The answers were all there and it took me less than a minute to find them.The Tech gave up after an hour and a half and the conference was cancelled.He never ended up looking at the trouble shooting page.
Things change: Find a Skill that can last.
Information changes, facts can change, best practices can change and nobody in the world can keep up with everything.The only skill that will keep you ahead of the game is to always know where to look for your answers. You too can get lucky just by knowing where to look. Besides, you will also be saving yourself a lot of time.
I hear so many people saying that they will not start item “B” until item “A” is accomplished. For instance, “I will not get married until I have a job”, “I will not have kids until I am comfortable in my career” or “I will not start my own business until I have at least 5 years of experience”. Sometimes it’s good to wait but make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. If you ask me, you don’t need to get your ducks in a row; you just need to get your ducks while you are able to.
Idiocracy
The “not having kids” example reminds me of the movie Idiocracy where they show the difference between “educated” and “not so educated” people when it comes to having kids, which ultimately leads to the population of the earth. If you don’t know what I am talking about, Please watch this 3 minute video:
I am not telling you to go ahead, get married, have kids and start your business right now. I’m not even saying that you should do any of the above. What I am saying is that everyone has at least one thing that they are pushing off because the time doesn’t seem absolutely right. It may be making that sales call, asking your boss for a raise or asking someone out on a date.
The time will never be right so why not now?
The time will never be absolutely right because when you pass one hurdle, another comes along. In Idiocracy, first they want to focus on their careers, then the market is bad, and so on. Life is funny and it doesn’t always give you what you want when you want it (like Harvey’s does) but it does give you the opportunity to go out and get what you want. It may mean that you have to be a little spontaneous, you may have to improvise and you will have to rethink everything every step of the way but at the end of the day when you look back it will all be worth it.
You will regret not doing more things than you regret doing
Someone once told me and I happen to agree “you will regret not doing more things than you regret doing”. At the end of your life, you will look back and ask yourself why you didn’t jump on more opportunities.
Life is all about learning
Life is a learning experience. You will have to learn to deal with each situation that comes up and the more you learn, the more prepared you will be to face tomorrow. So, why not force yourself to learn as much as possible? You could get “lucky” and end up with everything you ever wanted.
On Saturday night I had the privilege of going to a hockey game with my brother to see the Montreal Canadiens play the Washington Capitals.Although the Canadiens lost with a couple minutes left in the game, I did come away from the game with a valuable lesson.
There was one beautiful play where one of the Canadiens (can’t remember which one) broke through the Capital’s defense and made it all the way down the ice, a little past the blue line when he decided to pretty much pass the puck to the Washington Goalie.When I say pass, I really mean it.The entire game, the Canadiens were slapping the puck at the net and on this play, it couldn’t have been going more than 5 mph.
I was a little disappointed but my brother who is a much bigger fan than I am reminded me of Wayne Gretzky’s quote “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take”.He said that you never know but sometimes those shots go in by some fluke.
This got me thinking about many things in life.There are times where you have a chance to do something but you don’t feel that you are 100% ready yet or the timing just doesn’t feel right.If you don’t go for it, you will definitely not succeed.On the other hand, even a miserable attempt at the net can end up as a goal.A goal is a goal, no matter how it’s scored.
Go ahead, take your shots, even the ones that aren’t all lined up and perfect because if you don’t take it, it’s for sure a miss but if you do make some sort of effort and take the shot, you never know.You may score by some fluke.
Another example of this was given to me by my insurance broker.He said selling insurance is a numbers game.You will have success in proportion to the amount of phone calls you make.There is no real special trick, it’s just get on the phone and don’t stop calling.The same goes for hockey.Keep taking shots on net and eventually one of them will go in.
The more shots you take, the luckier you will get.
All the way through our schooling we are measuring how smart we are.How well we do on each test, in each subject and most of all compared to the rest of the class and sometimes even the rest of the State, Country or World.After we are done with schooling, many of us are still on the roller coaster ride of wondering how smart we are and how we compare to others.Some people are afraid to speak up because they fear looking stupid.Some people don’t take chances for fear that they will fail.I am telling you today that you have nothing to worry about.
Just the fact that you are reading this post shows, that you have enough initiative to do something with yourself and that you are smarter than a large portion of people out there.I am not saying that reading my blog specifically proves anything, it is reading anything and learning something outside the scope of your “required reading” that means something.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I start my own Social Media business, Flid Media .I am confident in my abilities and I know that I am more than qualified to be doing what I am doing.At the same time, Social Media is very new and is changing every day.Every single day I read blogs and articles about new elements of social media that I have never heard of before.Some are just being launched and introduced but others are new perspectives.
There will always be people out there that are better than you or know more than you but that should not deter you from reaching for your dreams.You don’t have to be the best or the smartest out there.You just have to be better and smarter than the people you are doing business with.When I say “better and smarter” I don’t mean in actual intelligence, I mean it in the scope of what you are doing.The most brilliant minds will need help in a field that they have no experience in.You may never be the Michael Jordan out there but the NBA is filled with players who don’t hold a candle to him.Besides, have you seen Michael play baseball?
As I mentioned in the past two posts, go out, learn something and become smarter than the next person.Then you too can become a consultant.
Yesterday, www.flidmedia.com, my new company’s websites was on the fritz.I messed something up in the backend and I wasn’t even able to get back into the backend to fix it.I knew what I did wrong and I had a good idea of how to fix it but I just wasn’t able to get into the area that would let me make the changes.
The first thing I did was search through faqs and forums online looking for similar problems that may help me out.When I didn’t find anything, I posted my own question.This took place late last night and when I woke up this morning there was a solution posted to my issue.The solution worked and my site was up and running again.I sent the person who sent me the solution a short note which read “thank you, you’re a life saver”.
In life there are many times when someone else’s expertise can help you out in a few second or minutes when without them, it would take you hours or days if there is even a chance that you can do it yourself.When being helped, you too may exclaim “thank you, you’re a life saver”.
It could be something as small as someone giving you better directions to your destination when you are late or having a booster cable when your car battery dies to something at the other extreme like when a doctor saves your life or the life of someone you love.
Just think.Something so easy for one person either because of his profession, his interests, his familiarity with his local area or pure chance can save you so much time, money and effort or even actually save your life.In my last post I mentioned that there is so much opportunity out there because of how fast the internet is growing, so anyone can become an expert on something.
Today I am telling you once again, go out, learn something that most people don’t know (which is easy) and hopefully one day someone will tell you “thank you, you’re a life saver”!
There once was a time where it seemed like there was a finite amount of knowledge out there.The wise men all knew the same things, had the same education and maybe had a little bit of a different expertise.Besides the few regular inventions and innovations, you could probably know everything there was to know by reading an encyclopedia from cover to cover.
Today with the exponential burst of the internet, online video, bogs, and every other type of content that is uploaded faster than the world can process it, nobody can even get close to knowing everything.Seth Godin’s article, “Warning: The internet is almost full” admits that the internet can never really be full but “we can”.There is no way for any person to process more than a tiny fraction of the information that is out there.
You may look at this a missed opportunity because if you just started your blog 5 years earlier, you could have had it made.Now, you have to compete with the millions of other blogs that are crowding up the net.I look at this as a great opportunity and an easy way to get lucky.You no longer have to be gifted with intelligence and an ability to soak up all the information that you read.All you have to do is choose a niche that you are interested in and stick to it.As the niche gets bigger, specialize and keep narrowing down your focus.There aren’t enough people in the world to have a specialist in every single area anymore.The more the internet and general knowledge grows, the more opportunities there are for average people to get ahead.
What are you waiting for?Choose your expertise, start learning and get lucky!
This self improvement blog is full of advice on how to increase your luck and improve your life. You can start off by reading 40 Ways to Increase your Luck.
There are so many reality TV shows where you can watch other people do what you want to do.
