I had a tough week last week.
I was facing a dire lack of progress on my internet marketing efforts, with my older sites sinking down the rankings and getting less traffic, despite having more and more links, and my newer site not breaking through.
I was once again questioning the whole thing – should I be doing this internet marketing at all or should I do what my Dad would have advised and get a “proper job”? Things were really getting on top of me. I think that, working alone at home, this period of utter slog, when there is no little to show in return, and yet of course the bills have to be paid etc – this drudgery got me down. I over-reacted, I started once more to think about bottling out, quitting. I started worrying away about money and getting old and having achieved so little by age 46 (which is BO***CKS by the way) went into a proper black mood.
Towards the end of last week, once I reached the depths of despair, something strange happened. I found something within me, a reserve of will-power, a hidden fountain of strength. I started to pull myself together. I realised that actually a lot of what I am going through is one of the biggest tests of character I have ever faced. I realised that, now, aged 46, I’m breaking down barriers, smashing through ingrained behaviour patterns that have been there probably since I was a toddler. I can feel myself changing. I can feel myself taking control of my life – REALLY taking control of my destiny in a way that I have never actually done before – even though previously I THOUGHT I had. It really is a great dawning of a new era for me, and it’s going to stand me in good stead in my self-employment, whether that be in affiliate marketing, online, offline, whatever. Wow, I just thought to myself – people pay for weeks of THERAPY to get here!
This realisation that I was breaking through some of my life’s oldest psychological barriers, changing myself, helped me to understand why it’s such hard going. Some of those barriers have been resolutely in place since the 1960s, after all. It gave me a new impetus, this realisation, and then a dose of serious admonishment – I started to beat myself up big-time. I started to give myself a few home truths. I reminded myself once more that getting started in internet marketing or whatever flavour of online business I end up with, well, it’s not so different from starting a business in the offline world, and not so different from starting any new enterprise even away from the world of business, for example deciding that you want to, I don’t know, get in training and run the marathon or swim the channel.
It takes work, of course – but more than that – as the late Roy Castle used to sing at the start of Record Breakers on the BBC, “If you want to be the best… you gotta have dedication”. And lasting, undying dedication at that. Setting up a business online or offline often requires a period when you will see NOTHING in return – no money, no satisfaction, no sense of achievement, no recognition, NOTHING. There is nobody to ask for advice, nobody to cross-check decisions with, nobody to go for a coffee with, no financial return let alone financial independence, and constant hard graft. And if it’s a business that’s new to you, you will be blundering about making a right mess of it all and wasting a load of time, money and energy aswell.
Having reacquainted myself with these home-truths, I very soon had reaffirmed by wholehearted commitment to self employment. I mean, if I don’t use all my skill and experience and intelligence to make this work, what else am I going to do? I already know, from detailed self-analysis, repeated several times over a period of many years, that I am in no way whatsoever suited to a career, dedicated to someone else’s business. I have forced myself into this role time and time again and my heart has NEVER been in it and I have wasted over TWENTY YEARS of my life on this. So, if I cannot work for someone else, at least not for a full-time career anyway, what alternative is there but to build my own business, to work on my own account?
There really isn’t any viable alternative for me – I have wasted enough time as it is, and now, aged 46, I just HAVE to make a go of working for myself, in whatever business, in whatever field, in whatever niche or niches that I decide or to some extent that the market dictates. There is no choice if I want a fulfilled working life, and I need to work and act from now, from this minute, as if there are NEVER going be to ANY career openings for me ANYWHERE. I need to forget about “job hunting”. I need to pretend that there are no vacancies for me. Ever.
I need to do this because in the past the biggest distraction for me has been the lure of money, easy money, to be gained by taking a salaried career-style job, or more lately by taking contract work that, in reality, looks and quacks like the dead duck of a pseudo-job that in day-to-day reality it actually is.
So, with a new resolve I started work yesterday, Monday, morning – determined that I would do ANYTHING to make this work, anything in line with my ethics that is. And I kicked myself into action and told myself off for doubting myself, and gave myself a good talking to as my mother might, saying things along the lines of, well – you just have to do the work, you just have to do it, there is NO choice. Wasting time on doubts is pointless. Just get on with it, mechanically; forget about strategy for a while; just to the work, and eventually, maybe when you least expect it, and maybe in some way you never thought of, things will start to pay off.
I have learned something else from this episode. I need to have a survival strategy for when I hit a black-spot. Maybe I need to have a big red psychological “emergency stop” button, and when I “hit” it, maybe I need to break away from the desk and the laptop for a while, go for a walk, do something voluntary with kids, go out there and then for the rest of the day. This “emergency stop button” would require me to sacrifice a few hours or even a whole day, but that sacrifice of a day could save a life doing my own thing, instead losing that life to some mindless employer.
Authors bio is coming up shortly.
