Procrastination is defined as the action of delaying or postponing something.
We’ve all been guilty of doing this to some degree, some people do it more than others.
We know we would be better spending time doing things that move us closer to our goals. Work that is productive, and worthwhile. When in college or university, it’s revision for that all important next exam, presentation or completion of the next assignment in time for the submission deadline.
So many students procrastinate right up until the looming deadline gets so close that delay can no longer be extended, pulling the all-nighters just to have any chance of submitting something reasonable.
It doesn’t get much better for non-students, in fact, most people struggle with procrastination in some aspect of their lives. Pulled and push about by distractions and temptations, we spend way too much time on social media or surfing the net, in a vain attempt to avoid doing what we should be doing. Or doing anything we can, to get out of going to the gym.
Our instant gratification monkey keeps us seeking pleasurable experiences and avoid doing things that we perceive as work or difficult and thus unpleasant.
We’re hardwired to avoid discomfort, either physically or psychologically.
So how can we better get on with the things that will improve us, encourage growth, and that will lead us to our goals?
This website is laden with motivational advice, we even have a model to help you unlock your potential, and hack your blocking thought patterns and behaviours. Sign up to our newsletter for more about this.
We’ll add just a couple of options here, but there are many others throughout the website.
Use CONSEQUENCES to your advantage.
At college or university we have deadlines. The fear of a failed exam or a poor score on your assignment are enough for you to resort to pulling an all-nighter, so that you don’t have to suffer the indignity and shame of the consequences of failure. And although students are known for cramming right up the the finishing line, they do still do all they can to hit those deadlines. Deadlines work.
So putting yourself in a position where you give yourself a DEADLINE, and where failure has adverse consequences, will help you hack your motivation. For instance, having an accountability buddy, who holds you to account for your progress, milestones and end result, is one idea. Broadcasting your intentions and date for completion to your family and friends is another, say on social media. You don’t want to look like a failure to the people closest to you, so you better get the work done.
Give yourself REWARDS for following through; if you get [x] amount done in the next 2 hours, you’ll reward yourself with 30 minutes doing fun stuff, or a lovely treat or whatever works for you.
Use INCENTIVES along your journey, daily targets achieved result in something good coming your way. If you get [x] done by [y] you can have/do [z].
In the same way as incentives, use PUNISHMENTS to direct your actions but for the opposite reasons. If you don’t get [x] done by [y] deadline you can’t do [z].
One last thing to consider before we wrap up this post; if you can do something that you love to do so much, and doing it doesn’t feel like work, this will be motivation enough to put in the work. So doing what you love, that also moves you towards your goal(s) is the best scenario possible. It’s worth trying to figure out a way of aligning your purpose (goal) with your day to day activities (actions/behaviours) whenever possible, because this is perfect alignment between your outer world and inner world.
Successful selling from your website, requires a plan of action, so that you know what you’re trying to do with each advert, each piece of content, each image, video, graphic.
Effectively it gives you a strategy, an aim for everything you’re doing, you have direction and structure and purpose.
Firstly, you’ve got to get people on to your website, from wherever they currently are, whether that be searching on Google, socialising on Facebook, browsing imagery on Instagram, or consuming content on other websites.
Get Results: selling on website
So the question becomes, how do you get people who are minding their own business or searching for something, to want to click through to your website, instead of continuing to do what they’re doing?
Well, first you have to be in the same location your prospects attention is focused on. If they’re on Google, searching for information, services or products, you’ve got to be there either through Search Engine Optimisation efforts, or Pay Per Click advertising. You need to be on the first page ideally, because most searches don’t extend beyond the first page.
If they’re on social media, you also need to have a presence there, either in the same groups, or by delivering content that they find interesting, or via paid adverts.
Secondly, you need to get “noticed”, this means standing out from the crowd in some way, either with eye-catching graphics or attention-grabbing words or copy.
Once you have them on your site, you must provide what you promised them on your adverts or copy. Don’t mislead them, because they will be annoyed and disappointed and this isn’t good for your brand reputation. Trust takes time to build and seconds to destroy.
Include information that is entertaining, informative, insightful and adds value to the person consuming it.
Also make sure this content is relevant to what you’re selling. No point providing cute pet videos if your customer is looking for business solutions.
There is no point getting random traffic to your site, you want people who are going to benefit from your services/products, and only them. So keep it relevant to your target market from initial content on social media or in search results through to your website pages.
Finally you need to have a “call to action”, either getting them to sign up to your newsletter, so you can keep providing value and pitch your service/products, or have a buy now option, where they can purchase directly from you straight away.
Test different approaches to see what works best for you, but remember people buy based on TRUST, COMPETENCY, CONVENIENCE, RELIABILITY, QUALITY and VALUE FOR MONEY. Selling on the internet is the same as selling face to face, in this respect.
Jim Rohn famously said “To have more you’ve got to be more”, not in the sense that your sense of worth should be wrapped up with your abilities and what value you can provide to the world. For you are an extraordinary light as you are, but society rewards those that provide the most value to others, at least in certain situations.
We all know those that do outstanding work, that help their fellow human beings or the planet, but who are not as financially rewarded as they should be, and in this sense, the world can be unfair.
Nursing and caring for instance is not well rewarded financially, doing good deeds for your neighbours, likewise.
So it’s true that you might want to do certain things that society is not going to reward you greatly for, unless you run a business or invest in a business that leverages additional resources to increases income. Generally the more people you can help, the more you get paid. You ultimately get to decide if you still want to pursue a calling that is far reaching or that helps on an individual one to one basis.
So you have to look into whether what you want to do is going to reward you well enough, if not you may want to look for other ways of providing income or leveraging additional resources as highlighted above.
So carefully consider you goal, make sure it aligns with your inner being. Doing something that isn’t who you are, can grate on your soul and cause inner conflict.
My advice is, do what you love, that way it doesn’t feel like work. Figure out a way to do it, that will help pay the bills. I’ve never been one for settling or doing something that my heart wasn’t in, well I have but I didn’t last long doing them.
So with that said, are you doing what you love? Would you do your job if you didn’t need the money, or are you doing it solely for the money?
If you’re doing something you’d rather not do, then you need to work out a plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
You have to start from where you are of course, you may need to do it for a certain time, but it’s important that you have a plan to work against that will enable you to transition into what you love.
That plan is of course different for each one of us. Figure it out, bath in the vision that you are working to achieve.
You may say to yourself, “I’ll do what I’m doing until I have £x in bank, or until my online business is better established” etc.
Make your plan doable, actionable, tangible, break it down into steps that are easy to follow and measurable, so you can make sure you’re progressing towards your goal.
It’s okay to pivot, when needed, because as you progress you might uncover insights that better inform your plan, that may speeds things up or plot a different course. You might decide your goal needs to change based on new information. So keep it flexible, but don’t let self-doubt and fear put you off.
Get Results: getting subscribers onto your email list
Get Results: opt in model
Getting visitors to opt-in to your mailing list (via your website) provides a great way of directly communicating with them at a later time, in fact it should be one of your on-line marketing priorities. Imagine if you lost your Facebook page or Twitter account (and it can happen), how would you contact your audience?
Having a list of email subscribers keeps control in your own hands, rather than relying on a third party platform, and gives you a direct path to people that, by subscribing to your list, have qualified themselves as being interested in what you have to say. If they arrive on your site, read a little and leave you have nothing. As the old adage goes “the money is in the (email) list” and this is unlikely to change any time soon.
What you’ve first got to think about is that, from your visitors point of view, why would they want give you their email address? They usually won’t want to be contacted unless you have something interesting or useful to say or offer.
Get Results: opt in model
If you think you can simply add an opt-in form to your site and people will immediately fall over themselves to sign-up, then you’re sadly, misguided. Try it for yourself and see what happens. There needs to be something else in place to get that all important email address, and incentives are a great start.
Incentivise
So you’ve got to give visitors some incentive, provide some benefit to them in return for their email address. They have to want to get communication from you for some perceived advantage. Generally, people don’t like to be sold to, so you need to get over to them that you’re looking to help them to either solve a problem or achieve a goal rather than sell them something, and communicating the benefit of your offer is vital if you’re to succeed. Answer the question “What benefit is in it for them”.
Get Results: opt in model
Benefits can be short-lived, and particularly relevant to one piece of content (content upgrade) or could be more long term focused and offer ongoing value. If you capture an email because of a content upgrade you should look to keep them as a long term subscriber by having a strategy in place to provide ongoing value and support, otherwise they will simply opt-out straight away. Check out my in-depth list of opt-in incentive ideas.
Sell the benefits – Use wording within your opt-in form that sells the benefit of this incentive to your visitor. “Increase productivity with my 5 efficiency hacks” or “5 efficiency hacks that will increase productivity”, obviously make it relevant to your particular incentive, answer the question. “Why do my visitors need this incentive?”
Don’t promise something you can’t produce or provide and never ever try to mislead subscriber’s. Be honest, and reliable at all times. Once you break trust it is unlikely, unless you have history with them, that they will ever forgive you, and why should they? Check the section about credibility, capability and trustworthiness (below), for more information.
Offsetting the risk for subscribers
If I am the visitor on a new website I consider the risk reward balance of becoming a subscriber. Asking myself “If I give this person my email address can I opt-out if I change my mind?” So adding some text to your opt-in form saying that subscribers can opt-out easily at any time, and will not be pestered thereafter, will help to reduce this concern.
The main fear for many visitors, that prevents them from subscribing, is being swamped with spam emails that don’t offer any value to them and that become a pain to get rid of. Knowing they can click a button and never see your mail again is a big risk reducer. “One click to unsubscribe at any time – guaranteed!”.
Another concern is email addresses being sold onto third parties without the subscribers permission, and this should never happen, but sadly does. Make sure you state that there is no risk of this happening if they sign up with you. “We will never spam you” or “We will never share your email address with anyone else” or a combination of the two will help.
Adding extra value
When a visitor lands on your page they probably don’t know you, they don’t particularly care about you and your brand, or want to build a relationship with you, what they want is to get some benefit from you and your site. It’s your job to answer their question, “What’s in it for me?” The benefit should be so good they just can’t resist to sign up. The promise of insider information, better quality bonus information, discounts, rebates etc. and they’ll get that exclusively if they sign up.
This content can be hidden on your site, free from being indexed like your other content, on a page rather than that a post so it doesn’t appear in the blogroll. There are a number of WordPress plugins that will help you keep this content off your sitemap or navigation. Contact me for more information about this.
Other considerations for getting email opt-in’s are:
Getting Visitors
Getting people to see your page in the first place is of paramount importance, but the traffic volume alone is no good, you need traffic that is interested in your offer, so targeted traffic is what counts. Laser focus your marketing messages to speak to people who are interested in your niche and only them. Check this post for more information.
Important Content
Once they arrive on your site, you need them to stay around long enough to see your opt-in box, so having content that will keep them engaged and on your site long enough to get the chance to opt-in is another big part of the jigsaw.
There needs to be some demonstration of value in your content that makes the visitor think, “I like this enough to sign up”. Think about it, if the content on a site you visit is not engaging or of high quality or relevance, are you going to sign up for their email newsletter?
You need to be thinking “I can get some value from this person” to even consider signing up. There’s got to be an interest from the visitor in the subject matter, and then they have got to like your take on that subject matter to want to stay around and hear more from you.
Placement of opt-in
You should consider placement of your opt-in form, do you put it in the sidebar, and if so at the top, middle or bottom? In the post itself, and again where is best? There is no definitive answer to this, the best advice is to test for yourself and see what works best for your audience. Some ideas for placement testing include:
Sidebar – top, middle, or bottom separately and altogether,
within the post itself – above the fold or bottom of post or both
It’s great to include an opt-in form on both the “homepage” and “about us” pages, and again test multiple locations and see what works for you.
Make it stand out
As well as considering the location, it’s important, wherever you place your opt-in form, to make sure it stands out and is noticed. Use the rule of contrast, and make your form the opposite colour to the rest of your website. Visitor’s must be drawn to your opt-in form and the human brain is hard-wired to notice things that don’t match the rest of the environment, that stand out.
Number of fields
Think about how many fields you’re asking the visitor to fill in – my testing shows the fewer fields the visitor has to complete the more subscribers you will get. On the flip side I have seen research that suggests converting subscribers to paying customers (further down the sales funnel) tends to be better from leads who originally opted-in via forms with more fields, so as always test variations and see what works for you.
Credible, capable and trustworthy
Credibility, although last to be discussed here, is without doubt the most important element you need to sell anything online. If you can prove you know what you’re talking about, you know your niche, your product or service, you’re three quarters of the way to achieving online success.
Credibility builds trust, and gives your audience confidence you can deliver the results they are looking for. Credibility comes in the form of customer testimonials and reviews, case studies, demonstrations, free samples, free trial periods, social media following and interaction, before and after photos, published income statements, in fact anything that shows you can do what you say you can do, and the better you can demonstrate this the easier selling will be. Think of why you shop at Amazon (for instance), is it because of their stunning website design, the colour of their sidebars or footers?
You buy from Amazon, because you trust them, you know they can deliver what they say they will, and when they say they will, you can check out product reviews, you can return it if you’re not happy with it when it arrives. If I didn’t say it before “Credibility is key”.
Summary
There needs to be so much more in place to get subscribers onto your email list than just having an opt-in form on your site. Without subscribers, selling online, while not impossible, is much more difficult for some type of businesses. This varies depending on the type of niche you are involved in of course, my photography studio business sells lots of experience vouchers online without needing to get subscribers (although I still collect the emails of visitors to send promotional offers to), but this seems to be very different for none physical businesses that sell things like digital products and solutions, where getting subscribers is much more important in the sales process.
Below is a list of elements you will need to get visitor’s email addresses.
You’ve got to get targeted traffic to your site in the first place,
Provide good relevant content to engage your visitors and keep them hanging around, also the more of this content there is and the longer you have been around helps in the perception of credibility
Have an opt-in form generator such as Thrive Leads to capture your visitor’s email address and an auto responder such as Mailchimp or Aweber to deliver the relevant incentive promised,
An opt-in incentive and the wording used to sell the incentive to your visitors. Also think about an ongoing strategy for offering continuing value that requires staying subscribed to get access to it. (list of ideas here)
Risk reducers – using reassurances such as:
We will never spam you
We will never share your email address
You can opt-out with one click at any time, but please give us a try
Positioning of the opt-in box:
On the home page
Within post above fold and end of post
On the “About us” page
In the sidebar
Don’t overdo it though, sometimes less is best.
Number of fields the visitor has to fill in – keep to a minimum.
Make sure your opt-in box stands out, use the rule of contrast when deciding what colour to use, which involves looking at the predominate colour of your website and picking the colour opposite on the colour wheel
Most importantly – being perceived as credible, capable and trustworthy – trust elements, money back guarantees, free trial periods, income reports, testimonials, review, case studies, list of major brands you have done work for, TV appearances etc. Without credibility, I doubt having all the other elements in place would lead to much success, it is the single most important ingredient of selling online, and off-line for that matter. If you were to consider what to spend most time on improving, it should be this. As I said earlier, I sell lots of photo experience vouchers online, and the main reason for this undoubtedly being seen as credible, capable and trustworthy.
Once you have all the elements, described in the preceding paragraphs, in place you have a fighting chance. Test all of the variables to see which is more effective with your audience, it’s an on-going process of testing, and re-testing. There is no magic bullet, and what works for one doesn’t guarantee will work for someone else. Don’t assume you know best either, use your hunch as a starting point and test against it.
Just a word of warning regarding testing. Don’t change more than one element at a time and make sure you are getting sufficient volume to make the results meaningful. This will be hard when starting off, because you will obviously not have the volume of visitors, but online success is not achieved overnight, and measuring performance from the start is what will give you an edge over other newcomers, and ensure you have taken a solid first step.
It’s all very well getting lots of traffic onto your website, but if it’s not targeted traffic, then you’re not going to earn much money from all those visitors. If you’re selling dog collars for instance and getting people to your website who are looking for holidays, then all that will happen is those visitors will bounce off your site and go elsewhere. So think laser focused targeting for all your marketing messages. Appeal to prospects that actually want what you have to offer. Find out who they are and where they hang out, and deliver your message to them and only them. To test the depth of knowledge you need to have a about your audience, can you answer these questions?
Who is your ideal reader/visitor
What do they look like, talk about, care about, hate, fear, desire
Who do they hang out with, talk to, argue with, ideolise, want to be
Where do they hang out online, in person, want to go, not want to go
What products, brands, personas, do they love and hate
How do they talk, formally, passionately, analytically
What lingo do they use (ie keywords)
Why are they coming to you?
Why should they listen to you instead of everyone else
What problems are they looking to solve
Where to find your audience
Does your audience frequent Facebook or Twitter. Do they love to spend time on Youtube surfing the “How to…” videos in your niche? Would it be more productive to target them via the major search engines such as Google and Bing? If so then you would need to consider Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and getting your site up the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings. If you want to get yourself in front of your audience fast, then Pay Per Click (PPC) might be the way to go. Think very carefully about your acquisition strategy because getting it wrong can cost time, effort and money. To summarise:
Optimise your site to make it search engine friendly,
Use PPC – make sure you know what you’re doing with this method,
Participate in forums,
Get active in Facebook groups,
Network on Facebook and Twitter,
Guest post on blogs in your niche (good for reputation, traffic and SEO),
Attend events and conferences – great off-line method,
Link out to other valuable resources/sites.
Getting yourself a home
Don’t rely on making your main internet home Facebook or Twitter, because although these are great platforms to engage with your audience, relying solely on these could wipe your business out overnight should these platforms decide to change the rules, as many software companies have found to their costs. For instance Shortstack started off providing engaging Facebook competitions until Facebook decided to cut them out and do it for themselves and although Shortstack have evolved away from Facebook to some degree, they recently wrote a blog post detailing their acknowledgement of the mistake of over-reliance on a third party to support their business.
I now use WordPress for all my sites, it’s free to use (except for the hosting of course if you’re using a self hosting option), comes with lots of plugins to add functionality to the site, is loved by Google and is ideal for SEO and has tons of free themes to make it look original. Most of the modern themes are also mobile responsive which is a must these days for both ranking and user experience.
Building relationships – Email Marketing
Provide Great Content
Once you get targeted audience to your website, you need to have something interesting, useful, unique and most of all, helpful for them to read, look at and engage with. Look to help them with some problem they have or to achieve something they want to achieve. Great content should:
Be honest
Be valuable (don’t waste peoples time)
Be delivered in multiple formats if possible
Be as short as possible but no shorter
Be relevant
Be fresh
Be shareable
Solve problems by providing solutions
Attract an audience
Above all – be results oriented.
To do this you must understand their wants and needs. Use surveys, interact with them via email and find out their pain.
Tips about Content generation
Think about what someone in your niche is going to need to follow in your footsteps. Think about your progression and map this out for your audience if they are trying to replicate you.
Use easy to remember forwarding URLs for certain topics to make them easier for your audience to memorise, these can be purchased as domain names and pointed to any page on your site. Promote this easy to remember URL in your marketing messages.
Use the medium that best suites your site. Look what the competition are using and do it differently and better.
know the product – be a sales agent for it, if you haven’t used it and found it useful don’t try to sell it. Become a resource of information for using that product. Give your audience tips and tricks for getting the best from it. Show the product being used, “un-boxing the product” is a popular type of video content. Ask yourself “Can I trust the product to be good for my audience?”. Become a source of information for that product. “How to….” videos and articles, show you using it for your own purposes, helpful tips and advice, and reviews
know what you want your audience to achieve by using your website what is their goal, then design a road map to help them achieve that goal, show them how using your products will help them get to their goal.
Build deep relationships with your subscribers. The deeper the relationship the shorter the pitch required. Speed up the building of relationships by:
Be personable – easier to connect. Use video and podcasts,
Tell stories and entertain,
Random Acts Of Kindness – reply to comments, give them a special deal, put comments on their blog,
Be real,
Build trust first:
Give lots away for free, add value without charging. If your seen as a giver people more likely to respond positively,
Get others to recommend you
If you don’t currently use the product yourself, get in contact with the owner of the product and ask some questions about the product and write a post about the conversation.
Get a special deal just for your audience, or give a rebate (using part of your affiliate earnings) back to the purchaser if they go through your affiliate link.
Other tips
Create an epic post about the product. A ONE Stop shop resource,
Multiple Youtube videos about different aspect of using the product,
Hold a webinar for the product,
Publish a webinar replay – Be sure to record your live webinar so that you can embed it on your website as a replay for those who didn’t watch it live, and those who did watch it live but want to get the information again,
Use an indirect social push – link to a post or a resource that will engage people beforehand about the product or a video about it, not directly to an affiliate link
Keep track of your click through’s – use pretty links or crazy egg,
Indirect email list promotion – For me, I like to indirectly promote on my email list – like I do with social media – it’s all about giving people as much high-value content as possible, and on the email, it’s exactly the same. I don’t directly promote anything on my email list – and if there are any links in my emails they all point back to my blog,
Indirect promotion on other people’s sites,
Be honest and disclose that they are affiliate links,
Thank people in advance for going through your affiliate links,
Review and compare products of the same type,
Focus on how it will help your audience (benefits not features),
Believe in your recommendations,
If it doesn’t work try another offer,
Test, test and test again,
Make your own product instead,
Be patient. Trust is built over time,
Provide a resource page full of all your affiliate products and links,
Offer a bonus
Extra content (i.e. extra skins for a opt-in box)
Discount price, rebates,
Tips and tricks document included,
How to use document included.
Email Sign ups
Encourage visitors to opt-in to your email list so that you can keep in touch with them and continue to help. You need to have an opt-in box on your website to do this. I have them dotted around my site in the sidebar and footer of most of the posts. I encourage you to do the same. Only ever provide great content and assistance, don’t ever spam them with endless sales pitches. We all hate that, don’t we?
You can use what are known in the trade as opt-in bribes to encourage subscriptions. An opt-in bride is something of value that the visitor has to exchange their email address for. This could include:
Cheat sheets
Tips and tricks information
A white paper
A resource list
An Ebook
In fact anything that adds value, and is perceived as being valuable and relevant to your visitor. If they don’t want it, they won’t sign up. If they do sign up always make it really easy to unsubscribe from your list as a matter of courtesy.
Note: If you sign up for our newsletter, feel free to respond to any of the emails we send you asking for our “Lead Magnet List” which will give you more ideas for what to use as Lead Magnets.
Have something to sell
Ultimately we are looking to build a business from our online endeavours, so we need something to sell. Something that will help our audience, something that gives more in value than it asks for in payment. Think of saving your audience time, effort, money wherever possible. Look to help them make money or solve some problem or pain they want to remove from their lives.
You can look to sell your own products or be an Affiliate and sell other people’s products. There are literally thousands of such products available to sell from physical products, services to digital products and everything in between.
If you’re starting out in online marketing, it is probably wiser to sharpen your marketing skills before investing a great deal of your resources in developing your own products, and Affiliate Marketing is an ideal option. Products can be found via networks such as Clickbank, Commission Junction, Amazon and JVZoo to name but a few.
summary of where to find products to sell
Clickbank,
Amazon affiliates / associates but look for high value products,
Odigger.com or offervault.com,
Commission junction you can be an affiliate or sell your product through them,
Think about what you use yourself,
Directly approach the company yourself, ask if they do affiliate program,
Forums and ask for ideas to the likes of web warrior forum and digital point forum,
If you cant find a product make one yourself.
Where to use affiliate links
Put affiliate links in an Ebook
Put affiliate links within content section and as many natural links as possible, without overdoing it. Not everyone will read the full article
Link to an image of product Easy Azon WordPress Plugin – I have never used this myself so I can’t recommend it,
Mention discount prices “click on this link to save 20%” if you have such an offer,
Create own advertisements, use text widgets to rotate text links,
Affiliate links in your images.
Keep the conversion going
Keep providing help to your audience, otherwise they will move on and leave you behind. If you’re only looking to service a narrow band of people at a certain stage in their development and don’t intend to offer support for them later, than that’s fine as long as you know how to keep the flow of new recruits coming to your website. Have a plan and work the plan.
Get Results: affiliate marketing business model
Summary
To be truly successful in Affiliate Marketing you need to build an audience that keeps coming back to you for more, I’ve heard it described as building a tribe or engaged community, even raving fans – whatever you want to label it, it’s about engaging on a regular basis and building a relationship with them. In order to achieve this you must provide great, unique, valuable, and actionable content that your audience needs and wants. This should be your major focus. Without an audience you can’t hope to build an affiliate business.
If you’re looking at doing it as a sideline, or full time business you will probably want or need to earn money from it by selling something. I prefer to use a method that adds value and genuinely helps people. I love to talk about Marketing and Business so write about it a lot. I have to make a living but have decided to only sell products that are relevant to my audience, I would be proud to have developed myself, and that are of genuine use. If I don’t like it I won’t try to sell it.
If you’re getting into affiliate marketing then pick a niche you are passionate to write about, otherwise you won’t enjoy it and will likely give up if the going is tough. Don’t do it just to make money, do it to help others. The side effect of adding more and more value is you tend to make more and more money.
If you’re business is not currently online, you’re potentially missing out on lots of business, which is going straight to your competitors.
Is business good? Well it could be so much better with an online presence.
My photography business survives without any passing trade, it’s all done online and of course word of mouth.
It’s not enough to just have a social media profile business page. What if it goes away or get’s hacked. What you need is your own website, a based from which to grow from, that’s your own.
Next you need to be found in search results.
You can still use your social media channels, if you have them, but your website and search is a whole new marketing channel.
Staying as you are is of course an option, after all you’re in your comfort zone. But remember if you do what you have always done, you’ll likely get what you’ve always got. Well that’s not entirely true, because more and more business is being conducted online these days.
You’ve got to be where your potential clients are hanging out. This is online, sure, on social media, but also on Google search. People search for things on Google and other search engines. You have got to be there to be found and you won’t be via Facebook or Instagram.
Appearing in search means..
You need a website (hosting)
You need to find out what you prospective customers are searching for (keyword research)
You need to have your site optimised for search results (SEO)
You need to fill in the gap between going live and being found in search, through advertising via PPC (Google Adwords)
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Perceive reality as it is, you wouldn’t recognise it
Your brain takes in info and sifts through it to find patterns and uses it to create your reality
It’s not about what’s hitting your eyes, it’s your brains interpretation
Perception has less to do with outside world and more to do with what’s going on inside the brain
The brain is completely cut off from the direct senses
Sound, vision, hearing, smell and taste is all the same stuff in the head
Photons of light or sound waves are getting converted into electro chemical signals that travel through millions of brain cells, known as neurons that send electrical pulses to other neurons. This is what creates our sense of reality.
The brain turns it into something meaningful by sifting through a huge stream of incoming data and finds patterns which are assembled into our reality
The result of millions of years of evolution
Seems effortless and instantaneous
When we see, many different systems have to work together. To see we use all the other senses to build a picture of the world around us, sight is only one part of that. We wouldn’t be able to see if we couldn’t touch for instance
Example – A blind man, who becomes sighted later is still unable to process the data, as the brain requires rewiring to deal with processing the visual data, something that it has never done before, so it’s like starting from scratch. The parts of his brain that would have dealt with sight have been used by other senses, in its absence
Depth perception and facial recognition not being processed by the brain as it would in a person with sight, even 10 years later on
Many parts of the brain are used in vision, approx 40%, all are needed to form an image
The best view of how the brain operates is to see what happens when it’s interrupted
Example – Headset that flips the view of the environment, left becomes right and visa versa
Visual data no longer makes intuitive sense
Takes brain 1 week to adjust and behave normally and manage in its new reality and after two weeks spacial map is altering, forget what is left and right. It takes a couple of days to readjust afterwards
All senses come into play to decode. A new reality is created
Babies don’t just touch stuff to feel what they feel, like they are learning how to see
Only means something if we can cross reference using other senses. What we touch influences how we see, taste is affected by our sense of smell, sight informs what we hear, and our reality is built by comparing these streams of data and when woven together our reality is constructed.
All sensory input takes different times to process and our brains have to merge these together to make our reality. Sound is processed faster than vision, because visual system takes more processing time than the hearing system, but it feels as though it is done instantly
Touch of hand is processed faster than touch on foot
All data from senses is first collected and processed before the brain builds a story. It takes ½ second to do this. So when we clap our hands, our reality of that clap is ½ after the fact. As a result our reality is based on the past
Different parts of the brain deal with different parts of the processing and it is all woven together to create our reality
Example – Solitary confinement; Deprived of sensory input – brain begins to create own reality. Going on imaginary trips and see illusions as reality.
What we see through our eyes, is less than the data that goes from our Thalamus to the cortex and our visual
Data from eyes goes to Thalamus and on to outer brain Cortex and visual Cortex.
6 times as much traffic going in opposite direction
Most of what we see is less to do with light from our eyes and more about what’s going on inside heads. An internal generated reality.
Known as The internal model
Use incoming data to update and correct internal model of the world through past experience, rather than rebuilding our world through sight
Example – Mask of face inside and outside appears to be sticking out. Internal model expects to see face stand out not in, so fools us into thinking it is
Your model sees what it expects to see. The Thalamus compares with what is coming in through the eyes to our internal model
Example – Eyes jump around but the internal model is only being updated, it doesn’t take in all the details, so the scene doesn’t jump around in the same way the eyes do. Data is taken on a need to know basis
Anytime you look around, colour doesn’t exist. Colour is reflected as black and white and only becomes colour in our heads
Only see a small spectrum of light. Less than 1/10trillonth of the full spectrum
All our senses are only picking up a tiny part of the information that is available
Nobody is experiencing objective reality, only what we need to perceive, same for all animals. Dogs have great hearing
Most people experience the same things, but a small percentage experience the world experience differently. Synesthesia – is a condition where the person sees letters in colours, “Hannah” looks like a sunset. Some see music, some experience many different types of psychotic experiences of life. Chemical imbalances in the brain.
Everybody’s life is constructed via beliefs and values
The Brains experience of time results in it compressing and stretching time, seeming longer or shorter. Moments of terror = slow motion
The Amygdala takes all the resources from other parts of brain and records more detail, richer and more vivid, and when replayed in memory they appear to have taken more time. The distortion of this time comes from the memory of the event. The brain is the ultimate story teller.
Each brain has its own unique model of the world. Reality is what your brain tells you it is.
What makes you who you are
3 lb organ. Wet biological stuff, fire billion electrical signals every second, results in the experience of being you
What shapes who you become?
Your life shapes your brain and your brain shapes your life
What makes me, me?
We are born helpless, more than any other species
Many other animals have life skills built in
Zebras can run within 45 minutes
But if these animals are in a strange environment, they won’t survive
People are pre-programmed to survive in any environment by being equipped to “learn” over having certain skills built in
We learn on the job
This gives us an extraordinary advantage
Same number of brain cell (neurons) in children as adults
As child grows, age 2, twice as many neurons as adults, after 2 growth is halted, and the number of connections are reduced and existing connections are strengthened. Links not used are lost. We become specialist rather than generalist.
But adults cells have stronger connections
But this process relies heavily on the outside world (our unique environment) and can go wrong if environment is not conducive to healthy development
Example Romanian orphans’ – neural activity reduced, because lower input up to age of 2.
When brain is starved of needs, development is stunted
And as adults, these orphans are still under-developed
What we experience in our early years goes a long way to shaping us in the rest of our lives
Genetics also shapes us – hormones change our appearance as teenagers.
Brains also change as teenagers. Example teenagers sat in window and have strangers look at her, brain reacts different to adults. Teenagers more sensitive to being looked at compared to adults
This is because the medial prefrontal cortex is highly active in teenagers, this results in them being more sensitive in regard to their self-consciousness and the situation in relation to themselves. Emotional situations carry a lot of weight
Also poor impulse control as the brain develops, results in greater risk taking
As we grow out of our teenage years our brains change less so
The knowledge – the Posterior Hippocampus becomes larger through revision.
Experience changes the brain through plasticity. The brain is a work-in-progress
Our identity is constantly changing, who you are and who you can become
Good and bad
Charles Witman, killed his wife, mother in law and 13 people. He asked for his brain to be examined, and he had a tumour which was putting pressure on his Amygdala, which is involved in fear and aggression, making him more violent
Disease, drugs, and aging can reshape the brain
Our brains may change but our MEMORY is a constant part of our personality
What if you could meet yourself at different ages – memories are likely to be different in each of yourselves at different ages.
When we experience an event we use all our sense that are woven together to make up that experience
As a memory it becomes less vivid, and subsequent events supersede it and affect how we feel about that memory.
Leading questions can contaminate existing memories
It’s even possible to implant completely false memories, if plausible enough. i.e. lost in mall as child, and after giving it time more and more detail creeps into the false memory. We embellish the false memory, we are imaginative storytellers
Our memory of the past is not a faithful record, it’s a reconstruction, a mythology
Why are our memories so unreliable, because it doesn’t just record what happens, it allows us to simulate what is coming next. It is a narrative that links the past with the future, so that we can work out what we need to do tomorrow
Keeping the brain active, helps sidestep the brain as it ages and the onset of disease, creating new neural pathways
Conscious experience is our unique perspective of the world. It’s not about the neurons because they will still be there after death, it’s more about how the neurons work together. Like drummers making just random noise, but then start working with one another to create a performance. Consciousness is a performance of neurons.
During sleep, the neurons are still interacting as if awake, and in deep sleep they become extremely synchronised but I am not there during this time.
I am the relationship between the neurons in a certain state
Why do we care about anything. The Meaning of life is the web of associations from our unique history of life experiences
We don’t perceive objects as they are, we perceive them as we are. Brains are as unique as snowflakes. We are completely unique from anyone that has and will ever live
From cradle to grave, we are works in progress
Who is in control of you?
Every action and decision and belief are driven by parts of brain you have no access to, the unconscious
Your brain secretly controls everything you do outside of awareness
Human consciousness is awaking in the morning, when we wake from sleep
Waking is the birth of you. Your brain comes online, but this is also the beginning of a great deception
It feels like you are in control of your decisions, but it’s not quite so simple
The conscious you makes up a very small percentage of what is going on.
The hidden activity includes:
Controlling the body – Hitting a baseball happens so quickly, even before conscious awareness has time to kick in
Cerebellum in the brain calculates micro adjustments to body to say, just hold a cup of tea, millions of times without our awareness
Why is so much of what we do buried out of reach?
EEG scans show motor skills reduce cognitive activity load, brain activity is almost in a rest state if what you’re doing is greatly practiced. Carving the skill into neurons so you can perform the task rapidly and without need for conscious attention.
New skills change our brains and are hardwired into the structure of our brains (muscle memory)
Brain requires only as much energy as a 60 watt light bulb, which is incredible considering its power
The consequence of all this, is many processes have become hidden from our consciousness
We go into autopilot when carrying out these tasks (such as driving) as our brains and body’s take over
Brains can be trained to do any skills automatically and they seem almost super human
Blackout of consciousness – enter a flow state. The zone. The neural circuits can run without the conscious mind being present. Perception is heightened, things slow down and things become more vivid, stop thinking and start just doing. Free of thought and struggle
The hidden parts of the brain can take control of our body’s and shape our lives in more profound ways
Freud pioneered studies about what’s beneath consciousness
By watching what’s happening above the surface, you get a peak at what is happening below it
Unconscious shapes thoughts and behaviour
Eckhart Hess in the 1960’s ran an experiment showing faces and asked questions about how friendly, how attractive this person was. The images were the same women but with dilated eyes – men found the women with dilated eyes more attractive. Brains were analysing details and acting on them, without the men’s conscious awareness
Warm coffee =closer relationship, harsh smelling environment = harsher moral decisions, sat next to hand sanitizer = shifts political opinions to a more conservative stance (less outside threats)
So why aren’t we just unconscious beings?
What is the point of consciousness?
Because conscious mind deals with unexpected situations, to make sense of a new situation. When expectations are violated, consciousness is woken up. It also plays a vital role in dealing with problems in internal sub-systems.
Conscious is like a CEO, rising above the daily routines to take an oversight role. If you’re hungry but on a diet, your conscious mind tries to work out what’s best and make an executive decision. It has a unique vantage point. Consciousness is a way for individual cells to view themselves as a unified whole. It is a long term planner
If consciousness goes completely offline: like a blackout, sleepwalking. Walking involuntarily and doing actions without conscious awareness
Unconscious brains steer our behaviour
Why do we all do different things, behave in unique ways?
Genes also play a part in behaviour. The Y chromosome (males) makes men more prone to violence, environment also affects genes, what happens to us and impacts on genes
Culture, ideas, belief systems, environment all interact with our genes
Do you have free-will of any kind?
We think when we choose to do something we are in control, and get to decide, but science can’t find evidence for this
Example – TMS causes participants movements, but the participants thought it was due to their own free-will. The conscious mind is good at telling itself that it made a choice when it hasn’t
If there is no free-will, it is still hard to make predictions, because one thing effects something else which effects something else and has a knock on effect and the outcome of all those interactions, results in there being no way of knowing the outcome (ping pong ball into a tank with other ping pong balls)
Conscious experience is only a tiny part of what makes us, us. Our inner space is vast, a reflection of the universe perhaps
Decision making processes
Our brains are constantly making decisions, we are aware of some, however most of which, we are not
Decision making allows us to navigate through life and has led us to where you are now
Making choices, looking at options, results in us being constantly in a state of conflict, do this, do nothing or do that
Why do you choose one over the other, for example, eat yoghurt or not?
These rivalries are internal, different networks competing against one another
Example – The word “Blue” in orange colour is confusing. The colour network, competing with the word network
Example – Alien hand syndrome
The struggle that is waged inside our head every day. Two systems that come into conflict REASONS versus EMOTIONS
Example; 4 men on track, out of control carriage heading their way, either move lever to divert onto different route but will kill one (most choose to move lever and kill one but save four), or second scenario, push a man into path of carriage to stop it, killing one to save 4 men (most can’t purposely push man to save 4)
Warfare, long range strike, removes the emotion and makes it easier to do
Why do we have emotional system?
When things go wrong, easy to see what might be happening, for example – Lady who can’t make decisions after having accident and damage to brain, doesn’t care to be able to differentiate between options and this frustrates her
Emotion is a necessary component of decision making, can’t decide on one choice over other, doesn’t care for one over the other
Need to value one option over the other. If you don’t care it can be hard, so need emotions to help out in the decision making process
Emotions important for making decisions
Emotions also interact with our physiology, which allow us to put a value on a choice
This conversation between body and brain is going on all the time
React physically first (heart rate increase, dilated pupils, empty bladder) when facing a threat
Hunches start before rational brain kicks in as proven by “Iowa gambling test”. Feeling/intuition spots the fact that cards from stack A and C are more rewarding/lucrative
Hunches pick up after 10 cards have been selected, conscious rational brain at 20 cards, as proven by sweat glands showing signs of negative reaction to picking from wrong stack
Hunches are the rational brain catching up with emotional brain and physiology
Ego depletion – running down on energy, needed by the pre frontal cortex which effects decision making as shown in test of judges making decisions before lunch of guilty and less so after lunch
Example lap dancers earned more when ovulating. Estrogen effects how the ladies appear to men, softer skin etc and these are picked up by the men who give them more money
Why do you stay with a partner – Oxytocin, strengthens the bond we feel when in a relationship and makes other competitors less attractive. Brains preconditioned decision to keep couples together for sake of offspring
Some choices are made by our DNA, which are inherited from parents. Some basic responses are predetermined
Example -The greater the disgust response to images shown, the more likely you are to vote conservative within the next 6 months, the less of an adverse response the more likely to vote liberal they are. This was tested by the responses in nervous system after showing gross images to participants
How do we make choices about future decisions?
We run simulations of the future and give each a value. 10 units for this, 5 units for that, 50 units for the other and we keep re-evaluation options. A best guess of the future outcomes. Our Dopamine system is what is used to change the value of things based of our latest experience of it. If better than expected, evaluation goes up, if worse than expected goes down.
When Dopamine goes out of control can lead to addiction. We can lose control of our impulses
Example – Sub-prime disaster shows how we can lose control. The pull of the now outweighs consequences in the future. The future is just an idea of what might be. The here and now has much more psychological pull. The present versus future conflict.
We rely on will-power to keep us in check, but will-power gets used up and when it’s in short supply we give in to temptations or distractions or just give up altogether, if what we’re doing is hard
We use will-power up like a tank of gas
Ulysses contract – social pressure to keep us on track, and bind oneself in the future
Example: addiction – Suppress on one side and crave on the other, and the conflict and balance between the two, learning to find strategies to move the balance to increase suppression over any cravings. Move away from being a slave to our impulses
What does a brain need to be healthy?
Nutrients from food, oxygen and OTHER PEOPLE
Our brains are wired to work together
We are fundamentally social creatures
The most basic encounter relies of trust – buying from a shop
Much of our brain activity is dedicated to communication with each other
We try to impress each other and exchange ideas
Example – Easy to form stories from simple shapes on a screen interacting
We look for intention and relationships all around us
We navigate the world around us by judging others’ actions
Example – Babies (with little life experience) make judgements on teddies that are either mean or nice, based on instinct, not just by what has been learned
Many regions of the brain are used in social interaction, this is less defined in people who suffer from Autism, resulting in social integration problems
Example – Harvard medical school did a test on a patient who suffered from autism, after being given TMS targeting different parts of his brain. When they did it to the Dorsolateral Prefrontal cortex, a region responsible for abstraction, he became able to read people, where he couldn’t before, and this was completely by accident, and it never went away
Movement in facial muscles can be read in milliseconds and we subtly mirror what we see
Mirroring happens because it allows us to identify the emotion in others, and read other people. People with Botox are not able to mirror expressions and as a result, correctly identify the other person’s emotion as accurately
When we go to the movies, we know what we are seeing is actually make-believe, yet we still react emotionally to what we see. This is because the pain matrix is activated in us and empathy for others is triggered, we kind of feel their pain. We are able to step into their shoes as if it were us. This is hard-wired into us
If the brain is starved of human contact we may go into an animal like state, pacing. Then into a plant like state, mind slows down and becomes repetitive. The brain turns on itself and becomes a source of deep psychological pain
It creates a reality from the scant sensory input, and makes up stories
The world around you is part of who you are, in a vacuum you lose a sense of who you are
When we feel excluded, the pain matrix is activated. Social rejection is so meaningful it hurts
Our Brain pushes us in the direction of bonding with others. We seek out alliances, a sense of connection
We strive to work in groups
There is also a flip side to this, where there are in-groups there are outsiders, such as Jews in the war
How can the social orientated brain suddenly change into something that can cause genocide? Germany, Bosnia where neighbours killed one another
What is going on here? How can this happen?
Such occurrences keep happening throughout history. We need to understand genocide as a neural phenomenon
Where there is separation between in-groups and out groups our brains are changed and this effects how we respond to other people’s pain if they are perceived as in the outgroup. What team are you on?
Networks in prefrontal cortex become active when we interact with others, in psychopaths (who make up a small percentage of the population) this is less so, and with those involved in genocide, who are just everyday people, they dehumanise their victims, seeing them rather like viewing inanimate objects. And group behaviour amplifies this to a greater extent, like group contagion
Propaganda plays into this by dehumanising the enemy to appear like animals
Example the school children experiment where children were separated into blue and brown eyed children. Putting blue eyed children on top and reversing the day after. The children’s behaviour dramatically changed towards their friends. This changed them forever experiencing both sides of the coin. They realised systems of rules can be arbitrary
What’s next for our brains, what will we be capable of?
Who will we be?
We’re marrying our biology with our technology
Plasticity – example Cameron Mot started having drop seizures, and had the diseased part of her brain removed to try and eradicate it. An entire half of her brain had been effected by the disease. With the loss of all that brain tissue, she has only slight weakness on one side, but not much else. Her brain has overcome the loss of brain tissue, through plasticity
All incoming information, through eyes, ears, nose or via touch, is turned into electro chemical signals. The brain makes sense of any input, even through cochlear implants. As long as the input is consistent, the brain will figure out how to use it
It doesn’t matter how signals find their way to the brain, it will figure it out over time. There is no limit to the sensory expansion that we can create. The brains capacity to take on new inputs, we should be able to expand the experience of being human
We are not confined to the transitional senses
There is no limit to what the brain can incorporate
How we sense the world is only half the story, the other half is how we interact with it
Paralysed woman who’s brain is unable to communicate with her body, is making use of robotics to connect her brain with a robot arm, just by thinking about it. There’s a direct physical link between her robot arm and brain
Not just replacing limbs, but improving them, and expanding our capabilities and expanding the body
What if technology could address our mortality?
When we die all our knowledge and information is lost
We might be coming to a time where we could take the information from a dead brain and interact with it again, giving the dead a chance to live again
Cryonic suspension to preserve brains and bodies
Other ways to access the information from a dead brain, to be able to read it out directly
Map out all the huge, and unique connections which underlies all its functions – known as “The Connectome”. Like a wiring diagram
Slicing thin slices of brain onto surface of water, each slice pushing the last, like a conveyer belt, into strips, then scanned by electron microscope and magnified hundreds of thousands of times, and then stacking on top of each other and following the neurons through the images to make a 3D model, mapping all the wiring that underpins the brains thought, experiences and beliefs. This would be a zedobyte of data, more than all the current worlds data.
But the time might come when computing power isn’t an issue
The computational hypotheses – hypotheses if the wet biological part of the brain is not what’s important it’s the connection and interaction that’s important, we could run digitally. It’s not what the mind is, it’s what the brain does.
Creating models based on biological data, to create a simulation of a human brain – could the mind live in a computer
Create machines that think via AI. Proven to be extremely difficult. The goal of a sentient machine is still to be achieved. Machine learning, like babies to be able to learn, without being pre programmed. With each interaction it learns and builds on its knowledge
Lines of code, instead of chain/train of thought. In 1980’s John Surril came up with a thought experiment, called the Chinese room. You are locked in room, outside is someone who only speaks Chinese, you in the room have a book that match Chinese symbols, the Chinese person posts messages to you, you look up the answer, matching the symbols, and post back the matched reply, to Chinese speaker. The Chinese person thinks they are having a conversation with someone that speaks Chinese. But I the operator, don’t understand Chinese. The argument goes, this is how a computer is, just manipulating symbols and following instructions, it doesn’t understand
This exposes the difficulties and the mystery of how physical pieces and parts comes to equal our experience of being in the world
Looking at the natural world, such as Ants we see how the individuals contribute to a larger organism as the colony. They work individually but all for the common good. Relying of chemical signals from other local ants, when isolated they are very ineffective. The ants work as a system, no one ant sees the bigger picture, but it works as a super organism.
Emergent properties. This is thought to be how neurons work, being embedded in a network, reacting to local signals. Enough of them working together and the mind emerges into consciousness.
Maybe they need to interact in specific ways to be effective
When you wake up in the morning, beforehand there is nothing when you awake there is everything
When asleep the strand of activity is restricted, when awake the activity is much more widespread, experiences are bound together a composite of numerous possibilities. Consciousness may come from these patterns of interaction
Building consciousness on different media is still in the realms of science fiction, but the possibilities are still there
When we imagine simulated life the choices are endless, and what we are experiences of life now might be it. It is difficult to disprove it. How can we ever know what we are experiencing is reality?
There is some “me” at the centre of this, trying to figure it out. I’m thinking about it, and therefore “I am”
We might be at the point of an evolutionary leap, transformed beyond what has ever been done before
Get Results: winners and losers predator of chance and victim of circumstance
There are WINNERS and LOSERS in every situation. Mentally position yourself to WIN. Be a PREDATOR of chance rather than a VICTIM of circumstance.
Victims blame and complain. When they pass the buck they also unwittingly pass the power to help themselves, to find a way, to make things happen. Instead take responsibility, don’t look outside yourself for answers, all you need to conquer is within you – It’s fear, fear of loss, failure, defeat, disappointment.
When you look differently at things, things look different. Change yourself and things change. To have more you have to be more.
These are not just sound bites, they are truths.
Using COPING STRATEGIES helps elevate internal dissonance but coping strategies are often used as coping excuses. Excuses to be able to accept failure, to be okay with not following through on plans towards goals. If you’re not moving goal bound ask yourself why not. Somethings getting in your way and it’s most likely to be you. Figure yourself out by improving self awareness; ask yourself why you do what you do and don’t so what you don’t do. Figure out your strengths and weaknesses so that you can chart an effective plan of attack.
These are just a few of the key elements to enable you to get results. Sign up for our newsletter and check out the underlying framework we use to get results and find success.
Get Results: thought processes including opinions and beliefs
THOUGHT is the key driver of ACTION and BEHAVIOUR. Another way of saying this is we do things based on our thought processes.
THOUGHTS either made up of fleeting distractions that pass through our minds briefly, and while we may question their origin, they have very little impact on our daily lives, or thoughts that repeatedly replay over and over, which wear grooves into our psyche, otherwise known as pathways into the neural network of our brains, forming what we often describe as BELIEFS and VALUES.
These beliefs and values become the RULES we operate against. To implement rules we have to make JUDGMENTS, deciding if something is right or wrong, good for us or bad, whether we do it or not etc.
Understanding how thoughts impact behaviour; what we do, or don’t do, why we do something or don’t do something, is vitally important, because they directly impact the quality of our decision-making and subsequently the quality of our lives. Self awareness is so important in this respect.
The difficulty with scrutinising our psychological mechanisms is that we may be forced to confront things we’re not particularly comfortable with confronting. We may have to admit our shortcomings, our weaknesses, or vulnerabilities, which goes against how our brains are wired and how we are conditioned, which is to always be looking to increase our sense of value, to be more than we were yesterday, to be better, more valuable.
In reality, knowing the hard-to-admit shortcomings of our makeup frees us to move forwards more effectively, we can plan the best path towards our goals, knowing where we need help from others, or through training, and what we should focus on by doing what we do best, what comes more naturally to us and what aligns with our inner workings.
We have BELIEFS and VALUES which are predominately made up from, ASSUMPTIONS, INFERENCES and the TESTIMONY of others, and often have little to do with facts, or being backed by evidence. We should question such BELIEFS and VALUES. Where do they come from? Well generally they come from social and cultural conditioning, they are less about what we want and more about what the world around us wants from us. Are they based on truth and fact or are they just a convincing story we tell ourselves repeatedly? Are they an attempt to increase our sense of self?
Your SENSE OF SELF, is that bit of you that attaches to and emotionally invests in thoughts, possessions, people, cultural and social ideas and affiliations, so as to increase your own value. At some level, you believe having more makes you more, but this is a lie.
Learn more about the EQUATION OF EMOTION which will help you with dealing with EXPECTATIONS, PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY, ATTACHMENTS. For more about it, click here.
Change EXPECTATIONS to APPRECIATION. Nothing is promised. Lose that sense of entitlement you might have. Be grateful for each day, which is a gift. If you find this hard to believe, go to your local hospice and spend time with people that are living on borrowed time, to help you get a better perspective and appreciation of what’s really important.
Question your PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY. Change the story you tell yourself. Choose a different narrative because none of it is based on fact anyway, so make it empowering so it serves you.
Let go of ATTACHMENTS. They are designed to increase your sense of self, but in reality, you are not your attachments. Also be careful of SEPARATION because this too is an attempt to increase your sense of self, by lowering the “other” and thus rising above the “other”.
Bring awareness to your IDENTIFICATION WITH THOUGHT (EGO) processes. You are not your thoughts, and your thoughts are not who you are. You are not separate from the universe of formless or form, you are in integral part of life. Also stop using this moment as a stepping stone to the future and to relive the past, instead fully engage with the here and now because it is the only access point we have to engage with life.
You can see that there is more to THOUGHTS and THINKING than initially meets the eye. Thoughts are so integral to the way we live life. Mastering thoughts and the thinking process, helps master life. We can’t control external elements or other people, but we can control our thoughts, our reactions to events and situations. We can make better quality decisions, less influenced by emotions and emotional reactions, we can approach situations from a different, more empowering perspective, with a different interpretation than we had before.
“A view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge”
and the part that says “not necessarily based on fact or knowledge” is important to take note of
because OPINIONS are often defended as if they were TRUTHS, FACTS, even based on EVIDENCE.
When in fact, they are largely shaped by our individual BELIEFS and VALUES.
Which in turn, are formed from ASSUMPTIONS, INFERENCES and the TESTIMONY of people we might respect or trust, such as authority figures, experts, work colleagues, family and friends.
They are a result of our SOCIAL and CULTURAL CONDITIONING.
When you react to someone criticising or challenging your OPINIONS, you can be sure you have invested part of your SENSE OF SELF in these OPINIONS.
That is, you are ATTACHED to them to such an extent that an attack on them is perceived as an attack on you. You and your opinions are as one.
The first step in breaking this identification is to observe it at work.
When your opinions are challenged, and you feel negative emotion as a result, look inside yourself to see what attachment you feel a need to defend.
Question why you feel you need to defend this OPINION and figure out what BELIEF it’s being driven by.
Then question the validity of this BELIEF. Why you have it, where it came from, is it a belief worth defending?
Unless you remove your sense of self from these BELIEFS, you will inject subjective bias into them, and will be unable to take an objective standpoint.
You will look to confirm them, to prove them, so that you can inflate your sense of self.
While, at the same time, discrediting your objectors, so as to avoid having to really look objectively at the underlying TRUTHS and FACTS, without the cloud of EMOTION getting in the way.
The SCIENTIFIC approach is to hold beliefs as hyphotheses and look to disprove them at any opportunity. If you can’t prove them as TRUTH or FACT, consider them best guesses.
