Are You Sabotaging Yourself – I was?
It seems to me that sometimes, no matter how much we read about our actions being influenced by our past experiences and how we can change our future outcomes by changing our current actions, we forget what we know we should be doing and begin to sabotage ourselves.
The reason I mention this is because I recently took a long hard look at what I was doing and got quite a shock. As a result I’ve reached a big turning point in my personal and business life.
It’s a big turning point because I have a confession to make that some of you may relate to that has resulted in me taking the direction that I am now going to take. You see I’ve been online for quite a long time now and over that time I’ve had periods that were quite successful and periods that weren’t successful at all.
If I analyze it the times when I wasn’t successful have been when I’ve been distracted, when I’ve allowed something else to take my attention and as a result have neglected what I should have been doing online. I say online because with me the distractions have normally come from something I’ve got involved with offline.
There was one notable occasion when I had grown my list to over 5000 which all but disappeared in the course of a year because I didn’t keep in regular contact with them. You may be wondering by now what’s caused me to suddenly consider that I’m at a turning point and need to make some changes.
Well, it’s my good friend Martin Avis’s fault. You see a few months back I re-subscribed to his newsletter and started to attend his very excellent London lunch networking meetings. Chatting with Martin at the recent London lunch I discovered that Martin earns a six figure income (in UK pounds, that is) from his newsletter that he has been sending out to his list for the past 10+ years.
That’s right, a very comfortable six figure income almost entirely from his newsletter. That really gave me a wake-up call because I started online at about the same time as Martin and in the beginning I sent out a newsletter like his and the one I’ve gone back to now. The only difference is that he has continued to send out his newsletter and build his list and I haven’t. There’s a lesson for us all there which is that focus and consistency over a relatively short amount of time can and will produce amazing results.
Martin was making a good living after only a few months so we’re not talking ten years to become financially independent.
So that’s why it is a big turning point for me and why I’ve gone back to my original format for my newsletter. If you’re not already receiving my regular Action Today newsletter, click the ‘Subscribe Now’ link over on the right of this page and you’ll be taken to my registration page. Once you subscribe there you’ll get the next issue. There is also a link to the newsletter archives so you can catch up with past issues.
There are many reasons why we sabotage ourselves. It may be fear of failure or rejection – many of us fear that. We become concerned that if we send out something to our list people may not like it, they may feel that we have nothing worth saying or feel that we are intruding in their life.
Some of that is actually true but none of it should prevent us from going ahead all the same. Not everyone will like what we do but a percentage will and it’s that percentage that we will continue to serve and will become our best customers.
We may allow all of the latest, greatest offers to get in the way of actually doing something constructive to grow our business – I’ve certainly done that in the past. Sometimes we make the mistake in thinking that buying a new program or coaching course is growing our business. The only time that something we buy helps our business grow is when we use it.
I sometimes feel that people who market self help programs miss the point when they give the impression that all we have to do is think positive thoughts. That’s certainly a vital part of success but without action we’ll get nowhere.
Bob Proctor, who is the master of achievement, describes the formula perfectly as:-
Thoughts – lead to – Feelings – lead to – Actions – lead to – Results
Our thoughts and feelings are part of our inner world and the results we experience are in the outer world. Action is what ties the inner and outer world and converts what we desire into our outcomes, our results.
So, if you’re not experiencing the results that you want in your life, maybe you’re sabotaging yourself like I was. If so, make yourself a commitment to change right now. Don’t allow these things to get in the way of you achieving what you can with the right action.
And believe me you can achieve anything you want. There are enough people from all backgrounds and walks of life that have become successful online for there to be any doubt about it anymore.
I have gone back to basics with my business and the results in just a few weeks are amazing. I decided to review what I was doing with my affiliate marketing to see if I could improve results there and just at the time I did Andrew Hansen and Josh Stanton launched their Unstoppable Affiliate course.
Amazing how the universe delivers just what you want at the time you need it, isn’t it? Anyway, I decided to buy it and have been working through it. No matter how much you think you know there is always something new to learn and this course has certainly taught me a lot of new techniques.
If you have been trying to make money as an affiliate and become a bit lost I can’t recommend this course highly enough. It covers every single detail of affiliate marketing from finding profitable offers to promote, building a website/blog for it, how to drive traffic to it and get good search engine rankings plus lots more.
They also place a lot of emphasis on doing all of this free or as cheaply as possible. If you feel that this may be what you need right now, you can check it out at their Unstoppable Affiliate site.
Several of the people that have taken the course have reported making money with their first sites within 4 to 8 weeks as I have myself which is testimony to how well Andrew and Josh’s methods work.
This period of self-analysis has worked wonders for me and maybe if you take a step back and look at your business and personal life you may see areas where you can benefit like I have. In any event I wish you every success with everything you do and will continue to provide updates on how I’m progressing with my business especially my affiliate marketing.
Until next time,
Trevor
“Remember Nothing Happens Until We Take Action”
