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How To Get Rid of the Fear of What Others Think About You as a Blogger

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We live on a planet populated by over 7 billion people.

Each a unique spirit that came forth to this planet to experience contrast in order to establish a set of unique preferences which will aid in the expansion of the Universe.

In other words, each of us is here for a different reason to create a unique life with a unique set of preferences.

The next time you go to a grocery store or a shopping mall with a busy parking lot, just look around and notice all the different cars parked in their spots.

Why are all the cars different?

I mean as humans, shouldn’t we have already figured out which one of the thousands of cars available out there is the BEST car?

Shouldn’t we have at least figured out which COLOR is the best color?

Why is there still so many different types of cars out there in 2015?  Why haven’t we figured out what the best option is and just all agreed to go with that option?

The reason is because we are ALL unique and all different, and our lives are different and our needs, desires and preferences are all different.

Intuitively, we all know this to be true.

But then if we’re all unique and different then why do we spend so much time and energy worrying about what other people think!?

This short video clip from Abraham / Hicks offers some great insight:

The interesting part that I really like from this video is how Abraham mentions that our well-meaning parents spent our childhood slowly but surely CONVINCING us that our happiness depended on pleasing them.

In other words, when we did things that pleased our parents, they applauded us, cheered us on, gave us positive attention and flowed love towards us.

And when we did things that were not pleasing to our parents, they yelled at us, scolded us, gave us negative attention and held back love from us.

They did this so that they could “steer” us away from danger and hurt and towards safety, as frankly we were still much too naive and inexperienced to be able to think for ourselves.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this – it’s called parenting.

When we were young children we would often disagree with our parent’s opinions when we wanted something and we would try to think for ourselves.

Our parents would say “Don’t touch the oven, you’ll burn your hands!” and what would we do?

We would think they’re full of crap, and we would want to touch the oven.

Then we would touch the oven and we would burn our hands and then run crying to our parents, and they would say “I told you so!  You need to LISTEN to me!  I know what’s BEST for you!” as they consoled us.

Slowly but surely we would be conditioned to think that our parents knew what’s best for us and that we are often mistaken when we think we know what’s best for us.

Once that line of thinking was ingrained in our minds we would go to school, where we would meet our teachers and the whole process would begin again.

At first we would rebel against our teachers, but slowly over time we would be conditioned to the fact that THEY know what’s best for us.

We would be taken to the doctor’s office and again we would be taught that the doctor knows what’s best for us as well.

And the truth is that as children, these well-intentioned adults probably DID know what was better for us than we knew for ourselves – IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS!

If it wasn’t for them, we probably would have DIED by now doing all the stupid things that popped into our heads. 🙂

Sticking a fork in the electric socket?  Yeah sure, that sounds like a great idea!!! 🙂

See my point?

… but the thing is that we are not children anymore.  We are now adults and we have our own built-in “Emotional Guidance System” / Intuition and it is now mature and when we connect to it properly, *IT* is the true essence of us that knows what’s best for us – not our parents, our teachers our siblings or anyone else.

NOBODY knows what’s best for you except YOU and YOUR inner essence.

We all know this, but very often people still ask me…

“Paul, I don’t know why, but I still worry about what other people think…  I try to write a Blog post but then I’m scared to publish it because I’m worried about what others might think…”

or

“Paul, I shot this video and I was going to upload it to YouTube, but then I got this like crazy fear of what people might think of me!  I don’t get it.  Why do I care so much what people think of me!?”

Well, the truth is that the reason why you CARE is because for the first 18 years of your life you were PROGRAMMED / CONDITIONED with a program that could essentially be reduced down to this statement:

“Do what pleases your parents, teachers, friends, society or you MIGHT DIE!  You don’t want to DIE do you!?”

Of course it wasn’t stated in this way, with this type of extreme language, but that is essentially how we were programmed.

Again, when we did things that pleased our parents, we were given what we wanted, positive attention, love and affection.

And when we did the opposite we received the opposite.

Couple that with the fact that our very DNA is programmed with the programming that in order to survive we must be a part of the PACK / HERD, otherwise if we are expelled form the PACK / HERD we will be alone in the wilderness and then we will die!

Is it any wonder that we grow up to be adults who can’t think for ourselves without worrying about what others might think, and we can’t even do something as SIMPLE as writing a Blog post or shooting a video and uploading it to YouTube?

See, before you write that blog post and publish it…you’re part of your HERD.

You’re part of the PACK.

Safe!

But what if you click that publish button, and write that Blog post, where you share YOUR truth, with all the positive intentions that you may have… and then what if the HERD / PACK rejects you!

You might die!

Well, not really… but that is what the child inside of you has been programmed with.

It took me TWO DAYS to publish my first Blog post.

I wrote it, and re-wrote it and printed it out and read it over and over again and I was CONCERNED!

“What if people think this is stupid?”

“What if my boss reads this?”

“What if my co-workers read this and make fun of me?!”

“What if … what if… what if!!!!”

And finally I DID publish that post.  And I didn’t die!

Then I published another, and another, and another.

And slowly but surely I eliminated my fear of what people think…

… I write my Blog posts with ease now because I don’t really care what others think.

Of course I want *SOME* people (ie. my target market) to get value from my blog posts, but I don’t care what people think of ME for writing the posts.

That is one of the most precious gifts and benefits you can get from blogging.

The GIFT of slowly and gently growing more and more confident in your ability to NOT GIVE A SHIT what the rest of the HERD/PACK thinks of you!

So when people say to me “Paul, how do I overcome this constant WORRY I have of what others think of me!?”

My answer is simple…

KEEP BLOGGING!

As you Blog, you’ll start to get followers and people telling you how much value they get from your Blog posts…

… and also at the same time you’ll start getting some “haters”.

This is normal!  Don’t freak out when you get a “hater”.

All it means is that you’re doing the right things.

It means that you’re polarizing your blog audience, which is exactly what you want.

Let me give you an example…

One of the qualities of my target market is that my target market takes 100% responsibility for their lives.

People who try to blame others for things that go wrong in their lives are NOT my target market.

So when people like that arrive on my Blog, they usually become my “haters”, and that’s okay because I’m not here to help those types of people.

For example, I once had a lady email me blaming me for the fact that her 12 year old son was on her computer / Internet, and he came across my Blog where I had said the word “crap” and she didn’t appreciate me exposing her son to such vulgar language.

She actually emailed me saying that!

LOL!

I kindly pointed her towards my terms and conditions where I clearly state that anyone who is under 18 should NOT be reading my site as heck, from time to time I might say something as vulgar as the word “CRAP” (gasp!), but at the same time it boggled my mind as to how naive this lady was…

… she was giving her 12 year old son UNRESTRICTED access to a computer with a full Internet connection and the thing she was worried about exposing him to was my blog saying the word CRAP?!!!

Seriously!?  Has she not seen what’s on the Internet?!

Not only that, but does she really think that the worst word her son has heard growing up and going to school as a 12 year old is the word “crap”?

My point though is that as I kept blogging, and my audience grew, from time to time I would get these comments or emails from “haters” and they come in all shapes and sizes. 🙂

But the cool thing is that as you KEEP BLOGGING, you start to build confidence and these types of opinions of others begin to matter less and less and less to you…

… and that is where TRUE FREEDOM starts to spring from in your life.

Because just think about it…

… imagine if you have ALL the money in the world… like let’s say you won the lottery…

… and imagine you had ALL the time in the world…

… and you thought that those things would give you FREEDOM…

… but you hadn’t yet overcome your fear of what others think of you…

How free would you really be?

You wouldn’t be free at all, would you!!!???

You’d just be a retired, rich person who was still like a little CHILD… spending every day of their life worrying about what others think of them!

Sometimes people say to me “Paul, yeah…I don’t know if Blogging is for me… I don’t know if I’m comfortable posting my thoughts online… I worry too much what people think… that’s why I’m thinking of starting this business over here… I think I can make a lot of money with it, and I don’t have to Blog and worry about being judged.”

Really?

And let’s say you DO make a lot of money with “THAT” business over there… will you really be FREE if you still stay up at night worrying about what others think of you?

That’s not freedom.

True freedom comes from honoring the child inside of you who didn’t know what was best for you in certain situations growing up, and at the same time letting that child go, and allowing the ADULT version of you to come forth and to start thinking for yourself and NOT worrying what the “HERD” thinks of you.

That is the only way you’ll ever be free.

You can’t be free if you continue to live your entire life trying to please everyone around you, somehow expecting to derive happiness from that.

So what’s the best way to take one tiny little step forward towards overcoming your fear of what others think of you?

Start a blog and write your first post.

Then publish another.

Then publish another.

…

The Awesome Day Exercise

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A number of years ago, one of the coaches I was working with asked me to do what seemed like a simple exercise.

She wanted me to write down, in detail what my “Perfect Day” is going to be like once I am living the life that I want to be living.

At first this seemed like an easy thing to do, but once I started to actually think about this exercise it became a lot more complicated than I thought.

I started off by imagining the “perfect” way that I would want to wake up.  Where would I be?  What time would it be at?  Who or what would wake me up?  What would the temperature be like?

Then I tried to imagine what my “perfect” breakfast scenario would be.  What would I want to eat?  Who would I want to be there with me?  Where would we be?

As I went through the day in my mind and tried to imagine the “perfect day”, I actually ended up getting more and more frustrated.

Why?

Well, because there are so many different things that I love doing, but trying to fit all of them into one “perfect day” was virtually impossible.

For example, I imagined that on my perfect day I would get private lessons in the martial art that I used to practice a few years ago.  But then I also wanted to play some basketball with my friends.  But if I had an intense martial arts workout that day, then basketball might be too much to do as well.

Unless of course those were the only things I was doing that day, but in my “perfect day” scenario they weren’t!

There were so many other things that I wanted to do, and it wasn’t trying to figure out which stuff to keep and which stuff to get rid of.

In the end I just couldn’t really come up with a “Perfect Day”.  There were just too many different things I wanted to do, and not all of them were physically possible to be done all in one day.

So instead I decided to do something similar to the “Perfect Day” exercise, but without the limitations…

The Awesome Day Exercise

The Awesome Day Exercise is basically very similar to the “Perfect Day” exercise, except that with this exercise we are not limiting ourselves to “Perfection” nor are we limiting ourselves to just ONE DAY!

Essentially doing the Awesome Day Exercise simply involves writing down the details of what an “Awesome Day” in our lives might look like.

And the cool thing is that we can have MANY Awesome Days…

… meaning, I could sit down and write out an Awesome Day for me… describing every part of the day in as much detail as possible, but without having to limit myself to that Awesome Day being the ONLY “Day” that I get to manifest in my life.

So for example, let’s say that *ONE* “Awesome Day” for me might be to wake up in the morning, and spend the entire day with my wife watching a marathon of an awesome show or movie series we really enjoy.

I could go into more details but you get the idea.

ANOTHER Awesome Day for me might be training for 4-6 hours in Japan at a DOJO with the Grandmaster of the martial art I used to study.

See by setting up the rules of the exercise in this way, I am not limiting myself to just ONE supposedly “Perfect Day”.

Instead I am allowing my mind to open up my imagination and imagine many different “Awesome Days”.

Try this now…

How to Do the Awesome Day Exercise

Grab a piece of white paper and a blue pen, and at the top of the page write down “An Awesome Day in My Life”.

Then, below that, start writing “The day starts off at …”

And from there, just let your imagination run loose and try to write down as much detail as possible about this one Awesome Day that you’d love to experience.

As you’re doing this, keep in mind that ANYTHING is possible.

You do NOT have to limit yourself to things that are “realistic”.

Turn off the reasoning center of your brain and just let your imagination loose.

What time would you wake up?

What would you do then?

Would you eat breakfast?  If so, what would you have?  Who would be there?  Where would you be?

What would you do right after breakfast?  Who would you do it with?

Would you have lunch?  If so, when?  With whom?  What would you have?  Where would you have it ?  Who would make it for you?

Try to write out as many details as possible of the entire day, trying to capture what you would be doing, who with, how you’d be feeling that day, what would you be feeling etc.

Why Do This?

Now you might be wondering what is the purpose of an exercise like this.

Firstly, it’s to ignite your imagination.

Secondly, it’s to program you subconscious mind with the images of what an Awesome Day might look like to you, so that your mind can begin to formulate a plan on how to manifest that.

Your subconscious mind is the most powerful supercomputer in the Universe, but it needs to be properly INSTRUCTED or PROGRAMMED in order to help you achieve what you want.

Without clarity and these images that your imagination will form as you write out your Awesome Day, it’s not easy for the mind to know what you want.

When I did this exercise a number of years ago, I was still working in the corporate world and one of my pet peeves at the time was that I had to wake up at 8am sharp each morning to make it into work on time.

So when I wrote out my “Awesome Day”, one of the details I put into my day was that I wake up WHEN I’M READY to wake up!

Not when some alarm clock goes off, but whenever I’m ready to get up.  It doesn’t matter if that is 6am, or 8am or 8:30am, or 9am or 10am or whenever.

Whenever I feel rested enough to get up, that is when I wake up on my “Awesome Day”.

Also, I hate alarm clocks, so on one of my “Awesome Days” I imagined waking up around 9:30am or so, being awakened by one of my dogs coming into the bedroom and “gently” waking me up.

When I wrote this out years and years ago, it was more or less a fantasy, as there was no way I would be able to sleep in until 9:30am!  I had to be up at 8am!

But today… as in this morning, and for many mornings in the last few years I’ve been living that “Awesome Day” description of my morning.

I wake up around 9am or 9:30am or 10:00am, just depending when I’m ready to get up, and in a lot of cases it is my dog that comes and wakes me up.

It happens all the time now.

Small details from my “Awesome Days” that I described and imagined have been manifesting, almost as if by magic, and often times I don’t even realize it until a while later when I remember what I wrote down.

Remember, I imagined it first.

Then I wrote it down in as much detail as possible.

Then it manifested!

Try it out.  You’ll love the exercise.

How to Turn On Pinterest Analytics

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I watched an amazing webinar tonight from someone who is making a six-figure income with her Blog and one of the channels of traffic she has mastered using was Pintrest.

I honestly haven’t done a lot with Pinterest yet, but after seeing the webinar I am definitely more interested in learning more.

One of the tips that she shared with us on the webinar to maximize the results you’re getting on Pinterest is to enable their built-in analytics platform.

At first I was a bit confused as there IS no analytics platform in my Pinterest account but then I found out that you have to follow a few simple steps to turn it on.

Once I figured out how to do it, I decided to shoot a quick video show others how to do it as it’s not totally intuitive.

Here’s the video of how to turn on the Analytics feature in your Pinterest account:

Cool eh?

 

My Wife’s New Car

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Last week I wrote a post stating that it was looking like my wife might be the first one out of the two of us to get a free car from blogging.

She started the year off by taking the 21 Day Blogging Challenge and it helped her to raise more awareness and to get more clients for her home based business.

We have both been in the market for a new car for a while now, since both our cars are over 10 years old.

When we made the decision to upgrade our cars at the beginning of this year, we also decided to do it by first focusing on boosting the income we make from our home based businesses by embracing Blogging on a regular basis.

We knew that getting new cars would be a lot of fun, but we also realized that just like most people out there, we don’t really like making car payments to pay for those cars. 🙂

So what we decided was that if we could first boost our business incomes to the point where the extra income paid for all or at the very least the majority of the car payments, then we would be able to get the benefit of getting a new car without the major drawback of having an extra payment to take care of.

That makes the process of getting a new car WAY more fun as my wife and I experienced this weekend when we bought her new car.

I shot this quick video today to show off her new Mazda that she bought, and to hopefully inspire others to consider starting their blogging careers by taking the 21 Day Blogging Challenge so that they can manifest the money to buy whatever they want in their lives – whether that’s a new car or something else.

Check out the video here:

If you liked the video, do me a favor and hit the little thumbs up button that appears when you hover over the video to tell me that you liked it.

 

3 Blogging Myths That Are Just Not True

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Here are three very common blogging myths that I hear all the time that are just not true.

Myth #1 – You Have To Be a Good Writer to Blog

One of the most common excuses I hear from people about starting a Blog is that they say that they’re not good at writing.

Yet, the very same people text 5,000 words of text to all their friends throughout the day, and post dozens of facebook updates.

You don’t have to be a great writer to be a great blogger.  Blogging is about making a connection with your audience and communicating with them in a comfortable, conversational style.

It is NOT about winning an English literary prize for best writer.

Also, nobody even said you have to write.  If you prefer you could make videos, and then outsource the process of transcribing your videos into blog posts.

Or just record videos, upload them to YouTube, and then write a short blog post of just a few sentences introducing the video and then embed the video in your post.

Myth #2 – To Start a Blog I Need to Pick One Niche Topic and Know Exactly What I’m Going to Blog About

This is another common myth.

Most people think that they need to pick just ONE ultra-targeted niche topic for their Blog and then do nothing but write content related to that topic.

You don’t have to do that.

You can Blog about various different subjects that interest you, and you don’t have to be an expert in any field to Blog about it.

With proper training you can train your mind to start generating Blog post content ideas as you’re living your life.

You can turn almost anything that you experience throughout the day into an interesting Blog post piece.

You can find some of the best training I’ve seen on this topic by clicking here.

Myth #3 – Starting a Blog is Complicated

Another common thing I hear people say about Blogging is that starting a Blog is complicated and requires technical knowledge.

Until fairly recently, I would somewhat agree with this statement because Blogging used to be complicated.

As a techie / former computer programmer, I found the technology required to setup a Blog fairly easy to understand, but not everyone has a programming / techie background like I do, so it used to be pretty difficult to get starting with Blogging without being a techie or hiring one to help you out.

Luckily today with the Kalatu Brand Station platform, all of that is virtually eliminated.

Kalatu allows anyone to setup a Blog in just a few simple steps without any prior technical knowledge.

Also, the other benefit of using the Kalatu platform is that it is based on the WordPress platform, but unlike using WordPress on your own hosted platform, Kalatu offers you training and support for using their software.

If you’d like to see a full rundown of why Kalatu is better than WordPress click here.