Tag Archives: motivation

Motivation/Inspiration

Do You Know Chris Brogan?

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A few days ago I was listening to a podcast where my buddy Richard Rierson had conducted an interview with Chris Brogan. I felt good for two reasons; one, I knew Richard had always wanted to interview him and two, he had interviewed me first, although that either means he valued what I had to say a lot or Chris was much harder to get than me. lol

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Trust Agents

Either way, as I listened to the interview I came to realize just how little any of us can know about someone else, even if we’ve read their books, read their blogs, seen their videos or had them comment on one’s blog not just once but twice. 😀

In any case, he’s a fascinating guy to listen to and see what he has to say. But this isn’t a puff piece about him; not at all. In taking a break from this week’s marketing test (click here in case you haven’t been paying attention) I thought I would talk about two takeaways from the interview he did with Richard and one I got from him somewhere else some years ago… one that I think is interestingly important since I keep saying that when I grow up I want to be rich and famous.

1. You’re never as famous as you might think you are.

Chris was asked by someone what it was like having so many fans online. He said that he didn’t take it all that seriously because in his own hometown he can walk down to the local coffee shop, get coffee and possibly something to eat, and no one there knows who he is. He can pretty much go anywhere where he lives and not have people running up to him because they want his autograph.

Before I’d read that line I hadn’t had it crystallize in my mind but it’s an absolutely true statement. My friend Kelvin asked me a couple of weeks ago if I listened to any new music because I’ve never been on Pandora. I told him I had years of music from the period of music I loved so I didn’t need any of it, but if something hit me from out of the blue that I liked I’d deal with it then.

Overall, I have no idea who most of today’s young musicians are. There are a couple of names I’ve heard whose music I’ve never heard so I couldn’t comment on any of it. The same goes for TV and movie celebrities; don’t even think about asking me about anything “reality” related. For that matter, I don’t know who 98% of all athletes are either, even on my favorite teams (Syracuse University basketball is the lone exception).

Thus, if I were working in a hotel and someone who thought they were all that said to me “Do you know who I am?”, I’d probably say “no”, mean it and move on. See, as much as I’d love to be rich and famous, the truth is that the only shot I have at it is to entice a specific group that’s interested in what I have to share, and only that group, and hope that I could get at least 33% of them to know who I am and trust me enough to listen to me and buy from me. Heck, maybe all it would take would be 20%; who knows?

Overall, we can’t believe in our own importance when it comes to others. Be comfortable in your skin and put yourself out there, but don’t believe that almost anyone other than your mother is losing sleep wondering anything about you; isn’t that sad?

2. Business is personal.

In his interview with Richard, Chris threw out this gem and my eyes lit up. That’s because I’ve always believed this was a truth, even though most people you talk to in business will say it’s not.

Here’s the thing. I’m an independent consultant, and I spend a lot of my time reaching out to people in different ways. Sometimes I don’t expect to be contacted back because it’s typical sales; in other words, if I’m calling someone out of the blog and leave a message on an answering machine, there’s no obligation to call back because they don’t know me from Adam (have you ever wondered which Adam that phrase is talking about?).

If someone has reached out to me first, I return the correspondence, and then they don’t contact me again… or not for weeks at a time… that’s personal. Someone might say that’s business but it’s not; you reached out to me, I responded… it’s personal.

I’ve had some people tell me I’m too sensitive sometimes, that things happen in business. Bah! People who treat others like that when it’s business related do the same thing outside of business. Whereas it’s easy enough to change behavior from work to personal, it’s much harder to change patterns. I evaluate people in business the same way I do in my personal life, and my patterns are intentionally the same as it relates to business and my personal life. Anyone paying attention to their behavior would see they do the same.

So… on this one… I’d ask more people to consider it and the way they treat others when they believe it’s just “business”.

3. No successful person is a copy.

This came out of the interview with Richard as well, and it resonated greatly with me. I have a friend who says that one of my problems is that I keep trying to do things my way instead of just doing what someone else has already done. My response to that is we can’t always follow what someone else did exactly and expect the same results. Times change, factors change… we should take the best that someone has to offer and make it a part of who we are without losing who we are.

All of us are unique; that’s just how it goes. We can take lessons we learn from others and apply them to our life, but at the end of the day we can only be the best “us” that we can be. Think about the 5 most successful people you know, either personally or not. You might see qualities in each of them that are similar, but for the most part you’ll realize every single one of them is totally different and succeeded because of those differences. We can learn perseverance from them; we can’t learn to be them.

I’m thinking these are 3 pretty good lessons. Course, what I say doesn’t always matter so I’ll put it out to you and your thoughts.
 

Books

Life: It’s A Trip by Rasheed Hooda

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The most popular post I ever had on this blog concerned a trip my long time internet friend Rasheed Hooda made when he decided to visit 40 states in two months to try to meet as many people in person that he’d first met online. I was one of those people, and his full story connected with a lot of people. Go check that one out if you want to big dose of inspiration.

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Life: It’s A Trip by Rasheed Hooda

Rasheed, who still holds out hope that he’s going to climb Mount Everest some day (I think it’ll happen when China allows the Dalai Lama to go back to Tibet but that’s just me lol), has now written what I’m calling a bit of fun and wisdom in his autobiographical book titled Life: It’s A Trip, and he shared it with me so I could read it and talk about it here. So you know, that link takes you to his website, as it’s in an ebook format and he’s selling it off his site… thus, that’s not an affiliate link you see. 🙂
Continue reading Life: It’s A Trip by Rasheed Hooda →

Motivation/Inspiration

Fighting Anger And Depression

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Can I tell you a secret? It’s personal but I figure if you’re a regular reader you won’t mind it. There might even be something in this for you.

Halloween is Bloody Fun
Billy Wilson via Compfight

Quite often I’m holding in a lot of anger and a bit of depression. I don’t know that the first has always been with me but the second has.

What makes me angry? Goodness, what doesn’t make me angry. I get angry with a lot of things I read in the news. I get angry when I see a lot of the things I read on social media. I get angry when I have to hear things about politics or religion or racism or… name anything where people show hate towards someone else.

I get angry when I feel someone demeans what I do. I get angry when people speak to me in a manner I don’t like. I get angry when people don’t show courtesy to me or others when I’m in their presence. I get angry for many of the bad ways that people treat each other.

Because I fight all these things, as in work hard to keep them suppressed, I then get depressed. I get depressed because at a certain point I realize that there’s nothing I can do to stop any of it. There’s probably little I can do to change anyone’s behavior because, frankly, if people don’t already care about themselves then what the heck would I ever be able to say so someone to get them to change right?

Now that I’ve said that I want to say two other things.

One, luckily I don’t manifest my anger all that often in public. There are so many people I just want to smack or hurt in some fashion for their being jerks. But I don’t, which is smart for more than one reason. Instead, I get quiet, get introspective, and try to find something to move my mind to a calmer place, a happier place, a place where I can regain my perspective if needed. After all, no one wants to hang around a person who’s angry all the time, right?

Two… I know I’m not alone. As a matter of fact, I’d bet that most of you are angrier people than I am and probably get even more depressed than I get. But you probably have outlets for your anger, things you do that maybe you want to or need to apologize for later on, things that I don’t do.

See, I’ve never cursed, never had a drink, never taken any illegal drugs. I’ve never hit anyone first, never really beat anyone up, rarely have said hateful things to intentionally hurt a person’s feelings… wanted to, but didn’t.

I have been sarcastic though, and I’ve had a mean streak. For me, my mean streak is to make someone feel belittled without my having to have said anything.

One of the reasons I push myself is because I want to be better than any detractor who ever believed I was less than them, or couldn’t achieve something I said I wanted to do.

Yeah, I can be spiteful. I never forget, and I’ve never quite gotten that forgiveness thing down. Most of the time I let things go, or so I tell people, but I never forget; of all the gripes I’ve had about my short term memory as I get older, I want to smack myself because it would be nice to forget the slights, or perceived slights.

Why am I talking about all of this stuff?

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greg westfall via Compfight

One, because it’s a bit cathartic, as today I end my self imposed week away from all social media. I needed time for myself, time to do things like editing my latest book some more, time to lay back and relax and watch a few movies.

Two, because of the words of Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix coming back to me when I felt like I was being split in two:

“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

Of course that’s just a version of an old story where a man tells his grandson a story about two wolves going through the same battle, mentions that each person has this within himself, and answers the grandson’s question of which one will win by saying “The one you nourish.”

I know many of you go through these same things. Luckily, the overwhelming majority of you are probably like me in not hurting someone else physically, trying not to hurt someone unintentionally, holding those emotions in until you’re alone and then finding your own way of dealing with them. Hopefully, you recognize that you’re not evil and that you are a good person and can and will eventually overcome these feelings and distractions.

And if you need to step away for a while to do so then do it. If you have to write about it then do it. If you have to eat lots of cake and ice cream and cookies… well, do that also! 🙂

The real words to follow: “don’t let the haters get you down“, which appeared there first and then was plagiarized here, but looks better at the second link.

Man, I hate thieves… makes me so angry… 😉
 

Motivation/Inspiration

Sometimes You Don’t Have Control Over The Goals You’ve Set For Yourself

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Back at the end of December I wrote a post here and included a video on some of my long and short term goals for 2014 and beyond. It’s no secret that I want to be a professional speaker and travel around the country giving presentations and getting paid for it. There’s also no question that I know what the secret is to getting there.

Wicker Paradise Photo Archive: Superbowl Sunday Inspiration Quote. shared via http://blog.wickerparadise.com
Wicker Paradise via Compfight

Well… I kind of have to modify that second part, the one about knowing the secret. Truth be told, even with over 1,500 articles on this site, 3,500 or so total for all my blogs, articles all over the place and for as long as I’ve been online I’m still not all that well known. I’m not infamous enough or notorious enough or brazen enough to go too far out of my comfort zone of who I am to crossover enough to be really big time.

Yet, with all that folderol, I assumed that when all was said and done that I would have achieved at least enough notoriety as a black blogger that, at least somewhere along the line, I might have a shot at making a top 100 list somewhere of black bloggers, and possibly have it extend to social media.

Thus, when a post came out on a blog that listed the 100 Most Influential Black People on digital/social media, I thought I might have an outside shot at it. After all, I came in #224 in a recent blog list and was maybe behind 7 or 8 black bloggers on the list. That’s the kind of thing that makes you think you have a shot on a more directed list, wouldn’t you agree?

Well, it didn’t happen, but I don’t want you to think I’m mad at the list or upset that I’m not on it. That’s not the point of this post because that’s not the lesson here. It’s not that I’m not on the list, or my buddy Ileane Smith isn’t on the list or Lisa Irby isn’t on the list or Beverly Mahone isn’t on the list, folks who are more prominent in social media moreso than me. Well, it is, but it’s not.

If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission
billsoPHOTO via Compfight

What it’s about is criteria that, for goals many of us set, we don’t have a chance to reach because we not only don’t know the criteria until after the fact, but we don’t even know how to get into the game when compared to some of the folks that are on the list, or in the game.

When the list starts with President Obama, Beyonce, The Rock and Oprah, you know you’re in trouble. It doesn’t matter whether the question is if they’re actually just prominent and influential people in general, which carries over into social media, or whether their social media presence is strong enough so that even if they weren’t famous celebrities would they even count. What matters is that it’s not always about criteria… it’s about who you know and who knows you.

I’ve got to be truthful. At 54 years of age I don’t think that any marketing I could even think about doing would propel me to the level of most of the people on the list, so shooting for a top 100 inclusion makes little sense. Heck, if the folks I named above couldn’t get it done, what the heck am I going to do?

However, I have decided that one of my goals for 2014 is to work on becoming more prominent, to the point where my name is mentioned by more people, I’m interviewed by more people, more people view my videos, and my name does get out there in some fashion.

Do I think any of it will get me on the list? Nope, not a chance. However, it could happen and that’s not really what the goal comes down to being about.

Ever hear of a guy named Eric Thomas? He’s a motivational speaker and I’ll bet that you’ve heard some things he’s said in motivational videos without realizing it’s him. He’s a guy who grew up in a bad section of Detroit, dropped out of high school, lived a horrible life that ended up with him and his wife being homeless for a long time until he realized one day that his experience didn’t have to define him. He went back to get his GED, then got his college degree, got his master’s degree, and is a paper from a doctorate, just before he turned 39 I believe. He had a company and employs others, travels all over the country giving motivational speeches and does a lot of other interesting things.

And he has a goal… to get the Nobel Peace Prize. He said it’s not that he thinks he’ll really get it but it’s an audacious challenge he feels will motivate him to push harder to be better and become better known, to help more people, and even if he doesn’t get there he’ll improve and improve the lives of many more people.

See, we all have goals that we can have some control over. I had a minor goal since Christmas to buy a washer and dryer, which seems like a small goal, but my wife and I bought a washer and dryer, as well as a new stove, weeks ago. Cash, no credit, no payments… that was a minor goal but one we had control over.

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Sometimes we have goals that we may or may not have control over, that may or may not manifest themselves the way we think they will. Last year I had a money goal I wanted to hit and I didn’t quite hit it in 2013. However, from last May to this May I will have hit that money goal, which will mean I hit my money goal in a year, just not the way I thought I would. And, if I continue on my present contract until at least the end of November, I’ll actually hit that money goal by then for 2014; if it ends, I have other things in the works to help me get there.

And other times we have no control over the ultimate goals we set. In 2012 Pete Pelliccia and I decided to shoot for the Shorty Award for blogging, and we really thought we had a chance at it. We didn’t come close, even if we both finished in the top 15. The winner was some musician in another country who, as far as I could determine, didn’t even have a blog. But people in his country voted for him and he was popular there and that was that for us. I haven’t tried since because in its own way it’s rigged, not by the people who run it but by groups of people who can vote anyone into a category they don’t really qualify for. Still, it was a shot at gaining a bit more publicity, as I got to write about it and try to encourage people to vote for me, even if I never knew who voted.

That’s what I want to push on all of you, or anyone who reads this particular post. If you’re trying to make money, if you’re trying to gain publicity, or if you’re just trying to get more followers or even something else, you have to have something to aim for that you don’t really think you’ll ever reach but you still shoot for it. You don’t have to figure out immediately what you’re going to do to get there, though you will have to try something at some point. You don’t have to share it like I have; you just have to do it.

And, like last time, if you think you need some help I’ll do what I can. I’m not going to put more work into promoting you than you should be doing, but if I see the effort and you want some help, I’ll help. Helping is a version of marketing and self promotion also; kind of a pay it forward event if you will.

Am I crazy? Are you crazy? Are you ready for bigger and better? Let me know below; yeah!
 

Motivation/Inspiration

We Are What We Consume; Not Talking About Food…

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I probably can make the connection to the phrase “we are what we eat”, this post isn’t about food, although as I’m sitting here writing this I’m also thinking “I wish I knew where I could get some good cookies besides heading to the store for some mint Oreo’s”. Such is my life. 🙂

Mamma Mia. りんご娘のライブ　コンサート. Over 4,500 visits to this photo.
Glenn Waters via Compfight

As I’ve probably stated multiple times in the last 10 months, I’m presenting working a consulting assignment out of town. This basically means that I’m showing up in an office and working at least 8 hours each day. Because I’m not working in a leadership capacity, it’s basically the same thing every day, and, well, my mind doesn’t work like that because it likes diversity of work. Sure, I get to basically create a lot of my own work, but it’s dull, mundate stuff, though necessary.

The lucky thing about living in the 21st century is that we have all these different things we can take with us to work to watch & listen to, although folks frown on your “watching” stuff per se. However, you can listen to a lot of stuff, and I’ve always enjoyed documentaries so it’s a great time to catch up on a lot of things I’ve never seen. YouTube is a lifesaver… or is it?

I was going along pretty well there for a time until I noticed that my mood had started to change. I wasn’t feeling all that happy mentally, and it was extending outside of the office. Frankly, being out of town all by myself is pretty lonely, and yet I was starting to embrace the loneliness as a shield and didn’t want to bother with anybody, even on the weekends. I wasn’t getting depressed, but I was getting a little bit paranoid.

Then I figured it out. The documentaries I was partaking in were, for the most part, about the darker aspects of human life. There are lots of documentaries on serial killers, gangs, drugs, despots and dictators, death, murder… in other words, there’s lots of negativity that looks like information we all need or might crave.

I liked this stuff because I was learning a lot… of useless stuff. Sure, we all need to be careful of our surroundings and watch out for nefarious characters, but we also need to be ready to enjoy life a bit; wouldn’t you agree?

I decided I had to change up a bit. I started looking for comedians and funny stuff. I started listening to more motivational speakers and those TED talks that are pretty popular. I love Neil deGrasse Tyson so I started listening to everything I could find with him in it, as well as a lot of science stuff, mainly astrophysics; I’ve always been fascinated by things like that.

I also decided to go back and listen to some of my own videos on my two channels, something I really hadn’t done much of because, like blog posts sometimes, once they’re written it’s often on to the next thing. A couple made me cringe, but many of them just made me laugh, even the serious stuff; sometimes even I wonder how I come up with the things I talk and write about.

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What happened? I started feeling good again mentally and even the boring work took on a different feel. I found things to laugh about that may have only been funny to me, but it’s a better state of mind than where I was, and truthfully it’s a state of mind that I strive for most of the time.

But I went further than that. There were some people I was following on Twitter who kept up the negative stuff, even if it was stuff I agreed with. I’m a liberal in my politics, but there’s just so much conservative bashing one can take without getting riled up. I don’t follow any conservatives on Twitter, so no problems there.

On Facebook, because of F.B. Purity (come on, y’all aren’t using this yet?), I block a lot of stuff but some gets through via images. If I kept seeing the same thing from certain people I just stopped following them, because my closer friends don’t put that stuff out all the time. I don’t really mind the occasional thing, but 24/7? Who can mentally be in a good place putting stuff like that all the time?

I like this blog, I’m Just Sharing. You know why? Because I vacillate between happy and serious stuff, teaching stuff, opinions and the like, but overall I think the tone of this blog is more towards the uplifting, motivational side. I think that when one’s mind is in the right place, their writing style improves and, hopefully, others can read their words and know that even when there are complaints it’s coming from a place of love and joy, such as my post on commenting courtesies.

Think about your own life for a bit. What types of things are coming into your life on a daily basis? Is it positive stuff that makes you feel good? Are there a lot of things that you deal with that make you feel bad? Are there things you can change to help change your mindset towards more positive feelings, even if they’re small changes? In the long run, doesn’t everyone really want to feel happy at least most of the time?

Do you need more? Then check out this post on ways to reach your own personal Super Bowl that I wrote 2 years ago; just something to think about that may help you on your way to feeling better.