Articles
Finding The Right Path In Life; How To Avoid Falling Into A Career
When it comes to finding our calling in life and starting our careers, most of us will go through a similar process that has very little to do with what we actually want to do and this is so sad and can end up with a sense of being unfulfilled which can permeate throughout our lives and make people feel miserable and unhappy.
For most of us, our jobs are not a matter of design so much as luck and divine intervention. Perhaps you finish school/college/university and you find yourself at a loss for what to do; let’s be honest; many of us don’t know what we really want to do at this stage in our lives.
So what do you do? Inevitably, the vast majority of people will take the first job offer that comes up – let’s say that is stacking boxes for an air conditioning company. Sexy, eh!?!
Then maybe you find yourself somehow rising through the ranks and becoming the head of logistics for delivering said air conditioning units. Maybe this then catches the eye of someone at Fed Ex and you get head hunted to become the head of international…
Never mind that you studied at Uni to become a marine biologist! Did you want to be a marine biologist? Maybe it was just something that was of interest to you, but a career? If it was something that you were keen on studying it, then why not?
How To Stop That Happening
So, how did that happen?
Basically you allowed your skills to form as a result of your experience rather than your desires or dreams.
This is normally what happens and is not your fault but you do need to be aware that this is the normal process.
Our strengths are partly natural and partly acquired through our experience.
The latter actually tends to play a larger role though and certainly from the perspective of someone looking to hire you. When someone is looking at candidates, experience is a very important part in the decision making process of many employers, so we tend to get pushed down a path we never intended to follow!
Never mind that you love fish and have a marine biology degree – you’ve got 10 years of experience in logistics!
In other words, your strengths will be largely shaped by your experience, so if you want to make sure you don’t just ‘land’ in a career you never planned to pursue, you need to ensure that the experience you’re getting is highly relevant to whatever it is that you want to do.
Take Control
Now you may argue that this is out of your control and it may be to some extent.
You don’t always get to choose the job offers that come your way or the advancement courses you get offered.
But sometimes it will be down to you.
And it will be down to you to make your experience relevant to the career path that you want to choose.
Life is full of choices, and they will have a huge impact on the path that you follow in life, so choose wisely.
Sometimes you have to gamble and choose with your heart and see where it takes you; it will be more exciting and more rewarding, but it can also be incredibly scary and this can deter some people from ever going for it.
Let me tell you now; NEVER give up on your dreams and don’t stubbornly hold out for that perfect job either – instead, plot yourself a course and steer yourself as much in that direction as possible, looking for opportunities wherever they arise to mold your strengths and abilities to be a fit for whatever it is you truly want to do with your life.
This way you will be doing your best to ensure that you are finding the right path in life for you and not just falling into a career that doesn’t really suit you. You owe it to yourself to have a career that you truly enjoy, fulfills you and makes you happy (and hopefully makes you some money in the process) so be aware of your choices and do everything in your power to steer your life and career in the direction you want to go 🙂
Life Obstacles: Can You Imagine A Life Without Obstacles?
Life obstacles; great aren’t they?
But suppose you are given a choice to live a life without any type of obstacles or challenges. Can you imagine a life without obstacles?
Would you take that if it were possible? You may be tempted to jump at the chance, however, it is likely it would not measure up to your expectations.
Several years ago, there was a television program that focused on only good news. It actively looked for good news in the local community and even in other places.
Do you know what happened? The show did not last because people seem to be more drawn to bad news. Isn’t that interesting?
The thing is, our minds are hardwired to solve problems, so when problems don’t exist, our minds become idle and we become bored with our situations.
Therefore, subconsciously, we welcome obstacles so that we can figure out how to overcome or solve them.
When we crash against an obstacle or challenge in our lives, we often moan and groan about how “life isn’t fair…” etc. but we need these things in our life to force us to grow as individuals.
Just think about an obstacle course. Why do these even exist and why do people try to get around them as quickly as possible?
If we weren’t so inclined to solve problems, these never would have become popular. But, we still participate in them because of the challenge involved.
The military use these to inspire things such as free thinking, abstract thought and leadership; 3 qualities highly regarded in life and crucial in soldiering.
When we manage to get past some obstacle, we experience a feeling of elation and accomplishment, which increases in proportion to how difficult the obstacle was to overcome.
Getting past the obstacle may happen very quickly or may happen over a period of time. It could be a mental or physical challenge, or even both. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the situation, we welcome the challenge, at least on a deep, subconscious level.
Some people will withdraw when faced with certain obstacles. They may feel as though these particular types of obstacles are beyond their ability to solve them and this is unfortunate because we all have the capability of solving most situations.
The difference between these people and others who succeed in overcoming these challenges is the belief that they can do so, not being put off by past experience and the perseverance to keep going (grit).
Even when the obstacles are dire, dangerous or even life threatening, people who approach it in a positive manner will have a much greater chance of overcoming them.
What is certain is that if you don’t try, you will definitely fail and that obstacle will become part of you in a negative way. It could destroy your life if you let it.
Your “failure” to overcome it can really eat at you and cause a quick downwards spiral which can make you less certain of yourself and thus even less inclined to face up to future challenges; it is a type of negative self-fulfilling prophesy that you need to be aware of and do everything to avoid.
Obstacles are an integral part of life and as you have seen from this post, they are necessary for our survival and continued growth as human beings and should be embraced.
They may be difficult to come to terms with. However, when we get to the point of overcoming them, we have tools we can use to make our lives better and that is an incredible experience.
But even more powerful is that we can extend our experience to helping others overcome similar obstacles and challenges as well.
And there is no greater feeling than helping someone to overcome a situation that they thought impossible!
So, why not think about all this the next time you are faced with a difficult situation and realise that it is not a challenge or obstacle, but rather an opportunity to stretch yourself and to grow and become a better version of yourself.
So, I ask you again; could you imagine life without obstacles?
I hope the answer is a resounding “No!”
Social Media Marketing Tips: The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes To Avoid INFOGRAPHIC
Social Media Marketing Tips: The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes To Avoid 
Failure Is Not Fatal: Having Compassion For Your Own “Failures”
If you search the Internet for quotes about success and/or failure, you’re pretty much guaranteed to come across this one:
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
This was alleged to have been said by Sir Winston Churchill but there is no evidence that he actually said such a thing, but the sentiment is a good one.
Do you believe that failure is not fatal?
You can’t let failure, or more accurately, fear of failure, hold you back from pursuing the life of your dreams.
Either that, or you chose something that was too easy to accomplish, and you got it right first time. If you continually look for the easy way, you may not be living up to your full potential. Eventually, you are going to be confronted with something you find difficult to accomplish, and you may even fail at it.
Living within your comfort zone is a nice, safe place, but you need to venture outside it if you ever want to grow to reach your true potential.
Most people look down at their failures and consider themselves losers when they happen. They look at the profiles of successful people and think that only those people are good enough to make things happen. What they don’t see, is the failures all of those successful people went through before experiencing their successes.
There are many instances of this. Just look at Thomas Edison, or more recently, Sylvester Stallone. These people overcame massive rejection and failure, but did they stop? No, and they went on to achieve great things in their lives.
But people never see the failures and obstacles they went through; they just see the success that they have accomplished – in fact, they often view these people as “overnight successes” when nothing could be further from the truth!
Why not try to view failure as a gift instead? It is something you can use to figure out what went wrong. When you observe your steps, you may find that it was a minor flaw in what you attempted. Others would simply give up saying it is too hard.
Of course, you need to hold the belief that what you want to accomplish is possible. If you don’t truly believe this, the chances are that you will keep failing over and over again and never arrive at a solution.
But, if you are confident what you want to achieve can happen, then you must be determined to stop at nothing to make it so. This is what differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people; the willingness to keep going in the face of adversity, and an unwavering belief that they can and will succeed.
Another way to look at failure is this; consider your failures to be a learning process for your projects. As long as you spend the time figuring out what you were trying to do, and analyzing why it didn’t work, you are gaining valuable insight into the problem. Keep going with your efforts even if you fail thousands of times. Hold true to your belief in the project and stop at nothing to get it done.
You may have heard of the phrase “Fail forward fast” and this is what you need to keep in mind whenever you fail; it is just a part of the journey, and not the ultimate destination UNLESS you allow it to be!
If there is any formula for success, it can all be boiled down to an unwavering belief in the possibility of the project happening, as well as being tenacious in your efforts to bring it to fruition. In this way, you should never put yourself down for failing. In fact, you should expect it and embrace it. Be suspicious if it doesn’t happen.
It’s sad that most people don’t have the self-compassion for failure. These people try once or twice and then give up thinking that whatever goal they were trying to accomplish just wasn’t not meant to be. If only they gave it a few more thousand or so tries.
It’s easy to give up, and the human mind will always look for the path of least resistance and try to convince you that giving up is best for you.
But is it really?
Of course, it isn’t. If you can only push through the pain and disappointment of failing and stop beating yourself up and allowing yourself to feel self-compassion, that all is not lost, then you could achieve so much more that you are currently.
I believe in you and that everybody has the capacity to become successful and the best versions of themselves. The trouble is that most people just don’t believe in either their ability to succeed, or (even worse) that they don’t believe that they are worthy of success.
With unconscious thoughts like these whizzing around your head, is it no wonder that people struggle from one thing to the next.
Failure is a part of success; you can’t have one without the other, so you need to embrace failure and enjoy the journey you are on to achieving your goals.
Whenever you encounter failure, it is okay to feel sorry for yourself. Most gurus will tell you to “man up” and “get over it” but that isn’t always the smart approach. I am telling you that it is okay to feel sorry for yourself, to feel dejected and frustrated. But also understand that it is a process and you can learn from it, adjust and keep going.
Achieving goals should be a lifelong process and you will fail so many times along the way but as long as you can keep the end goal in mind, you can pick yourself up, embrace the process and enjoy the journey you are on to success.
If you want to know more about how you can “enjoy the journey” then I encourage you to check out this cool training that can help you to do just that. You can find out more here: warr.pro/Journey-Full
Do Blogs Still Work?
Do Blogs Still Work?
The question “Do blogs still work?” is one which gets asked a lot and the answer is quite simple.
Of course, they do!!
Put it this way; providing good high-quality information is exactly how to earn the favor of the search engines, which have the potential to make or break your business.
And since it dominates 75% of the global market share it’s best to focus all your efforts to rank on Google above all else.
So, how do blogs play into this?
Well did you know that 47% of buyers view 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative, and companies with blogs tend to get 67% more leads than those who don’t have an updated and optimized blog.
And being found easily in the search engines is obviously going to play a key part in people finding your blog posts.
You could have the most amazing content on the internet but if people can’t find it you are wasting your time.
SEO, or Search Engine optimization, is a very important strategy when building your blog, especially off page SEO strategies, and these are continually evolving along with any updates to the Google algorithm.
Sometimes businesses just aren’t clear on how content production can lead to lead generation.
The simple answer is, as stated earlier, people will need several exposures to you and your content before they feel comfortable parting with their contact details or their cash.
Building up trust and authority status is crucial to your success, and a blog is an extremely powerful tool at your disposal, to build credibility and showcase your expertise.
So, are you still wondering “Do blogs still work?” Hopefully not, and here are some simple tips that you can use to optimize the way your blog will work for you.
These are easy to do, and you can get started right away; many are common sense, but you will be surprised that many blog owners are not doing them correctly, and that means you can get a competitive edge over them by following them.
OK, on with the tips…
Focus on quality rather than quantity
Going back a few years ago, short sub-500 word articles were the best type of article to write to gain a high ranking on Google, but those days are long gone.
Longer posts are much more favoured today and when I mean long, these articles can be over 3000 words, which is like a small ebook!
The focus is on high-quality information going deep into a topic that can really help your readers with their problems.
Don’t think you can just waffle and stuff keywords into your articles as you will be penalized.
Write with your reader in mind and you can’t really go wrong.
Having a content calendar/schedule is a great tactic to use to try to instill the habit of creating content regularly.
Some will say to write daily, some weekly, some monthly!!
The truth is, there is no right or wrong answer, but you must be consistent.
If you can only manage to write one article a month, that’s fine. Never sacrifice quality for quantity.
Once you have started writing your post you can move onto the next tip…
Encourage Engagement With Your Readers
When you are writing anything on your blog, try to write conversationally; use you and I in your writing i.e. talk to your reader one-to-one.
This really helps to create a connection with your readers. Don’t try to be aloof as the subject “expert” but rather try to position yourself as a fellow traveler.
This is much more engaging for both you and your readers.
Also, try to use stories if at all possible as these are incredibly engaging and powerful.
Another engaging post is a case study, and this also shows the readers proof that what you are writing about works.
If you allow comments on your posts, respond to all your comments as soon as is practicable for you. Having a dialogue is incredibly engaging for the reader involved but is also another indirect form of social proof.
So, now you have readers looking at your content. Let’s move on to the next tip…
Add A Call-To-Action
You should always write a blog post with the end goal in mind, whether it is for the reader to opt-in to your email list or to get them to click through to your offer.
Also use widgets to add opt-in forms or calls-to-action on your sidebar or use pop-ups and/or exit pops.
I can’t stress this enough; don’t just write a post for the sake of writing as it is a waste of time; after all, you are in business to make money and if you have people consuming your content, it is an ideal opportunity to get them to sign up or monetise them.
You may be uncomfortable using more intrusive forms such as the pop-up, but they do work, as long as any offer you are showing them is highly congruent to the post they are reading.
Working in tandem with the call-to-action is our next tip…
Use Content Upgrades
What is a content upgrade?
Well, basically it is another chance to further encourage your readers to sign up.
And, because the focus is on longer posts, a very quick and simple content upgrade to offer is a copy of the blog post in downloadable pdf format so they can read offline or at their convenience.
Other types of content upgrades that work well include checklists, video, audio etc.
Video/audio doesn’t necessarily mean just having a video or audio version of the blog post; it could also be some complementary training that enhances the information in the blog post.
Get creative and you can have many opportunities to capture your readers email address.
If you are going to offer a pdf of the post, then a really quick way to do this is to use either Post Gopher (a WordPress plugin) or, my personal favourite, Designrr. Both of these tools can produce a pdf version of the blog post, but Designrr allows you much more flexibility to customize the end result.
Using calls-to-action or content upgrades aren’t the only way to engage and entice your reader to sign up. Now you can have your very own personal assistant on your blog, leading on to our next tip…
Start Using Chatbots On Your Blog
Messenger chatbots are hot right now and have super high engagement and you can quickly use a service like ManyChat or MobileMonkey (you can use the free versions to begin with although the Pro versions aren’t that expensive).
When you have signed up you can use the service to install a small snippet of code on your website that will allow a custom chatbot to show on your blog; cool. eh?
Both Manychat and MobileMonkey work specifically with Facebook Messenger and have incredibly high engagement, and there aren’t that many blogs doing this at the moment, so it is definitely something worth looking into.
So, there are 5 ways to ensure that your blog is still relevant today and in the future.
Implement them and you will be able to answer anybody asking you “Do blogs still work?” with a resounding “Yes!”
As a bonus, here are 4 reasons why blogs don’t work.
When you look at blogs that are failing, there are normally some common reasons that keep popping up and these are summarized below.
Again, there is a lot of common sense here, but these things can be easily overlooked, so refer to this list often so you don’t fall into any of the traps that could be hampering your success.
A lack of basic SEO resulting in poor ranking
This blog post is NOT about SEO, but you really need to be doing the basics to give your blog an SEO boost.
On-page SEO, such as having a keyword rich post, having your main keyword in your post title, using internal links (if appropriate), optimising tags in any images used, using Yoast SEO plugin (if using WordPress) etc.
Off-page SEO is more important for ranking, and involves building backlinks to your blog, using broken link strategies, reaching out to influencers and guest blogging etc.
If these things aren’t in place, the chances are that your blog won’t rank, which means that few, if any, people will see it and no additional lead opportunity will be created, which, of course, will result in zero new sales.
Blog topics not researched or strategically created.
Serious question:
How can you know what topics are getting searched the most and are most relevant to your company if you’re not doing keyword research?
Writing blog posts with no target in mind is completely pointless.
You must do your research and find out what people are typing into Google to find the information that you are trying to give them.
Targeting these keywords will result in less competition, thus making it easier to rank for, BUT it must be a keyword that people are actually using!
Lack of understanding of the customer avatar and journey.
Some entrepreneurs don’t realise that people are reading their blog posts long before they ever converted. As stated earlier, it takes at least 3-5 exposures to your content before a reader will trust you; in all honesty it’s probably more like 7 exposures.
Along with keyword research, you should’ve already done your niche research and know who your ideal reader (and thus customer) is, and ALL your content should be written with this person in mind.
You also need to be able to analyse and track visitors to your website so you can see which post are working and which aren’t.
Without this kind proper analysis, it’s unlikely to know which blog posts actually led people to fill out a form or were part of leading people to fill out a form, so all the blogs were marked as a waste of time.
Lack of a coherent content promotion strategy
Even if you have done all of the above and you do have a wonderful blog that is based on keyword research and properly optimized you still need to promote the blog to your audience.
In all honesty, writing and publishing a blog post is only half the battle.
Without thinking about the different avenues to connect users to your content, your blog is only going to reach a fraction of your audience.
You should also share every blog post on your social media channels; share to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at a bare minimum.
OK, there you have it. You now have 5 ways to ensure that your blog is staying relevant, and 4 things to keep an eye on to ensure that you aren’t sabotaging your success and not ranking as well as you could.
All there is to do now is to start cranking out that content…
