It doesn’t work for me

My IM career has matured enough to turn me into one of the people who at this point really see the image of failure versus success very clearly. Clearly to the point where I sometimes wonder how bluntly should I really express my observations to people?

I already have a “talent” for stepping on “sensitive toes” as it is, even when I try hard to be diplomatic, but frankly, as I am growing more mature and aware of the world around me it is becoming increasingly difficult to sugarcoat the truths, including the simplest ones, just so that I would “keep the house peaceful”.

I am not sure if I am now being upfront apologetic for the fact that I will ultimately express my opinion with no regards towards the feelings of those who may be sensitive to recognizing themselves in these observations or I am justifying to myself the fact that I even feel the need to express these opinions.

None the less, here it is.

One of the most frequent “complaints” that I see in the world of IM is oh so well known “It doesn’t work for me” statement that many people often make. This also applies to other things in life, so it is obviously not a matter of IM. It seems to be a matter of an average person’s personality deficiency if there is such thing (and I am pretty sure there is).

The “It doesn’t work for me” syndrome is in my opinion only the result of inability or unwillingness to learn and more so unwillingness to make a genuine effort to make it work.

Obviously, if guided by inaccurate or false information, the “personality deficiency” does not apply. However the process of learning is not only the process taken through “book learning” methods. I actually refer more to learning on a personal level.

As always, I speak of learning. It seems to be a recurring theme at times.

Whenever I encounter those who are willing to learn I immediately notice that the same lot also has better chances at succeeding at what they aspire to do. This is not a coincidence. Learning is a building block to developing anything in life. You learn to walk, you lean to talk, and you learn to do anything else you do through life. What I fail to understand is why there is such resistance on behalf of many to simply learn to think in a way in which a successful person is thinking.

The definition of success is purely subjective of course. You may have a different vision of what success means as opposed to what I may think about it. And that is alright. Because at the end of the day if you envision one thing as success and I envision something else as success then you will most likely try to achieve your version of success independently from mine.

This is exactly why I am referring back to willingness or ability to learn as a building block of a life path of an individual.

The statement “It doesn’t work for me” is really just a statement that points at a low level of self awareness. Stating that something doesn’t work for you (if you are making these statements at times) simply shows that you are not asking the right questions. And when the questions are not right then the answers can’t be found. You can’t ask “what the weather is like” and expect to hear “It’s 3 o’clock” as an answer, can you.

So when you do something or use something to complete a task and you state “It doesn’t work for me” what you should really ask yourself is, “why do I think or feel that this doesn’t work for me?”

Simply by changing the way you look at the issue you are opening a whole new world of perceptions to yourself.

Another tightly related issue or “personality deficiency” is blaming external factors for internal failures. I can accept that circumstances in life of a person play a role in with how much ease or difficulty something can be accomplished. We all looked at the face of adversity at some point in time. Some more often and on a lot more serious scale than others, but blaming events and other people for personal weaknesses is a very frequent reason for personal failures.

In my mother language there is a saying that I always found to be very truthful in defining the very reason for why a nation can survive most terrible adversities. It translates into something like this:

“To die but not give up”

I am not using this old saying to suggest that everything has to be done at any cost, but when applied on an individual and in context of “It doesn’t work for me” applied to Internet Marketing it more or less summarizes what the general “giving up” mentality in a person is lacking. Alongside learning to observe the steps of successful people and developing the ability to emulate these observations into your own life, the attitude of perseverance and the tenacity with which you do something are truly some of the biggest success boosters that you can give to yourself and that you alone have full control over.

When things are not working out the way you want them too, do not blame the tool, do not blame the person that pointed you to the tool, do not blame the book, do not blame outside yourself. That will not help you or resolve the reason for which you are finding yourself failing at times.

The reason is always in your corner. You are always the one that has the option of choosing where your life will go. And this is not without consequence.

If you were sold on an idea that “doesn’t work for you” but it works for other people, ask yourself what you are doing differently than other people for whom it works. In that question you may find some interesting answers.

If you were sold on something dishonest, you have the option to blame “them” or to take the responsibility and say “I misjudged this thing and I fell for it. And it is my responsibility that I did so”.

By doing this alone,,, By taking the responsibility for your successes and your failures you will already have done half the job.

Nothing will work for you on its own. Putting no self-generated effort into things is simply not going to work period. If “It doesn’t work for me” is something you hear yourself thinking or saying, stop to think about what that really means on a personal level. Then allow to yourself to cool off from the frustration and make a rational conclusion about what is the true reason for making such statement.