Mind the Beginner

I have talked about mental mountains before, those peaks in success that we want to climb. For most these peaks are dreams, for some goals and for the happy few they are reality.

Twitter as you probably know is a social media tool that exploded onto the Internet a while ago and has been a great success. It’s almost unheard of to not an account there. If you watch CNN you can’t even get around twitter anymore because they use it as a source of information to see what’s trending at the moment.

Twitter has become mainstream and all over the world millions of people are following each other. Mostly just for the social chat but there is some serious business going on as well. Social media are an easy way to promote yourself or your business and to meet up with other people, twitter gives us the added bonus that we learn how to say just about anything in 140 characters or less. Great for productivity, not so great for people who want to share their life stories.

Twitter is a very powerful tool to climb your mountains with. To harness that power you need three things:

1. A twitter account
2. Socializing skills
3. A little spare time to tweet in

Let’s state the obvious first

Getting followers on you twitter account is slow at first. The first 100 people you follow are probably people you know directly through blogs, other sites and perhaps real life. Some follow you back. You have made a beginning and start to socialize. The more you tweet the more chance you have of being retweeted. Your name reaches people you don’t follow yet and who don’t follow you. Have your name pop up often enough and you’ll get more followers.

Getting a retweet does involve you actually adding something to the community. You do that by being interesting and helpful. If you keep that up more people will flock to your banner. Your name gets out there and the ball starts rolling faster and faster until you get dozens of new followers a day. People will recommend you through #followfriday and you’ll get even more followers. (And hints on who to follow yourself)

Being helpful

Being helpful to others is what climbing mountains is all about. Someone asks a question through twitter and you answer it. If you think you can answer a question and your answer will be helpful try to always answer. Again, this gets your name out there and gets you recognized as a helpful person who doesn’t use twitter solely to promote yourself.

The more you help people the more followers you get, got it?

The power of twitter: All you have to do is ask.

The power is with the followers

And now they key to all this. If you have 1000 followers and you have a question, even if just 1% of those people can help you, you end up with 100 answers to your question. Not every answer will be great but combined they will get you another step towards the top of your mountain.

Ask to be retweeted and you will be. (seriously!) Reaching even more people who haven’t heard of you yet. Given enough time and skill you’ll rise through the “ranks” of twitter and come up top somewhere with thousands of followers who want to help you whenever they can.

The wider the base of followers the higher you can get. Logically maybe one person in a thousand will be able to help you in such a way that you leap forward. Having thousands of followers means several leaps. Getting you up your mountain that much faster.

Try to be that one in a thousand person every time you help someone. When the time comes they will remember you and do whatever they can to return the favor.

More reading on mental mountains:

Is that a mountain?

Stand still please, the future will still be there tomorrow

The three essentials of an uphill struggle

The truth about positivity, stop dreaming!

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A few days ago Jonathan Mead (Illuminated mind) tweeted who would like to review his new eBook on their blog. I took the chance and tweeted back that I would like to do a review. Lo and behold, the eBook was in my email a few days later and I read it “cover to cover” straight away.

For those of you who don’t know Jonathan, he’s a blogger who isn’t afraid to go against the stream or to leave the stream entirely. To unstream as he puts it. Exposing our presumptions about productivity and life and challenging us to think before we actually (mis)take something for the truth.

So what is this book about exactly? The title gives a slight hint. “Reclaim your dreams” is a book about – and I’ll put it bluntly – stop caring about what others think and do what you want to be doing. Going into the army because your father and grandfather were in the army, now is that a good reason to enlist? Or is it peer pressure and indoctrination about how life should be?

On the inside cover we find several statements about what this book is:

• This is a declaration of authenticity, and act of spontaneity, and a call to live deliberately.
• This is an invitation to dream
• This is a permission slip to be ridiculous

He hit the nail on the head with those statements, this book really does grab you and shakes you about until you realise that you’re not actually living your life. Watching what other people do on TV, Reading about what other people do on Blogs, Listening to what other people do with Music.We read about it, hear it, see it, want it, but don’t act on it. The solution is all about getting out of your comfort zone and getting back in the driver’s seat of your life in stead of standing on the sidelines watching life flow by. You’re invited to dream and to make the dreams become reality even if they are ridiculous according to others. Who are they to judge you’re dreams? It’s your life and you’ll want to live it just the way you like it. Permission granted.

Once more I look at my mountains and realize that they are tall. I can imagine myself standing on top and being on top of the world. I can dream about it and most of all I can be positive about it.

But let’s be honest, does being positive get you up there? Absolutely not! Being positive is just dreaming, you dream being up there while you lay in bed or on the couch watching some mindless TV show. “One day I’ll be up there you’ll see!”

Yes, one day… with that attitude that day will be when your body has disintegrated to dust and a speck of that dust carried on the wind might land on top of that mountain just by sheer luck. Stop lying to yourself! The only way someone gets up there is by working very hard, making long days, investing their time and doing the very best they can. You won’t get up there if you work four hours a week, you won’t get there by doing less, there is no magic trick. You’re not even assured of getting there by doing exactly the same thing as you idol.

If a best-selling author tells you you should read certain books, Amazon will be very happy with that writes because we all immediately start reading those books. If your idol wears certain shoes, how many of you will buy those shoes just so you can imitate him? Dress like the one who made it and maybe, just maybe, that success will be yours as well? Play on the signature guitar of your hero and you’ll soon be playing just as good? Dream on!

There is a reason some people are at the top of their niche or the best of their field. They got there first. No other blog will ever be able to challenge icanhascheeseburger. The owners of that blog make thousands of dollars a day just because they had the brilliant idea and monetized it. No other blog can do that anymore because it has been done and it will be seen as an imitation.

So why do we want to imitate others? The chance to be successful that way are slim at best. The way to get to the top of a mountain is to find one that hasn’t been climbed yet, one that is yours for the climbing without the crowds. The problem with our dreaming is that most of the time we dream of being someone else. That’s the easy dream we don’t need to be creative. We just think to ourselves “I want to be like that person, I want to live his life”. It will not get us there however. This is a fault in our thinking that helps sell all those signature guitars, replica racing helmets and any brand of clothing that “they” wear. There is a phenomenon called social proof. It’s the idea that if everyone is doing something it must be right. I wonder how many people actually buy something because their friends have bought it.

So what do we do about this problem? We dream our own dreams, create our own mountain to climb and be positive about that. Be realistic and dream about that goal in our life, not the goal someone else reached and who we envy.

Don’t wish you were this or that person you idolize. Be yourself and follow your own path to your own top.

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The rat race is all around us. Running around, always looking at the horizon or the top of the mountain. It’s totally useless you know? We set goals in our lives, wonderful things we would like to do one day. We read about 4 hour workweeks and think that would be just great. We keep dreaming about where we want to be, and in doing so we never have time to enjoy where we actually are. 

At this very moment you are reading a blog on beginnings. Now I ask you, what do you want from this blog? Is reading this post what you want to be doing right now? Are you procrastinating perhaps? Don’t panic, we all procrastinate and we all have dreams about our future that keeps us away from the now. Yes, even “great” people like Timothy Ferris and Leo Babauta have moments every day that they dream off into some kind of fantasy about the future. It’s human you know..

In being human it’s perfectly okay to dream about the future and look at the top of the mountain. But in doing so we forget to enjoy where we are right now. In favour of a bright future we forget to actually live in the now and appreciate where we are and who we are this moment. 

Drifting off into a fantasy about the future is a sure sign you aren’t completely happy with where you are right now or who you are. You’d rather be somewhere else in stead of having to live in this boring moment you are in right now. Perhaps you’re supposed to be working on a homework assignment right now you’re putting off in favour of this blog post. Well, one the one hand I’m happy you’re reading this post, on the other hand this post is a way for you to get distracted from what you are supposed to be doing right now isn’t it? 

Stop for a second, breathe deeply and open your eyes, where are you right now? What are you supposd to be doing right now? 

Take another breath….

….and now go do what you are supposed to be doing and stop fantasizing about the future, it will still be there tomorrow!

An odd title for a post perhaps, but how many of us look at mountains every day? The mountains of “should”, “could” and all the other mountains we build when thinking of beginning something. You see a great guitarist play and you think “this is for me, I want to be able to do this too!” so you buy a guitar and take lessons. But no matter how hard you try, after two years of practice you’re still a beginner and can’t jam or are stuck in playing the same songs all  the time, trying to fool people into thinking you actually are a guitar player. You’ve got the guitar after all and you’ve got the tuning down to an art. 

This bit actually is autobiographical, I own two nice guitars, a dozen books on playing and the best of these is the tomb that is used at Berklee for music-sightreading. If only I could gt through it’s pages I would be a great guitar player. Ive been looking at the first 16 pages for years now. From time to time I take my guitar from it’s wallstand and tune it again, play the same (parts of) songs and stick it back on the wall. That’s your great guitar player for you, smoke and mirrors, an illusion. 

We all have things we want to be able to do, but we want them instantly, without all the work to get there. We want to climb the highest mountain but it shouldn’t be to much work.

• Starting a blog and expecting loads of traffic and within a month your blog should make money
• Build a new business and expecting financial freedom instantly. 
• We want to slow down, and be quick about it!

The few people who actually get to the top of that mountain write books about it and tell others what it’s like to b up there, fewer write about what the journey was like getting to the top and fewer still tell you only one in so many really do get up there and join the successful. 

We all love the success stories and listen eagerly to people who travel the world or successfully start a business or top-50 blog.  In listening to these stories we actually do the same thing as watching TV or playing on our game console. We numb our own senses and fantasize about living the life of someone else and flee reality.  But that’s cheating ourselves. Be honest to yourself over who you are and where you are, that’s the first step into getting to the top.

Mountains are popular, mountains called “rich”, “famous”, “successful”, “entrepreneur”, “bestseller”. Two questions:

1. Are your mountains really yours or do you want to conform to expectations or popular ideas?
2. What are you going to do right now to take the next step to the top? 

Now stop looking up at the top and look down at your feet to see where you need to take the next step.