Archive for February, 2010
Inspiration from Will Smith
If you’re a Will Smith fan, and even if you’re not, you’ll find the bits of wisdom in this video quite inspiring. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:
“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say ‘I’m gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid,’ and you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.”
Morning Pages: 8 Lessons Learned
Today is day four of the morning pages exercise. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
1. Make Morning Pages a Priority
I almost skipped morning pages today. It wasn’t something I consciously chose to do. I just let myself get side-tracked. I started surfing around reading other peoples’ stuff, looking for inspiration, and before I knew it, an hour had passed, and I’d still not started writing.
I may have to change my morning routine, which typically looks like this. I roll out of bed and hit the bathroom. Then I grab a coffee. Next, I turn on my computer and check a few things. Then I finally sit down to write my morning pages. I think tomorrow I won’t turn on my computer until my morning pages are done.
2. Let Go of Results
When we start some new course of self-improvement, whether an exercise program, a spiritual practice or morning pages, we tend to expect immediate results. At least I do. And If I don’t see results pretty quickly, I tend to find reasons to stop doing the exercise. I decided this morning that I’d commit to doing morning pages for 30 days without any expectation of results.
3. Make Morning Pages a Special Ritual
Get clear about the reasons you’re doing this. For me, there are several reasons. First, writing is imperative to my business. Any successful online business is driven by relevant and informative content, and that starts with writing. Second, I’m doing this to become a better writer so I can write more, and touch more people with my writing.
Third, this has become a spiritual practice for me. Through this process, I’m reconnecting with myself; with my inner spirit. It’s a form of meditation. I’m reconnecting with my true self and the divine within me.
When I sit down to write, I have a hot cup of coffee or tea, and turn on Gregorian Chant Radio on Pandora. The music is soothing and relaxing and it sets a mood that reflects the special and spiritual nature of my ritual. Of course, if I don’t turn on my computer tomorrow, I’ll need to find a new source of music. Fortunately, I recorded some Gregorian chant music that I can download to my iPod.
What My Vacuum Repair Guy Can Teach You About Web Marketing
I was talking to a friend about web marketing recently, and we were discussing the time commitment that’s involved. At the time, we both agreed it’s a serious time commitment, and she said she’d rather invest most of her time into marketing her business coaching practice locally offline.
I came away from the discussion feeling like it’s an either-or proposition. Either you invest a lot of time and energy into web marketing, or you simply give up on the idea of web marketing altogether, and invest most of your time into local offline marketing. While writing my morning pages today, I came to a different conclusion.
Your online presence can be the hub of your local marketing strategy without a huge investment of time, money and energy. As an example, lets look at my local vacuum repair store, Phaneuf Vacuums, located a couple miles from my home.
First, a little background. If you know much about me, you may know I have a cute, cuddly beagle named Ellie. What you probably don’t know, and I’m embarrassed to admit, is even though she’s nearly two-years-old, Ellie still isn’t house broken.
Consequently, I spend a lot of time cleaning my carpet. I even have my own Hoover Steamvac carpet cleaner. Last week, my sturdy Steamvac stopped steaming because of a broken part.
Want to Make Writing Easier? Try Morning Pages.
As I mentioned yesterday, writing is often a chore for me. With that in mind, I’ve undertaken a new morning ritual called “morning pages.” Morning pages is a writing exercise devised by Julia Cameron and popularized in her book, The Artist’s Way.
The morning pages exercise is designed to help you recover (or discover) your creativity, and silence what Julia refers to as the Censor. The Censor is that critical inner voice that criticizes each and every word you write and makes it brutally painful for you to write anything.
“The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn’t right. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth…The point is to stop taking the Censor as the voice of reason and learn to hear it for the blocking device that it is. Morning pages will help you to do this.”
Interestingly enough, one of my clients wrote me this morning after reading about my struggle with writing. She said: “I really did think that writing came so naturally that you had no problem putting pen to paper and the words just flowed out of you. That is a wake up call for me.” I think the same thing when I read other peoples’ writing. I think writing must be so easy and natural for them, when in reality, that’s likely not the case. It’s very possible they struggle with writing nearly as much as I do.
I’m Learning How to Write. Again.
I don’t know about you, but very often, writing is a chore for me. Since I started working online, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve sat down to write an article, and the words simply flowed out of me easily and effortlessly.
One recent article took nearly an entire day to write, and it really wasn’t that long of an article; only about 900 words. It’s a brutally painful process, and it has to be remedied lickety-split.
After doing a bit of research this morning, I’ve discovered what some of my problems are. The first issue seems to be around my expectations. See, I expect to be able to sit down in front of my computer and just start typing out an article easily and effortlessly. That’s not really a bad expectation, but I expect to do it without any sort of preparation before sitting down to write. I expect that the information is already in my head, and all I need to do is get it out of my head and onto the screen. Apparently, that’s not how real writers work. Real writers actually do a bit of preparation that makes their writing much easier and effortless.
How Do You Stay Inspired Every Day?
Not to sound like a Baptist preacher, but we should all rise up, and give praise for the existence of the Internet. Every day. I mean really. Never before in history has it been so easy and inexpensive for you to share your ideas with an audience that could potentially number in the hundreds, thousands, or even millions.
Never before has it been so easy and inexpensive to get your product or service in front of prospective clients and customers. Never before has it been so easy to connect with people all over the world, and create new relationships. And it’s never been easier than right now for you build your personal brand, and make your mark on the world, even if in a relatively small way.
“We are going through a gold-rush of branding. In the old days to become a brand, you needed a lot of mainstream media attention. But now, if you get talked about enough in all the social webs; blogs, you can get there. You can build your brand; you company’s brand. But it all starts with that first moment when you look in the mirror … first moment. What do I want to do?” – Gary Vaynerchuk
I don’t know about you, but I spend a good 15 hours a day online. Most of it spent reading, writing, communicating and just generally doing business. And when you spend that much time online, it’s all too easy to take the Internet for granted.
Hi there. I'm Michael Pollock. I inspire and teach creative entrepreneurs how to use the Web to make a difference in the world, make more money and live a bigger life ... 
