The first blog post in this series of 3 was all about my achievements for 2012 and if I followed last year’s format, the next topics would be “What are my disappointments for 2012? How did I limit myself in 2012?” I posted a series of similar blog posts at the end of 2011 and i hope you are following suit as it’s a great way to take some time and reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly and what you want to change in your life.
As those two are quite negative, I don’t really want to do separate blog posts on them in isolation. The next topic in the sequence is “What did I learn from my disappointments and how I limited myself?” and that’s much more upbeat so I’m going to roll the three together today.
Disappointed About In 2012? My Attention To My Health For Starters!
You’d think, reading my Achievement post that I had nothing to be disappointed about – it’s been a cracking year all round – but us obsessive compulsive achievers are like that, we are always looking up at the top of the mountain and how far we still have to go and we rarely take the time to see how far we have actually come! I’m sure you know what I mean! So please read this post in the spirit in which it’s meant – learning not moaning – as I’m truly grateful for all the wonderful things that HAVE happened this year….
Some of the things I disappointed myself with in 2012 was that basically I got EVEN heavier. I haven’t lost any weight in spite of several half hearted attempts and I actually got heavier. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been again, the same weight I was in late 2005 when I decided enough was enough and lost 5 stone in 5 months. Over the last 6 years I’ve put it all back on again. So that’s horrid really. My excuse is that because I was working up the hierarchy of needs, I concentrated so hard on building my business again that I didn’t look after myself at all.
The worse thing is I can’t seem to care that much and I know that’s a really shocking thing to say when so many people are sick. But I live in my head. I live in books, I live in my head and I live in my thoughts. The physical world has never been very interesting to me. I’ve never been very sporty. I was always in the library as a kid. I’m not competitive at all physically, so team sports bore the arse off me, but I am quite competitive psychologically. My body has always been a disappointment, in puberty it got worse, it felt like it was letting me down all the time! So my weight and general health went downhill this year. I won’t list my ailments but they are all to do with getting older and getting fatter.
The other thing is since turning 50, my blood pressure has gone up and my feet started to hurt during the summer. I think I was wearing flip-flops for months on end because it’s a very casual lifestyle we lead at Business Success Factory Towers in Shoreham-By-The-Sea (official name – true!) and as internet marketers. Also my arm and shoulder has started hurting. I’ve got some sort of tendon trouble in my feet with tendon pain and a really painful shoulder which wakes me up at night.
I slept on it, funny, just before Christmas and it became steadily worse. Looking it up on Google as we all tend to do, it’s where the tendons get inflamed. Then as they swell up and fill the bone cavity that they move through, they aggravate the bone cavity and that starts to get inflamed too. So it’s all a bit of a vicious circle really.
I’m taking pills to relieve the inflammation but unfortunately the pills don’t really work very well with the blood pressure pills. So the doctor was a little concerned about that. I’ve had a month on those and it does seem to have helped a little bit but Google says it can take 1-3 months to improve. You are not allowed to take any other painkillers with them as they have anti-inflammatories in them, but I might try paracetamol as I need my sleep!
The next step – she did say something about booking some physiotherapy but she said go to PhysioDirect and I could only find the Nottingham one online…. I’m going back to the doctor this week.
My teeth need looking at too, as I’ve neglected them since that Greek dentist put the gold filling in which not only made me look like a PIMP but then went bad so I had to throw good money after bad having it taken out. Not a good experience all round really.
So the other thing I decided to do is just look after myself better in 2013. I’m going to attempt to lose weight and decide just how to do that because once you make a decision, of course, it’s a lot easier. It’s sticking to it, that’s the issue. I’m going to the doctor and sort my arm and my blood pressure out and I’m going to go to the dentist no matter how painful that might be and it will be painful financially for sure, because I haven’t been there for a while. My feet seem to have helped themselves since wearing proper shoes again or it could be the arm medicine that is helping. So that’s all good.
No Cruise For Me This Year
Other disappointments in the year were I didn’t feel financially confident enough to book myself on to the Internet Marketer’s Cruise, and now they’re all getting on the boat. Literally this week. I’m seeing the pics of them all in Miami and it’s making me very cross!
The other disappointment obviously was that while I manifested my dream car it got busted up ……. really through nobody’s fault. A friend driving it had to stop suddenly when a child scootered in front of the car in front and obviously he was third party, so I’m still without that because it’s taking a while to get it fixed. But I’m grateful still that I have a dream car and I’ve got a loan of the friend’s car who was driving it when it had its accident. I have got transport and that’s the main thing.
Blog Traffic Disappointments
Other disappointments, I’ve got down here on my mindmap are that despite my traffic holding steady, and holding it’s own against any Google slaps, despite it’s age, enormous amount of unique content, it’s not rising in numbers at all. Despite my opt-ins running at about 10-20% for new, unique visitors to opt-in, I still haven’t managed to find out what my traffic wants in terms of, “How can I help them best?”
I don’t know who you are or what you really want!
I’ve asked obviously. I’ve done surveys obviously but I still don’t seem to have hit the sweet spot in terms of my skills and strengths and what I can do effortlessly, and how I can really help you all, you wonderful people who are coming and finding me. You’re searching, you are finding me, you are staying on the site. You’re visiting lots of pages and you seem to really enjoy it and comment on things, but I don’t really know what you’re looking for, that I could help with. So I’m feeling a bit at a loss on that one.
Now theoretically, it doesn’t matter because I’m working with Neil in ROARlocal and I’m having a great time doing that. I’m working with Chris Barrow (my first ever business coach) too, on advising him on his new product launch. Theoretically, I shouldn’t care but the thing is it’s seems like a big waste to me to have a website that you’ve poured your heart and soul into over the last few years and it’s getting 2,000 odd unique visitors a month and they’re opting-in at 10-20% and you don’t know what to offer people. So I’ve really got to think about that.
I’m offering my books obviously and I’m offering lots of free things like “The 3 Secrets of Business Success” videos. People opt in for that stuff all day long, but they just don’t buy my books. Whether that’s because ebooks are a format that’s gone out of fashion, whether the copywriting is rubbish (no-one to blame but myself on that one *grin*) or they’d just rather have videos. I don’t know.
The thing is I don’t really have time to think about it, working in ROARlocal during the week and having spent a lot of my Saturdays moving over to Infusionsoft. I really don’t feel like I’ve got the emotional and mental resources to work outside office hours to be honest. Another side effect of turning 50? I already work for an hour in the morning reading, learning new stuff, from nine until six roughly for ROAR, and then I do occasional webinars in the evening and work on my own stuff during Saturday. So I’m pretty much finding I don’t have any more energy at the moment.
So, that’s a bit of disappointment because I’d love to be making more use of all my hard work to date – I’m keeping my subscribers warm. I’m sending them links to blog posts. It just seems like a bit of a waste.
How did I limit myself in 2012?
Well, the one big realization I’ve made this year about how I limit myself is that I’m a very big worrier.
I didn’t think I was at all, but when I realized what really held me back at 2012, I realized that the thing I was terrified of was over-promising and under-delivering. I felt that I needed to know every detail of how something was going to be delivered before I actually offered it.
I worried about the fact that my shoulder hurt and I worried about what it was, really, causing that. I worry about the fact that my teeth aren’t great without going to the dentist. I worry about things – up till now – without doing anything about them.
So I’ve decided that’s something I’m not going to do in 2013. I’m going to list the things I’m tolerating and I’m going to do something about them!
The minute you take action, like the minute you have made a dentist appointment, you can stop worrying about it, can’t you?
That other thing that we’ve got in our family is a fear of responsibility. We don’t want to be responsible for other people’s happiness. When we feel we’ve been responsible for someone feeling unhappy or not pleased with us, we really don’t like it all. I don’t know where that’s come from – too much responsibility as a child possibly.
I’ve got a mental energy that never sleeps but a physical laziness that limits me because it limits my ability to keep fit and lose weight. I really do find all exercise deeply, deeply dull. I bought myself a treadmill just before Christmas because I thought, “At least I could listen to hours of Rich Schefren’s Q and A coaching calls while walking indoors in the warm and dry, but it wasn’t very good quality and never felt right like the one’s at the gym. In fact my mate Steve, he borrowed it and it threw him into a wall and he said, “My God, it’s a death trap.” So it wasn’t just me!
Yes, I’m not very interested in physical activity at all and that also limits me from doing things because if you’re physically lazy, you can’t be bothered to go anywhere. You’d rather just sit on the sofa and watch television when you’ve got some time off. So that does limit me a bit.
Also, I’m pretty disorganized. I mean I don’t know what it is whether it’s just some form of dyslexia or something but I’m the one who turns up to the station with just a moment to go before the train comes, then I get there and I know roughly where I’m going but it’s on my phone and my phone has run out of battery. So I have to spend a panicked a few minutes trying to locate someone or an internet cafe to get the address and things like that.
Again, I’m trying to sort that out. I’ve made an appointment to go to the Apple shop on Saturday and get all that synching business sorted out. Neil is astonished that I’m an internet marketer of many years standing and that my tech is so poor. My PC is elderly and really not up to the job. I can’t put up with it taking 17 minutes to boot up in the morning much longer, I’m reaching breaking point on that one. I go get a coffee and go back to bed and wait for the computer to boot up in it’s own good time.
My disorganization, which is overcome largely by sheer will power and my pretty ruthless time management but does let me down when I go out and about, yes, that causes me quite an amount of stress, which then makes me not to want to go anywhere because I know how difficult it will be. I mean the thought of just packing and going on a holiday makes me feel quite ill with the effort of it all!
Yes I’m going to get a Mac. Finally, I’m giving in. I’m going to the Mac shop and if they can fix my iPhone which turns itself off all the time and if they can fix my iPad which won’t sync with my G-mail account because it says that the password is wrong in spite of it being the password I sign in to Gmail with every day, then I may consider buying a Mac. But the reports on my local Mac shop are patchy, to say the least, on Google – the reviews. So we’ll see how they handle me.
After All That, What Did I Learn In 2012?
One of my learnings from 2012 – because I do like to end each blog post on a positive note – my learnings are that my marketing knowledge is very strong actually. We were at this event yesterday and there were a lot of very, very clever people there who had made a lot of money or who were looking for a lot of money as an investment.
I was astonished really how little real in-the-trenches business and marketing knowledge a lot of these people had even if they have been working for big companies like – well, I won’t say any names. There were some people there who were very big in some of the big, major corporates, and they didn’t know about things like Google+. So I feel much more confident now that my skills and my knowledge are very valuable.
One of my learning for 2012 is that there is a growing need for any kind of business not just local business. Any kind of business really needs someone who knows what they’re doing in terms of internet marketing. Someone said to me while networking yesterday, “But there are loads of companies out there doing that……”
I said, “Yes, there are. There are those people out there who sell themselves a PPC specialist who are still using outdated techniques that could get your site banned from Google for ever, there are companies who’ve got people who will say they’re Social Media Managers but they don’t actually know how to make money from Social Media Management, and there are plenty of people out there who come out of a corporate life and set themselves up as Digital Marketing Agencies who’ve never made a penny online.” I feel much, much more confident that I really know my stuff.
Another one of my learnings in 2012 was that I taught myself Infusionsoft. They made me pay for a coach. The coach didn’t know half of what I needed to do, and I understood the concepts behind Infusionsoft very quickly because once you know how one software works, you can really puzzle out most of the other ones.
So I largely taught myself Infusionsoft. That was a BIG learning achievement. The thing I need to learn now is Campaign Builder and apparently they do have videos – just not had time to watch them yet. As soon as I’ve got some time, I could just sit and watch these videos and puzzle it out. I’ll get to use Infusionsoft Campaign Builder which is apparently awesome – it’s one of the biggest reasons I wanted to move over to Infusionsoft in the first place.
One of the other things I’ve learned in 2012 is that, “Yes, outsourcing can work.” There are people out there who are better than you who you could afford to hire. There are lots of people who are not as good as you and there’s lot of people that aren’t so cheap, but there are actually – if you look close enough and long enough then, there are good people who are willing to work for a fraction of what the industry pays.
That is great because it helps you leverage yourself across many more platforms. You just have to get really good at writing good step-by-step instructions which is a good discipline anyway.
The other thing I’m remembering – because I have had this role in the past – I’m remembering how to be a boss, because I used to go delegate all over the shop. But I’ve really go out of the habit recently and I’m now starting to find that I need to do that again. So the outsourcing thing is delegating things and effective delegation is about communication, not something that comes naturally to me, I have to say, so I’m re-learning that as well.
But the most important thing I’ve learned in 2012 is that it’s all inside your head.
I know I say this to you on a regular basis but really, what’s the fundamental difference between “me now” and “me in 2010 or 2011?” It’s purely that my confidence was shot and it’s back now with a vengeance.
I know that I’m worth it. I know that I’ve got skills that are worth it. I know that people will pay for my knowledge and skills, and I know I can bring value to people and I know I can bring value to companies.
We were sitting there last night and just randomly talking to a couple of people. I could give them each a nugget of something they can take away with them. So it’s all in your head. If you don’t feel confident and if you don’t – even if you don’t feel confident right now, if you don’t feel confident that you’re going to learn what you need to learn to be a success, then that is going to hold you back from even trying. So that’s one of the biggest things I’ve re-learned, I suppose, in 2012.
That’s my blog post covering what I was disappointed in 2012 about myself, how I was limiting myself in 2012 and my learnings from those things. I really highly recommend that you look at doing something similar each year – you don’t have to publish it. You don’t have to go out in public with it like I do. But if you look at what your achievements were and what your disappointments were, how you limited yourself in 2012, what your learnings were from that, you’ll be doing more self assessment than most people ever do.
If you did that as well, I know that you’ve come out of each year feeling a lot more like you know yourself and you know what you want because until you know what you want, of course, you can’t tell what you want to do. You don’t know which direction to move in. Just as important, is knowing what you don’t want.
We all have to do things that perhaps we wouldn’t necessarily think that we would want to do in the beginning. But I found – if you just get started on trying things out – they’re often not as bad as you think they are. That’s the worrying part of me again. I was worried that things are going to be worse than they actually are.
The final blog post is going to be about my roles and my goals for 2013 and it’s coming soon.
I’d love to hear what you think of this blog post series – do you like it? Do you hate it?
I hope you like it – my transcriptionist did, she paid me the lovely complement of saying my blog posts are “honest and inspiring and make me feel like I can “do it” too” and while I’m not quite sure which bit she means, that’s very sweet as it must be hard work listening to me banging on!
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Hi Nicola
I know you’re a big fan of Colin Turner. In his ‘Born To Succeed’ book (which in my opinion is the number one book of its type) he mentions how a few years ago he was in a bad way health wise and the book that basically changed his life and enabled him, and everyone that he has recommended it to, to lose weight was, ‘Fit for life’ by by Harvey Diamond.
Its only a couple of quid off Ebay and it definietely worked for, I recommend you have a read if you haven’t already.
Cheers
Gary
Hey Nicola
Our year was virtually identical! It made me laugh how much of this stuff we shared in 2012!
We had our car branded up at the tail end of 2011, and it was pretty cool driving around with my name over it then 2 months later, the car blew up! So we bought a brand new one but no more branding – it’s jinxed!
The foot pain sounds like Tendonitis – I got the same thing from wearing flip flops and it is very painful. One thing that does sort it is to have a Cortisone injection. It’s not pleasant to have because they inject straight into the joint, but it does work. I’ve had several in my lifetime
Tramadol is another option for the painkiller – I take it with anti inflammatories and BP tablets (I had the BP warning this year too – scarily on the same day I went under a general they detected my BP was up to 200!!)
With you on the teeth thing too – what are we like eh?!
Please have a chat with Adrian Savage re IS though. Campaign Builder was the first part of IS he taught me, and he genuinely is very on the ball. I bought IS through him so didn’t get an IS coach, Adrian is doing all my training
Here’s to a happy 2013 xx