Moving Targets
Sow a thought and you reap an action;
Sow an act and you reap a habit;
sow a habit and you reap a character;
sow a character and you reap a destiny.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
If you’re not familiar with Ralph Waldo Emerson, here’s a short bio. He lived in 19th century USA and among other things he proposed, “Transcendentalism”; his reaction against scientific rationalism. His first book, “Nature” (1836), expressed his Transcendentalism with his belief that everything in our world, even a dewdrop, is a microcosm of the universe. He was also an essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet.
Have you noticed the discontent among people and how it creates restlessness? I don’t want to create the cake; I just want to eat it right now. In defense, it might be viewed as an overzealous search for perfection, or an over-precise nature that’s always investigating flaws rather than finding the small signs of perfection.
I suppose we all have our reasons for this and to various extents we have all been there and done that.
Inner-Blindness
I know I have suffered from this on occasion. Best described as the inability to see what’s right before our eyes. It’s an inner sort of blindness that we can’t see or even recognise the treasure we seek, whatever that might be, even when it passes right before our eyes.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “I can’t see the wood for the trees” or one similar.
Whoops, there goes the object of our quest, we didn’t even notice that it was right there before us, so we go on searching.
Not long ago I went for a walk in the local vineyards with my camera because conditions favored an impressive sunset over the French Pyrenees. I can only see this in winter because most of the year the sun passes all the way across the mountains and sets over lower, less-impressive hills. It still looks stunning, but I wanted mountains in my photographs.
Whatever I did that day, nothing worked out. Too much light, washed out photographs, not enough light, no detail. Very frustrating so, I gave up and went home and forgot the stunning panorama that stretched before me in all it’s wonderful glory and temporarily forgot my favorite Wayne Dyer mantra.
Change the Way You Look at Things
Why do we allow the apparent offending detail to assume overstated proportions?
Through my own fault-finding criticism of the light, my camera and my photography skills. I failed to see what was right there before me. If I had changed the way I looked at things that day, the things I perceived as faulty would have positively changed.
A Quest to Change
A few months ago I realized that although I know much about what I do and I already have success in my business, there were some things that needed attention. Particularly my knowledge of website development and a then slightly mysterious thing called, Search Engine Optimization. With constant change and advances in technology I recognized the need to update my existing and learn some new skills.
Not for the first time I spotted an ad that pointed at Wealthy Affiliate.
“Wealthy Affiliate is a popular online training platform and community that helps people learn affiliate marketing. It was started in 2005 by two guys called Kyle and Carson. Today, they have developed Wealthy Affiliate into a vibrant community of 1.5 million marketers and entrepreneurs”.
Two things in particular attracted me:
- No fees to join and the opportunity to develop a free website through their training program
- It has a pay it forward philosophy where people help people without expectation of reward
Within a week I had completed over ten hours of free training and had a website up and running that was soon after ranked on Google and Bing.
You can check it for yourself here.
Wealthy Affiliate Training
How often do we look at things and see more readily what is wrong than what is right? There is a goldmine of training at Wealthy Affiliate and the best parts of that are; if you follow it and act, it works. Yet how often do we allow a small detail to force us off-track and skip things because we think there’s an error, we know better or, we are impatient? We spot the small detail that doesn’t relate to our experience or precisely what we think we need, resulting in us skipping a part of the process and later wondering why we’re not getting site visitors or search engine ranking.
The training is written the way it is because it works. People have achieved success because of it. Of course, things need updating from time to time because things change. Regardless of our chosen niche, we work in an extremely fluid and developing environment called the Internet. Changes are welcome and natural. It’s our responsibility to keep up and inform training developers if we spot changes they haven’t noticed. Positive feedback is valuable feedback and it helps many people. Asking questions too is valuable because not only does it find answers, it also helps the receiver to adjust and change if necessary. There’s no such thing as a bad question unless it’s a question never asked.
A Couple of Take-Aways
The training works and it leads to progress
A valuable goal is to accept that it works, follow it and leave nothing out
Perfect
When we cease trying to improve what needs no improvement or doing things the wrong way through over-elaborate schemes out of ignorance or thinking we know better, we will discover success. If we stop searching for something better, we may then give the perfection that already exists the chance to make itself known.
“When you aim for perfection, you discover it’s a moving target”. George Fisher
Comments and Questions
Please leave yours below. Your thoughts or questions may well ignite a positive spark in another readers thinking. You will always receive a prompt response to your questions and there is no such thing as a bad question; only the one that was never asked.
Here’s to a successful day
Peace & Light
and
Seasons Greetings
Steve Costello is a British Community & Youth Studies and Psychology honors graduate with over 30-years theoretical and practical experience in the Personal Development public and private sectors. He founded ExGro in 2018 with business partner, friend and clinical psychologist, Leo Faerberg.