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7 Excuses and How to Beat Them

We all make excuses. But the truth of the matter is: Excuses are for Losers. Instead of seeking out excuses to justify our actions or our inactions, we need to be looking for reasons to push through and overcome the obstacles that are in our way.

 

Time by: Alan Cleaver

 

  1. I don’t have enough time – We are all given the same 24 hours a day. How do you use it? Where are you spending and wasting time? Are you just filling up your time with useless crap, so you can justify NOT working towards something? Instead, you should be managing your time better to focus it on the actions you should be taking.
  2. I don’t know what I’m doing – Neither did anyone else, at one time. Learn! Just because you think you don’t know what you are doing, doesn’t mean you can’t do something. Just start and adapt as you go.
  3. I’m not good enough – Who says? Just because you are starting something, doesn’t mean you aren’t good or can’t be good. How do you think you will get good? Only by doing and practicing. The more you work at it, the better you will get. Quit comparing yourself to others who have practiced at the activity for years.
  4. Nobody would want to hear from me – How do you know? What you have to say and how you say it may be exactly what they need to hear. This excuse is only building upon the “I’m not good enough” excuse. As you continue to practice, learn and improve, you will build your voice. As you do, you will reach many more people.
  5. I don’t have enough money – Sure you do. You may just need to balance your finances better. Besides, who says you need to have money to begin. With most things, there are ways to get involved that does not take money and if it does, it is only a small investment. As you get more involved, you will want to invest more and at that point, you should be able to budget for it.
  6. I don’t have the energy – That’s because you are lazy! Energy comes from action. The more action you take, the more you get moving and doing something, the more energy you will find that you have. Include with that the more you get excited and motivated about things and the more you get involved.
  7. I don’t have the connections – Sometimes you don’t need the connections you think you do. Work without the connections and build them as you go. In this day and age of social media, it is easy to build connections, it is only a matter of talking with those you wish to build connections with.

 

People are so afraid of failure. They think failure is the end. But it is not, it is only the beginning of learning. Since people are afraid of failing, they use excuses. When we use excuses, we are not fooling anyone. Everyone around us realizes that they are just excuses and nothing more. They are only a way for you to justify your inaction instead of taking responsibility for those actions and fighting to succeed.

 

Call yourself and others out when they use excuses and have them do it for you. Call it for what it is. You will begin to see how many times that you use an excuse and it will motivate you to work harder and not rely on a weak excuse to justify your laziness.

 

So what excuses do you use?

What is keeping you from succeeding?

How do you call others out when they make excuses?

7 Steps to Optimize Your Blog Posts

Sometimes writing can be the easy thing. At least when it is only a rough draft. It is the re-writing that can be hard. Along with that, cleaning up your blog posts to optimize them can be time consuming and monotonous. Here are 7 steps of a workflow that can help improve the process.

 

  1. Rewrite – Take your blog post and re write it. It is time to polish it. Make your post as timeless as possible, this will help when readers come to you in the future, your blog won’t appear outdated.
  2. Edit – Go back through and check for spelling and grammar mistakes. Also look at how you word things to make sure that it makes sense.
  3. Links – Read through your blog post and highlight where you will include links. You are going to have two types of links in your blog posts: internal and external.
    1. Internal – These are links that will refer back to old posts that you have written or to other pages on your site.
    2. External – These will link to either someone else’s website when you mention them in your post or to an affiliate product link that you promote.
  4. Pictures – As you read through your post, you will also make note of any pictures that you wish to include. Along with pictures, you could group audio and video into this process. Make sure that any media that you use, you have permission from the copyright holder. You may want to create a master list for pictures and media, so you can search for them all at once and then add them to your library. Especially if you are optimizing several posts at one time.
  5. Questions – End each of your blog posts with a question or two. The reason for this is to encourage your readers to get involved in the conversation. You could also use a call to action depending upon what your desired outcome is or what your topic may be.
  6. Format – Take the time to format your post so that it is easier to read and looks good. Be consistent with this, it will help your readers become comfortable with your style.
  7. Publish – Assign categories and tags to your post and set a post date for sometime in the future. The other possibility that you have is to simply archive the post to be used in an emergency. It is always a good idea to have a number of posts waiting in the wings for when life gets in the way and you don’t have time to write a post. It has been suggested that 3 months worth of posts is a good amount.

 

While these may seem like a number of time consuming steps to go through, they are actually not that bad. Once you begin working on polishing your posts, they move along quickly. If you follow these steps, you can get your posts to be published and they will have consistency while looking good and building connections.

 

So what do you think of the steps?

Did I miss anything?

What else would you include?