Today I had a remarkably good day, the kind you only dream of as a business owner. I hung out with my kids and my wife in the morning, got in to work at about 9am, had a few meetings and by noon I was on my way out of the office in a convertible to hang out with friends at Disney.
Naturally, I shared this on Facebook. Of course, none of this ever saw the day of light on Facebook. In all honesty, I have two Facebook profiles just to keep my real life separate from the industry life that so many people are either cheering or hating. To further illustrate this, I did txt a pic to an actual friend but asked him not to mention it on FB and got the following response that is pretty telling:
Hahaha I hear you man and perception is crazy different. I catch so much shit from people who think I don’t work which is far from the truth. I just don’t post about it because it’s not interesting!
You don’t take pictures of yourself when you’re sad and you tend not to be thrilled to share the rockstar events such as setting the budget and reviewing project progress. But why is there such a fascination with people that seemingly do nothing? Why is that the celebrated goal of business ownership – to not work?
I’ll spare you the rest of the post if you’re busy: You’re being conditioned by sales charlatans to believe that success is not found in work but in not working. If you truly and honestly believe that then you seriously need to consider your career choices. Now read on for some fun ranting:
Why is social media so deceptive?
Because it is used to sell everything from lifestyle to political arguments; and much like anything you read on the Internet you will percieve the message according to your own mood and not neccessarily in the light that the writer intended. If you’re having a bad day “Good morning” can sound an awful lot like “I hope you get hit by a car” when you read it online.
But why do people percieve that there is relatively little work getting done? Mostly because we have been conditioned to believe that the hard work is a suckers bet.
Why should you work smarter not harder?
Because unless you challenge the fact that success is an outcome of hard work you cannot scam people into buying a get-quick-rich scheme that is so prevalent out there.
Don’t get me more info
wrong, you need cheerleaders. But they should be motivating you to overcome the reality that earning money is indeed difficult, not dumbing you into a false sense of security (another Facebook post):
Looking for a way to be more successful at anything? Hang around with, associate with and engage with people who are SUCCESS-minded people. People who focus on positive achievement and HOW to achieve success, NOT who find every cynical reason why something can’t be done…why it’s too hard, too expensive, too good to be true. Befriend people who don’t constantly gripe, complain and find fault. Listen to people who focus on SUCCESS rather than failure, the positive WINS rather than the struggle. These are the people who encourage you and BELIEVE in YOU in the moments in life when you don’t believe in yourself. Here’s a little exercise: Honestly assess what you watch and read…are they a fountain or a drain?
Beautifully said. When you turn off your skepticism, your instinct, your ability to assess risk there is no limit to what you will blindly spend your money on in your quest for the dream.
And that folks is why hard work gets a bad reputation: Nobody in their right mind would spend thousands of dollars on snake oil if it said you needed to break your back and even if you do everything right there are still odds that failure is possible.
Success isn’t found quickly by cheating and changing the odds.
Success isn’t achieved through blind faith and positive thought.
Success is found by overcoming constant adversity and setbacks, by refusing to give up at the numerous obstacles, dealing with difficult people and never taking your eye off the ball.
But you’re not going to fork over $1,000 to hear that bullshit. You want a turnkey business that’s an ATM that someone else magically refills with cash every month while you sip fruity drinks on the beach. You want to ski and sip cocoa in the winter, be on a yacht in the summer, work half days while your staff made up of expertly recruited flawless employees takes care of your never-difficult clients.
Wake. Up. Optimism, positivity, success-minded — it doesn’t mean what you think it means. It doesn’t mean ignorant of your problems, reckless with your money, irresponsible with your time management, disrespectful of your challenging clients and employees: It just means that no matter how big of a challenge you have ahead of you hard work is eventually going to make it happen.
And they don’t sell a bullshit kit for that.
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