A Common Lie We Tell Ourselves To Sabotage Our Success

I’ve been running online businesses for years now. It has been a fun experience and has taught me a lot about the world of business and about life in general. One thing I have noticed along the way is that we tend to tell ourselves little lies that can get in the way of our success.

I’m sorry to say that I’ve been guilty of this as well. My sites were getting most of their traffic from the search engines. Anybody who has marketed things online knows that the search engines are constantly changing and updating their algorithm.

In fact Google alone makes hundreds of different changes to their algorithm each year. This means the way they rank sites is changing hundreds of times each year and every online business can see their traffic and sales shoot up or down based on those changes.

Of course the goal of these changes is to improve and serve up better content to the people searching online and most of the time if you provide great content it doesn’t affect you very much. But sometimes it can have big effects on your business.

A few years back my main site fell in the search engine rankings. I tried to change it, but eventually I moved on. What was worse, I gave up creating great content sites altogether, saying that the times have changed and that it was harder to make money online then it used to be.

I could have always created new sites and promoted them like crazy to rebuild my business, but I didn’t put the time and effort into it. My thinking was that “if everything can just change in an instant what is the point of working so hard for it?” Well that sort of thinking was flawed!

That was my trap. What I should have done was find out why I lost my business and find out how I can build others that would not fail the same way. Who knows where I would have been if I spent my time rebuilding my business and learning from my past mistakes.

I fell into a trap when that happened, and it is a trap I see a lot of people falling into. People simply want to believe that if they are failing at something it is because the times have changed and that they would have been successful if they were just doing it a few years earlier.

It doesn’t take long before you see people talking on online forums or you hear people talking offline about how things are different now and you can’t be successful because of some weird reason.

Some common excuses I see are:

It’s impossible to find a job because the economy is bad and employers just aren’t hiring

My business used to make money, but the market has changed and I can’t make money in the new business

My business can’t make money with all these new competitor’s in the market

Times have changed and people just can’t afford what I am selling/marketing/promoting/offering

It’s easy to come up with these excuses, and that is exactly what most people do when times get hard. Nowhere is this more apparent than when you are dealing with the online world.

The internet is constantly changing, the rules change, new sites pop up, new competitors enter the market, and things simply change, all the time.

Seeing all these things changing it is easy to believe that the world isn’t the same world we used to know, even when you realize that nothing really major happens. The world is still basically the same place it has always been. Some minor rules may change, but the world still goes on.

There’s no use worrying about changing times or using it as an excuse. It only wastes your time, robs you of success, and may even drag you into a depression.

What To Do Instead?

Instead of worrying about changing times and using it as an excuse to fail, embrace change as you see it. Learn from it and take it as a growing opportunity. If the market is changing, look for ways to change with it.

For instance if you truly believe the job market is slow or will be slow, look for ways to differentiate yourself. People with unique skills will always be in demand. Another option would be to simply try harder and fill out more applications and knock on more doors.

Regardless of what you believe, keep pushing harder. The world hasn’t fallen to pieces and a slow economy doesn’t mean that businesses can suddenly stop hiring or people can suddenly stop buying things they need or want.

When things get slow or seem to be harder, use it as a way to get better at what you do and try harder. That way you can still survive the hard times and when things turn around again you will be a much stronger person and in a great position to take advantage of it.

Maybe what you have done in the past doesn’t work as well today, and if that is the case embrace the change as a learning experience and find another path to the same goal. Your mind will expand and your creativity will help you in other areas of life as well.

Final Tips

Change is going to happen. It is a major part of life. It’s hard in all aspects of life, but it can be hard to overcome mentally. When change has to do with your job or business, it can be even more stressful because you need money to pay the bills.

In this case it is always good to have some savings or another source of income to make things easier on you. Saving money and preparing for a rainy day when times are good is just a smart thing to do after all.

Know that change will happen. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t assume that it will be the cause of your successes or failures. Only you can make that decision. Don’t be afraid of change, because we all have to deal with it, and we all have to find a way to reach our goals regardless of what comes our way.