What's Your Experience

This post is more about resonating with readers than how to increase your value to the online world.

A short while ago I noticed a friend of mine had an advert on Facebook.  I was surprised because I had no clue he even used Facebook.  I eventually caught up with him over coffee as we often did and I asked him about his social media exploits.
It turns out he is embarrassed to tell friends and family what he is doing online.  He is of the belief he will be laughed at or worse case maybe ridiculed.  I can understand that because I used to feel the same way many years ago.  We had quite a conversation about his online activities and his story was so familiar.

There is a common theme here and maybe you can relate to this.  Too often when we tell our friends that we have an online business of some sort, there is usually an underlying hope they will take an interest and want to know more.  More so than not, this doesn't happen.  To add to this, the opposite occurs.  It seems we get a negative reaction when matters concerning making money online is mentioned.
Therefore the easiest path to take is not to say anything.  Funny thing is, my friend had no idea I worked online too.  There is another demon lurking in the shadows here too.  There is a silent fear that failure will triumph and that holds many of us back.

Let me explain using my friends words.  He can think of nothing worse than promoting his online business to his friends who then tell him they're not interested.  Worse than that, over time if this online business doesn't work out and fails to produce the desired results, his friends may feel vindicated.  His friends might look down at him and say, "I told you this wouldn't work."  It would be so embarrassing.

From a statistics point of view, over 90 percent of online start-ups do fail.  There are numerous reasons for this failure and often they are to do with the business owner, not the biz model.  That is beside the point of this post, the fear exists.  Fears are huge road blocks and often we dismiss them as being minor obstacles. This of course is a wrong because fears manifest themselves in ways we can't imagine and that's a course in psychology I'm not going into now.

So, is there a point to this post!  Yes, but it's subtle.  I want to create for everyone a self-awareness that fears of any kind are a negative force.  Most of us are aware of them but dismiss them as harmless.  We must tackle fears head on, do what is uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable.  It's about making change.

Not only change, is about growing, moving forward and never looking back.  Everyone, including you can overcome all fears regardless of what they are.  It will amaze you by what doors will open as you grow and move forward. Setbacks and fears are part of life but hey need not be permanent, it's up to you.

Thankfully, my friend has a fresh perspective about his online business and his old fear of telling his friends about what he does.  In fact he doesn't shout it out to everyone he knows, rather, he tells them if they ask. Before he would say nothing but that fear has now been conquered.

I do hope many of you can relate to what I have written and it's been of value in some way.

TTFN