This is a guest post by Stephan Wiedner from Noomii.com.
Everybody is familiar with Jack Canfield’s famous series of Chicken Soup books full of heart-warming success stories.
My personal favorite Jack Canfield book is “The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be“.
Like most self-help books, there is a lot of information and I’ve forgotten most of it except for the 4 gems that have stuck with me for the last four or five years, and are applicable to blogging success.
For all the bloggers out there, here are the top 4 life coaching principles, taken straight from Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles.
1. Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement
Your blog will never be done. Okay fine, maybe you’ll eventually stop blogging but it helps to maintain a belief and attitude that you’re in it for the long haul and that you’re not going to get it right the first time, or the second time, or the third time. So you might as well just keep improving.
Stolen from the halls of Toyota, our office regularly applies the principle of kaizen, a Japanese word for constant and never-ending improvement.
Without our commitment to kaizen, we would have quit a long time ago. We have redesigned our logo and slogan at least four times. Our homepage has been redesigned more than five times (and it still needs a lot of work). And I have spent countless hours kaizening our lead generation landing pages. But the tweaks and improvements are necessary to survive in the ever-changing landscape of the Internet.
You can always improve your writing, optimize your landing pages, create better products, get more followers, and ultimately, make more money. So before you hang your hat and say “that’s good enough”, why don’t you sleep on it one more time and see what improvements you can come up with tomorrow.
2. Practice the Rule of 5
Practicing the rule of 5 is about getting things done. It means completing 5 things everyday that move you towards your goals. But not just anything. You need to complete the right things.
If you are like me, you have a list of to-dos that is longer than a full roll of toilet paper. To combat the never-ending to-dos, get into the habit of asking yourself:
“What 5 things can I do today that will help me achieve my goals?”
When I’m feeling overwhelmed repeating the mantra “do more, do more”, I stop doing what I’m doing and check in with my list of priorities. I know there are always five little things that I can do that would be particularly beneficial to moving me towards my goals. When it comes to blogging, usually that means reaching out and contacting five other people.
I’m naturally a product-centric, introverted person. I like to focus on the things that I have control over like spreadsheets and word docs. Going out and talking to other people is like walking into the great unknown. But you know what, it takes very little time to reach out and send an email to someone and the results can be amazing.
There’s always someone you can praise and compliment, send an invitation to, or simply say hello. Try it today. Drop me a note at stephan[at]noomii.com. I’d love to hear from you.
3. Stay Focused on Your Core Genius
A leading positive psychology researcher and colleague of mine, Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener, once gave me a sail boat metaphor for looking at your strengths and weaknesses.
Think of your strengths as the sails and your weaknesses as little cracks in the hull. The smallest cracks can be left alone but bigger ones need to be patched or you’ll sink. But no matter how well you patch the holes, you’ll never go very far without a big sail to captures the winds.
In the context of blogging, there are a number of strategies that you can use to be successful. If you’re an amazing writer, do more of that. If you’re the idea generator, offload the writing to others. If you are a power networker, do more of that and avoid the things that slow you down.
Not sure what your strengths are? Take the VIA Strengths survey. You’ll be asked to register an account but it’s free.
4. Hire a Personal Coach
Let’s face it, most bloggers have the luxury of sitting at home in their underwear. What’s missing is human accountability and support: someone to hold your feet to the fire, be a sounding board, and to challenge your assumptions.
Jack Canfield recommends that you hire a coach and if you have the commitment and cashflow to justify working with a professionally trained expert, that’s great. There is no official governing body that licenses coaches but an experienced life coach, business coach, or career coach with proper coach training can be worth their weight in gold.
Like professional athletes, if you want to be at the top of your game, you need an outside perspective to help you perform better than you could on your own.
Coming from a cost-conscious, frugal, startup-minded environment, I am constantly looking to do more with less. To support others in their quest to success, my business partner and I are developing an 8-week paper-based program that you and a friend can follow to coach each other. It’s like having a gym buddy for all of your business and personal goals. Email me at stephan at noomii dot com if you are interested in a copy.
Summary: The Top 4 Life Coaching Principles
So there you have it, straight from Jack Canfield’s finger tips, 4 time-tested principles that you can apply to your blogging efforts:
- Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement
- Practice the Rule of Five
- Stay Focused on Your Core Genius
- Hire a Personal Coach
If you are a keener, here is the full table of contents of The Success Principles:
Do any of these jump out at you? Leave a comment and tell us which principles work for you and how you apply them.
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Thanks for your great article, Stephan. I especially liked Canfield’s “Rule of 5”, as I tend to get scattered during the day, being (amongst everything else) a homeschooling mom.
Hi LuAnn,
Yes, the Rule of 5 is great. I can relate to the busy-ness you must experience everyday. My wife and I both own separate online businesses and homeschool our 5 year old. We’re a month into it and I must say, the house is a little more busy. The rule of 5 helps me feel like I’ve made progress everyday, even if I’ve been distracted throughout the day.
Keep at it!
Stephan
Hi Stephan,
1. Yes, there is no final frontiers! Always upgrading and improving with the ages 🙂
2. I like that 5 rule idea. Very nice, I will try that one for sure! I might just drop you a note too 😉
3. Love the image and mediocre in this explanation, stay strong! I think I can, I think I can hehe Great idea to find out what your strength are. What a blessing that one is.
4. Yes this one is key to motivation and improvement.
I like that gave the link in the end to follow through if you are keener.
Thank you Stephan!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for your comments. In particular, I like your reference to “The Little Train that Could”. “I think I can, I think I can!” For real, I use this with my 2 and 5 year olds when they are biking uphill.
Stephan
These are some great tips. I can definitely relate to them, especially the first one. I own a “make money online” blog, and I get so many comments on a daily basis from frustrated readers that they are not making money online, at least not as much as I am making. What I try to explain to them, is that I too started making just a little. Over time, three years to be exact, I developed my blog and worked harder and harder and now I make a substantial amount. Making money online is not easy, but with time and persistence, it can be done. Too many people want fast results in a short period of time, and things simply do not work that way. Not even in real life. Everything takes time. Great motivational post. And I’ll be sure to try thinking in “fives” now!
– TriNi
Hi TriNi,
Great personal story. We can get Big Mac’s, movie rentals, and phone calls to the other side of world in a matter of seconds, why can’t we achieve success that quickly??? A friend of mine once told me a great quote. He said “things take years to happen overnight”. Many of the successful people we see in the media are that way.
– Justin Bieber has been playing music for years
– Sidney Crosby started playing hockey when he was 2 (sorry, I’m Canadian and most other non-hockey nations probably don’t even know who Sidney is)
– Oprah was working for decades before she reached even a small fraction of her popularity now.
– Steven Spielberg started making films when he was a kid
– and the list could go on and on….
Stephan
Wonderful post Stephan Wiedner. Yes you are right Blogging is not a one night process. All the points discussed here really have lot of information for the bloggers. Keeping blogging continue itself is a difficult task and only those survive here who are committed to work continuously. The basic Aim of the blog should not be the fill only our pocket its about providing valuable content to readers and making them to make money..
Yes Kulwant, yes! Our core value #1 is to create genuine value. If you don’t do that, profits will be short-lived.
Great points, Constant and never-ending improvement is for everybody no matter what they do and how they live. This will help you to enhance your skills, knowledge and well-balanced lifestyle.
These tips are excellent. Lately I have been very focused on the 5-a-day rule, although I’ve been working on 3 things a day. Slow and Steady Tortoise gets there too, right?
Yes, 3 things a day is okay. It may even be preferable. I like to set myself up for success. Doing 3 things and feeling good about it will lead to more things getting done. Doing 4 things and feeling bad about not doing 5 will lead to negativity.
Stay positive. Slow. And. Steady.
Awesome work Stephan! I’ve heard the term kaizen before which in fact made me face the fact that a blog or a website for that matter is never complete. The day you start resting on your laurels is the day that the tortoise will overtake you.
Sure, being content is a virtue but you still have to consider other people and not just yourself. If you are running a business, the more it expands, the more people you can help.
Hi Stephan,
I must say, I’m amazed. Beautiful article. Every principle above is essential to success. More and more people are jumping into the online home business bandwagon today than ever before. However, there’s a large number who struggle to achieve the goals that they set forth for their businesses. Learning I think should be the ultimate priority at all times. We need to end every day a little smarter. The moment we stop learning is the moment we become obsolete.
Great post I must confess. Jack Canfield is my success motivator and he’s doing a great job. I’ve learnt today that blogging should be done creatively, with patience and zeal. God bless you!
Some great advice in this article! I like the thoughts on focusing on one’s strengths. This makes a lot of sense; we live in an age where you can outsource all types of skilled work, and it won’t cost you an arm or a leg.
If you love to write but spend most of your time proof reading and worrying about your punctuation, hire someone to do this for you — it’s cheaper than you think — then get on doing what you really love.
The same goes for web graphics, coding, SEO, etc. We all come to the table with different skill sets, and there’s not enough time to become a master at everything (even if you wanted to). So just do what you do best, or maybe what you enjoy the most, and stop letting excuses hold you back!