Often people speak about “Trust” being central to any successful relationship. Upon appropriate maginication, I realised that trust is never gained or lost by a single incident. Like everything else, building trust needs consistent efforts.
And when I mean efforts, I don’t mean pour yourself to seek validation and all that jazz. It just boils down to two things
You doing what you said you will do
And doing that over a long period of time.
Just by doing these two things, anyone can become reliable. And reliability leads to trust.
On a fuzzy Saturday afternoon, I logged into my inactive Instagram account. Unsurprisingly, all I found was an ad in every second scroll.
Many ads were selling how I wouldn’t be “Happy” with what I had. How ugly/unhappy/lonely/obsolete I am, and how buying “a product” would make my life instantly better.
In the past, I have given in to temptation and bought a few stuff. Unsurprisingly my mental state would’’t change after the purchase.
I was always left wanting more. And wanting to make things better than they are. Just like how seeing the NEWS makes me anxious and leaves me wanting for more!
Makes me wonder, ads especially the ones that offer comparisons are distributing dissatisfaction! Isn’t it?
How many people read your blog? Why do you keep putting out videos to a few 100 subscribers?
I keep getting these questions. For context, I’ve written 75+ blogs and produced 50+ videos.
People usually expect me to give a goal-based/outcome-based answer. Like “I want 100,00 subscribers”, “I want a passive income” or “I want to have 100,000 email subscribers” etc.
The questions come from an assumption that I’m striving to reach something or somewhere. And most of them are bored by my answer.
What keeps me going is the act of doing. I write and I put out videos because I like doing it. I would be lying if I say I don’t look at metrics. But that’s NOT why I write.
Every number that comes out of this is just a by-product. Not my goal.
I often catch myself trying to recall a random idea that occurred to me during the course of the day. And I promise myself that I’ll work on it later.
It’s 9 AM next day, KA-BOOM I realise that I don’t even remember the trace of the idea, the train of thoughts or anything remotely related to what I was thinking.
I overcome this with a simple hack
Write everything down. However stupid or trivial the idea is. Write the keywords connected to the idea.
Because we always overestimate our ability to remember things. I rather use my energy to process information, than store information.
Across personal and professional life, we’re stuck in 3 kinds of scenarios
Know it- One where we know the answers. We’re confident about it, and we feel we can wing it.
Clueless- We can seek answers or stay curious about various questions. Relentless questioning always leads to better outcomes. Nobody ever knows the ‘right’ answer on a consistent basis.
Know-it-all- We tell ourselves we know everything and close out the opportunity to seek answers.
Fears drives a lot of my decisions (or drive away a lot of decisions). I was always looking for an answer on “How” I can overcome my fears. I was just looking for THE magic bullet. But there’s isn’t one.
At appropriate magnification, if we choose to pay attention and decide to care, each of our fears exist for a different reasons.
We need to get in touch with them. It means looking deeper, introspecting gently and mitigating the specifics. Always ask
What’s the worst that can happen?
Because sometimes not realising the worst case stops us from acting on fears. After all, you might end up realising that the worst case isn’t that bad after all!
Disclaimer: This is an observation from my anecdotal experiences. If you’ve serious conditions dealing with stress or mental conditions because of your fears, please get a consultation from an expert.
Most consumers wouldn’t even recognise that we are putting out a work that we’re 100% NOT satisfied with.
But you would. That’s the beauty and curse of being a creator. Or creating. Successful creators don’t wait until they’re 100% satisfied.
Because they know it takes far more courage to put yourself out there, and feel great about it. With deliberate practice, your 96.5% could well become aspirational for a lot of consumers.
