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Why It’s Best to Start With a Proven Recipe To Make Money Blogging

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My wife and I were watching an old episode of “Friends” this evening, and it was an episode about Thanksgiving dinner.

In this episode, Rachel was given the task of making dessert for the dinner.

Now if you’ve never watched Friends before, you should know that Rachel’s character on the show is a horrible cook.

Monica, who is an awesome cook, is making the Thanksgiving dinner and she decided to let Rachel make the dessert.

Now, what ends up happening is that Rachel decides to make a Trifle for dessert and she decides to use a recipe she finds in some magazine.

Well, it turns out that somehow two pages in the magazine get stuck together and Rachel doesn’t realize it, so she ends up following the first half of the Trifle recipe correctly, but when she flips the page to see the rest of the recipe she is actually seeing the second recipe for Shepard’s pie!

So basically she has this dessert that has cake and fruit on the bottom layers and then meat and potatoes and peas on the top later, topped by bananas and whip-cream.

The dessert ends up tasting horrible and nobody eats it except for Joey.  🙂

Anyway, watching this episode of Friends made me think about how so many people out there so often refuse to follow a proven recipe for making money as bloggers or making money online in general.

Instead they try to combine a few parts of one recipe they learn from one person teaching one system, with a few parts of another recipe from another person teaching another system, along with other parts from other systems and then when this mish-mash of recipes produces no results, they blame all the different people they were following at the same time.

Heck I know I’ve been guilty of this in the past.

Instead of following a PROVEN system / recipe from someone who knows what they’re doing and who has proven to be able to produce results I’ve sometimes tried to cherry-pick certain parts from certain systems and processes and tried to combine them into my own “thing”.

Unfortunately, that rarely works.

That is why I’ve been REALLY putting a lot of focus on being coachable, teachable and learning to PAY ATTENTION and to follow people’s recipes VERBATIM instead of trying to improvise at every step.

This is yet another reason why I absolutely love Empower Network and their proven Blogging system which has been proven by thousands of people to produce results!

There is no need to re-invent the wheel or to try to combine multiple strategies from multiple systems into some kind of amalgamation of systems.

Just get in, plug in to the training, follow the system / proven recipe, and you WILL start to produce results.

There’s no need to re-invent the wheel.

 

7 Books I Find Absolutely Fascinating

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I’ve read close to 1,000 personal development books in my life.

Most of them were pretty good, some of them were kinda crappy, and a small percentage were FASCINATING and had a profound impact on my life.

This is not a complete list, but here are 7 books in my library that I find fascinating.

#1 – The Ultimate Secrets to Total Self-Confidence by Dr. Robert Anthony

The reason I list this book as #1 on my list is because it is actually THE very first personal development book I ever read in my life.

I was still in high-school when I picked up this book and decided to read it.

A lot of what I read in the book aligned with how I thought about this, and a few concepts that the author taught really blew my mind.

I would definitely recommend this book, especially to young adults just graduating from high-school or in college.

Of course if you’re an adult and you feel like you could use a bit more self-confidence, you might really enjoy this book.

#2 – Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins

Tony Robbin’s book Awaken the Giant Within was another one of the very first books I read in personal development.

This is one of those books that contains a LOT of content.

Tony totally over-delivers in this book and I still see it as one of the fundamental building block books that shaped my life.

It’s a “meat and potatoes” type book which covers virtually every area of life, and helps you to understand how your mind works.

 #3 – Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

I don’t know of any other book that more multi-millionaires credit their success to than Think and Grow Rich.

Virtually every wealthy person I have ever met in my life has read this book and most of them have personally recommended that I read it.

I’ve read it many times over the years and I still get something new out of it every time I read it.

If you want to learn how to be rich, and you haven’t read this book yet, order it now and read it!

When you finish, read it again!

#4 – The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles is the book that inspired the movie “The Secret”.

I read the book back in 2001 and to this day it stands as the MOST READ book in my library.

I have read this book DOZENS and DOZENS and DOZENS of times.

The first time I read it, I couldn’t put it down.  When I finished, I read it again and again.

There is some sort of energetic field that surrounds this book, and it completely changed my life.

After years and years of financial struggle, after reading this book and applying what was taught inside I started making a 6-figure income.

It’s still one of my favorite books of all time.

In fact I might just re-read it again today or tomorrow.

It’s a short read, but it’s awesome.

#5 – A Course in Miracles

I have to admit – I haven’t finished reading this book.

This thing is literally as thick, if not thicker than a Bible and just as difficult to read.

It is not something you just pick up and casually read.

It is essentially a handbook on enlightenment.

The book is broken up into two parts – the text and the workbook.

I had a tough time getting through the text, so instead I focused on the workbook.

The way the workbook is designed is that you read one lesson and you do one lesson per day for 365 days minimum.

Meaning, you are not supposed to do more than one lesson per day, but you can stay on one less for any number of days that you like.

So for example on Day 1 you might do Lesson 1, and if you’re ready then on Day 2 you can move onto Lesson 2, and then if you’re ready on Day 3 you can move onto Lesson 3 etc.

But if you get to Lesson 10 and you’re not yet ready to move onto Lesson 11, then you can stay on Lesson 10 for a few days, a few weeks, months, years or even for the rest of your life.

I can’t remember how far I got into the lessons, but I do know I didn’t finish.

However, the lessons that I DID get through had a huge impact on my life.

It’s a very powerful book and I’d recommend it to anyone seeking to learn about enlightenment, forgiveness, peace and love.

#6 – Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This book also had a huge impact on my life, but from a totally different perspective.

Up until the point when I read this book, I was unconsciously living my life based on the assumption that human beings are RATIONAL.

I thought that *I* was RATIONAL and that other people are RATIONAL.

It’s not something that I consciously thought about, or that I remember deciding at any point in my life, it was just something I ASSUMED was true, just like the majority of the people in this world.

We ASSUME that people are rational beings, and when they behave in irrational ways we become confused, irritated and even angry at them for breaking that assumption.

The concepts taught in the book and the experiments revealed took me to a whole new level of understanding of how human beings think and work.

I recommend this book to EVERYONE, but if you’re a marketer or a sales rep, it’s a MUST READ!

#7 – Influence – The Psychology of Persuation by Robert B. Cialdini

This is another book I haven’t finished reading yet.

In fact, I’m only on the 2nd or 3rd chapter in this book.

It’s not an easy read, because each chapter in this book reveals some incredibly mind-blowing information that will enlighten you to understand how we are influenced as human beings.

Every time I read a page or even just a few paragraphs in this book I have to stop and re-think my entire understanding of how I approach marketing and how I communicate with people.

It’s a very “potent” book…. that’s probably the best way to describe it.

Have you read any of these books?  If so, which ones, and what did you think?

 Which other books have you read and found to be fascinating?

 

How To Get Rid of the Fear of What Others Think About You as a Blogger

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We live on a planet populated by over 7 billion people.

Each a unique spirit that came forth to this planet to experience contrast in order to establish a set of unique preferences which will aid in the expansion of the Universe.

In other words, each of us is here for a different reason to create a unique life with a unique set of preferences.

The next time you go to a grocery store or a shopping mall with a busy parking lot, just look around and notice all the different cars parked in their spots.

Why are all the cars different?

I mean as humans, shouldn’t we have already figured out which one of the thousands of cars available out there is the BEST car?

Shouldn’t we have at least figured out which COLOR is the best color?

Why is there still so many different types of cars out there in 2015?  Why haven’t we figured out what the best option is and just all agreed to go with that option?

The reason is because we are ALL unique and all different, and our lives are different and our needs, desires and preferences are all different.

Intuitively, we all know this to be true.

But then if we’re all unique and different then why do we spend so much time and energy worrying about what other people think!?

This short video clip from Abraham / Hicks offers some great insight:

The interesting part that I really like from this video is how Abraham mentions that our well-meaning parents spent our childhood slowly but surely CONVINCING us that our happiness depended on pleasing them.

In other words, when we did things that pleased our parents, they applauded us, cheered us on, gave us positive attention and flowed love towards us.

And when we did things that were not pleasing to our parents, they yelled at us, scolded us, gave us negative attention and held back love from us.

They did this so that they could “steer” us away from danger and hurt and towards safety, as frankly we were still much too naive and inexperienced to be able to think for ourselves.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this – it’s called parenting.

When we were young children we would often disagree with our parent’s opinions when we wanted something and we would try to think for ourselves.

Our parents would say “Don’t touch the oven, you’ll burn your hands!” and what would we do?

We would think they’re full of crap, and we would want to touch the oven.

Then we would touch the oven and we would burn our hands and then run crying to our parents, and they would say “I told you so!  You need to LISTEN to me!  I know what’s BEST for you!” as they consoled us.

Slowly but surely we would be conditioned to think that our parents knew what’s best for us and that we are often mistaken when we think we know what’s best for us.

Once that line of thinking was ingrained in our minds we would go to school, where we would meet our teachers and the whole process would begin again.

At first we would rebel against our teachers, but slowly over time we would be conditioned to the fact that THEY know what’s best for us.

We would be taken to the doctor’s office and again we would be taught that the doctor knows what’s best for us as well.

And the truth is that as children, these well-intentioned adults probably DID know what was better for us than we knew for ourselves – IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS!

If it wasn’t for them, we probably would have DIED by now doing all the stupid things that popped into our heads. 🙂

Sticking a fork in the electric socket?  Yeah sure, that sounds like a great idea!!! 🙂

See my point?

… but the thing is that we are not children anymore.  We are now adults and we have our own built-in “Emotional Guidance System” / Intuition and it is now mature and when we connect to it properly, *IT* is the true essence of us that knows what’s best for us – not our parents, our teachers our siblings or anyone else.

NOBODY knows what’s best for you except YOU and YOUR inner essence.

We all know this, but very often people still ask me…

“Paul, I don’t know why, but I still worry about what other people think…  I try to write a Blog post but then I’m scared to publish it because I’m worried about what others might think…”

or

“Paul, I shot this video and I was going to upload it to YouTube, but then I got this like crazy fear of what people might think of me!  I don’t get it.  Why do I care so much what people think of me!?”

Well, the truth is that the reason why you CARE is because for the first 18 years of your life you were PROGRAMMED / CONDITIONED with a program that could essentially be reduced down to this statement:

“Do what pleases your parents, teachers, friends, society or you MIGHT DIE!  You don’t want to DIE do you!?”

Of course it wasn’t stated in this way, with this type of extreme language, but that is essentially how we were programmed.

Again, when we did things that pleased our parents, we were given what we wanted, positive attention, love and affection.

And when we did the opposite we received the opposite.

Couple that with the fact that our very DNA is programmed with the programming that in order to survive we must be a part of the PACK / HERD, otherwise if we are expelled form the PACK / HERD we will be alone in the wilderness and then we will die!

Is it any wonder that we grow up to be adults who can’t think for ourselves without worrying about what others might think, and we can’t even do something as SIMPLE as writing a Blog post or shooting a video and uploading it to YouTube?

See, before you write that blog post and publish it…you’re part of your HERD.

You’re part of the PACK.

Safe!

But what if you click that publish button, and write that Blog post, where you share YOUR truth, with all the positive intentions that you may have… and then what if the HERD / PACK rejects you!

You might die!

Well, not really… but that is what the child inside of you has been programmed with.

It took me TWO DAYS to publish my first Blog post.

I wrote it, and re-wrote it and printed it out and read it over and over again and I was CONCERNED!

“What if people think this is stupid?”

“What if my boss reads this?”

“What if my co-workers read this and make fun of me?!”

“What if … what if… what if!!!!”

And finally I DID publish that post.  And I didn’t die!

Then I published another, and another, and another.

And slowly but surely I eliminated my fear of what people think…

… I write my Blog posts with ease now because I don’t really care what others think.

Of course I want *SOME* people (ie. my target market) to get value from my blog posts, but I don’t care what people think of ME for writing the posts.

That is one of the most precious gifts and benefits you can get from blogging.

The GIFT of slowly and gently growing more and more confident in your ability to NOT GIVE A SHIT what the rest of the HERD/PACK thinks of you!

So when people say to me “Paul, how do I overcome this constant WORRY I have of what others think of me!?”

My answer is simple…

KEEP BLOGGING!

As you Blog, you’ll start to get followers and people telling you how much value they get from your Blog posts…

… and also at the same time you’ll start getting some “haters”.

This is normal!  Don’t freak out when you get a “hater”.

All it means is that you’re doing the right things.

It means that you’re polarizing your blog audience, which is exactly what you want.

Let me give you an example…

One of the qualities of my target market is that my target market takes 100% responsibility for their lives.

People who try to blame others for things that go wrong in their lives are NOT my target market.

So when people like that arrive on my Blog, they usually become my “haters”, and that’s okay because I’m not here to help those types of people.

For example, I once had a lady email me blaming me for the fact that her 12 year old son was on her computer / Internet, and he came across my Blog where I had said the word “crap” and she didn’t appreciate me exposing her son to such vulgar language.

She actually emailed me saying that!

LOL!

I kindly pointed her towards my terms and conditions where I clearly state that anyone who is under 18 should NOT be reading my site as heck, from time to time I might say something as vulgar as the word “CRAP” (gasp!), but at the same time it boggled my mind as to how naive this lady was…

… she was giving her 12 year old son UNRESTRICTED access to a computer with a full Internet connection and the thing she was worried about exposing him to was my blog saying the word CRAP?!!!

Seriously!?  Has she not seen what’s on the Internet?!

Not only that, but does she really think that the worst word her son has heard growing up and going to school as a 12 year old is the word “crap”?

My point though is that as I kept blogging, and my audience grew, from time to time I would get these comments or emails from “haters” and they come in all shapes and sizes. 🙂

But the cool thing is that as you KEEP BLOGGING, you start to build confidence and these types of opinions of others begin to matter less and less and less to you…

… and that is where TRUE FREEDOM starts to spring from in your life.

Because just think about it…

… imagine if you have ALL the money in the world… like let’s say you won the lottery…

… and imagine you had ALL the time in the world…

… and you thought that those things would give you FREEDOM…

… but you hadn’t yet overcome your fear of what others think of you…

How free would you really be?

You wouldn’t be free at all, would you!!!???

You’d just be a retired, rich person who was still like a little CHILD… spending every day of their life worrying about what others think of them!

Sometimes people say to me “Paul, yeah…I don’t know if Blogging is for me… I don’t know if I’m comfortable posting my thoughts online… I worry too much what people think… that’s why I’m thinking of starting this business over here… I think I can make a lot of money with it, and I don’t have to Blog and worry about being judged.”

Really?

And let’s say you DO make a lot of money with “THAT” business over there… will you really be FREE if you still stay up at night worrying about what others think of you?

That’s not freedom.

True freedom comes from honoring the child inside of you who didn’t know what was best for you in certain situations growing up, and at the same time letting that child go, and allowing the ADULT version of you to come forth and to start thinking for yourself and NOT worrying what the “HERD” thinks of you.

That is the only way you’ll ever be free.

You can’t be free if you continue to live your entire life trying to please everyone around you, somehow expecting to derive happiness from that.

So what’s the best way to take one tiny little step forward towards overcoming your fear of what others think of you?

Start a blog and write your first post.

Then publish another.

Then publish another.

…

The Awesome Day Exercise

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A number of years ago, one of the coaches I was working with asked me to do what seemed like a simple exercise.

She wanted me to write down, in detail what my “Perfect Day” is going to be like once I am living the life that I want to be living.

At first this seemed like an easy thing to do, but once I started to actually think about this exercise it became a lot more complicated than I thought.

I started off by imagining the “perfect” way that I would want to wake up.  Where would I be?  What time would it be at?  Who or what would wake me up?  What would the temperature be like?

Then I tried to imagine what my “perfect” breakfast scenario would be.  What would I want to eat?  Who would I want to be there with me?  Where would we be?

As I went through the day in my mind and tried to imagine the “perfect day”, I actually ended up getting more and more frustrated.

Why?

Well, because there are so many different things that I love doing, but trying to fit all of them into one “perfect day” was virtually impossible.

For example, I imagined that on my perfect day I would get private lessons in the martial art that I used to practice a few years ago.  But then I also wanted to play some basketball with my friends.  But if I had an intense martial arts workout that day, then basketball might be too much to do as well.

Unless of course those were the only things I was doing that day, but in my “perfect day” scenario they weren’t!

There were so many other things that I wanted to do, and it wasn’t trying to figure out which stuff to keep and which stuff to get rid of.

In the end I just couldn’t really come up with a “Perfect Day”.  There were just too many different things I wanted to do, and not all of them were physically possible to be done all in one day.

So instead I decided to do something similar to the “Perfect Day” exercise, but without the limitations…

The Awesome Day Exercise

The Awesome Day Exercise is basically very similar to the “Perfect Day” exercise, except that with this exercise we are not limiting ourselves to “Perfection” nor are we limiting ourselves to just ONE DAY!

Essentially doing the Awesome Day Exercise simply involves writing down the details of what an “Awesome Day” in our lives might look like.

And the cool thing is that we can have MANY Awesome Days…

… meaning, I could sit down and write out an Awesome Day for me… describing every part of the day in as much detail as possible, but without having to limit myself to that Awesome Day being the ONLY “Day” that I get to manifest in my life.

So for example, let’s say that *ONE* “Awesome Day” for me might be to wake up in the morning, and spend the entire day with my wife watching a marathon of an awesome show or movie series we really enjoy.

I could go into more details but you get the idea.

ANOTHER Awesome Day for me might be training for 4-6 hours in Japan at a DOJO with the Grandmaster of the martial art I used to study.

See by setting up the rules of the exercise in this way, I am not limiting myself to just ONE supposedly “Perfect Day”.

Instead I am allowing my mind to open up my imagination and imagine many different “Awesome Days”.

Try this now…

How to Do the Awesome Day Exercise

Grab a piece of white paper and a blue pen, and at the top of the page write down “An Awesome Day in My Life”.

Then, below that, start writing “The day starts off at …”

And from there, just let your imagination run loose and try to write down as much detail as possible about this one Awesome Day that you’d love to experience.

As you’re doing this, keep in mind that ANYTHING is possible.

You do NOT have to limit yourself to things that are “realistic”.

Turn off the reasoning center of your brain and just let your imagination loose.

What time would you wake up?

What would you do then?

Would you eat breakfast?  If so, what would you have?  Who would be there?  Where would you be?

What would you do right after breakfast?  Who would you do it with?

Would you have lunch?  If so, when?  With whom?  What would you have?  Where would you have it ?  Who would make it for you?

Try to write out as many details as possible of the entire day, trying to capture what you would be doing, who with, how you’d be feeling that day, what would you be feeling etc.

Why Do This?

Now you might be wondering what is the purpose of an exercise like this.

Firstly, it’s to ignite your imagination.

Secondly, it’s to program you subconscious mind with the images of what an Awesome Day might look like to you, so that your mind can begin to formulate a plan on how to manifest that.

Your subconscious mind is the most powerful supercomputer in the Universe, but it needs to be properly INSTRUCTED or PROGRAMMED in order to help you achieve what you want.

Without clarity and these images that your imagination will form as you write out your Awesome Day, it’s not easy for the mind to know what you want.

When I did this exercise a number of years ago, I was still working in the corporate world and one of my pet peeves at the time was that I had to wake up at 8am sharp each morning to make it into work on time.

So when I wrote out my “Awesome Day”, one of the details I put into my day was that I wake up WHEN I’M READY to wake up!

Not when some alarm clock goes off, but whenever I’m ready to get up.  It doesn’t matter if that is 6am, or 8am or 8:30am, or 9am or 10am or whenever.

Whenever I feel rested enough to get up, that is when I wake up on my “Awesome Day”.

Also, I hate alarm clocks, so on one of my “Awesome Days” I imagined waking up around 9:30am or so, being awakened by one of my dogs coming into the bedroom and “gently” waking me up.

When I wrote this out years and years ago, it was more or less a fantasy, as there was no way I would be able to sleep in until 9:30am!  I had to be up at 8am!

But today… as in this morning, and for many mornings in the last few years I’ve been living that “Awesome Day” description of my morning.

I wake up around 9am or 9:30am or 10:00am, just depending when I’m ready to get up, and in a lot of cases it is my dog that comes and wakes me up.

It happens all the time now.

Small details from my “Awesome Days” that I described and imagined have been manifesting, almost as if by magic, and often times I don’t even realize it until a while later when I remember what I wrote down.

Remember, I imagined it first.

Then I wrote it down in as much detail as possible.

Then it manifested!

Try it out.  You’ll love the exercise.

How to Turn On Pinterest Analytics

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I watched an amazing webinar tonight from someone who is making a six-figure income with her Blog and one of the channels of traffic she has mastered using was Pintrest.

I honestly haven’t done a lot with Pinterest yet, but after seeing the webinar I am definitely more interested in learning more.

One of the tips that she shared with us on the webinar to maximize the results you’re getting on Pinterest is to enable their built-in analytics platform.

At first I was a bit confused as there IS no analytics platform in my Pinterest account but then I found out that you have to follow a few simple steps to turn it on.

Once I figured out how to do it, I decided to shoot a quick video show others how to do it as it’s not totally intuitive.

Here’s the video of how to turn on the Analytics feature in your Pinterest account:

Cool eh?