Last week, having watched a recorded webinar by successful internet marketer John Thornhill, I have decided to take one of his ideas on board and set myself a public challenge. For a while I have recognised the value of having an accountability partner, but they have only previously been my wife, or a friend; and telling one person I’m going to do something just doesn’t feel like a strong enough incentive. In the past I have made excuses to that one person for my lack of action and just not felt enough pain from the experience to make me follow through next time.
Another person suggested giving a significant sum of money to charity every day I didn’t follow through on what I said I would do. An interesting concept, but it doesn’t rest easy for me to link giving to good causes with my failure to follow through and to link not giving with success.
Nope, for me, public humiliation is the only way to go. I have a good gut feeling that it will be this that will make taking action a must in my case. People will be watching my blog to see what progress I’ve made and, at the end of the 90 days, if I haven’t won the challenge it should be clear from my blog whether that was for valid reasons or simply through not taking action.
Win or lose, I’m hoping the resulting posts will provide me, and others with a learning tool of what went well, what didn’t and how things can be improved upon to make my results successful (or even more successful), next time.
I don’t feel entirely ready for this challenge but I hear Napoleon Hill’s words ringing out in my head:
“Don’t wait – the time will never be just right.”
If my hunch is correct, then my decision to focus and commit to this plan should attract to me any missing resources I might need to succeed in my venture.
Apparently this has a lot to do with the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain, which (crudely described) helps us to filter out the things that don’t matter to us and notice the things that do.
Day 1 of my challenge starts on Monday. Hopefully I’ll surprise a lot of people with what I achieve in the next 90 (working) days. I hope I surprise myself.