Ever had your index fingers stuck in one of these bamboo cylinders? It's an anxiety producing experience. You pull and pull and pull and the dang thing gets tighter and tighter and tighter. You give up and sob your eyeballs out because you think your only escape entails chopping off your index fingers.
Yet as you mourn the eventual loss of your fingers, a strange thing happens: you escape.
Just.
Like.
That.
Indeed, the secret to getting out of Chinese Fingercuffs is the Art of Not Struggling. The more you pull, the tighter they get. The more you relax---or even push in---the looser they get.
For me, chasing after my dream has been a lot like trying to escape from Chinese Fingercuffs. For months, I sweated and struggled. Yet, the more I struggled, the less I accomplished. I worked hard---so, so, so hard---on an essay that I wanted to submit to the New York Times. I can't tell you how much thought I put into that essay, nor how much time.
I can tell you this. The New York Times rejected it---within 48 hours of submission. It must be a World's Record for the fastest rejected essay.
I tried to get myself booked on national TV, too. Didn't happen.
During my very dark month of October, it seemed like nothing was working out. My site traffic seemed to be going down. My PR kept leading me to dead ends. And I swore there was more cellulite on my thighs than the month before, not to mention dark circles under my eyes.
Why is it that disappointment makes me feel ugly? It's an unfair insult to injury in my opinion.
Then something strange happened. I gave up the struggle. I stopped trying to control the end result. I told myself, "If it happens, it happens." Instead of focusing on my numbers, I began focusing on my journey, and on what I could really change.
As a diet book ghost writer, I can't tell you how many times I've told dieters: "Don't focus too much on the number on the scale. You can't influence that number. Instead, focus on what you can actually change: what you eat and how much you exercise."
Oh, I've written that so, so, so many times.
It was about time I took my own advice. I can't---just can't---force people to read and love my blog. I can't make people want to be my friends on Facebook. I can't strong arm people into following me on Twitter.
Nope. Just can't.
But I can do the following:
- Write kick ass blogs that people want to read.
- Form close connections, so people will want to tell others about my kick ass blog.
- Guest blog, so more people can find out about my blog and so I can increase my SEO.
- Submit articles to article services, for the same reasons.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I went more than a day (or even more than half a day) without checking all of the following numbers:
- My number of blog comments.
- My number of daily site visitors.
- My number of Facebook friends.
- My number of blog and newsletter subscriptions.
- My number of followers on Twitter.
What do you expect? A complete personality makeover? Didn't think so. What I did stop doing, however, was allowing these numbers to affect my mood. And interestingly, as soon as I stopped trying to force those numbers to conform with my preconceived ideas of what those numbers should be, they all fell into line.
Really, it's just eerie. My site visitors? They've been above 200 daily visitors for the past week. That's about 50 more a day that I'd been getting. On Twitter, I just broke the 200 mark for followers. That's double the number of followers I had just two weeks ago. Same with Facebook.
I've gotten more blog comments this week than I got last month.
More important, I have more energy and feel calmer and happier---because I've stopped struggling. I've found that sweet spot where everything feels just right. Life couldn't be better.
Help Alisa improve her stats. Check out her blog and leave a comment and subscribe. Follow her on Twitter. Tell all of your friends about her. Send her a message and let her know how much you love her stuff.
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