This process can do the same for you too.
Photo taken by the author
What an emotional rollercoaster the last few years have been. Financially, I’ve tripled my income, but what out-shadows that is the meaning I’ve found in the process.
You may want more in your life, and the goal of increasing your income may exist. What has hit me recently is that it’s who you become in the process that makes you triple your income.
Tripling your income is a result of the person you have become. And how do you become that person, you may ask?
By realizing and putting the following into action:
Create Something Bigger Than Yourself
The goal in the process of finding meaning is to commit to something that’s bigger than yourself. Making money is nice, but it’s also selfish. What if you made more money and used some of it toward a cause you care about?
That’s something bigger than yourself.
If you’re a writer like me, what if having lots of ‘likes’ was something you didn’t focus on, and instead, you put your attention to measurably helping a few people? When the goal becomes more than likes and helps others in the process, the extra income happens, and you find not only something bigger than yourself, but you derive meaning from it.
It’s hard to derive meaning from something that’s completely selfish. Go beyond yourself.
Have a Dream
Don’t let the haters tell you that you can’t have your dream. You might be miles away from that dream, and that’s OK.
When I started writing, my friend rang me one day and said to give up. He said that without a Wordpress blog, SEO skills, and a team around me, I would never direct traffic toward my blog articles. What did I do? I had a dream.
Instead, I found a Wordpress blog that did have traffic and understood SEO, and then I published my articles there to begin with. Thankfully, this dream of being a writer was not held back by the limitations and possibilities of someone else’s thinking.
It’s OK to dream — it’s the seed from which everything starts. If you believe the dream is a possibility, then it can become a reality.
Work at It for a Decent Amount of Time
This writing dream of mine has been going for more than five years. Nothing worth achieving, or that will add meaning to your life, will happen overnight. Here are the two issues we face in the process:
1. We give up too easily
The amount of time I get emails saying things like, “My YouTube channel has ten videos and no one is watching them — I want to give up,” is far too frequent. All it takes is a bit of silence or no attention and we’re ready to give up.
That is why you have to do it for yourself in the beginning and believe that you can change the world with your skills and experience.
2. We measure results too early
If you’re trying to measure the results of putting in the hard work too early, you’ll likely give up. You may only have one to two readers or three people in your audience, but you have to start from somewhere.
For the first few years of my writing career, I paid very little attention to the results because all they would do is make me depressed and distract me from continuing to hone my skills. Completely turning off the analytics when you’re just starting can be incredibly helpful.
Support Others Along the Way
Through the process of increasing your income and finding meaning in your life, there will be others doing exactly the same thing.
Learning to acknowledge the others who are following a similar process or in the same line of work as you helps you keep things in perspective.
When the people around you win, you can dissect what they did, talk to them, support them, and uncover the insights you need to do the same in your life. All it takes is a comment on someone’s work, a nice email saying hi, or stopping someone in the street to acknowledge their work.
Practicing this has helped attract the people to my work who have answers and ideas that I haven’t found for myself.
When you help others win, they, in turn, want to see you win.
It’s the circle of life, to put it in the words of “The Lion King.” (OK, let’s not sing the theme song.)
Be Approachable
The reason people read my work is because they feel connected to what I’m talking about. I do my best to engage with readers and share their stories or tell them what worked for me.
Being approachable goes a long way. The number of times I’ve met someone I admired in real life only to find out that they’re not approachable, are in love with themselves, and are a completely different person, is greater than you can imagine.
That is why I evaluate and aspire to be like people that I’ve met rather than the false, fluffy idols that social media tells me are congruent with who I am.
Show Gratitude When Things Go Right
There’s so much failure you have to deal with when you go after something that many people tell you is ridiculous. There are so many low points, false starts, and dead ends. Most of the process looks like this.
That is why when something goes your way or you have a small amount of success, you have to be grateful for it. Gratitude reminds you that this success you’ve just felt is rare, unusual, and worth taking the time to look at in-depth and celebrate.
The reason I’ve tripled my income has a lot to do with those strangers that helped me and believed in me. That is why my gratitude is directed, for the most part, toward acknowledging these people and consistently reminding them of how they have helped.
Saying thank you once is not enough. Once is expected, whereas saying thank you ten plus time is unexpected and good for the soul.
Never Forget Where You Came From
We often start from a fairly shitty place, and never forgetting that will serve you well.
See a bit of yourself in those who are trying to rise up and do what you’ve already achieved.
My buddy Joel gave me a break in writing, and that’s why I always remind myself of where I started. Rather than talk down to people, talk to them at the same level, as though you’re in exactly the same position as them.
Too many times, I see people rise from nothing and talk down to the very people they were like only a year or so before. Remembering your roots keeps you grounded and shields you from an ego that would love you to forget.
Tripling your income and finding meaning in your life is not a miracle. You start from having neither of these two privileges.
Make a Commitment
I wouldn’t be sitting here today typing these words if I didn’t become obsessed with the most important part of the process: commitment.
When you add commitment to your daily process, you unlock your potential and set up a habit that’s hard to break. The habit of commitment becomes an addiction, and it’s one of the few healthy addictions in life. The day I stopped going from one idea to the next and scheduled writing into my diary permanently was the day everything changed.
The commitment to do the work was a contract with myself that, in my mind, could not be broken. Make no mistake, though — this commitment was hard.
Being committed when I had a near-miss with cancer was scary.
Being committed when I broke up with a romantic partner was heartbreaking.
Being committed when my career fell apart was hard to do when the online world became curious and asked questions.
Being committed when a group of bullies targeted me and took everything I’d worked for and spat it out as comedy, lies, and meaningless words was soul-crushing.
Each time, it would have been easy to give up the commitment or take a break from being committed. In fact, this will shock you:
On the hardest days, the words I typed had more passion, usefulness, and truth than the words I typed when everything was fine.
Commitment is how I tripled my income and found a meaning for my life in the process. The same tool will work for you when you make a decision and refuse to go back on your word.
Raw Honesty With Yourself
It’s easy to live a lie or fall into a delusion deeper than the sea surrounding the Titanic. Learning to be honest with myself has helped me get real when things get out of hand.
Let me give you an excellent example: Last week, D-Rock from Gary Vaynerchuk’s team let me post a short video on Gary’s Instagram. Moments later, my ego got the better of me. I shared the video from Gary’s Instagram and only hours later realized how ridiculous it was.
I got real with myself and saw my mistake. I saw what my ego had done and how pointless it was to share a moment like this with the world that only had value for me. Nobody else was paying attention. This sort of raw honesty has been useful and stopped me from becoming a dreaded influencer, and it has helped me stay in my lane which is being a writer.
The same is true for you. Learning to have this sort of raw honesty with yourself becomes like a course correction when the vehicle of your life starts heading off a cliff with you in the driver’s seat.
Comments / 0