Being Myself Online Avoids Stress

Table of Contents

Yesterday I went to a truly wonderful “Success Comes From Within Workshop” and met some inspirational yet completely caring people who have reminded me that “being myself online” is perfectly OK.

Working On Mindset

I've been feeling I needed a bit of a “Mindset Topup” for a while now. Pressure of work, and a few other things were getting to me.

Then the invitation came from a lady who I knew from my days in the complementary therapy industry. I always enjoyed her events, and this one seemed pretty timely.

She's probably running it again and I don't want to pinch her material LOL. So here are just the first 2 pages of my copious notes which were particularly relevant to me at the moment.

There was lots more good stuff with practical exercises.

Shallow Measures Of Success

We started off by defining “Success”. Given the backgrounds of the other attendees (mainly complementary therapists), you won't be surprised to hear that it was NOT about:

Super-cars
Mega-riches
Having a big house
Celebrity friends
Expensive holidays

This is a group of people I can relate to, because in so many places of my life I'm already where I want to be, that I'm looking for a deeper meaning of success than those.

I already love my house, my car gets me from A-B safely, and I have a group of very close friends. I had two holidays in the last 12 months, and I'm a bit bored with holidays now to be honest. There's no place like home 🙂

So why am I doing all this home-business stuff you might ask?

Partly it's to have a supplementary income so that when I retire it can be at the same high standard of living that I currently have.

But mainly, it's for most of the reasons below….

Deeper Meaning Of Success

Here are a few of the ways success was defined / discussed within the group:

Self-confidence
Self-sufficiency
Empowerment
Growing and moving forward
Producing your own energy attracts happiness
Feeling fulfilled by what you do day-to-day, whether you call it work or play
Helping others less fortunate than ourselves
Achievement – and believing in what you're achieving
Being at peace

In fact we finally decided that “Success implies an end rather than a journey”.

As most of us preferred to think about continued accomplishment, we decided to “do away with” the term success for the rest of the day 🙂

One thing everyone agreed upon was “Don't judge yourself by other people's ideas of what you should be doing”.

Compartments of Accomplishment

We all drew a “Life Map” with ourself at the centre of our little universe and considered the following areas:

Relationships
Work Life
Financial
Fun and Recreation
Health and Well-being
Spirituality
Philanthropy

Most of us were lucky enough that we have some areas of life that are going swimmingly, while others need work.

Work-Life Balance

A few months ago I had already recognised that my work/life balance was too weighted towards work, so I started introducing lots of new things into my life:

Return to Church
Joined a Book Club
Volunteering for two charities
Went back to my line-dancing class
Yoga
Accepting more invitations from friends and even instigating some!

Largely these have been a great success and I started to feel I had a better life balance.

What Went Wrong?

So it's been a bit of a surprise to me to find that I had stopped looking forward to “work” – which used to be my reason for getting up each day. (OK, sad I know, but I love my work – normally!)

Of late, I've almost had to drag myself to the computer. Not for my offline work – that's as busy and enjoyable as ever. But the online work was getting me down. Why?

First let's flip back to the Success Mindset Day…

Three Core Elements Of Feeling Satisfied

We talked about:

Having a sense of self – the need to look yourself in the eye and feel good about where you are in life. Of special note was remembering that Facebook gives a distorted view of reality.
Taking responsibility and not being a victim. Control your attitude to life's side-swipes. You can't stop life getting in the way, but you can control how you respond to it.
Raising your consciousness and being kind even when faced with anger and negativity. Supporting those around you who are in pain.

Online Work Getting Me Down

It was number 1 that was getting to me.

I was not being myself online.

The group I'm working with to promote one program – a very nice bunch, by the way – are all doing Facebook marketing. Posting in groups and on their profiles and the dreaded videos. Regular readers know how I feel about those!

Yes, all the leaders tell me I should do videos, and I'm sure they're right, but it just isn't me.

Whilst I am “outing”, I have to confess that while I enjoy learning from SOME people's training videos, I'm much less keen on listening to people talking about “life”. I don't mean that to sound harsh, but some of them are just too long. Two minutes I'll listen to, and that's about it! I have a business (or four) to run.

Am I the only person running a part-time business online? Does everyone else have 24/7 Facebook (etc etc) exposure?

When I'm working on my offline businesses I need to work uninterrupted.
When I'm writing a blog post I don't want my flow broken
When I'm relaxing, I'm relaxing, not answering Facebook messages
When I'm out shopping I'm not sitting at my desk where I can give a professional answer to a client or lead
When I'm out with friends we all agree it's rude to keep your phone on beeping at you. I'm still of the generation that believes a mobile is for emergencies. Anyway I can barely hear the thing with all the poor and dropped connections. Unless it's an emergency, why on earth use a mobile when I'm sitting next to my nice clear landline?

Finally it dawned on me that pressure to do video marketing like one particular group is doing was just getting me down, causing me stress and draining enthusiasm for my online business.

Being Myself Online

I shared this at the group yesterday and had to concede that no-one was “making me” do it.

But the peer-pressure and guilt of not doing what “the group” was doing, was worrying me – to the extent that I was making excuses for “not working today”. Unheard of for me!

We talked it through at the meeting and concluded that, as long as I support the team effort in my own way, there was no reason for not being myself online.

So, going forward, I will be “me” again. I already feel stronger for making the decision.

Am I Alone?

Happily I was chatting to another very successful online marketer and he too agreed with me that he'd only said to his wife the other day that he was sick of all this video marketing stuff and had no intention of spending the rest of his life listening to people drone on in Facebook videos!

So I am delighted to have found two businesses that fit in with my own personality and lifestyle. They're very different, and each with their own different appeal:

I can be as active or passive as I like – but my team-leader produces amazingly professional videos for me.
The second one requires more active participation, regularly, but it's through blogging, which I enjoy.

You can read about them here.