The more I value myself the more I realize a daunting truth: Not everyone deserves to know me. In the words of Rudy Francisco: “Some people will take until you have nothing left, and then hold a grudge against your hands for being empty.”
Tag: value
Acceptance
Value Yourself, Value Your Time
I don’t know who wrote this but I had to share it. It’s so true. We only work and spend our time according to how we see ourselves. Meaning that if we don’t think we are worthy then we are not going to value our time and therefore not do anything with it. Taking time to spend alone and reflect is not something that is optional for me. I believe that mental health is just as imperative as physical health but is highly underrated. Rarely do we consider mental clarity or offer exercises to help to maintain that kind of balance in our lives. Mental stability is just as important to me as physical health. Taking care of myself helps me to have the endurance to take care of others. Prayer, meditation, and just overall quite time gives me a chance to listen to my own thoughts, cultivate new writing ideas and examine where I am right now in my life, my goals, and those things that need to be improved. It helps me to be of service to my husband and to my community. The same way that reading and studying helps to exercise my brain, quite time and reflection help to clear my mind and organize my thoughts. For us to truly value our time I believe what the quotes says, we must first value ourselves. We have to know our worth in order to know what we’re worth. Only when we believe that we are truly worth it, will we have what it takes to truly appreciate these moments that too soon become memories.
Before The Week Ends: Quality Connections
It’s no secret. I pretty much blog like a madwoman so I actually have days I take off, which is the weekend pretty much with only very few exceptions. And although I should really be cleaning right now, I’d like to share something before we dig in for the weekend. Something that is on my heart, and that I also think is very important both for Indie Authors as well as anyone running a business or trying to run a business. This subject matter is concerning social media connections. And as always there is the disclaimer that this post is based on my experience and is not necessarily professional insight. For the record.
I would be very careful playing the numbers game with social media. Obviously you want more interactions, but don’t get frustrated, embarrassed, or beg if you do not have lots of Twitter followers, IG followers (I am staunchly against that app where they promise you thousands of followers. I want my connections genuine) or Facebook Likes. The reason I would not force these connections is because you just don’t want a whole bunch of people following you, but what you want is quality connections. By quality, I mean people who could really help you in achieving your goals. What is 4,000 Twitter followers worth when 3,000 of them are family members and friends? Don’t get me wrong, family is very supportive but they are also a conflict of interest. Since they’ve known you since forever and they love you so much you cannot count on them to really be honest about your work because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They also want to see you make it, which is great, but you need more than mom and dad on your bandwagon to really make some noise.
You need a community of support that is more than just your family members. What is 2,000 email subscriptions worth when you only have a 2 percent open rate? Open rate, it’s the percentage of people who actually open your emails. This is easy to track using Mailchimp. I don’t have a lot of subscriptions to my email list personally and I love that. Not that I do not want it to increase, but I want it to increase with quality and value. For now, I’m OK with not having many email subscribers (by subscribers I do not mean to this blog, I mean to my personal email list). I enjoy the close knit family I have currently signed up (by family I do not mean blood related, I mean those who support me. I call them family because they are. If you signed up, you would be family too. Not shameless plugging, just saying) because the open rate of the emails is still in the 30-40 percentiles which are great for only about fifty or so subscriptions. This means that most of the people who are signed up are actually opening and reading the newsletter as opposed to 1,000 subscribers of which only ten are engaged.
This same thing can be true of social media across the board. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook and I don’t get overly excited about the numbers. The reason I don’t get overly excited is because though people are there and obviously find something worthy because they like the page consistently, the interaction is low. This I can compare to the email list. If my Facebook Page was an email list I would only have a few opens. For this reason, Twitter is my favorite place right now. It’s my favorite place not because I have tons of followers. It’s my favorite because the interactions are high. People are actually engaging and the people following me are either readers, authors, editors, or professional business people (Note to Authors: Careful befriending JUST authors. Authors are not going to buy your books, readers are).
We live in a world where people ravish in the idea of being Internet Famous. But what we have to understand is that bragging is not branding. Having lots of followers and likes doesn’t mean anything if they are not coming from the right sources. What you want, more so than numbers is quality connections in an ethical / professional atmosphere. This means you want to leave what your sister in laws baby cousin Tracey did at the club last night out of your business accounts.
Making Money in a World Addicted to FREE—What Do Writers DO?
Most excellent article. Worth the read for Authors and Aspiring Authors.
I think we need to renegotiate the terms…
One of the reasons I did such a detailed post about the pop culture and how it’s impacting artists (A Culture Addicted to FREE) is that for us to make any solid plan, we need to gain a good understanding of how things are being run and also grasp current consumer habits.
To fix any problem, we must be aware of what are called operational constraints.
Operational constraints are any real or potential roadblocks in the way of our goals. If you ever do a S.W.O.T. Analysis, which I strongly recommend, it stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Any time we do business—which writing IS a business—we need an accurate picture of the terrain so we make wise business decisions and can plan ahead.
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The entire reason for me blogging about the impact streaming could…
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Book Reviews: The Value
Book reviews are, in my opinion, a double edged sword. It does not guarantee that people will buy your books but what it does is add value. When I go to purchase a book, if I had a desire to buy the book I’m going to purchase it anyway. I may scan the reviews yes, but whether or not I decide to buy depends on my initial thought processes before I even got to the authors page. If I’m still leery about purchasing I may depend more heavily on the review as opposed to if I already had my mind made up to buy.
Book reviews are interesting in that they validate that people are actually reading and discussing the book and I think this is what gives them their leverage. There are real life men and women who are interested in your work as an author and that adds a worth to them that becomes more important in the end than book sales. It’s a funny thing because book reviews do increase book sales to an extent (naturally) but they also turn out to serve a greater purpose. Book Reviews authenticate the author in many ways. One of these ways being that he or she have reached someone with their artistry. Its interesting because not everyone who reads a book will review it and that is why they are so special. Good reviews are like little compliments that help to encourage the author. Even if its just one person, the reviews help people to recognize the author as someone who is officially capable of using their skill set and talent to change lives.
Stop Wasting Time
You get up. Go to work. Complain at work. Blog at work and complain about blogging. Count the seconds until the day is over. The day is over. Go home. Make dinner. Kiss the wife / husband. Kiss the children. Complain about work tomorrow. Eat dinner. Go to bed. Get up. Go to work. Complain at work. Count the seconds until the day is over….
Has it ever occurred to us that there is more to life than just existing? How many of us can honestly say that we enjoy every minute of time we have in a day? By “enjoy” I do not mean spending your days partying like a rock star, going to clubs, getting rich or die trying. I mean as in to appreciate, or to value. Yes, your career or job may not be what you want at this time but you are there for a reason. It could be because your smile puts a smile on someone else face. Could be because your “Good Morning!” warms someone’s heart. It could be because your “weirdness” is not weird at all. If only the world was just as crazy as you are, maybe it would be in a far better place. If only it carried your light.
And what of those in-between moments? When your on lunch, what are you doing in that time? Are you reading and nourishing your mind? Are you studying for something? Are you seeking to be a better person today than you were yesterday?
And what of it when you come home? Are you cherishing those moments or complaining about them?
It would have been nice to have our expiration dates tattooed to our chest when we were born. To have written on our birth certificates:
March 12, 1956 – September 9, 2020
That would have been nice but it would have also made our lives a lot different than they are now. Many of us would be far better people and seek to live far better lives. We would give more, and we would care more. Except, this isn’t reality. The covenant we make to die when we breathe our first breath does not come with a date. And when its time to go, and our life flashes before our eyes, the years we wasted we are going to desperately want back. Do something today that is going to actually mean something when the dust settles and the gravediggers are singing your song.
The PBS Blog 