Are you making it impossible for yourself to win?

Whether they know it or not, the vast majority of people reading this message are currently making it impossible for themselves to win.

Allow me to explain, by asking you a few questions:

• When will you have enough Twitter followers, Facebook fans or Linkedin contacts?
• When will you have enough blog readers?
• When will you have enough newsletter subscribers?

A race we can’t finish, let alone win!

Most people know they want more followers, fans, readers and subscribers, but that’s it. As such, they have entered into a game, where it’s both impossible to finish and impossible to win.

Here’s the thing: Being part of a game we can’t possibly win, negatively impacts how we feel about ourselves and our work.

Playing this unwinnable game also causes good people to act in a way they are not proud of. It encourages them to spam us with requests to follow them, ‘like’ them or subscribe to them. It causes them to get angry, when we unfollow them or unsubscribe.

As a consequence, they damage their reputation; as clients, prospective clients and contacts start thinking of them as being needy.

An alternative focus

Why not forget about building those numbers and focus on building value, instead? Let’s aim for progress rather than movement. Let’s avoid following the masses, who confuse activity with productivity. Let’s set ourselves up to win every day, by:

• Being as useful as we can be, every day.
• Building someone up with our encouragement, every day.
• Sharing something of value with people, every day.
• Learning something new, every day.

This approach leaves the marketplace feeling better about who we are and what we do. More importantly, it makes US feel better about it too!