Success is one thing that means a whole lot to different people.
As a digital hustler, success might mean having a lot of traffic to your blog like site A.
Getting interviews like site B. Or being in the limelight like site C.
Because that’s what everyone expects of you. Yes. It’s what you’ve been reading online ever since you started writing. It’s also what the gurus say about it.
Look at the timeline…
Starting from your family. As a young chap. They had expectations from you. And reaching those expectations is what meant success for them.
To your family, you couldn’t ever decide on what’s success to you. Success is what they say it is. So you did everything to achieve what they will finally accept as successful.
With this mindset you moved on to the school.
At school, your teachers saw you as a student just like every other students.
To them you were no different so they clustered you guys together. Set particular expectations for you (in form of examination, tests etc).
After your semester exams. They praised those that have achieved those expectations. Moved them to the next level.
Those that didn’t meet the expectations? They were seen as failures.
This raised the bar of competition. Making you to try to judge yourself based on what the best person in your niche/class/group is doing.
Again you got a job after school and moved into work. The cycle repeats itself.
You get promoted based on how good you are in bringing results that is remarkable to your boss /company. So until they applaud or approve you, you’re not a successful worker.
Notwithstanding what you’d rather want to contribute to the company. Or the things that is personal to you which can really move the company forward.
The company pushes you into a particular corner defined by them. And you begin to see just what comes out of that corner as a definition of success for you.
This happens in your place of worship too. Everyone! Every association gives you a particular yardstick for measuring success.
With this they foist a particular mindset on you as an individual that success is what must be celebrated externally not personally.
You see, it takes a lot to defeat this mindset. And you must do everything you can to defeat this mindset.
Because as a digital entrepreneur, your success is going to by defined a whole lot by your mindset.
You’re going to have to set expectations for your self and rate your success based on how much of your expectations you’ve achieved.
You’re going to start with setting up your goals for your digital business.
What exactly do you want to achieve right now?
You want to get more publicity for your blog, book or business?
You want to make more sales or get more people to subscribe to your email?
Set your target on what you really want to achieve and rate your success based on this.
In the digital world, you can’t rate yourself based on other people’s success.
It’s not that you can’t actually do this, thing is, your goals and experiences are quite different from that of these other guys.
It’s more like a blogger A who’s all out to get more leads measuring himself with blogger B who’s successfully getting enormous subscription to his email list (just because his focus is in getting email subscribers.)
It won’t work that way. In the end, you’ll only feel discouraged and disappointed.
Because you’ll think you’re not as successful as the other guy, whereas your goals are not the same.
And not just that, in this era of social media, where everyone can paint beautiful pictures of what is not, you’ll do yourself a lot of harm basing your success on what you read from blogs and social media posts.
This is not saying that you can’t aim to achieve or be more successful than others…
What I’m saying is this, as a digital entrepreneur, instead of trying to out beat the other guy or measure yourself based on his success, be inspired to attain your own success because he’s attained his.
Like if you see a blog that’s had hundred thousand hits per months and you admire it whereas your goal is to get hundred thousand sales from your blog per month, use the guy’s success as an inspiration to achieve yours. Don’t leave your goals for his own.
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