Personal Change

In defense of bad headlines

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I like to get my contact with the world through a news board called Hacker News. It works just like other news boards — popular and interesting article stick around for a longer time. In general, even the most popular articles stick around for only a few hours.

Yesterday, I went on Hacker News and I saw a terribly uninteresting article had appeared on the front page. The headline ran:

“What’s SAP, and why’s it worth $163B?”

“Geez,” I said, “who cares? I know all I need to know about SAP. It’s some big enterprise software company. Why would I ever want to read more about that?”

So I ignored this article.

And I had to keep ignoring it because a few hours later it was still there, getting more and more upvotes.

This morning, I sat down on a park bench with a croissant and checked Hacker News again. “What’s SAP” was still there, with about 10x the average upvotes of all the other posts on the HN front page.
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I sighed, hung my head, and clicked to read this stupid article.

​​And you know what?

It was fascinating.

I won’t repeat the article here. I will just tell you that it put the current moment into a bigger context and taught me something new about my world. (And yes, that new thing was about enterprise software.)

But this article did more than that.

For example, did you know that until the 1990s, 90% of software sold was custom-built, and not off-the-shelf?

Of course, today, it’s the exact opposite.

Which made me think about the direct response business. Could we be in a similar, pre-1990s situation right now when it comes to DR marketing funnels and sales copy? As in, 90% of copy today is still custom-written, instead of off-the-shelf?

You might say it’s a stupid question, and that it’s impossible to have off-the-shelf sales copy and marketing.

​​Or you might say it already happened, with companies like Clickfunnels, and with niche marketing providers like Vyral Marketing for real estate agents.

Whatever.

The point of this email is not this question of custom-built vs. off-the-shelf marketing. The point is simply that the “What’s SAP” article got me thinking in a new way.

And that’s really what I want to share with you today. A defense of bad headlines.

Because if you find yourself magically attracted to a headline — “I gotta read this!” — odds are good it’s because you are looking for confirmation of previously held views… or perhaps some small update on a topic you already know too much about.

On the other hand, when you find yourself completely repelled by a headline (“What’s SAP”), it might be time to stop and say, “Sounds horrific! But let me see what this is about.”

A couple days ago, I shared a talk given by a very successful and very influential marketer, Dan Kennedy, about thriving during a recession. In that talk, Dan said:

You pay attention to everybody else who’s in your business. It’s like being Amish. It works just like real incest. Everybody gets dumber and dumber and dumber until the whole thing just grinds to a halt.

So you can’t do that. You’ve got to pay attention outside your little Amish community of jewelers or carpet cleaners or whatever it is that, up until tonight, you thought you were.

You’ve got to pay attention to other stuff because you ain’t going to find any breakthroughs in the five other people standing in a circle looking at you. They aren’t any smarter than you are. They are probably dumber than you are.

I think that covers the M and the B in my M+B+C email formula. Now as for that C:

You might or might not already know that I offer an Email Marketing Audit.

So far, I’ve been selling my Email Marketing Audit by referring to results I have achieved for businesses I’ve worked with. The increases in conversion rates in email funnels… the millions of dollars of sales made by writing emails and managing email lists.

But there’s another good reason you might want to get me to look at your email marketing:

​​My non-Amish breadth of of experience in this field.

Off top of my head, I’ve consulted and worked on email funnels to sell weight loss supplements… shipping containers… pet supplies… sex and dating info products… essential oils… Internet marketing… fermented food preparation kits… realtor services… and real estate investing education.

Do you think this breadth of experience might help you and your business get out of incestuous and closed-minded marketing practices?

In case you do, ​​here’s where to go to get my Email Marketing Audit:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

I will attempt to make you salivate with this email

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Some time ago, I sent an email with the nonsense subject line:

“The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way”

That was in response to a message I got from a mysterious reader. He sent me an email with no body, with just a file attached. The file had seven “tested and proven” subject line templates, which I mashed together to produce that monster above.

A bit of fun to prove a point. I thought that would be the end of it.

Except, a few days ago, my mysterious “won’t even say hello” correspondent popped up again. Another empty-bodied email. Another file attached.

This file promised to teach me “How to Make Your Reader Salivate Over Your Offer.”

The file described a sales technique. I won’t repeat it here. While it’s solid sales advice, it really won’t make anyone anywhere salivate.

I mean, really.

​​Have you ever found yourself literally salivating at a bit of sales copy? Staring at the screen, your lips parted, your tongue lolling around your mouth, having to swallow hard every few seconds?

Of course not. That kind of physical reaction is impossible to produce with words alone. Right?

Right. Or maybe not right. ​Because here’s a passage that this “make your reader salivate” stuff brought to my mind:

​For instance, just think of the word lemon, or get a quick image of a lemon and notice your response.

​​Now see a richly yellow 3-D image of the same lemon, and imagine slicing it in half with a sharp knife. Listen to the sound the knife makes as it slices through, and watch some of the juice squirt out, and small the lemon scent released.

​​Now reach out to pick up one of the lemon halves and bring it slowly to your mouth to taste it. Listen to the sound that your teeth make as hey bite into the juicy pulp, and feel the sour juice run into your mouth. Again, notice your response. Are you salivating a bit more than you did when you just had a word or a brief image of a lemon?

This passage comes from a self-help book. It’s in a chapter on getting motivated. It describes a technique that’s supposed to make you want an outcome more. Because as Seth Godin wrote a while ago:

Humans are unique in their ability to willingly change. We can change our attitude, our appearance and our skillset.

But only when we want to.

The hard part, then, isn’t the changing it.

It’s the wanting it.

I don’t know if the lemon technique above works in making you want to change. At least for the long term. But it doesn’t matter much.

My point is not how to achieve real change in yourself… but how to achieve the feeling of possible change in other people.

Because if you are in the business of direct response marketing… then much of your work consists of spiking up people’s feelings just long enough that they step out of the warm bathtub of their usual inactivity.

And that’s why popular self-help books might have a lot to offer you.

Which brings me to an offer that will almost certainly not make you salivate. In fact, this offer will probably not interest you or tempt you in the least.

Because my offer to you is the book from which I took that lemon passage above.

​​I already promoted that book extensively in this newsletter. It’s called NLP, and it was written by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner.

I promoted this book previously as a self-help book.

The value of this book as such is dubious, as is the value of all self-help books.

But the value of this book as a guide on how to stimulate the feeling of change and progress… of motivation and inspiration… in yourself and other people — that value is certain.

And for any marketer or copywriter who is willing and able to read the book as such, the book will be delicious. Maybe even mouthwatering. Figuratively speaking of course. In case you want it:

https://bejakovic.com/nlp

Chicken soup for the marketer’s, copywriter’s, and salesman’s soul

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“In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.”

The above quote is from David Foster Wallace, from his famous “This is Water” commencement speech at Kenyon College.

At some point in your life, you’ve probably either heard this exact quote on something very much like it. It’s basically cognitive behavioral therapy:

1. You only ever have a few pixels of evidence about what’s “really” going on.

2. Those pixels can fit into multiple consistent pictures.

3. Some of those pictures are more pleasant and useful for you to look at than others.

4. So you might as well focus on the useful and the pleasant pictures.

Pretty good advice, right?

Except, I happen to be professionally warped through my work as a direct response copywriter.

And so, while most people might see a healthy life lesson above, I see a sales technique.

A couple days ago, I talked about Sam Taggart, the door-to-door salesman profiled in a New Yorker article.

I showed you one way that Taggart deals with objections. But here’s another way, from the article:

Usually, once the customer realizes she’s being pitched, she’ll say anything to make the salesman go. When I canvassed with Taggart, I often felt anxious: They really want us to leave! But he interpreted every objection as an appeal for further information. He heard “I can’t afford it” as “Show me how I can afford it,” and “I already have a gun and a mean dog” as “What else do I need to fully protect my family?”

Taggart always takes objections as a request for more info, and questions as a sign of interest.

And why not?

Like DFW says above, it’s not impossible. In fact, in at least some situations, it’s exactly what’s happening.

When a potential customer or client asks you an accusatory question, or when they raise an insurmountable objection, those are just air bubbles on the surface of the ocean. You don’t really know what’s going on underneath the surface to produce those bubbles. So you might as well imagine a colorful and fun underwater party, populated by singing crabs and smiling tropical fish who really want you to succeed. “Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from meeeee…”

Anyways, the New Yorker profile of Sam Taggart doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of the guy. But that’s mainly New Yorker propaganda. And in any case, there’s a lot of value in that article, if you only, as they say, read between the lines.

I might write about some of that valuable stuff in the future. If you want to catch that when it comes out, sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street, and a bucket (these aren’t movies)

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For just a moment, think back to your high school days. And imagine you get home one day from a long hard seven hours of being unpopular and ridiculous…

… ​​only to find your parents sitting on the couch, arms crossed, waiting for you.

Without a word, your father stands up, grabs you by the arm, and leads you to a spare room. He locks you in there — it’s for your own good, he says. There’s a bucket in there in case you really need to pee.

The next day, you’re allowed to go to school again. But when you get back home, the same thing happens. Room, lock, bucket. And this goes on for months.

So now the trick question:

How do you think you would feel about this?

Think about that for a moment.

And once you’re done thinking, let me suggest that the reality of how you would feel might be quite different from what you just imagined.

At least that’s what I learned in a fascinating talk by Rich Schefren, to whom this room-bucket story actually happened.

You might know of Rich already. I’ve mentioned him literally hundreds of times in this newsletter.

Rich is a super smart and successful marketer. He’s one of the people in this business I respect and admire the most.

All that respect and admiration came from listening to Rich talk about business, about marketing, about writing.

“Boy this guy is insightful,” I always think to myself, “and really nice to boot.”

But the fact is, all this time I knew nothing of Rich’s crazy life story, except that at one point he ran a downtown Manhattan clothing store and at another time a hypnosis center.

I didn’t know anything about Rich’s teenage association with the actual Goodfellas in New York… I didn’t know about that room with the bucket… I didn’t know he worked in a boiler room while Jordan Belfort aka the Wolf of Wall Street performed his famous “One-Call Close.”

I’m a copywriter and I’ve hyped up gurus before. Meaning that, I know all the usual elements of origin stories in the DR world — I was living in a van down by the river, my parents hung up on me when I called them for help, my wife left me and took everything but the cat.

And yet, even though I’m so jaded, Rich’s story actually made me say, “Holy calf, this is crazy.”

So Rich’s talk is worth watching just because his story is fascinating.

But then there’s the back end of the talk, where Rich ties it up with some life lessons.

Now in general, I’m allergic to life lesson porn.

But if there is anybody I would take life lessons from, it’s Rich Schefren.

And in fact, over the past week, I’ve gone back in my head over and over to the story of Rich in the room with the bucket, and the conclusion he drew from this experience.

In case you are curious, you can hear Rich talk all about it, and about many other interesting things, at the link below:

https://pages.strategicprofits.com/rich-diamond-day-c

How I might repurpose this email

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I don’t watch a lot of movies that have come out in the past 30 years, but when I do watch ’em, I like the ones that are low-brow.

For example, I loved Knocked Up.

Knocked Up is a Judd Apatow comedy in which a bunch of aimless bros are working to launch fleshofthestars.com. That’s a website where you can go look up the exact timestamp when different Hollywood stars appear naked in a movie. Presumably, so you can go and see your favorite actress’s nipples for a fraction of a second.

Knocked Up came out in 2007. Boy, how the world has changed in just those 15 years.

For example, this morning I found out that something like the reverse of fleshofthestars.com exists today.

It’s called Unconsenting Media. It’s a website that allows you to look up which movies feature which type of sexual assault. Presumably, so you can avoid watching the movie and being traumatized or re-traumatized.

And it’s not just for humans and sex.

Another modern site, Does The Dog Die, tracks movies in which, as you might guess, the dog dies. Enough people find such movies traumatic that Does The Dog Die gets an estimated 414,000+ visitors each month in an attempt to avoid dog-dying movies.

And now, you’re probably looking at me through the screen expectantly.

“Ok that’s kind of curious,” you’re probably saying. “So what exactly is your point with the above?”

To tell you the whole truth and a few things besides the truth, there is no point. That’s because I already had a fixed idea in mind today, a valuable point I wanted to share with you. And it’s something completely unrelated:

Reuse work you do.

It’s hard to get rich if you are creating one-off custom work, unless you are Pablo Picasso.

Likewise, it’s hard to get productive if, say, you spend hours researching and then writing an email, which is consumed in just a minute or two by your readers, and then you throw it away and start all over the next day.

But the trouble is, it usually takes me a lot of time and effort just to present a valuable idea in an appealing and surprising way.

​​Sometimes, like today, I fail at even that. Sometimes I can’t connect the fun/new/interesting thing I want to tell you, with the valuable point I want to make.

So if on top of that, I add in the requirement to create something which I can reuse… well, I often get completely locked up before I even write anything.

The good news is, the two parts of “info” and “tainment” don’t really need to be tightly linked.

And more good news:

​Content doesn’t have to created with reuse in mind… in order to be reusable. So, you could say that my point today is really:

Do work you can reuse, and reuse work you have done.

That’s what I did with my 10 Commandments book a couple years ago. Some of the book was repurposed content I had written already for this newsletter, with the book in mind.

But some of the book was entirely new. Still, I repurposed it later for this newsletter. For example, I reused Commandment III within a daily email a few days ago. To which a reader named Phil Butler wrote in to say:

===

Hey John,

I bought and read your book last night.

It’s a great read, and this commandment was by far my favourite. Although I’ve heard it a million times before, it didn’t click properly until I read your IOU analogy.

Thanks a ton…

Best $4 I’ve spent in ages.

===

The fact is, I’ve used and reused the content from this book so much that, if you have the time and energy, you can search around my newsletter archive on my website, and you will be able to piece together almost all my 10 Commandments book.

Or, if you have $4.99, you can find the whole collection packaged up beautifully for you at the link below. Some people say it’s a great read. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Rejection stings, but this might help

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“You have to love yourself first. How else can you expect anyone else to love you?”

I knew a girl once who shared that bit of wisdom with me. I was young and naive and it sounded reasonable.

But then I lived a bit more. There were times when — not only did I not love myself — I didn’t remotely like myself.

And yet, other people loved me. My mom and my dad, of course. Friends. Girlfriends. They didn’t know or didn’t care whether I found myself unlovable — they loved me.

Message received, loud and clear. So I concluded the following:

When somebody loves you, it says much more about them than about you. It says they are able and ready to love. All we know about you (not you specifically, you know what I mean) is that you are an adequate target for their love.

Anyways, that’s a bit of personal philosophy I wanted to share with you. I’m not trying to depress you, by the way. Quite the opposite.

Because I believe it works the same the other way around. If somebody does not love you… well, it says more about them than it says about you.

But this newsletter is about marketing and copywriting. So let me tie it up:

I bring this up in case you’re hustling, in business for yourself, or trying to flush customers or clients out of their hiding places. If that’s you, then you know (or soon will) that rejection is part of the game. Leads dismiss you. Clients leave you. Clients ignore you.

And?​​

It doesn’t say much about you. Not as long as you’re at least adequate. And if you’re not, that’s usually easy to fix.
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I’ve been rejected thousands of times, personally and in business. It stings almost every time. But little logical reminders, like the one above, can help.

Can help what?

They can help you go out there and get rejected again. They can help you keep working. Which is how you find success eventually — and even self-acceptance, if you haven’t got it now.

Anyways, on to JV opportunities:

​​Over the past couple days, I have been making a call for people who might be a good fit for my “cash buyers’ list​​”.

I’ve had a healthy number of people respond so far. Which makes me think there might still be more people out there who could be a good fit for this offer.

S​o if you haven’t taken me up on this invitation yet, and you want to know more about it, read on here:

​https://bejakovic.com/an-email-business-worth-0-52-billion-yes-billion/​​

Bejako goes back to school for a push

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I went back to school today. For the first time in 10+ years, I sat in class, behind a desk. With a bunch of other little idiots next to me, I listened to a smiling teacher as he pointed to his chest and said, “Me llamo Rubén. ¿Cómo te llamas?”

This went on for the better part of four hours, from 9am until 1pm.

For four precious hours, we went through the elementary particles of the Spanish language, presented at a snail’s pace. For four hours, I practiced saying the same damn things a million times to various Italians, Germans, and Greeks who were in the class with me.

You might have your doubts that this is an effective way to learn a language.

I have reasons to believe it will be useful.

And in any case, I’ll only do it for this week. This time investment (and during my most productive hours!) is not sustainable for longer than that. But I figure it’s worth doing at the start to kick things off.

And this brings me to one of the most valuable ideas that has shaped how I have run my career.

For example, I got going as a freelance copywriter by charging $5 for a 7-part email sequence.

Do you think that’s a shockingly low rate? Do you think I allowed myself to be exploited?

Who cares. I did it for a week and then I increased my rates a bit. And then a week later, I increased my rates a bit more. And then a bit more still.

Point being, it’s easy to fix and improve things once you get them going. But in most cases, the getting going is the hard part.

This isn’t my idea or observation, by the way. This is something I was fortunate enough to read a long time ago in an essay by somebody very rich, very successful, and very smart. Here’s what he said:

A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don’t. You build something, make it available, and if you’ve made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don’t, in which case the market must not exist.

Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going.

The guy who wrote that is Paul Graham, a multimillionaire computer programmer who started the early-stage investing firm Y Combinator (Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe).

Graham said that one of the most common pieces of advice they give Y Combinator is to Do Things That Don’t Scale.

Now at this point, I had a valuable caution to give my newsletter readers about Graham’s bit of advice. But I’m not including that on this public archived post. I often reserve the most valuable and important ideas for my newsletter readers. I have to reward them somehow. If you’d like to join them, and start getting my daily emails, you can sign up here.

An inspiring Aaron Winter recommendation

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If you are a bit of a word nerd, then I have something that might fascinate you:

The words free and friend are closely related, and both derive from an ancient root meaning love.

Maybe the path from love to friend seems straightforward.

But free? What’s love got to do with it?

Well, here’s the surprising explanation:

Apparently, the original meaning of free was “not a slave”. A free person was able engage in social relationships such as friendship and marriage. On the other hand, slavery was a condition in which all social bonds were cut off, and the only relation was being owned by the master.

Perhaps that sounds abstract. An example might help:

If a Roman legionnaire was captured in war, made into a slave, and then escaped and made it back home, he would have to go through laborious rituals to recreate his entire social network, including remarrying his wife. That’s because becoming a slave was equivalent to “social death” and the severing of all social ties.

That thing with the Roman wife and the free/friend etymology are two curious factoids I got from the book The Dawn of Everything.

This book takes a bunch of new anthropology and archeology research that has come out over the past few decades, and it turns upside-down what you might think of as well-established human history.

I’m telling you about all this because yesterday, I promised to tell you the most valuable thing I have gotten (so far) from the Dig.This.Zoom training.

Well, the recommendation to read The Dawn of Everything is it.

Partly, that’s because The Dawn of Everything is full of interesting tidbits like the free/friend etymology above.

But really, I found this book valuable because of how inspiring it is. Because through detailed argument and seemingly endless research, it makes the following point:

Human beings choose and shape the societies live in. There’s nothing inevitable about the way the world is, or about the way it’s going to develop.

Aaron Winter, the copywriter who is putting on the Dig.This.Zoom training, recommended this book to suggest that something similar holds on a smaller scale as well.

Aaron’s point was that you can choose and shape how you work, and with who you work. There’s nothing inevitable and you are not bound by industry norms, not if you don’t want to be.

Again, I found this inspiring. I always enjoy being reminded that we all have agency, and that we can choose and shape how our lives turn out, even though it might not be obvious in any given moment.

I’m not sure I’ve done enough to either motivate you or convince you with this email.

But perhaps you resonate on some level with the idea that today’s society is not the only possible one, and that very real paths exist to something better.

Or perhaps you are greedy for lots of interesting facts and arguments that will make you a more interesting person to your friends, acquaintances, or newsletter readers.

In either of these cases, you might get some value, or perhaps a lot, out of The Dawn of Everything. Here’s the link if you want to check it out:

https://bejakovic.com/dawn

Getting comfortable copybragging on Facebook

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Speaking on a podcast a while back, marketer and copywriter (though not freelance!) Chris Haddad had the following harsh truth to share:

“If I was a freelance copywriter, I would be posting on Facebook about copy all the time. And I would be posting all of my testimonials and all of my successes. Because that’s the gig. And if you can’t do it, you need to go out and do something else.”

Chris was saying how back in the day, what made him successful as a freelance copywriter is he was willing to go out and shout, “Hey I’m Chris Haddad and I’m fucking great.” But that kind of bragging causes a discomfort in his seat these days. It’s also one of the reasons Chris didn’t offer any copywriting training for the longest time.

What if you’re the same?

What if you have a fear of the spotlight, and you cannot imagine bragging about yourself on Facebook?

​​And what if, unlike Chris, you haven’t yet reached the levels of success that allow you to say, you know what, I’ll do something else instead?

Well, I think you’ve got several options. Such as creating your own product in a non-marketing niche… or writing a daily email newsletter in the hope of establishing your credibility without bragging… or taking a page out of Sasha Fierce’s book.

Yes, Sasha Fierce.

Maybe that rings a bell. Maybe no? It’s the alter ego that Beyonce created for herself in her early days. Here’s Beyonce:

“Usually when I hear the chords, when I put on my stilettos, like the moment right before when you’re nervous… then Sasha Fierce appears, and my posture and the way I speak and everything is different.”

Psychologists agree. By conducting experiments on children and the weak-willed, they have shown how inventing an alter-ego for yourself (or at least asking yourself, “What would Chris Haddad do?”) works wonders in changing your perspective, your resolve, and your behavior. ​​Search online for the “Batman Effect” if you want to know more about this.

But for now, maybe it’s time to start inventing a braggartly Facebook alterego for your copywriting business. It might not be what you like to hear. But as Chris says, that’s the gig.

Are you expecting me to finish this email by bragging myself?

No, I will save that for tomorrow’s email. I do have something to brag about, and it even involves Chris Haddad in a way. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. Sign up to my email newsletter if you’d like to read that when it comes out.

​​​​For today, if you’d like to hear all of Chris’s tough love insights into what it takes to be a successful freelance copywriter, then brace yourself, and then take a listen here:​

The Email Player Haters’ Ball

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A few years ago, Ben Settle revealed that he now makes over a million dollars a year from his emails and info products.

Bob Bly has long said how his own, twice-a-week email newsletter, plus collection of $39 ebooks, earns him a healthy 6-figure income to complement his client work.

And last December, it leaked out that Daniel Throssell’s 2021 email income was “significantly higher” than $250k.

So where does that leave me?

I’ll tell you where.

It leaves me on the stage of the Email Player Haters’ Ball, receiving the award for best Email Player Hater. Like Dave Chappelle in his Playa Haters’ Ball skit, I’ll start off my acceptance speech by saying:

“First off, I’d like to thank God Almighty for giving everyone else so much… and me so little. [boos from the crowd] I hate you… I hate you… I don’t even know you, but I hate your guts. I hope all the bad things in life happen to you, and nobody else but you. [more boos]”

I won’t tell you exactly what I made over the past year from this newsletter. Let’s just say it’s equivalent to a modest salary. It’s certainly much lower than Daniel, Bob, or Ben make from their newsletters.

But in spite of my joke Email Player Hater status, I’m not stressing about my newsletter earnings.

In part, that’s because I tell myself that every blockheaded and self-defeating thing I do with this newsletter serves a deeper purpose. It allows me to stick with it for the long term.

But also, I don’t stress because of something I do instinctively, or rather something I don’t do:

​​I don’t compare myself to others, at least when it comes to business and money.

Over the past six days, I’ve been telling you about the six characteristics of a positive mental attitude. Today it’s time for the last one:

​Self-to-self comparisons.

The idea is that if you want a positive mental attitude… then don’t be a player hater or a player admirer.

​​Don’t look at all the people ahead of you on the great treadmill of life, and don’t stress how they are all the way up there… and you’re all the way back here.

Instead, simply compare where you are right now to where you were yesterday, yestermonth, and yesteryear.
​
And that’s it. The end of my 6-part, positive-attitude, let-me-put-you-to-sleep series.

Maybe you feel that was a little abrupt. Maybe you’re even left feeling a little unsatisfied.

After all, self-to-self comparisons might be good. But isn’t there value in looking to others for inspiration?

And didn’t I even say in my email yesterday that it’s good to be inspired by a vision that’s tinted by envy and bitterness?

True.

And that’s not the only confusing and conflicted part of this positive attitude stuff.

The fact is, if keeping a positive mental attitude were easy and simple and direct, then everybody would be doing it, all the time. And everybody would be happy, healthy, and on their way to being successful, all the time.

Of course, that’s not what you see at your local Bed Bath & Beyond.

Having a positive attitude consistently, or at least when it matters, isn’t particularly natural to most people.

The good news is, being aware of what it takes is step one. That’s what you have now.

But it will still take some repetition, practice, and maybe even juggling for this to have any chance to sink into your subconscious. For it to be useful the next time you might be recovering from a bad injury… or learning how to play the tuba… or building out an email-based business.

To help you get that repetition and practice, you can always reread these emails. Or just sign up for my email newsletter, and let me do all the work for you.