Rahway New Jersey USA
I am typing these words from sunny New Jersey USA.
I flew from London Gatwick to JFK in Queens NYC recently after spending 10 months in:
- Scotland
- Turkey
- Amsterdam
- England
Some consider me lucky. Some think me to be blessed. Others believe that I deserve it.
What do I think?
I am the guy experiencing this life….ya know? 🙂
Getting inside of my mind makes sense. I did it. Trust the one who did it to explain how he did it.
Perhaps more importantly, trust the guy who did it to point out common pitfalls on this journey.
I wish to discuss something that I call the Movie Effect.
Suffering from the Movie Effect goads most people to think that luck, blessings or some other random, external factor plays into someone living their dreams.
The What
People walk into a movie theater.
Movie goers spend 2 hours in real time watching images from 20, 40 or 80 years of a human being’s life time flash by on a screen.
Delusion ensues.
Someone spends 20 years of their lifetime mastering a craft. But the 20 years make up only 30 minutes of the movie.
Since most humans only see things through their personal perspective, most believe that someone who invested 15,000 hours to become a master was:
- lucky
- blessed
- gifted
- talented
- special
instead of reality biting them in the ass.
During those 15,000 hours, all manner of heavy fears pop up on the horizon. Nobody talks about that in the 30 minutes of the movie. Perhaps people in the theater see one or two big obstacles to surmount. Hollywood actors often do convincing jobs to convey pain, suffering and loss. Yet most minds cannot conceptualize what devoting 15,000 hours of their lives to skills mastery feels like, let alone facing most of their deepest fears on a seeming conveyor belt at times.
Dazed, the majority of minds assume that luck or an easy journey must be the root cause of someone living their dream lives.
The How
Believing that some bloggers:
- have all the luck
- experience easy success
forces most bloggers to believe in their:
- unluckiness
- bumpy blogging path
all but guarantees failure.
I seemed doomed to blogging failure for a while. Nothing happened easily for me. I assumed since top bloggers made things look easy that blogging always came easily to them.
I blamed my unluckiness and bumpy blogging journey for my failure. By default, I refused to look within my mind as the cause of my struggles. Why would I? Unluckiness and impossible to surmount obstacles handcuffed me.
I vividly remember one highly successful blogger in the network marketing industry. He made boatloads of cash. All appeared to flow to him with stunning ease.
The network marketing blogger racked up leads like it was nothing. He spoke confidently on stage. Handsome, married to a beautiful wife, he had it made. Unlike me of course, the pathetic loser blogger stricken by a lack of luck, cursed to forever be a blogging victim of the world I saw.
I believed he was just lucky. I figured that he was born that way.
Later did I learn how awfully he struggled for years before making it big.
Consider this to be another classic case of the movie effect poisoning your mind.
I saw the success snapshots spanning a few seconds and made a snap judgment.
I later realized the years of his life that he invested towards mastering his network marketing craft, struggling like the dickens at times along the way.
His life appeared to be a dream movie from my pinhole of a perspective.
But he practiced for 1000’s of hours during some dark times to experience his dreams.
The Wake Up Call
I eventually became fed up with struggling.
Pros told me to take responsibility for my failure.
I did.
I looked into my mind.
Fear in my mind projected onto the world made the obstacle in the world. Facing, feeling and forgiving my fears let solutions to obstacles arise. I acted on solutions. I succeeded.
Looking within was the answer.
I let go any concept of the Movie Effect to know this:
- taking full responsibility for your blogging work and results is the only way to succeed
- years go into blogging successfully
- bloggers spend 1000’s of hours working intelligently before things gradually come together
The Movie Effect and Blogging
I began to watch movies with the Movie Effect filter in my mind.
Most inspirational stories become fantasy land. Since all life events need to be shoehorned into 2 hours it makes sense to gloss over the work. Yet I know from personal experience that the work brings the results. Not only that, but highly-detailed, thorough, patient blogging work performed over years brings the dream life everyone thirsts for consistently.
I think in terms of 20 years when seeing an author writing for 30 seconds in a movie.
Ditto for any skill one develops on the big screen.
Do it yourself. Try it the next time you watch a movie of some inspirational figure. Think about the rest of the story. Consider what the individual really experienced.
Hold an idea of reality in your mind. See the snippet in terms of decades. Observe talent as being the by-product of diligent work executed for 1000’s of hours.
Ground yourself in reality to do the same work.
Release delusions.
Relax; you will be here for a while.
How Does this Sound?
Do you nod your head to these concepts?
Or does reality irritate you?
Does blogging sound like too much work? Thank yourself now for letting reality dawn on your mind. Bloggers waste years chasing easy results; it never happens.
Let feelings arise in your mind.
I bet some of you feel relieved. The big-time work now becomes par for the course. Reality feels good for this crowd because it proves you are on the right track. Normalize the work. Feel relaxed.
Key Point
Blogging work is never mindless. Nor do you get paid for every blogging action completed.
Blogging never works that way because running a blog is not a job. Blogging feels like a job sometimes. But building assets works differently than completing a job for a steady paycheck. Employees do that. Entrepreneurs patiently build assets. Intelligently built assets generate passive traffic and passive income. But building your blog into a strong asset takes great time and consistent work.
Businesses never spit out cash like an ATM at the beginning.
Running an online business through blogging is building an asset patiently before the cash rolls in consistently.
Drill this idea into your mind.
The work is an investment in your freedom.
But you need to do the blogging work to experience worldly freedom.
Conclusion
The Movie Effect is ever present.
Everyone loves a good flick.
Now you know how to separate fiction from fact.
Never be fooled by impossibly short time frames portrayed by Hollywood. Unfortunately, the machine wishes you to think of yourself as just some bum watching from the cheap seats. The onscreen specials have all the luck, unlike you. Never buy into that worldly pecking order bullshit.
5 minutes from a movie turns out to be 15 years – or longer – in a real world experience.
Take heart, my blogging buddies.
See the work as a freedom investment not a punishing sacrifice.
Sometimes this gig feels challenging.
But everything works for your good.
