Commitment, what does it mean?

Those who study business or public administration or management learn that
people learn to lead by how they are led and will respond in predictable ways to
certain actions by their leader(s).

Psychologists, counselors learn that everything is by choice and all choices
have consequences, good, bad, desirable or undesirable. They also learn, as
do most people who attend self-awareness workshops or group therapy that
"not to decide is to decide" and "TRY to save a drowning man and he still
drowns -- you either save him or you don't."

In a breakfast of bacon and eggs, the chicken contributes. The pig is committed.

How are YOU going to live your life? What choices will you make? Will you just
try, contribute and lead or will you live a life of commitment, making your
choices, embracing them and enjoying the consequences? If you are choosing
to do your own thing by starting your own business, especially on the Internet, a
commitment is required if you are to succeed.

The committed life is the life of true freedom. Leading by committed example,
and not by pity me and threats to take "your dolls and dishes" or "bat and ball"
and go home every time things don't go your way or people challenge your
ideas or even just don't appreciate you as much as you think they should, is the
mark of a true leader. Sadly, most of us are not able to hit that mark very often.
When we do, however, it is a glorious moment.

Some of us choose to volunteer our time to help others personally or through
organized groups. That usually involves a certain amount of sacrifice of family
and personal time. Some people think that such sacrifice means that everyone,
from their family to other group members or subordinates, should thank them
and appreciate that sacrifice.

That is not a correct read of the matter most of the time. It is giving to get back,
instead of giving to help. It usually backfires. If you are looking for those you
help, your family, or those you work with, or people you volunteer with, to give
you thanks, love or total understanding, don't bother. It is not going to happen, at
least not very often at all. Expecting it is also a wrong choice. You'll get a handful
quicker by holding it on your anus.

The same applies to the commitment and sacrifices required to succeed in your
own business. Many people will not understand your decision. You can expect
to be asked, time and again, "When are you going to get a REAL job?"

If you become angry when this happens, or start to explain how you really like
the freedom of choosing your own hours and being personally responsible for
your success or failure, do not expect to get agreement or a pat on the back
from most of these people. They truly do not understand such "foolishness", as
they see it, as having any value.

It is better to just tell them that you are still looking and "fooling around a bit on the Internet" or "playing with a couple of business ideas" in your spare time. That is all that they will be able to understand until you are wildly successful. Even then, some will scratch their heads and consider your success some sort of fluke.

Don't put them down. See, most people are completely unwilling to commit to
their success because to do so means also committing to the possiblity of
failure with no one else to blame but themselves. For many, many people the
idea of failure at anything in an anethema.

They have to know that they will succeed at whatever they do and if, by some strange happening, they should fail, then they must be able to blame it on someone or something other than themselves and/or their inability to do what is required, i.e. to commit fully.

Therefore I challenge you, just as I do myself, to consider living a committed
life. It means embracing your decisions, embracing your successes, and, yes,
embracing your failures too. See, every failure is just one more step closer to
success.

There is no shame in failing. There is only shame in allowing failure to
define or stop you from continuing your life of commitment while learning from
that failure so as not to make the same mistake(s) again. That, from my
experience in many areas and lots of glorious failures, is the best and shortest
way to true success, be it in business, life in general, relationships or learning.

Twitterfied

I have been on Twitter for a few weeks now. It is a fun site to read and often confusing to follow. I know that using tweetdeck, a Twitter organization application, will help, once I get the hang of that program and the time to add in and group all of my followers. Still, following some 300 conversations all at once can be daunting.

Following a person by reading their home page directly is also a good way to get familiar with how much that person is using Twitter to advertise and how much the use is to form relationship bonds, or both. One can also find out if that person uses personal references in tweets or leaves them out entirely or partially and even whether or not that person's tweets are ever about their personality over their (mis)using Twitter just to constantly plug a website or an Internet skill, such as blogging or selling handmade items to and for me.

Some Twitter users want only to plug their sites or products constantly on Twitter. Some want only to be my cyberfriend or to become my pimp. None of these do I find at all appealing. Those who message me only to give me their knock my sox off bonafide ebook or program for marketing or getting traffic from social networking sites turn me off. I didn't join the Twitter community to just read ads all day!

What I did join for was to maybe get a handle on the thinking processes of some of the more successful Internet movers and shakers. I wanted to find out if those who say they want to help others learn to earn on the net really want that. I also hoped to discover how many of them really only wanted to earn mega bucks from my, and others' naivete' or, if you will, stupidity.

The fun thing is, I found much more than I had anticipated! The gurus are there. Yes, there are some Internet marketers who only advertise their seminars and programs on Twitter. Most of them are not the best known gurus however. The best known gurus do plug some of their stuff, true, but that is not all they do. Mostly, they kid one another about things, share their travel and home experiences and thoughts, and let others see who they are as people as well as gurus. Twitter is a tiny window into some of their thought process and, as such, is both fun and fascinating to just read and to tweet (participate with a 140 character message) when one has something to say or wants to share.

Asking questions on Twitter is a great way to gather information, or get fast help to solve a problem. The problem can be with your business, your site or even your marketing. If you ask a marketing question though, be prepared to get some recommendations for programs, systems and sites where you can find help. Twitter is not a forum or a message board for newbies, or even seasoned hands, to pick the minds of gurus for free instead of purchasing their latest system which addresses your problem.

Sometimes experts in various fields use Twitter to get input as to people's needs and questions about Internet Sales and Marketing. They will then host a symposium on one of the broadcast media with those questions as a base. Often the symposium will be free and will be advertised on Twitter, including ways one can actively participate in the broadcast discussion. Wednesday seems to be a popular day for such special broadcasts and symposiums.

Since tweets are limited to 140 characters I have noticed that some Twitter members hold an evening or day long forum on on or more topics. These are hosted on another site where longer posts are permitted. They can often be quite lively and are fun to read. Since they often contain lots of good information and learning or techniques used by other successful Internet marketers, they can be valuable to download or copy to notebook or to whichever word processing program you use.

I have been known to go back the next day (the site may stay up for a day or two after the forum/symposium is officially over) to download (save) the page to my computer and then I can copy it into my word processing program to use for my own information. As tempting as it is, I hesitate to make this saved material into a saleable ebook or report because, unless I ran the symposium, I don't have rights to the material or permission from the participants to use their posts. Always be sure YOU get permission to use a person's comments or posts in a product before you include them. Otherwise you will find yourself embroiled in lawsuits and will lose the trust of your forum/symposium participants. If you plan to use your forum contents for a book later, be upfront about it and let participants know up front and at the very top of every page that all contributions and posts become the property of the site owner or forum host and may be published at a later date in any form.

I digress. The joy of Twitter is the 140 character limit to each post, called a tweet. It puts everyone on an equal footing and prevents over domination of the medium by one person. It is also a challenge for everyone to say all they want to say in 140 characters or less. Abbreviations and use of symbols and numbers for words are common. Website urls are also abbreviated, mainly using TinyURL to shorten them before they are added to a tweet.

There are some fun "traditions" on Twitter too. Fridays are days to recommend other participants to follow. It's called Follow Friday and all of the recommendations have the append #FollowFriday in the tweet recommending others. If a member has some favorite or very interesting followers, the tweet goes something like this: @joelcom, @williecrawford & @steveweber r my faves this wk #FollowFriday. The # sign will automatically save that tweet to a list of #FollowFriday tweets which can then be searched and read.

It doesn't take long to learn enough Twitter conventions to participate. The @ before a username will record that message on a page of the username's Twitter home site. The # sign in a tweet also saves it to that list for searching. All tweets go immediately to the general list of everyone. Those tweets which appear on your home page are those of the people you have chosen to follow. A list of your followers appears in another page of your Twitter home site. From there you can choose to follow them back or to block them. Blocking them won't prevent them from reading your page, just from sending you direct messages (DMs) or from following you until you unblock them.

Following back is a courtesy, and I usually follow back those who follow me. Later, if I find a follower is flooding my page with all advertising tweets or becoming obnoxious, I can always go back and block that person. They will still be able to @ message me or read my stuff on my site. I just won't be inundated with their tweets.

Becoming twitterfied, i.e. an active Twitter participant is fun and informative. There are many groups of people on the site. I tend to search out and follow those involved in Internet marketing and sales on any level. I also follow and have some followers from the music industry, from broadcasting and from various healing arts and alternative medicine fields. There are, of course, jewelers, crafters and crocheters there too. It is an interesting mix of people who interest me or think they might find me interesting.

The danger of Twitter is that it is easy to become what I call Twitterfried. That is becoming so addicted to Twitter, or so interested in a conversation thread that one tweets and reads tweets all day and/or night to the detriment of one's business, family life and/or health. It is a very real temptation. If you are strong and can avoid it, then Twitter is a great way to quickly check in on what is going on in the world as you choose to see it, to form new relationships with likeminded people all over the world, and to advertise your Internet or offline wares as well as to learn more about your chosen profession. Enjoy! I do.