3 things I suck at

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Lately I’ve been really feeling like I have Blogger’s block.  I sit down to write a Blog post and somehow two hours later find myself watching the latest funny YouTube video’s or watching the sales video’s from the three billion make money online emails I get per day.

I think I could seriously get a PhD in product launch strategies with all the product launches I’ve seen in the last 6 months.

Anyway, I was thinking about why I’m having such a tough time writing Blog posts lately and I realized that it may have something to do with the fact that I burned my goals and don’t really have any new major successes to report lately as I haven’t had any goals.  Don’t get me wrong, in some ways I’m happier with my life now than I have ever been before but at the same time it just feels different because I’m so goal oriented anymore.  I always find it really easy to Blog about some new development or some new accomplishment or even some new major concept or enlightened idea I’ve had, but lately most of my personal transformation has been internal and is very difficult to describe externally.

I mean, it’s not very exciting to write that I spent four hours meditating on the definition of the word “the Universe” the other day and had some interesting insights on the concept of “control” that I can’t explain yet but which have shifted things in my mind.  Nor can I really yet explain how I’m finding fulfillment and bliss in something as simple as painting Warhammer miniatures, or watching my dog sleep.

I have also been doing some balancing work around connecting with and opening up my Heart Chakra and my empathic (Clairsentient) abilities.  This has shot my ability to sense people’s energy through the roof during my coaching/mentoring sessions which has been very helpful to my clients, but has also had the side effect of making me super sensitive emotionally.  I’m normally the exact opposite of emotional but lately things have been very interesting to say the least.  The other day I watched the movie Hatchi: A Dog’s Tale and I cried for like an hour.

Like I said, I’ve been going through a lot of internal work lately but not a lot of that is easy to Blog about.

I just got back from having dinner with my younger brother where we were discussing Blogging and when I got home I finally got inspired to write a Blog post about something.  Since I haven’t been inspired to share any successes lately, I decided that maybe it’s time to write about some of my “failures” or more accurately about stuff that I suck at.

I’ve been noticing lately that not a lot of Bloggers write about their weaknesses.  Most just talk about their strengths.  So I figured, what the heck, why not share some of my weaknesses.  Maybe it will help some of you realize that you don’t have to be “that good” to be successful.  I never try to portray myself as “that good” at everything.  There are a few things I’m really good at, but there are also a lot of things that I suck at.

Maybe some of you can relate to some of these.  Some of these may surprise some of you as well.  So, here goes.  Here are some things I really suck at…

When I was still in elementary school, my younger brother and I got our first paid jobs delivering flyers.  We made somewhere in the range of $8 – $15/month doing that.  It was crappy pay but for a kids income that was the most money we ever made.  I remember saving up every single penny of what we earned and buying a Nintendo Game Boy for $150.  I don’t know how we managed to do that as it must have taken almost a year to save up for it, but I’ll never forget how happy we felt when we bought that thing.  It was awesome.

Later when I was a teenager going to high school, I worked part time at McDonalds.  My paychecks were somewhere around the $200-$300/m range and the thing I wanted most in my life was my own car so I saved my money like crazy.  I still remember the day when I went to talk to my Dad about buying my own car.  He said yes he would go car shopping with me once I saved up the money to buy one.  What he didn’t know is that I had $1,800 in cash saved up, stashed in my secret box in my dresser.

I’m pretty sure he thought he was agreeing to something that wouldn’t happen for months or even years, but I ran downstairs and came back with $1,800 cash and asked him when we could go shopping for a car.  A few weeks later I was the proud owner of a used, rusty, poo brown 1983 Honda Accord.  That was my first car and I loved it.

In those days I was an awesome saver.  I could save for anything.

Today I totally suck at saving money.  I would say that mostly it’s because I really suck at making a consistent income.  I honestly find it impossible to budget because I never know what my income is going to be in any given month.

In the last ten years I’ve had periods of time when I haven’t paid myself anything for a year straight even though I was working full time, and other times when I’ve made six-figures in a single month.  Sometimes I find it really easy to manifest large sums of money relatively easily and quickly, while other times I find myself making next to nothing for months.  This makes it really difficult to budget.

The funny thing is that I actually have a background in financial services and I used to put together financial plans and budgets for people and the businesses I used to run so I know exactly how to do it, it’s just that I can’t make a budget work for my style of income generation.

I’ve tried using everything from Microsoft Money to Quicken and many other budgeting software packages to put together a budget.  The first thing these software packages ask you to enter is your monthly salary.  My answer to that is “I don’t know” and the software can’t help me.

I have tried doing a budget where I just track my expenses which are a lot more stable than my income, but then what typically happens is that every time I look at my budget I find my energy levels dropping and I move away from a state of “abundance energy” to a state of “worry energy” and then I find it even harder to manifest money.

I think budgets are for “normal” people with a normal standard monthly salary and with regular expenses.  For me I’ve never been able to make them work.

Most high income entrepreneurs I know fall into two categories.  Those that are amazing at budgeting and saving money, and those who totally suck at it like me.  I typically find that the ones who suck at budgeting make more money in life.  But that could be my own beliefs seeing what they want to see because I hate budgeting so much.

I think the pattern I’ve noticed in my life is that the better I get at manifesting large quantities of money quickly, the less value I put on budgeting and saving money.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing – it probably isn’t – but I just can’t get motivated to budget or save.

I have been told by some of the most successful Bloggers out there that one of the biggest factors behind building a successful Blog is to Blog consistently.  They say that it doesn’t matter if you Blog once a week or twenty times a week.  What’s important is consistency.  I know some Bloggers who have six or more months worth of content already pre-written for their Blogs that they release every week like clockwork.

For me, I have never been able to write content ahead of time.  As soon as I finish writing a post I want to publish it immediately.  I can’t stand putting it in the queue to be time released later on.  If anything I might delay the publish date by a few hours but even that is rare.

The few times I have tried writing a post and then post dating it a few days forward, I found myself going back and trying to re-write the post or deleted it all together because I didn’t like it as much as I did when I wrote it.

Once again I can’t get myself to make a schedule of what I’m going to write about on a given day.  I either get inspired and just start writing, or I don’t.

I do know that if I was more consistent with my blogging my Blog would be way more successful by now and I probably would make a way more consistent income which might help me with my budgeting issue, but I haven’t been able to get myself to do that yet.

When I try to write because I have to write my brain shuts down.  It throws a tantrum and it doesn’t want to write anything.  When I’m inspired, such as right now as I’m writing this article I can pump out content so fast my fingers hurt from speed typing.

That is why if you look through my archives you will see spurts of inspiration when I’ve Blogged consistently for months and other months that are “dry”.

I want to find a way to keep my writing more consistent because I think it is important.  I just need to find a way to be inspired to write more consistently.  I think it may have to do with the way I perceive the purpose of my Blog.  So far I’ve mostly been trying to write “useful – success oriented” content that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with and testing before I write about it.  Maybe I just need to write and not worry about that.

If I started sharing a lot of my “half-baked” ideas I’d definitely have a lot more content than when I only share the “fully baked” ones.

Right now I think I’m the fattest I’ve ever been in my life.  I weighed myself earlier and I weight about 216lbs.  Four months ago I did a weight loss competition with Tyler Cruz and lost 15lbs in a relatively short period of time (35 days I think) and had my weight down from 212lbs to 197lbs.  Now I’ve gained all of that back and more.  I’m almost 20lbs heavier than I was just four months ago.

There are three main factors influencing my weight gain.

Firstly, when I’m not making as much money as I’d like to be making I always find that eating healthy and exercising is something that I’m just not inspired to focus on.  When I’m happy with my income I always find myself excited about taking care of my body, but when my income suffers all my energy seems to flow into trying to get that fixed and exercise and healthy eating become a low priority.  I’m not saying this is a smart way to live, but it’s just a pattern I’ve noticed with myself.

Secondly, after my competition with Tyler Cruz ended I once again had no real “purpose” behind exercising and losing weight.  I’ve been thinking about this lately.  All the people I know who are really healthy and fit all have a purpose behind their healthy bodies.  For example maybe they’re personal trainers at a gym, or they work in the health industry or they’re professional body builders or they sell eBooks on fitness.  I don’t know very many people who are healthy and fit who just do it for no reason.  Meaning I don’t know many people who do it just to be healthy.

Thirdly, with my wife being away I’ve been ordering a lot of food / delivery.  I’ve gotten better in the last three weeks, finally starting to cook my own meals but prior to that I’ve been eating way too much crappy food.  Part of the problem is that when I tried making meals before I found the recipes my wife and I used to make to be way to cumbersome to make for one person.

I mean there were days where it would take me like three hours to make dinner if you count going to the store to pickup what I needed, coming home, cooking it, eating, packing up the leftovers, and then cleaning up.  Not only that but the cost of the meal was more than if I just ordered delivery or picked something up.  Cooking for one person definitely takes a bit of getting used to.  I am getting better at it though.  I’ve started to figure out some really quick recipes that are delicious, semi-healthy and only take like 10-15 minutes to make.

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.  What are some of the things that you still suck at in life?  Care to share?