Do you ever feel like everyone else is having more success than you are?
That’s one of the worst feelings in the world.
It can be jealousy, perceived failure, and frustration all rolled up into one tangled ball of confusion in your mind. What am I doing wrong? Why am I not seeing more success implementing this strategy? Why does no one seem to care about this endeavor that I’ve spent months of my free time building up?
These are all questions that may be floating around in your head when you reach that breaking point where you feel like all of your efforts have been wasted.
Well you know what, they haven’t been wasted.
How to Stay Positive (When Everyone is Doing Better than You
There was a time when I almost quit blogging. It was a couple years ago, and even though there was a lot of bright spots, I didn’t feel like I was making progress as quickly as I should have been.
Jealousy of my peers really began to set in. This is one of those things that most bloggers or entrepreneurs feel at one point or another – but very few choose to write about it. There were a handful of people who started blogging within months of when I did in 2009 that I always compared myself to.
They each had a lot of success online. They’ve each done things in unique ways that have inspired interest and helped them scale up their businesses quickly. There were times that I was jealous as hell of those guys, and wished that my business was growing as fast as theirs. The frustration that I wasn’t moving faster was so intense, that at one point I considered throwing in the towel and quitting altogether – or at least changing paths a bit.
Then I remembered something. Even though subjectively, they were having more success than me at that moment, there were hundreds if not thousands that never made it. I looked at what I had accomplished, and when I objectively took a step back, it was a lot.
The reality is, despite my competitive nature and jealousy, I had everything I needed already. The freedom of time, enough money to do the things I wanted to, and a vehicle with which to help people in the process.
Fast forward to now, the business has been blowing up, my travels are taking me to awesome places every month, and I couldn’t be happier with where things are at.
There are times when you rough patches that you can’t help but think irrationally. You get trapped in your own endless loop of negative thoughts which build on each other every time they go around.
So when you get to that point where frustration is getting the better of you and you don’t know how to proceed, what should you do?
Here’s some thoughts based on my experience:
Take a Step Back
Consider where you’re at and everything you’ve already done. Just by virtue of the fact you’re wanting and striving to make positive changes in your life, you’re ahead of the game. Most people never make the conscious decision to do that, and go on with their life thinking that wherever they’re at is “good enough” even if deep down they don’t believe it.
Take a step back, look at what you’ve already done, and try and put things into perspective. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your business and new lifestyle.
Assess Your Target Market
Oftentimes the source of our struggle isn’t because we’ve implemented a bad strategy, it’s because we’ve implemented it towards a bad market. When you got started did you ever test to see if people actually wanted the product of services you were providing? Did you ask anyone in the market you were going into or do a survey?
I’m willing to bet that you may need to tweak your offering to either go more targeted or less niche. While it’s true there is a niche for everything, depending on what you’re offering there may or may not be enough buyers to built a sustainable business around it at this point.
For instance, there’s probably a niche for custom craftsman who specialize in building wooden tackle boxes. You might even be able to make some money teaching people how to make wooden tackle boxes, but if you’re offering $2,000/month consulting for how to start a custom wooden tackle box building business, then you may be offering services that the market doesn’t want.
Alternately, if you’re offering services to “build a website” and your target market is everyone, because well, you can build a website for everyone – chances are that’s too broad. No one feels that special bond with you, because you’re not targeting anyone in particular. If this is your problem, niche it down and market to a smaller market of people you have more in common with.
Talk to your friends
It’s no secret that one of the best ways to build something new is to surround yourself with people doing the same thing (that’s why I built Location Rebel Academy). However what happens when those peers you started talking with on a regular basis start having more success than you? What happens when that jealousy creeps up and you realize you aren’t quite where you want to be in relation to everyone else.
The solution is easy: talk to them. Chances are they’d jump at the opportunity to help you, because they want to see you succeed too! Ask to have a conversation or perhaps a mastermind call where all they do is help you with your business, it’s amazing what 30 minutes on the phone like that can do.
Pretty much everytime I talk to my buddy Matt Giovanisci I learn something incredibly valuable for my business.
He’s even generous with his advice for you as well:
Talk to your friends, they want to help.
I have a feeling that if you’re struggling, implementing each of these three ideas is going to get you unstuck real quick and put you back on the path to ass-kicking.
What do you think? How do you get unstuck when you’re feeling down?
Sean Ogle
Sean Ogle is the Founder of Location Rebel where he has spent the last 12+ years teaching people how to build online businesses that give them the freedom to do more of the things they like to do in life. When he's not in the coffee shops of Portland, or the beaches of Bali, he's probably sneaking into some other high-class establishment where he most certainly doesn't belong.Join over 40,000 people who have taken our 6 part freelance writing course. Sign up below and let’s do this together.
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