As I mentioned in my previous post, Looking Back at One Year of Blogging, it was a year of ups and down and a lot of meaningful personal growth. The lessons I learned are personally meaningful, and some of them are so basic that I am embarrassed to admit it in public that it took me 56 years of a lifetime to learn them.

1. Keep your word At least on two occasions (Guadalupe Peak and Passionate Pursuits) I made a public commitment to do something that I did not follow through on. The loss of credibility, and the resulting loss of subscribers and readership caused by those two incidents is something I have yet to recover from.

2. Own your mistakes Not only did I make commitments that I didn’t live up to, but I failed to acknowledge that I had made mistakes. Instead, I tried to hide my weakness by making excuses. I learned that what they say about excuses is true; that they are like a certain part of human anatomy, everyone has one and it stinks.

3. Write regularly Another mistake I made, that I am going to remedy this year is how frequently I post on the blog. Sometimes I blogged on consequent days and other times I went for weeks or even more than month between blog posts. While I know that I am never going to do this like clockwork, it’s just not in my nature, I realize that people expect to hear from me frequently enough to stay interested.

4. Learn the WP platform It took me almost eight months to figure out how to create a blogroll. I know, I know. And I still haven’t created a blogroll of my favorite blogs (dumb dumb dumb). I intend to get a premium theme and redesign this blog to reflect who I am and what I like. I intend to get some help so I can keep my word and have a new design by the end of July.

5. Network Effectively I have learned that there is more to networking than commenting on other blogs and occasionally showing up on Twitter and Facebook along with having the widgets do the posting on the big social networks. I intend to build alliances with other bloggers to cross promote each other and build visibility.

6. Have a Clear Mental Image I never really defined for myself what I wanted to accomplish with this blog, and as a result I faltered in what I was doing and never really had excellent quality content. I know I write effectively, but excellent content requires more than writing ability. I intend to tighten my focus and write along the predefined topics.

7. Give before you expect to receive The biggest boo boo I made was that I kept thinking of how I can make money with the blog without establishing myself first and without regard to the value I can provide. I was looking for a shortcut, forgetting all the while the definition of a short cut I learned as a child. “A short cut is the longest distance between two points.”

As I look over the list of lessons I have learned, I find a that there is an underlying thread that runs between them all. I guess it is a BONUS I got for being honest with myself. I realized that I made all these mistakes because I was not being true to myself and I was trying to do things from the “should” perspective. I was focusing on what I should do. I was focusing what should be a successful blog look like instead of what I wanted this blog to look like.

So the bonus lesson is that I need to stay true to myself and do what I like to do. It may not be what everyone say you should to be successful, but I have never been a do what everyone else does kind of a person. I have always followed my heart and gone against the grain to accomplish success in my life. Whenever I have achieved a high degree of success, it has always been by going against the grain.

When I look at people like Seth Godin, Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta and Jonathan Mead, I see people who established themselves as leaders by doing what others said was the wrong way to do things. I’ll never know what I am capable of achieving unless I am true to myself and follow my heart, even if it is against the norm; especially when it is against the norm.

What are your thoughts? Please share them in the comments below.