How to Get Unstuck

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Rasheed

When I decided to start blogging, I was paralyzed with fear about how am I going to come up with ideas to write about everyday, or every week.

Then I received an email that became the inspiration for my first blog entry.

Lately, I have been paralyzed again. This time with the overwhelm caused by my own fear of  inadequacy. A totally illogical fear, I must admit, but real nonetheless.

I stopped blogging for a while and I almost quit. But deep down inside I knew that I can’t quit, I won’t quit. I had just stopped believing in myself and in My Self.

But the thing about Your Self is that it never stops believing in YOU. It will provide you with everything you need to succeed. It will make your life miserable if you do not heed to its calling and when you finally give in, it will help you see that everything you need is there. All you need to do is BE YOURSELF.

First, I read a blog post from Jonathon Mead, then a newsletter from Sandy Dempsey and one from Ashley at the Middle Finger Project. This was followed up by a blog entry from Chris Guillebeau. It pulled me out of the doldrums and I had a thought that I wanted to turn into a blog post, so I sat down to write.

Am I writing about the idea I had? No. But I am writing, and that is what My Self has been telling me to do all along. Rasheed, just sit down and start writing. It kept encouraging me to think on paper, and that’s what I am doing here, just thinking on paper (or keyboard)?

So, if you’re ever lost, or get stuck, and don’t know what to write about, just start thinking on paper, and something of value will show up, and if you think it has no value, share it anyway. You never know whom it will inspire, just as all the above mentioned things inspired me. You never know. What you write may be just the thing someone needs to read and it will get to them at just the right moment, and thanks to the Internet, it may happen a hundred years from now. But does it really matter? What matters is that you got going and now you feel good about yourself because you broke the curse of being idle.

Was this helpful to you? Have you had similar experience? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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I Almost Killed This Blog

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Rasheed

It is true. I almost did.

Good thing almost doesn’t count.

As I go through self excavation and self realization, I am finding that I have many passions in life that I want to pursue. Unfortunately, the society tries to convince us that we can only do one at a time if we want to be successful. I say Bullshit! (that is my new favorite word and you will hear me say it often, or maybe not)

As you can tell I have not been alive for a while. Sure, I wasn’t dead, but I sure acted like it. I was barely existing. The life energy was drained and I was feeling down. I even wrote a post announcing that I am shutting down this blog to start a new one. Fortunately, it took me a while to get the new one going, and I realized that I don’t need to kill this one to have that one.

For me, it is not about having the best blog or high traffic blog. I want it to be fun. I am going to make it fun. Like it was when I started this blog. Then I saw some of the blogger who started at the same time as I did take off and became big name bloggers (Corbett Barr, Tammy Strobel, Karol Gajda and Sean Ogle to name a few)  and I started wondering what I was doing wrong.

It all boils down to being yourself. They were, and I wasn’t. I was trying to be like everyone else. So, I decided to start a blog about Being Yourself (the other blog I was talking about), only to realize that if my focus is on following everyone else’s advice about how to build a blog, then I am not being myself, am I? and if I am not being myself, how can I write about being yourself. Duh!

Then I realized that this blog is well suited to talk about issues of being yourself. After all, it is all about living life on your terms.

So, I decided I will keep writing here AND I’ll start other blogs as I see a need to pursue my other interests such as Writing, Entrepreneurship and Photography, and they may all overlap and interconnect, as they are all part of me.

I am planning to make some changes here, mainly to the look of the blog, so look for it in coming weeks.

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How to Fire Your Boss

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Rasheed

Are you sick and tired of your non-fulfilling job?

Don’t you sometimes feel like telling your boss “Take this job and shove it?”

Well you can. I have done it on several occasions. Not in those exact words, but rather tactfully, and often after giving them several warnings.

A paradigm Shift

The first step to firing your boss is a Paradigm shift. You need to see your boss for who he is. Someone who is using your services. He needs you because you have something to offer that no one else can.

What? You say that it’s not true? Well, then you’re screwed. If what you have to offer to the world, and your boss, is dime  a dozen, then you’re stuck. But, fortunately,  that is not the case.

You see, you are a one of kind human being, and no one else can be you. So if you add your personality and your attitude to the set of skills that you offer, then you are already offering your boss more than anyone else, provided your attitude is a positive and helping one. If you help your boss make more money, then he would be a fool to let you go, and if he is a fool, then you can let him go and work for someone else. Someone who would appreciate what you have to offer.

Easier said than done, you might say, given the current economic conditions. But the opposite is really true.

Hang with me here. If the economy is really tough, wouldn’t it make sense for the companies to hire the best employees? Ones that are worth more than everyone else? The ones who are a notch above the rest? And if you are one of those, wouldn’t the companies be looking for someone like you?

Like I said, the first step is a Paradigm Shift.

You need to stop seeing yourself as an employee and start seeing yourself as an independent contractor who is renting out his services to the company that you work for, and you need to stop seeing your employers as your boss and start seeing them as your customer. If your customer is happy with what you have to offer, he will keep using your services and reward you accordingly.

The more you make yourself worth, the more you can charge for your services. Of course, your customer may not be interested in, or have any use for the extras that you are offering. In that case, you can find another customer who can use the services you have to offer and charge them accordingly.

That, my friend, is how you fire your boss. It’s that simple.

Of course, if you see your employer as your customer, and yourself as an independent contractor, then it would be foolish to rely on only one customer. But that is a topic for another blog post.

You have just become a member of a Joyfully Jobless tribe, as Barbara Winter would call it.

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No more Lies

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Rasheed

Several months back I wrote something profound on my Facebook status.

You can gain a few things here and there by lying to others, but you lose everything when you lie to yourself.

I know it was profound, because people told me so.

But that in itself is a lie. I knew it was profound, and that’s why I put it on my FB page. Others just confirmed it.

I have been lying to myself a lot lately, and it has got me into a lot of trouble.

I don’t want to lie to myself anymore.

I know I am worth a lot more than I’ve given myself credit for, and like the old saying goes, “I bargained with life for a penny, and life would pay me no more.”

I have accomplished a lot in my life of 56+ years, but I was only focusing on the mistakes I made and regretting what I could’ve accomplished had I not made those mistakes. What I didn’t realize – but I do now – is that had I not made those mistakes, I wouldn’t be where I am today. And where I am today is a mighty place to be proud of, if I stop lying to myself.

As Edison said, “I haven’t failed. I know thousands of ways NOT to make a light bulb.”

Next step, make a list of ALL the accomplishments and post it above the desk to remind myself not to lie to myself anymore. Maybe I’ll share some of the major ones here.

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Taking a Sabbatical

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Rasheed

This has been long time coming.

You may have noticed that I am posting less and less frequently on here. I started this blog over a year ago, inspired and excited by my desire to be a nomad and living a nomadic lifestyle.

That desire is still alive and well. However, life happened in the meantime and I realized that this is not the most important aspect of my life at this moment, and since I am not actively nomading, I find it hard to motivate myself to write here.

Then a funny thing happened when I woke up this morning. I received my weekly dose of @SandyFromNJ in form of her weekly Newsletter, talking about “What does money mean to you?” Tucked in that newsletter was a link to a blog post she had written earlier in the week, Chasing a Niche, or Not.

I had fallen prey to the conventional wisdom, forgetting the immortal words of one of mentors, Ron LaGrande, who said “Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.” I was trying to do things that was conventional in the blogging world, and not succeeding at any of them, because I can’t put my heart into any of them. They were just not me.

All the while ignoring my own advise, and the reason for which I had started this blog in the first place, to “Be Yourself.”

So, this will be the last post for a long while, or maybe not. As I realize that if I am going to dedicate myself to being who I am, I will be on the road soon enough and will have reasons to write here. But in the meantime, I am going to do some self exploration with awareness, rather than following this method or that. I used to write Morning Pages, and they were helpful, so I might start them again.

I am also going to go back and read the ones that I had written during the last year and see what insights I can gain from them and share those at yet another blog I am going to start. I have had the domain name for my name registered for more than five  years, but haven’t done anything with it, so why not put it to work.

I also have another domain name, www.MisterWeirdo.com that I have had for more than ten years, and I used to have a website there that is no longer available, and I can use that to express my weirdness. So, I will keep you posted on which route I decide to go. In the meantime, I would very much appreciate it if you have any thoughts or opinions about which one I should use. I know for a fact that the advice coming from my readers is not going to be along the lines of conventional wisdom. :-)

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