There is no simple solution to anything. Social media is full of advertisements teaching us the correct way to do something, to reach a goal, or hit the jackpot of riches with three easy steps. At the same time, you’re browsing on a stream of LinkedIn posts, opinion pieces, and quotes that overrule, contradict, and question the methods that someone else has sworn to be the route to happiness.
When I started my life coaching business, I took multiple different courses trying to figure out the things that I didn’t have previous expertise in. The business side of things, the marketing side of things, the social media side of things. I was doing exercises on creating the perfect customer personas, honing in on my niche, practicing my elevator pitch, acquiring the organizational tools that I would need, and planning on how to spend my time, personal investments, etc. There were so many things that I needed to learn, and I didn’t have quick answers on how to do any of it. I was a golden calf for marketers of miraculous, fast way courses to whatever it was that I needed.
One of my new ventures was Instagram. After hearing over and over how this platform works as a great marketing tool, I created my account, and hired a person to work on my Instagram posting. She drafted a proposal for a master plan on how to build an audience. Her scheme stated what kind of posts I should put out on my feed and when. On Mondays, we’ll provide customers value by giving quick tips. On Wednesdays, we’ll send out inspirational quotes. On Thursdays, we’ll give them a peek into my personal life to earn their trust and to help them relate to me. You know, the kinds of posts that show my followers how approachable, humble, and real I am. That I’m a human, a mom, and just like them. A person you could have a beer with. You feel me? On Fridays, we’ll advertise services, and on the weekends, we’ll add something lighter, maybe a mini reading with the cards. Oh, how fun!
Most of these ideas, to me, seemed ridiculous. Especially the quick How To -tips. Posting about things like “How to reach enlightenment in 5 easy steps”, doesn’t really match with my own ideas of these topics, but hey, quick tips are what the audience wants, right?! I have since taken many of these posts down, but part of me hasn’t felt rebellious or confident enough to take all of them out due to sheer peer pressure for volume and content. More posts, more credibility, or that’s what they say… Feel free to browse this ridiculousness in my feed’s earliest posts.
Anyhow, I knew that there is no simple and easy 3-step way to understand the law of attraction or any of the more complex concepts. But as the fight for people’s attention gets more aggressive by the day with the pop-up ads, email marketing, Instagram posts, LinkedIn updates, Facebook groups, Tik-Tok, YouTube, text messages, phone calls, DMs and so on, I was now supposed to provide three-swipe magical solutions for people whose attention span is about 16 seconds.
This was the time requirement my Instagram person gave me for reels that I was allowed to put in my Instagram account, otherwise people won’t watch them. Really?! 16 seconds!? How do you convey anything meaningful in 16 seconds? Mind you, that at this point, I didn’t even know that a reel is the same thing as a video. Why can’t we just call it a video? Beats me… but I’m not arguing against learning the jargon of something that’s new to me.
So, there I went ahead with my 16-second reels. And felt the frustration of trying to figure out how to use all the technical tools I had never needed before. I hadn’t spent any time learning the ins-and-outs of social media platforms, graphic software packages, templates, hashtags, and trending audios to create content. I didn’t know which buttons to press on my phone to post something. I didn’t understand the difference between a post and a reel and a story. The amount of reading instructions and watching YouTube tutorial videos was exhausting, but every time I figured something out, I felt victorious. Yes! An old dog can learn new tricks! Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise! Plus, I’m not old. That’s just a metaphor.
But all the while, I was wondering why I needed to put this much work on some ridiculous social media clips that were near embarrassing. Is this really the way to show my knowledge or expertise on a topic I want to discuss? Is this really the way I’m supposed to market myself so that I can get my slice of people’s attention? Is this the way to reach people and to influence them?
And the honest truth is that I still don’t know. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. I have attracted some people that may have benefited from the content I share, but I have also attracted a whole army of spam bots, salespeople and marketers that contact me to sell their shortcut to bliss via the same platform that I am trying to use for expanding my footprint. *Groan*. It is quite discouraging at times.
To summarize my example of the wonder-powers of Instagram as a marketing tool, I’m still waiting to see if it really is worth any of the hype. To me, it didn’t magically change my business to an overnight success. Or, maybe I’m using it somehow wrong…?
This morning, when I checked my email, LinkedIn notifications, Instagram, and Facebook messages, and saw that the majority, if not all, of those messages were from people who wanted to sell something to me. I saw titles like: “We guarantee 10k in sales in 30 days! We bring you 10 coaching clients or you don’t need to pay! With this method, you’ll have 10k followers within two weeks! This course will change your life! How are your sales funnels working for you? How are you recruiting new clients? Are you struggling with this or that? We guarantee the results you seek! Learn from me, I have done the work and now you don’t have to! Just pay me and I’ll show you how it’s done. Shrink years of learning into days! Don’t do it this way, do it my way!” And I’m thinking to myself that how is it that the whole world knows the shortcuts to whatever we are striving to achieve, and everyone has a course, or a method, or a program, or a training module that guarantees the best of results?!
I was having a conversation with my husband saying that I don’t really see that. I am not 100% sure that anyone can shrink years of trial and error, experience and insight, hands-on work, and sweat and tears into a few days of simple guidelines, quotes, and polished workflows. I don’t think that there is a shortcut to riches that you can learn from someone else. I am not sure if anyone can guarantee results for anybody else just by telling them to do what they have done.
When I see people advertise their successes, swearing by the validity of their own method, I can find just as many people who have succeeded in the same area with some other method. We hear TED Talks that simplify success to one single solution. People crave this kind of simplification. Because, well. It just makes great achievements seem less complex and less difficult.
I recently listened to one of these talks where the speaker had monitored individuals in varied environments such as kindergartens, military, business corporations, etc., trying to isolate the most important feature for an individual’s success in all these different settings. Her study was aimed to find the common denominator in people that were successful within their peer groups. Her conclusion was that the secret sauce for success was not the person’s social intelligence, not their intro-or extraversion, not their IQ or intellect, but grit. Grit as in perseverance and staying power. And as much as I agree that grit, persistence, or stick-to-itiveness certainly plays a role in successful people’s stories, I refuse to believe that our success would be guaranteed by mastering one single feature.
What if your grit makes you stick to something that’s not good for you? What if your grit comes out as stubborn foolishness leading you to bang your head against the wall pursuing a goal that will not bring you happiness in the end? What if your grit is burning you out?
In one of the psychic fairs, I was guiding a woman who wanted to know what she was supposed to do with her life. Her dream had been to enter law school but now she had decided to drop that dream. I was curious to know why, and she told me that she had been trying for seven years to get into a law school but hadn’t succeeded. Wow! Talk about grit!
When we think about simple solutions, how about offering this woman the advice of just having more grit? “Hey, if you want to succeed, why don’t you just have some more grit to go ahead and spend another seven years doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?!” Personally, I probably would have given up after a couple of tries, considered this roadblock to be a sign from the Universe that I’m not meant to be a lawyer, and reassessed my motives and drivers for my dream. I would have needed to deal with the disappointment and the sadness and move on.
As much as I congratulate myself on having Finnish sisu, which we Finns describe as “almost otherworldly determination, persistence, and stamina in the face of hopelessness and adversity”, I think I would’ve given up way earlier than after seven years. What if the success you seek doesn’t find you? What do you do then? After seven years, do you even want the same things in life anymore? Is this still your dream, or is it something that keeps you in place? Have you gotten attached to a fixed, limiting idea, that getting to this specific destination, will provide you with whatever it is that you feel is missing in your life. Will it, in the end, become your success, or is there a chance that with this never-ending pursuit of your dream, you’re blocking yourself from moving toward something else that could be more rewarding?
The more I analyze the way people market their services and successes, the more I realize that there is no one way that works for everyone. As a coach and a guide, I will teach and preach about the methods that have worked for me. Just like every other coach and teacher out there. But I do realize that what works for me may not work for you. One likes the mother; one likes the daughter. Not sure if that is an appropriate comment, but you get the point.
Every single person sees their own experience through their own eyes. What someone else gets from an experience, is not the same for the person standing next to them. Nothing is for everyone. And no single way or advice will ever work for everyone.
If nothing seems to work, it could be that we need to create a whole new way of approaching our goals because something that will eventually work, doesn’t even exist yet. By simply following the steps that someone else has traced, we can miss the chance to learn something valuable ourselves. Maybe becoming successful is not meant to happen overnight? Otherwise, we’ll rob ourselves of the experience of understanding the value of what we are trying to build. If everything is as easy as taking an online course and throwing some money at it, we’d all be millionaires. Anyone who has built anything worth mentioning, has had a journey worth a thousand stories.
Our achievements are something that we work for, otherwise we are just meeting our expectations. We will not consider something as an achievement if it doesn’t involve us to exceed some of our own preconceived notions of what we are capable of. It’s not an achievement unless we feel that we need to push ourselves to get there. So, really, truly, how can someone say that reaching success will be as easy as following these five steps? If we get there with just five easy steps, are we going to consider it a success?
Personally, I have tried multiple different approaches. By sampling life, so to say, I will gain invaluable experiences in what resonates (or makes sense to me) and what doesn’t. I like to use the idiom: Take what works and leave what doesn’t. And as much as I use it in my own life, I encourage all my clients to think this way as well, which to me means that I won’t take it personally if you don’t find enlightenment after a tarot card reading. I am not upset, if you say that the astrology interpretation doesn’t really make any sense to you, nor do I get angry if you say that Human Design sounds like total bogus.
I’m a scientist. I question everything. I am trained on arguing against shaky data and false assumptions. I am a professional in having conversations with people who are paid and highly trained to find loopholes in my data and in my experimental design. And I am paid and respected for doing this with other people’s hypotheses and conclusions as well. As a scientist, I embrace those hard questions that make you ponder if some other way would be better, faster, easier, or cheaper. I don’t mind being questioned about the methods and the techniques. I don’t take it personally if my arguments don’t make sense to you. It’s ok. Because it’s not my conclusions or explanations that matter. What matters is the experience I have gone through, and there is no arguing about that.
That is the reason I do this. The experience I have when someone is moved by something I say. The experience I have when I guide people and see a glimmer of hope in their eyes, or a spark of a thought that gives them something to percolate on. It’s experiencing the chills I have running down my spine when I know my intuition is speaking. Those are my successes, and I don’t need to argue, nor explain that.
When it comes to personal empowerment, development, self-care, call it what you will. Some methods will work, and some may not. But I’m sure that everyone can get at least something from the multitude of approaches that are out there. It may not be a fast track to enlightenment, but if I can raise one thought in your mind, something is moved in this Universe. If I can ignite a spark of curiosity, question, or an idea, I am already in my purpose. Even a triggered response, disdain, or negativity toward something I say can help someone strengthen their own convictions and self-image. This is how we change the world.
I keep doing my thing, offering my clients the smorgasbord of mystical approaches mixed with science and practical thinking. You want to have things explained in scientific terms, no problem. Like to have a high-level spiritual conversation, no problem. Need your fortune told, can do. Want to have your resume checked and practice for a job interview, love it. I offer all this, since I know that one size doesn’t fit all. One size doesn’t even fit most. What we all need to do is try, experiment, and try something again, maybe something else that works better or worse. That’s information gathering, folks. Data acquisition. That’s what we all need. So go ahead, question, challenge, be curious, and then go try something new. Your experience will be your data, not anyone else’s words about their experience!
The challenge to succeeding is not the fact that there are no methods available. Everybody seems to have a method, right?! The challenge is to have courage to step into a process of experimenting so that you know what feels good to you. You will find your success by experiencing what you like and don’t like, what strengths you have and what you still need to acquire, what feels easy and what doesn’t. Which activities energize you and which don’t.
And while you’re at it, and to confuse things just a little more, we need to remember that all these things evolve as you go along (or grow). The most frustrating parts might not be frustrating after you’ve done them a couple of times. The easiest things may not be the ones you consider important or the most enjoyable after a while. While you are in your process, your personality, confidence, purpose, mission, dreams, opportunities, challenges, and the direction will change as you take steps in experimenting and moving along. And this is one of the reasons why the linear, straight-cut, fast-track follow-my-instructions type of methodology can never be the ultimate answer. We can get the initial boost and start making progress with a whole lot of methods, but at the end of the day, we will need to keep on doing something and allow ourselves to evolve while we’re at it. The right method will find us eventually, and it can be a complex mix of different approaches and accumulated information. It could be that we don’t even call it a method at this point. Maybe just experience. And no amount of money can transfer experience from one person to another.
Like we scientists know; you can research, plan, brainstorm, hypothesize, and think about all the possible scenarios, but at the end of the day, you need to go into the lab and just do the experiment. So go and experiment. There’s no other way to know what the next step is.
