3 Things I Suck At
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…
(1) Making a Consistent Income, Budgeting and Saving Money
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.
(2) Writing / Blogging Consistently
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.
(3) Consistently Eating Healthy and Exercising
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.
What Do You Suck At?
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. What are some of the things that you still suck at in life? Care to share?
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I have a problem with consistency too, like sticking to a single blog, blogging every day etc. And I believe it’s a real problem, because the only reason I’m here at your blog now is because I somehow get an email with your blog updates. If I don’t come across that email, I don’t show up, if you’re inconsistent. But if you wrote something every god damn day, I would show up, just to get to know you better. My friend Paul. And we not even friends in a normal sense. Personally I just like to connect with people, read about and understand what’s going on in their lives.
And I suck at making money, marketing, and getting enough calories.
Man, Paul, I’m struggling with all the same things right now. Every single one! Focusing on a budget when not making a solid income does send me into “worry energy” too. That’s a good way of putting it. For the most part, I let my wife handle the budget so I don’t have to see it and send my energy into a frenzy. Not the right way to do it, I know, but it works for now.
Blogging, oooh, blogging. I know if I just did it and stop worrying about how the content will come out, not only would my income grow but my confidence in producing more content would grow as well. But, like you, my brain says, “no, I don’t wanna!” Bastard!
Being healthy – last year I was down to about 202, lost 30 lbs training for a half-marathon. I felt great! This year, I gained 20 lbs back, up to about 18% body fat, and just ran a 5K (spur of the moment thing without training) and couldn’t even run the whole thing. Damnit, I wasn’t happy about that. I feel exactly like you describe. Since my income isn’t where I want it, I feel like I can’t get off the computer until it is.
As I’m writing this, it’s occurred to me that I may want to go back over Leo Babauta’s “Zen to Done” ebook. I may have to get my shit in order so I can move forward on all these goals. Worth a shot anyway.
Thanks for sharing Paul. It helps a lot to know I’m not alone here.
.-= Matt´s last blog ..Business Building Tips – August 31st =-.
It looks to me like all the things you mentioned are related and a result of dropping goals, as you mentioned.
Based on what I read, I would not say you are bad at income/budget/saving. You proved in your younger days that you were very good at it…when there was a desire to fill. A young kid saving for months/year? In my perspective, I would call that very dedicated. I can only imagine the temptations that might have presented themselves to challenge the budget/saving.
To me, money is boring. The consequences of not paying bills uncomfortable. The thrill of getting a new toy enjoyable.
Of course, the thrill of the new toy (goal) diminishes as I see some other toy I decide to want.
What happens when I realize every-thing I want is attainable, but it’s not ultimately the source of joy? What’s the point?
Yeah, in the past I think I was better at saving because I equated buying some material object like a Game Boy or a car with happiness. And even though those things did make me happy at the time, I now find that most material objects don’t really do that.
The ones that do, aren’t really that hard to save up for. For example, as I’ve mentioned many times in the last few months one of the biggest joys I’m getting from a material object is painting my Warhammer 40k miniatures. The starter set cost me $100 and the paints and paintbrushes and supplies maybe another $100. For a total investment of $200 I’ve been busy having fun with these things for weeks and I’m not even half way done painting the models.
Without a doubt making money from business. Working on it – but it is very deliberate and one foot in front of the other.
Hmmmm…..things I suck at, okay this will probably be depressing lol. FOCUS omg focus, my mind and effort wanders from project to project. ORGANIZATION, yeah this one is huge; my life much like my room is often in a state of fluxuating chaos. I’ve grown accustomed to this over time. Health is also a big issue as well. Gained like 30 pounds this year and can’t seem to motivate myself to workout. I also suck at motivating myself lol. Oh man I could probably go on for days but I won’t because I dont want to fall asleep while crying in my pillow tonight
Great post Pauly, its nice to hear someone admit that they have weaknesses or if you want to use double speak you can call them something like “opportunity for improvement.” Well at least you only suck at 3 things my list of things I suck at is continually growing lol.
Hey Paul,
Lately I’ve been really sucking at managing my money as well. I also have a problem with my income being inconsistent month-to-month…. and I completely agree with what you said… manifesting money is a problem for me when I’m not “set up” energetically to receive it because I’m not in a state of abundance… I’m realizing more and more that money is tied to this energetic state and it feels good…
Steve
I have had to do some soul searching as well lately. I pretty much suck at the same things you do but I need to add more to my list. i suck at relationships. I think I just need to get over it and be thankful I have a good job and accept i am supposed to be alone, at least for right now.
I LOVE THIS POST!!! I am glad to see that I am not the only one that has blog block, blocked blog, writers blocked head or whatever you call it. LOL
I have a terrible time everyday thinking about what to post on my blog. I have a blog, but have not actually started my blogging yet. I am doing so much great connecting and learning on Facebook. And like yourself, doing inner work on myself.
I also have the issue with eating at times when I feel I can’t write or not being where I want to be in my life. I want things to come out so perfect.
Thanks so much for sharing. I really enjoyed the read.
LOts of LOve!!!
I understand how Paul feels, because I feel the same way. Even with a proper timetable, I just can’t follow it. The way I push myself is by convincing myself with new goals.
Alvin.
.-= Computer Tips´s last blog ..iPad 42 Has Been JailBroken by Snowbreeze ! =-.
Well I would say I also don’t like to update my blog regularly but i have to do it as this is my bread and butter. I have made some timetable to this, but still it takes lot of toll out of me to do it.
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