Nostalgia. © by uhhhlaine

It seems like as a society, we’re becoming more conscious of the things we do that seem to be futile and seek to eliminate them. Enter the New Year’s Resolution.

Some people think they are futile.

Others think they are stupid but that it’s a concept that can be rescued.

And you still find people who believe in the New Year’s Resolution, though statistically speaking, most of us will probably break ours, though it seems the very act of making a resolution has some intrinsic benefit.

In mock of this, my Resolution was to remember the faces of all 12 models of the Cyclons, “just in case”.

Of course, this is an impossible resolution because of Daniel model – and it’s the reason I chose it. Better to consciously break one and get it over with than agonize over one I actually believed in and hoped to achieve.

But when I look at the larger spectrum of my life and how I have struggled, and often succeeded to embrace change and reinvent myself, I have to disagree with people who say we can’t change or that we never achieve goals.

Goals vs Resolutions

Some studies show that the very act of writing down a goal, with no other intent, will help you get closer to achieving it (though the oft-referenced Harvard goal-setting study  is a myth, newer research finds this to be true).

So if having goals aren’t a bad thing, and some folks can seem to do that, why can’t we keep our New Year’s promises? And is there a way for us to keep our resolutions or are we all just kidding ourselves?

My personal observation is that we attempt to have a goal that is too lofty for us to believe, and then we add an expectation to reach it in an unreasonable amount of time.

In a nutshell- we set goals that cannot reasonably be achieved, and even if we are able to somehow get things done, the cost of maintenance is too high.

And yes, when we actually intend to attain a goal, most of us are taught to do this differently if we mean to make progress. We tend to see what the big picture we want for ourselves in, say, five years is, and then work backwards into manageable tasks we can complete to get closer little by little.

For that reason, I think one way to achieve a New Year’s Resolution is to keep our high aims reasonable and within reach.

Is Your Goal Reasonable and Believable?

Why shoot for 10,000 visitors a day by February, knowing you’re only getting 100 a day now, and don’t have the advertising budget or time in your schedule to get to that goal, that soon?

You’ll get a higher success rate by setting manageable goals that eventually lead to success- I’m a huge fan of under-achiever goal setting. There’s a great example of this discussed on page 186 of Robert Kiyosaki’s “Cash Flow Quadrant”.

The basic concept is, setting yourself an initial goal that is so ridiculously easy to achieve that you can’t help but continue to achieve it. Then when you reach that goal for whatever set period of time you’ve chosen, set a slightly higher goal.

When he wanted to get in shape, he set a goal of five minutes. Honestly, who can’t fit in five minutes of exercise. You achieve that, you make the goal bigger, and so on. The benefits here are two fold. As the book puts it:

Set attainable daily goals that, when achieved, provide positive reinforcement to help you stay on path to the big goal.

By achieving a little bit – you are doing SOMETHING, rather than constantly missing the mark completely by doing nothing due to overwhelm. And you could still get to your 10k a day visitor goal – but at a rate of 25 new people a day, who stick, it’s much more likely to achieve by Next February than this one.

Force Change with A Compatible Tandem Goal

Another great tip I heard recently is to set a behavior-modifying goal in conjunction with the one you have. In Advice for keeping your New Year’s resolutions, a USA Today article, Psychologist Art Markman is quoted as saying:

“People say they’re going to eat less or they’re going to stop smoking or they’re going to stop drinking. One of the reasons it’s hard to do that is now you’re replacing this behavior with no behavior. So what you need to do is replace a habit with some other behavior.”

The article also gives an example – it’s harder to keep smoking when you’re training for a 5K race.

And it makes quite a bit of sense when your goal is to stop doing something – breaking a habit is much easier if you replace that habit with another, better one.

Be, Then Do, Then Have

In the book I mentioned earlier, around page 140 or so, Robert Kiyosaki discusses a goal setting seminar he attended And in it the presenter brought up the point that we often attempt to set goals that conflict with our current state of being, and that changing this set of being first is essential to achieving a new goal.

For instance, let’s say you decide you want to lose weight before your high school reunion, and you start a diet. You pick the one you feel would help you lose the most weight. But discipline is not enough when starvation is involve and you find yourself blowing the diet.

What happened there?

Part of it might involve learning how to be  a person who is at the weight you want to achieve- that is, adopt the lifestyle, habits and inner logic of the you that you’ll be when you get there.

People who lose weight permanently don’t think in terms of diet. They make permanent changes. They also typically don’t attach the pressure of a certain date or event. They primarily want to get in shape, no matter how long it takes.

There are many philosophies of the be-do-have achievement model that discuss this, some more spiritual, some based mainly in logic.

It’s an interesting question – can you be a long distance runner if you aren’t willing to do more than sprint?

Hopefully these tips will help you get to your New Year’s Resolution. I’d love to hear what yours is, especially if it’s business related.

Got quite a few things going on, some in the next few days, some in the past few weeks.

Been busy in the most remarkable ways, some that haven’t lent themselves well to blogging: it’s that much harder to be both talking and doing.

But that’s no excuse, so here’s my blog post, an update.

First thing, I’d like to start the LinkedIn Challenge up right after Thanksgiving. You guys voted for it over video going first, and then almost no one signed up. Partly my bad, I know.

Second, you all know that I’ve become the editor of Women Grow Business, something I’m very passionate about.

Well I’m doing my first workshop as Editor, live in the DC area, it’s a 3 in one digital strategy workshop – basically a crash course on how to grow your business using online tools, including but not limited to social media. We’re on the verge of being full, as it’s in a Georgetown University space that only seats 25 people. I really like my workshops to be intimate so everyone gets one on one attention.

It’s on Tuesday the 8th. You can read more about it here and sign up for one of the last 6 seats here. And yes, it’s Metro accessible. That’s how we roll.

Third, I’ve joined some friends of mine over at Punk Views on Social Media, where we’re going to be debating some of the topics that seem to get left out of the mainstream conversation. If you guys like it when I rant, or go in-depth on whether the social media influence tools are really measuring influence vs popularity, or whether Klout or Facebook violate our privacy, you’ll like this blog.

My first post on Punk Views is about how the Fast Forward Health un-conference and film festival opened my eyes about what’s really great in social media right now. Events like those are why I push back so hard against the BS. I’m going to write another longer post about Fast Forward Health. It really was a life changing experience – so stay tuned for that if you’re wondering how useful social media tools can be outside technology and business.

So that brings us up to date on my status. What’s up with you?

I’ve been thinking about whether to start a brand new traffic challenge or just pick up where we left off in the video traffic challenge. So much time has passed and so many priorities have changed. But there were still two weeks left in the challenge when we last did an update.

If I start a new traffic challenge it will be on LinkedIn. I’ve decided to take 45 days and find or re-visit places in LinkedIn that I’ve been neglecting on my own, for 4 reasons.

• A person I have a lot of respect for, Vincent Wright, has sworn by it for years.

• Gini recently wrote a fantastic article about using LinkedIn to find new clients.

  Not that I haven’t before but I haven’t done it lately.

  Furthermore, it occurs to me that I can write basic, intermediate and advanced how-to articles or even books about any major social network except LinkedIn. I have got to go beyond basics, if not for my benefit, then for yours.

• I hate LinkedIn.

  But in the interest of taking my own medicine, the point isn’t how much I like it, but how much I can leverage that technology to benefit me, or my business.

  So I’ve committed myself to going back to do the things that worked, and finding new things.

• I get more mileage out of someone sharing my posts on LinkedIn, 2 – 6 more visits than Facebook, and about 10 times Twitter. If I have a finite amount of effort, I should be putting it towards the area where I get the most results. It makes sense.

Now, I could explore the site on my own and do some research and testing, then compile a reasonably priced video guide  giving you the highlights.

And I probably will. But in the mean time, why not learn together?

The only reason I can think of is that the Video Traffic Challenge got stagnated, partly because I got busy after the July 4th holiday, which was smack in the middle, and also due to a dip in participation in general before that.

So here’s what we’ll do.

Vote by entering your vote in the comments, or Twitter retweet (so the Livefyre software can pick it up) whether you’d like to see us continue the video challenge or start a new LinkedIn challenge. We’ll say voting will go on for a week from today, and then I’ll post the results.

Whichever one we do, anyone is free to join us, and there’s no financial cost. It’s just a thing we do as a community from time to time. Though we will all shame each other when we don’t follow along with the steps, so be ready for some well-intentioned ribbing if you fall behind.

I’m not off-limits in the ribbing. So I should know.

We’d love to have you, in any case. Worst case scenario, you get visits from the days I post links to the people on the Leaderboard.

I recorded this audio before I went to BlogWorld last October, and forgot to publish it. I wasn’t able to ask people what they do, and why, but once you read this post, please feel free to respond below.

Links to things mentioned in this audio:

• The Instant Google Traffic System – thanks to everyone who bought this so I could have a safe time at BlogWorld.
• The Blog World Expo
• What I Do

After you listen to the audio, please answer the question in the comment section- what’s the story of how you got into business for yourself or why you started your company or ended up at your current job.

Don’t forget to tell me WHY you’re still doing it today, even when it gets hard.

On Friday, I was a panelist at the Grow Smart Business Conference, and I promised to write up a list of resources for search this weekend.

Then on Saturday, I decided to add Social Media resources.

Then today, I peppered some general advice to give it context.

And of course I didn’t want it to be one-sided, so I added some other people’s articles in too.

By now, this monster is out of control. So tonight, I’m posting the general search resources as promised. Then throughout the week I’ll continue with Social Media and Search resources, between my posts about the Women Grow Business Boot Camp, the Blog World Expo, and, of course Grow Smart Business.

To start this off, here’s an updated list of search experts and sites I trust the most – some of you will recognize part of this as a re-post,

In this audacious audio:

I’ve just launched Twitter Lists – with 7 other Twitter guides, 8 for $7 for the next 21 hours.
Group Consulting comes back this week. If my one on one consulting prices have been too rich for your blood, your chance to try me at the group rate is nigh.

For some reason I love the word “nigh.”

I continue on by rambling about how far I’ve come and asking you a question.

Download Link.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day here in the States. And spending a little extra quality time with my mother left me in deep reflection about the impact she’s had on my life.

You see, my whole life it felt like I had to share my mother with the world, something I resented for a few minutes as a bratty kid, but grew to be extremely proud about.

My mother is a pillar of our community in the truest sense of the idea. On Mother’s Day her phone rings non-stop, because everyone from cousins to distant acquaintances call her up to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day because she is mother to just about everyone she meets of the appropriate age, and a friend to the rest.

And she does all this without ever having neglected any of her own children. I wish I had space to tell you how many ways she has helped other people, to describe how strong she is, and what she’s taught me to be. But I’d be writing forever. So let me get back to the reflection part.

Part of what has made my mother so great is her willingness to give to others. So for the rest of the week, I’m going to do my best to emulate her, as kind of a tribute.

Of course, then I had to decide exactly how to do this. And I thought, well, in Traffic Reality this month we’re talking about how to put together and execute a search strategy that any business owner can follow.

And I’m realizing that many people need help with the things that come before the basics. We’re going to be talking about that here all this week, everything from how to figure out whose information to trust to how to figure out if you’re banned in Google and what to do about it.

If you’re already a member of Traffic Reality, there will also be more in-depth videos and articles about this in the bonus section that will be unveiled this week. I actually intended to surprise you with them sooner, but I got so caught up answering all the comments in my Birthday post and on Facebook that I got totally overwhelmed.

If you left me a comment on the blog, I answered you. If your greeting was in Facebook or elsewhere, there were so many wonderful messages, I still haven’t finished thanking everyone, but I will.

Also, the contest winners are going to be announced tomorrow, so if you’re looking for that information, stay tuned.

Ain’t nobody dope as me I’m dressed so fresh so clean

(So fresh and so clean clean)

Don’t you think I’m so sexy I’m dressed so fresh so clean

(So fresh and so clean clean)

Ain’t nobody dope as me I’m dressed so fresh so clean (So fresh and so clean clean)

I love when you stare at me I’m dressed so fresh so clean (So fresh and so clean clean)

Oh, hi there totally cool blog reader. I recently was linked to by Network Solutions for a little article I wrote… and shook with horror at the fact that I *still* hadn’t found the time to upgrade my blog look for the upcoming addition of tons of fun to Free Traffic Tips. So guess what I stayed up all night doing? 

That’s right! If you’re reading this via RSS, click through to the Free Traffic Tips site to see how fabulous the blog is now. The Multimedia section is really easy to find and scroll through, and we have a featured section for those of you who want to dive right into the most relevant content of the moment. 

Why should you care how super-dope my blog is? Because yours, too, can be ever so fly.

All you need is the Studio Press Themes from Brian Gardner, genius of all things WordPress um… Themey. They’re in the Hizzle fo Shizzle, My Frizzle. I’m still gonna hack mine up a bit, do some things with the header, change the coloring slightly so it matches the brand colors exactly, get a custom logo, hire Trish Jones to trick out my column positioning and such. So if you get the same theme that I do, all you’ll have to do is implement it differently (or the way it looks out of the box) and you’ll have a completely different theme than I do.

It’s one of the magical things about the smoking hot Studio Press Themes. Have a look at Five Beautiful Sites that customized StudioPress themes to their liking. While you’re in the blog, look out for the latest theme updates and special offers. Big thanks to Brian for a job well done. Now when I get linked by prominent sites, I won’t look like I’m stuck in 2007…

Before we continue, I want to let you know I’m aware of the video embed problem with videos from my Facebook fan page.

Apparently even if you embed a video to a page, which is supposed to be visible to Everyone even outside of Facebook, some people still can’t see it.

So I’m uploading the videos to our free member site over at Leveraged Promotion, and using that embed code to feature them here.

If you couldn’t see Why Facebook Matters, The Psychological Side of the Facebook Experience, or Leveraging Your Profile via News Feed vs Other People’s Profile Promotion (otherwise known as Why Facebook Spam Fails), the new embeds visible to everyone are now live at those links.

You can become a fan of mine at Facebook to see all the videos in the series in one place. If you’re looking to be able to connect with me directly and don’t know me yet, that’s your best bet.

However, if we already know each other, you might want to join me at the social members section of Leveraged Promotion, where I have a members-only blog that’s updated with less frequency, but juicer tidbits.

Members are currently moderated and approved on a case by case basis. Generally if you’ve made a comment here, know me on Twitter/Facebook/StumbleUpon or have bought a product from me, you’ll be accepted as a free member – apply here.

That’s it for announcements. Oh, and we are back on the old site theme until next week when I hope to unveil 09′s custom theme.

Just so you know, I put all the original recordings of audio and video back on the server and updated the podcast with new content. If you want to hear them or view them you can subscribe to the podcast or add it to iTunes, or you can go to our audio/video page to download individual recordings.

As always, please be aware that the free audios will NOT be studio quality. We’ve been told there’s an echo at about 15 minutes in, for 2 minutes, but that you can still hear me okay. Unfortunately I can’t correct this on the fly, still not well enough to do all the manuvering involved.

MP3 File

So here we are, we somehow made it to 2009. I checked and all my limbs are intact and in working order.

Pretty much, anyway.

Today, I wanted to start the New Year with what may well become the tradition of this site and the newsletter: more frequent audio updates.

In this rebirrth of the Free Traffic Tips Minicast:

* What's New with Me
* What's New with Traffic Generation – the answer is going to be a huge surprise to some of you.
* A Query About What's New With You

We'll Have a Poll up you can vote on with the top answers to one of the questions in this audio — we're going to be asking YOU to help decide the direction of the year.

What secrets do you want me to spill? What do you want to learn? Or do you just need a routine to help you put all of this into practice?

Answer the question in the podcast and you could win a prize- we're giving one for my favorite answer, the first answer, and every fifth answer.

The catch is – you won't know until the comments are published…