I am writing this blog post to give me time clarify my thoughts as to how to respond to my latest on-line dilemmas. Computers were designed to make our life easier and as for the Internet well the ultimate communication tool surely. Well yes that would probably be true if a whole new layer of complexity hadn’t entered our lives. Why do I lurch endlessly from one on-line frustration to another.
I am positive you will identify with the two problems I am currently grappling with and have stories of your own to relate.
Let me start with my immediate concern….
I need to make some on-line banking transactions - and normally they would take five minutes. Let me add that they are important and need to be dealt with today.
Lloyds bank’s home page has a invitation to come on in as long as I enter my User Name and Password. I entered the usual information only to see the same screen with it’s invite stubbornly sitting there. NOTE: Nothing to tell me my input data had been incorrectly entered.
OK - I accept I could have made some input error and have another go - this time with great care and precision - same damn thing.
I know, for sure, 100 percent, absolutely, definitely, with utter certainty, without a shadow of doubt, positively that I entered the correct information - and before you suggest it the CAPS lock wasn’t on - I checked.
SO - this is where I am now…
The dilemma - do I enter the information again knowing full well what happened last time my input data was not accepted following my third attempt - namely I was informed that I was now locked out from my account and needed to get help from the bank. My follow up call to the bank that time was equally frustrating as I discovered that there was no way they would send the information in an e-mail or provide it over the phone. Five days later I receive the login details in the post.
Now next to the login fields there are links offering help if you have forgotten your username or password. Now I know it is silly to be seduced by a word such as ‘Help’. You then fill in the data asked for there and the same thing happens - you are informed that they will send you the information.
Will a phone call to the bank before I am locked out work any better - hmmm - I suppose that is worth a shot although I suspect I will finish up with the same - wait for the post response.
I will let you know.
And now for ClickBank who have been the other thorn in my side this week.
I have been involved selling Self-Hypnosis MP3 audios via ClickBank. Recently we discovered a problem with the account and needed to get in touch with the company reasonably urgently as some strange things seem to be happening. Now bear in mind that ClickBank are a very large organisation.
I logged into our account and found that help was available via a form on their site. BUT - no phone number
Shouldn’t be a problem as their contact page pronounced “Dedicated to Exceptional Customer Service”
So I filled in the form on site - this was last Wednesday - eight days ago.
Rather foolishly at the time I was relatively confident as the page was headed up “Please fill-out the fields below and then select Submit. Your question will be routed to our team of Customer Service experts and answered within 2 business days.” I am quite concerned about what has been happening to our account so was not totally happy it was going to take 2 business days - but well I suppose they are busy.
When no reply by Friday - I filled out form again and so on until today when I have returned for the fourth time and filled out the data. Each time I am reliably informed that the data has been accepted. However I have had no response and no message sent to my e-mail address to say the data would be answered shortly.
What now??
All I found out during a web search to see if I could find a ClickBank phone number is that many other people are looking for the same thing.
Oh there is another solution - there is a physical address so I can write to them. As they are based in the US and I am in the UK shouldn’t take more than a week to sort out my problem.
So much for the speed of Internet Communication - all of that is no good if Companies are placing barriers in the way and offer no reasonably speedy alternatives if the technologies fail.
Well off to ring Lloyds - wish me luck
I was talking to a friend yesterday who is going through a lot of stress and she basically was telling me how unhappy she felt. I noticed that she kept referring to when this happens I will be… If that happens I will be…
In other words happiness would happen at some time in the future given certain conditions.
As I was talking to her I recalled that I had a book on the subject that had helped me enormously when I was going through a similar period myself. I found the book this morning hidden away at the back of a - rather dusty I have to admit - bookshelf. The book “Happiness Now! - Timeless wisdom for feeling good FAST” by Robert Holden.
I will have to get the book to her today but as I flicked through I recalled much of the wisdom contained therein.
Here I will quote directly from the book to give a flavour.
*****
You Only Live Once…
Your whole life is not in front of you - it is here - NOW!
After years of studying stress, I have concluded that one of the biggest causes of stress is that we wait for happiness to happen. We think happiness is not for now; rather, we see it as a reward we work to, struggle after and suffer for, in the hope that one day it will happen. Following this erroneous train of thought, today becomes a day for well-behaved hardship, noble suffering, mild martyrdom and quiet desperation, and tomorrow, maybe, we might be happy. I believe however, that
to be happy, you have to lose the ‘wait problem’!
Conditions will get no better in the future for as long as you are waiting around to be happy. Indeed, it’s only when you stop waiting that conditions begin to improve. I remember how all through my teenage years and early twenties I had this fantasy that life would get better in about eighteen months time or so. I remember how I used to think that I would be less shy, more confident, more successful and probably world famous! I was convinced that something wonderful and special would happen to me.
I had nothing concrete to base these feelings upon; I just hoped that when eighteen months had passed, life would have ironed out its problems for me and I would be a lot happier. What I experienced, however, was thatthe eighteen months never came any closer - no matter how much time elapsed, the eighteen months always seemed eighteen months away. I finally, painfully, began to realise that, in order to be happy, I had to participate more fully in my life - now. In other words,
to be happy, you have to give up ‘when’ for ‘now’!
A good exercise is to take two pieces of paper and write on the top of one, ‘I’ll be happy when ….’ and on top of the other, ‘I’ll be happy if …..’ Now complete the list. When do you thing you will be happy? ‘When’ are you hanging on for? And what ‘if’ has to happen before you choose to be happy? Keep writing and writing, and see how many conditions you have tried to convince yourself you need before you can start smiling.
‘You only live once…’ has a double meaning. It refers to the idea that this moment in time will only ever happen once. Make a point, therefore, of knowing what the date is today, because this date is a one-off. Today will never, ever happen again. Bearing this in mind, how will you choose to live today? Today is not a practice run - the game is on already!
‘You only live once …’ also refers to the ‘wait problem’ and the fact that we are only ever preparing to be happy instead of being happy. In other words, you only start to really live once … work is over, it’s Saturday night, the holidays are here, you have some money, you fall in love, you get married, you buy a home, your mortgage is finally paid, your pension plan matures, etc. But even then you can’t be happy, not until the grandchildren get a good education!
What are you waiting for before you give yourself fully to this world? More support, maybe? More confidence? More authority? More opportunity? More qualifications? Can you see that:
Whilst you wait, happiness waits.
Whilst you wait, love waits
Whilst you wait, peace waits
Whilst you wait, freedom waits
Whilst you wait, opportunity waits
Whilst you wait, the world waits
Whilst you wait, we all wait
The ‘wait and see’ sickness is simply fear. ‘ What if I stop waiting and go for it, and then I fail?’ By waiting you fail. By giving yourself fully, you will get all you once waited for - all the support, confidence, authority and opportunity. It happens, when you happen.
Happiness happens when you give yourself fully!
Why wait for what is already here?
**************
Brilliant stuff - and this book is just full of good sound advice. Which is why I must wipe the dust off and get this over to my friend today - yes TODAY - yes NOW!
Tags: confidence, Life, positive attitudes
My wife Barbara is a Health Visitor and some time ago attended a series of NHS training sessions given by a guy called Chris Croft. As a result I often see laying around the house printouts from the his newsletter which I always find fascinating reading.
Now - I don’t know Chris (if you don’t count seeing him playing in a group once) but I feel as though I do.
This is one of the extraordinary things about the web - you can get a fairly good and accurate picture of a person through their output. Do you know I would go so far as to say I like this Crofty chap (or at least I know I would get on with him fine if I met him). His positive attitude comes through in everything he writes and he has great empathy with people etc etc.
There is a real dichotomy here - we love positive people such as Chris and are drawn to them naturally - and yet we consume so much negative fodder from our doom laden media and seem hell bent on watching more and more of the awful side of life on our box.
If there is any body of people that deserve a bad press more than MPs it is the journalists themselves. (I wonder how squeaky clean the lives of these reporters are?)
I am no great fan of Gordon Brown but I watched with some amusement as two journalists were interviewed on the BBC on Monday morning - one from the ‘Telegraph’ and the other from ‘The Mirror’. They were almost beside themselves with rage that the Press had not managed to bring Brown down and that the media frenzy to destroy the man had been thwarted. Brown had basically silenced his back bench critics for the time being and the media were desperately scurrying around to find continuing dissenters to give them a prominent platform - just so that the bad press for Brown could be maintained.
Robert Peston - business reporter at the BBC - is a media man who has to almost grit his teeth if there is any good news to report. He will always negate any good news about the economy with a BUT ….
Don’t these people want the economy to pick up? If you are in a privileged position and can talk daily at people and tell them things are bad bad bad - and then in the next breath report that people have no confidence and therefore are not buying - why should they be surprised by the cause and effect response - which they themselves are fuelling.
Confidence is so important in life and our whole economy is controlled by it. So what a shame that the media is so good at destroying that most important of ingredients to an economic recovery.
We are all bombarded with e-mails these days and opening rates of messages are disappointingly low. Internet Marketers discuss topics ad nauseum such as how to title an e-mail to achieve higher opening rates.
I carried out a minor bit of research last week. I had to send a message to Adam Eason’s list which is now 15,000 strong.
The content of the message doesn’t matter - but I was able to title the e-mail either “Good News” or “Bad News”. So I decided to send half of the list the positive title and the other half the negative one. I tracked the result and - you’ve guessed it there were four times as many opened the e-mail “Bad News” as opposed to the alternative title. How sad is that?
I mentioned Chris Croft and his newsletters above. I leave you with the content of the Newsletter from him that prompted this blog post. I have not asked his permission but I am confident he will forgive me given that I have said such glowing things about him.
********
ASssertiveness tip from CC - Kangaroo
I used to work with a guy who was very lively, verging on random in his thoughts, and people used to say that he “had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock”. I love that expression!
But we all have a small kangaroo, or maybe just a sulky badger, or timid mouse, loose in our top paddock, because we don’t have control over our thought processes. We don’t want to think impatient thoughts, but we do. We don’t want to be nervous about the presentation, but we are. We’d like to me more tidy, better at planning, less of a procrastinator, better under pressure, etc, but somehow we don’t do the things that we easily could.
So we have a voice in our head that we can’t really control (luckily in most cases it doesn’t tell us to murder people, it just tells us to put things off till tomorrow or to have another doughnut) and we have habit patterns that we can’t get out of – called life scripts.
In fact to be a bit more precise, according to Transactional Analysis, we have a talking voice – our conscious – and a silent controller of our behaviour – our subconscious. The subconscious is a store of everything that has happened, and everything that the talking conscious has said. So if you say you’re impatient, and then behave in an impatient way, the subconscious KNOWS that you are impatient, and makes you behave like that next time.
Therefore your thoughts about yourself become true over time, and they begin to control your behaviour, and become “life scripts” which tell you how to live your life. Some can be positive, and that’s great, but negative ones also self-reinforce: “I’m always late” “I can’t help putting things off, it’s just how I am” “I always get horribly nervous before giving a talk” “I crumble under pressure” “I get impatient” – these are all self fulfilling beliefs that people have about themselves.
Suggestions on how to gradually win the mental battle to improve yourself:
1. Do something each day that flatly contradicts a negative self-impression of yourself. Prove your subconscious wrong!
For instance, if you suspect that you never quite finish a job, choose a twenty minute task and finish it properly.
2. Also, try to catch your negative self-talk every time it crops up, and replace it by positive thoughts, ideally specific things that you ARE good at, and attributes that are positive about yourself. Only feed good messages into your subconscious.
3. Since I have been experimenting with meditation I have found, surprisingly, that it has given me more control over the thoughts in my head – for example, in situations where I would have been ragingly impatient before, I am now able to say “I’m going to be patient now” and the inner voice, which used to say “This is infuriating, come on, aargh!, how long is this going to take???” now behaves itself and goes quiet. I’ve no idea why, but I can report that it is true. Full write up on the pros and cons of meditation so far in on my forum/blog at http://www.chriscrofttraining.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=361
**************
Keep up the good work Chris and maybe catch up with you some day for a beer.
Tags: positive people
I had quite a surprising and amazing experience last week. This is a story I know Adam Eason will be interested in.
I have helped produce a lot of Adam’s products (MP3 Self-Hypnosis Audio downloads) and set them up on his website. As a result - despite no knowledge of self-hypnosis originally I got to try out and learn about many of his products and behavioural change techniques. Notably I used what I had learned from his “Secrets Of Self Hypnosis Masterclass” to write my own script to overcome a problem with excessive armpit sweating. It was horrible and much to my relief and also I may add for my family and friends it worked a treat.
Now last week for my sins - Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adam Eason
With so much gloom and doom about and a collective International mindset shaped by negative media coverage of events is it any wonder that individuals lack confidence. All this negative reporting becomes just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is now down to individuals to buck the trend and prosper because everyone else is falling in the same ‘I can’t do anything about it - trap. The only people I hear these days in the media who are speaking positively are entrepreneurs. Why - because they are adaptable and can weather any financial storm.
Perhaps now, more than many new
years of the past, is a good time for you to look inward - wonder if you are
living life in the best possible way, and examine if there are things you’d like
to change.
create a life that works, that feels right, and that makes you happy. But how in the world can you tell if you’re
living your life to the fullest? I think that if you ask yourselves these following questions you will get a fair idea. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: negative people
Let me tell you about Ed Dale, an Australian (guess he can’t help that) web thingy doer person. He and his team specialise in teaching web newbies how to make money on-line.
About a year ago I was a newcomer to a social media service called Twitter and feeling my way around and frankly not really understanding what it was all about. By chance I watched an Ed Dale YouTube video about Twitter and suddenly it all made sense. And so I went off to find more about this character.
Hey - what I found was good - very, VERY good. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adam Eason, Affiliates, Ed Dale, Internet Marketing, Thirty Day Challenge Plus
I have been sitting here trying to outwit my mind.
Came across this from one of my friends on Facebook - thanks Tracey - this is driving me nuts but it is good.
Try it..
How smart is Your Right Foot?
Read the rest of this entry »
Hostgator - bless them - suspended this blog - this very site - once again.
Why?
Well I have been sending phishing messages. As if I would do that from a personal blog deliberately.
Why would I? It is my blog and I care about this.
Am I being naive in thinking that Hostgator shares some responsibility for protecting me from this. I am a client, a paying client and the answer to someone attacking my site is for them to say that I am a security risk and take my site down.
Read the rest of this entry »
Time and time again Hypnotherapists must be saying - “It’s not news to me”.
When will researchers latch onto the fact that using the natural power of the mind and imagination can really bring about physical changes?
When will researchers begin to take self-hypnosis seriously and give the therapy the attention it deserves?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adam Eason, G Lorimer Moseley, hypnotherapy, mind, Oxford, Pain relief, research, self-hypnosis
I have just let this blog evolve. I purposely didn’t write a tight description because to be honest I couldn’t rely upon myself to stick to one theme. Calling it a blog about ‘Life’ was as close as I could get.
Now that I am some way down the road though I can look at the content and see that it reflects more or less what my business life is about. I love techie things but am passionate about applying the cutting edge tech stuff with my real interest - healthy body and mind and self improvement of any kind.
I also notice that there is little about my domestic life - which is not deliberate as I am fairly open about all areas of my life - so maybe I will weave in a few more personal posts over the coming months.
But not today…..
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blogging, Ed Dale, Google Reader, Techie Stuff, Wordpress
I’ve been banging on for some time about video and how important it is for anyone who wants to do real business on-line to face the camera. That includes affiliates by the way.
The list is as long as my arm about the advantages of video over all other forms of interaction with your clients and I won’t repeat information available from thousands of other sources - HOWEVER here is a really important new addition to that list. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: advertising, marketing, pay per click, ppc, video, YouTube
No posts since 21st October!!
Not so - all posts since then have gone - lost forever.
I went to make a post on this blog this morning only to find out the site had been suspended because of suspicious activity on the site.
Despite making a more secure password and updating all my Wordpress
plugins - those mindless people who create havoc out there by adding
phishing material on other peoples websites have struck again. No I
take that back - they are not mindless Read the rest of this entry »
