Business
today I want to talk about a quote I saw that was don't let the Internet rush you. No one is posting that failures. And I found that really interesting for many reasons, but mainly the fact that with social media, with Instagram and Facebook and we see we think we see so much of people's lives or how people run their business. And yet behind the scenes, even the behind the scenes shots are never behind the scenes shots of I failed at this or I tried this thing and it didn't work. It's always shots of I try this thing and look, I go, you know, 20000 people or 10000 people out, a six figure weekend or whatever it is, even when they're doing the behind the scenes, they're never doing the behind the scenes of failure. And here's the thing. As humans, we learn better from trying something and failing and making mistakes than we do from trying something and succeeding at it or seeing someone succeed at it. We just don't learn as well. So it's really interesting how people on Instagram, on Facebook or wherever that you're seeing slices of people's lives, it's always 90 percent of the time the happy stuff. And even if it isn't the happy stuff, the sad stuff isn't I try this thing. I lost a bunch of money. Normally it's I try to sing, lost a bunch of money, but was the best thing that ever happened to me because then I, you know, hustled and I did this thing and I did this other thing and everything's rosy. But as someone who's trying to learn things, how do you learn from that? Do you learn from that? Do you take away all the good stuff? And a part of it is this person did this thing and they succeeded. So I'm going to follow and therefore I should succeed. But once again, we are all individual. We have all our different paths and different baggage. So it probably doesn't work that way. And this also leads to the question about just viewing other people and viewing competition or just seeing where someone else is in their journey and being upset that you're not at that place within the journey or your journey. Envy and compassion, as I'm sure you've had before, comparison is the thief of joy. And so when you are looking on social media and you're seeing other people and their slices, they are just slices and slivers of other people's successes and very rarely their failures. How do you feel? What does it make you think? Does it inspire? Does it make you think you can do better or does it make you think I need that quick fix to go ahead and be do whatever it is that they did to get the same results? Would you, as an audience, as a listener, be interested or as interested in the people you follow? If they actually posted their entire process from start to finish, whether it worked or not, would you be as interested if they tried a thing and it failed? But you still got to see that process of them failing? Is this something that you, as a bystander, an audience member, would be interested in? Would you follow someone trying out different things just to try them, or would you only follow if people were successful? I think it was really interesting and it's a question that I've put out to to friends and acquaintances. And I've got a mixed bag of results. And I think it depends where you are in your journey and where you are in your self confidence about what you're doing and your role in either your career or in your business. But comparison doesn't help you. There are going to be things that you do that will be different from other people because that's what sets you apart. Yes, you can follow a system. And really, I do believe that system should be followed. You follow a system once through just to see how it works and get an idea of the mechanics. And then when you follow it through the second and third time around, you iterate so that it fits you well, your lifestyle, your business style or just your your personality or your humour. But having a bedrock of something, a system that you can follow is super helpful. But then you tweak it. And I think people kind of think, OK, I've tried this thing and it didn't work rather than I tried this thing. What did I learn about it so I can reiterate and change it next time around. So that's food for thought. I'd love to hear back from you about whether you would like to see someone just trying things and seeing what their failures and successes are. Or if you. Only like happy to see what the successes are, so you can then follow them and reiterate for yourself. Thank you for listening. This is janice@thecareerintrovert.com helping introverts build their brand and get hired.