I’ve spent a lot of time helping people figure stuff out. And you wouldn’t believe some of the things that I’ve heard.
“I want you to watch the way I'm doing this so you can see how stupid I am”
and my favorite
“This is so easy for you, I'm just never going to get it”
Throughout my experience, I’ve found that there is one critical difference between the people who improve and people who stay the same. This is the one difference between people who use their websites, blogs and email lists to strengthen their on or offline businesses and people who are perpetually frustrated and distracted by the technology that is supposed to be helping them.
That one difference is attitude. Any number of self-help books will tell you that what you believe, what you do, what you say, and what you think will become your reality. So when you are constantly telling yourself and others, “I’m not good with computers”, you are literally manifesting that reality.
Do yourself a favor.
The next time you are confused by something, don’t resign right away. If you were going to ask someone for help, what would you ask them? Cruise on over to google and type in your question. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to find the answer. Give it a try.
Nobody’s perfect.
I’ve managed to avoid writing one single line of code for a long time. But when it came to launching Cloud Coach, I knew I wanted to use WordPress and I knew that I wanted to customize the look and feel of my site. That meant getting more comfortable with CSS. I had always avoided writing code because I was afraid that I was bad at it. Whenever something involved writing code, I would say, “this all looks like the matrix to me”. How quickly do you think I improved? Not at all.
It wasn’t until I started actually TRYING to modify some pieces of my website that I realized it wasn’t all that difficult. And help was just a few clicks away in the form of how-to guides, videos and forums.
The big question.
What are you telling yourself when you try to figure things out with technology? Take stock of what messages you're reinforcing and consider changing your attitude. I’d love to hear about problems you’ve solved and how you overcame them in the comments.
photo courtesy of sharonpak
