1. Why it is important to be well-connected

Is it really true that successful people can only get to where they are because of their connections? You may disagree, but there’s a benefit to networking because of the importance of being well-connected.

Maybe there are other factors involved, but there’s no denying that being well-connected can get you where you want to be.

Connections are like a web: the more people you know, the more social circles you are permitted to frequent.

How do you start being well-connected?

Expand your social circle and don’t stay where you’re comfortable. Being comfortable is like swimming in your own pond. If you want to benefit from new perspectives, new ideas, and new experiences you have to reach outside of your immediate social circle. Don’t limit yourself to people that you are most familiar with.

By being well-connected, you will find that it opens a lot of doors in your personal and professional life.

2. Belong to a community so you don’t get left out

Yes, I’m saying that with a touch of irony. But there’s a bit of truth to it.

Things like hearing news through the grapevine, and being privy to information that’s not just from the internet is one of the benefits of belonging to a community.

As social creatures, humans don’t function in isolation. There’s a reason why we work, live, and play in tribes. If you’re in complete isolation, there’s a risk that you are left out of the loop. That includes important information that can help you live and work smarter. That’s the importance of networking and being well-connected.

It’s interesting how information is passed along between people living in societies. Information that is useful is also sometimes hidden. That’s why you should join networking groups to uncover hidden information that will help you.

3. Expand the number of people in your zone of influence

How many people rely on you for your opinion? The more people that seek out your opinion, the more influential you are.

Why is this important? It’s important because the more people who can vouch for your expertise, the more opportunities you have to advance your career or leverage those connections to make sales and grow your business.

Building expertise is one of the ways that you can become a well known authority on a particular subject. You might not be comfortable with being well known, but the upside is that people will seek you for your guidance. It’s one of the ways that your social circle and number of connections grow.

4. Associate with positive people you aspire to be like

The saying that you should hang around the five people you aspire to be like is a cliche because it’s true.

When people make connections, they don’t do it only because they want to assimilate and fear getting left out. They do it because they know that making that connection gets them one step closer to their goal, whether it’s professional or personal. That goal can be building a business that reaches more people, or having a well-balanced lifestyle.

When you associate with positive people you aspire to be like, you may find that their habits are easier to emulate, their language and speech influence the way you communicate, and your overall outlook on life is more positive. That’s the importance of networking and being well-connected.

5. Is there no hope if you don’t have any connections?

Yes, there is hope. If you don’t have many connections, my advice is to network. There’s no way around it. Not a lot of people like networking, probably because they’re uncomfortable with strangers, and because meeting at a networking event feels fake and forced.

Networking is not just something that only social climbers do. If you don’t have a wide number of connections, and feel discouraged at having to build that network from zero, you still have to start somewhere.

Seek out introductions to “warm” connections if you’re just starting. These warm connections can be friends of friends, or friends of relatives or coworkers. There’s less pressure than if you were to be thrown into a networking event where you don’t know anyone. Even then, a networking event attended by people who have the same interests as you can be places where you can start meaningful conversations.

6. Are you so connected, yet feel so alone?

I get it that there are a lot of loners in a hyperconnected world. How do you reconcile the fact that most of our interactions lead to meaningless connections? As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, it’s easy to feel alone despite there being so many channels for virtual connection. It can lead to feelings of alienation and paradoxically, disconnection.

To solve this, forge connections that are based on commonality and mutual benefit. It’s easy to forget why we seek out connection in the first place. Remember that meaning is derived from giving as well as receiving. So when a connection does you a favor, try your best to do something kind in exchange.

Introduction

Since joining a running club recently, I’ve learned that exercise builds resilience. Strong in body, strong in mind means that when you build muscle and endurance through exercise, this mindset transfers itself to other areas of your life. Exercise not only benefits you physically, it also benefits you mentally.

I run with a few of my fellow co-workers. We meet weekly after work to run for about 40 minutes along the lakeshore downtown. I also jog in the park whenever I can, though at a slower speed and shorter distance than with this club. As a result, whenever I run with my co-workers, I’m pushing myself to keep up and to finish the run no matter how much I want to stop running and walk instead.

Sometimes my mind is screaming at me to stop running because I feel like I can’t do it. But these runs are like practice for pushing myself to do things when I want to throw in the towel and give up and take the easier route.

1. How to implement exercise to build strength and resilience

To implement strength-building in your life, start with something easy, like walking, jogging or running. Choose an activity with a low or no cost to start. It should also be in a low stakes, low pressure, and non-competitive environment. Whichever activity you choose, you have to keep up and do it consistently or else it won’t work. The point is to start building mental resilience with a gentle activity, then increase your endurance until you can move onto the bigger goals, whether it’s in your career or business.

This takes a lot of discipline. Now, I don’t have the greatest endurance. I can run for only so long before I’m winded. But during my run club, I found that I was able to keep up even though my mind was begging for me to give up and walk instead of run.

Exercise trains your brain to do things that it thinks it can’t do. It benefits your brain by building those muscles. You experience the mindset of persisting when everything is telling you to give up. The more times you do this, and the more practice you get, the easier it is to strengthen that mindset. It will become a habit that you do automatically.

2. Running trains your mind to do things you don’t want to do

To get over my reluctance and discomfort of running until I reach my limit, I began to tell myself to acknowledge the fact that no one likes to exercise. Same for selling to clients, eating vegetables, or whatever it is that you don’t like to do.

Telling myself this is like accepting that everyone has things that they don’t want to do, or keep putting off.

I found that when I was running, I reached my breaking point, or the point when I just wanted to collapse on the ground and not get up. But I didn’t quit, because I knew that that’s when I would start to see results. Running is really a practice in discipline. You strengthen your mind to focus and achieve that goal of getting to the finish line.

3. Exercise teaches your mind to be resilient

Whenever I run, there are many moments when I want to give up and walk, but I push through it. Through running, I’ve taught myself to not give up.

You might’ve asked yourself these questions: how do you get through it when you feel like giving up? How do you train yourself to be persistent?

The way to do this is to practice. I’ve mentioned that the voice in my head is begging me to give up and stop running. Learn to tune down the voice that says you can’t do something. It’s a bit like meditation, how you focus and tune out noise that can distract you from your goal.

Conclusion

Strengthen your mind through strengthening your body. Exercise, like running, makes you mentally and physically strong. Exercise also builds resilience. Life itself can feel like an endurance test, like it’s testing your limits to see how much stress or hardship you can handle. Sometimes what you’re trying to accomplish feels like running a marathon. By building exercise into your everyday routine, you get used to pushing through and reaching your goal.

For the past thirty days, I wrote a thousand words each day to finish a writing project of mine. Basically, I trained myself to be more disciplined and churn out those thousand words even if I didn’t feel like it.

How did I do this?

Well, it was really a practice in time management. It’s true that if you give yourself only one hour instead of two to write something, you will finish it in one hour, not two. Maybe it’s the novel you want to write, a blog post, or a speech that you’re going to give in front of an audience. Sometimes you struggle to put words down on paper. You stall. The words aren’t flowing. You’ve got writer’s block.

Like everyone else, I have bouts of struggle with motivation. I had the desire to write, but not the necessary motivation to actually sit down and do the actual writing.

But I learned through this process that writing doesn’t have to be hard. That’s because I thought of a system that I implemented into my daily writing routine. With these following five tips, you can create a new writing routine, or tweak your existing writing regimen.

Writing tip #1. Use a public computer instead of your personal laptop.

I will tell you the story of how I arrived at this new writing system that I’ve implemented in my own writing routine.

By accident, I left my laptop at home when I was going to a cafe to write. (Who forgets a laptop at home?!) After a few minutes of being annoyed with myself, I thought of a solution. Instead of going all the way back to my home to fetch it, I settled for going to the public library nearby to write using one of their computers. And so, what followed is my “accidental discovery” of how to write everyday, a thousand words, for thirty days.

When you use a public computer, you’re not tempted to be distracted by personal files, scrolling through social media, or tasks other than writing.

Once you’ve written for one or two hours, leave the library as soon as you can. The library is your dedicated workspace. Once you finish writing a thousand words, do not linger. The library is only for working, not for wasting time. Whenever you’re at the library, you automatically treat the location as a dedicated work space for writing, not for doing other things.

Writing tip #2. Make your work environment uncomfortable.

If you find that you can’t work at home, try working at the library, like I did (see tip #1). Don’t work at home where you’re likely to get distracted by fixing yourself a snack in the kitchen or turning on the television. Try to work at the library where there are no distractions and the plastic chair that you’re sitting on is uncomfortable.

I found that I was less distracted and likely to get up for a glass of water, etc., when I was at the library.

Writing tip #3. Set a timer.

What I like about using the computer at the library is that you’re limited to two hours before it logs you off. There’s a timer on the computer that I will keep my eye on constantly. It’ll notify me that I’ve reached the two hours.

Give yourself only one to two hours to write. If you’re rusty and just starting out or trying to get back into the habit, do it for half an hour to one hour instead. It will motivate you to write the thousand words since you’re under a time crunch.

Writing tip #4. Don’t be too critical.

Being too critical of your work stops you from moving forward. Maybe you feel like you have nothing new to say. But take heart. Most of the written material out there is a recycling of former material. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel and come up with something so original that no one has ever heard of.

The genius sometimes lies in creating something from something else, not from nothing. So to get writing, learn to quiet the voice that is too critical and says that you have nothing new to say.

Not everything you write is going to be a masterpiece work of art. Accept it and move on.

Writing tip #5. Be disciplined and write every single day.

When you feel like you have nothing to say, try to free-write. Write down all of your thoughts. Keep rambling in your writing. Don’t self-edit while writing, or this will break your flow of thoughts. Don’t read what you’ve already written, otherwise, you’d be tempted to pick out all the flaws in your writing and be too critical (see tip #4).

By using these five writing tips, I was able to write a thousand words everyday for thirty days. I’ve finished my current writing project and I am now starting on the next one. It doesn’t take too much effort for me to do this everyday now because I’ve exercised the writing muscle and now it’s just a case of putting it into practice everyday.

If you’re trying to finish an 80,000 word manuscript, writing a thousand words might seem so small. But it’s moving the needle a tiny bit everyday. We all have to start somewhere, and even a tiny step is a step in the right direction.

Introduction

Societal, environmental, and political issues are calling for your undivided attention everyday.

If it’s not eye-grabbing, it’s instantaneously background noise. Easily tuned out. Filtered out of our consciousness. Are you apathetic, or just busy?

Sometimes, the internet is in an uproar over some event that impacts the world while other events barely make front page news. Filtering things out is a survival mechanism. We need to focus on only the salient points and ignore the rest, even if it’s important people or organizations who need our attention. But why? How do some social media, tweets, blog posts or videos nudge us out of our apathy and get us to care?

1. How to get people to care when they have short attention spans

Our attention reaches its limit pretty quickly. To get people to care, don’t test their patience.

Sometimes paragraphs have to be limited to a few sentences, and sentences have to be limited to a few words. You have mere seconds to catch their attention, so don’t waste those precious seconds.

Don’t meander like you’re taking a leisurely stroll around the block. Get to the point fast.

2. Do not lose your audience within the first fifteen seconds

Ever had the experience of drumming up business for your company or pitching to a client, but they don’t engage your services right away? How many times have you been rejected, or told, “Sorry, I don’t have the time, I’m too busy”?

Getting people on board with your projects or services, and getting them to care, is an art that you have to perfect. Those first fifteen seconds, maybe less, are crucial. You want to start off with a bang and keep the momentum going. So make sure you have a hook in your introduction and don’t lose the momentum.

3. How to make your cause their priority

People have to prioritize and if it’s not going to impact their today, their tomorrow, they will likely not pay attention. So how do you make your cause their priority? Rely on empathy to make someone care.

As you know, it takes effort to sort out your priorities. You choose the most important items on your agenda and throw out the rest.

To stop others from putting your cause in the trash pile, give them a reason to care. This starts with making your message relatable. Convey deep emotions to trigger a response from them. Then use that to push them into taking action.

4. Be mindful of their time by making it worth their time

Ever had meetings where at the end, you are wondering “so what?”

Sometimes your intended audience won’t listen to you or pay attention to you because if it doesn’t serve their purpose. Or it doesn’t help them in some way. Stop your message from collecting dust. You want your message to be seen and heard. So don’t take up too much of their time. Make sure that every word counts. If it’s not worth their time, think twice about saying it.

5. Show passion and enthusiasm. It’s infectious

Have we gotten complacent?

Sometimes, we’re desensitized to flashing images and loud sounds. Sometimes we have to tune out just to stay sane and not overwhelmed by it all.

It’s difficult to make people care. So much so that you wonder if what you’re doing has a purpose. Maybe you have a project, a cause, that you’re passionate about. But you’re baffled when everyone else doesn’t have the same passion as you do.

Rather than resorting to shouting louder than our neighbours just to get your audience’s attention, motivate them to be enthusiastic about your cause. Get them fired up about it as you are.

Get them to find the same passion and enthusiasm to care deeply about what you are saying.

Conclusion

Our lives are saturated with bright technicolour images, text, and video. Everything must be louder, shinier, brighter, more colourful, and more clever to have an impact. The list goes on. You really have to outdo yourself each time you post a new piece of content.

Sometimes, your target audience’s time is taken up with a lot of distractions and busy-ness without getting anything done. Inefficiency and being distracted are ways of coping with stress. To care more, they have to make time for it, and time is a rare resource.

Not everyone can muster up the interest to care about societal problems, the planet, their health. They can’t sit up and pay attention because they’re not thinking about the future. They tend to block out anything else except for the here and the now, and what can give them instant gratification. Most of the time, they want to care, but their lives and the busy-ness of work, family, and relationships, prevent them from engaging and taking action. It can be disheartening.

So be brief. Every word has to have an impact. Think about it for a while before you start posting or speaking. This way, you are more conscientious of how you use your words. Competition is really a numbers game. You have to throw a lot of darts before you hit the bull’s eye. Once you’re on target, you’ll find easier ways to grab their attention.