If you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.”
— Paul Graham, “What You’ll Wish You’d Known”
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
every friday i share a picture and explain how i got the shot. here is this week’s photo.
how i got the shot: this is a picture of lake ray hubbard. this view means home for me. whenever i travel outside of dallas on interstate 30 on the long road home this view signals almost home, it’s where dallas county starts.
i took this picture on wednesday. i went shopping in rockwall, tx. with my sister and mom. i am guilty of taking pictures while driving but not in this case, my mom was doing the driving. this is taken on my iphone. i ran it through the ps express app, and played around with the exposure a little bit. i actually made it a little darker. this view in real life is breathtaking, the sun glistening on the lake.
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
yesterday i had a conversation with a co-worker and we were talking about back up plans. i shared with her something will smith said about back up plans, or the problem with having a plan b. he said, “plan b distracts from plan a.”
this is a video of clips of will smith talking about success in interviews, which includes the above quote. if you are striving for success it’s important to study the success of others. how does your mindset measure up?
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
“When you want to be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful!”
thanks to my sister devon for sharing this awesome video with me!
have a blessed and productive monday!
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
i hope you all enjoyed the START 2012 series. if you missed any of it below are all the links. thanks for reading the series. i hope it inspired you to simply start, which is often the hardest.
START 2012: so what is the one thing you desire most to start?
START 2012: what’s holding you back? (7 things that could be preventing you from starting)
START 2012: the perfectionist curse (and why you might actually be no good at what you do)
START 2012: the importance of starting something worthwhile
START 2012: how to start a blog this weekend! (easy as 1, 2, and 3!)
give yourself the permission to start, and see what unfolds.
dr. king said, “take the first step in faith. you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” take the first step towards your dreams, and then the next and next. this is how you accomplish great things!
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
all week i’ve been talking about starting. to conclude the series i want to talk about starting a blog, out of all the things i do it seems as if that is one of the things people are most interested in starting, and it’s the most easiest thing to do! i’ve been sharing online before blogging was a term, but it’s only really been in the past 2 years that i’ve become focused on blogging more seriously. the following is 3 easy steps to get you started with blogging!
the more specific your blog is the better. to be honest, my blog suffers from way too many topics! for example, when i write about photography i am sure i isolate people who may follow me for my inspirational pieces. not everyone is a photographer. and i teach at the elementary level full time, been doing so for the past 4 years, but i rarely talk about teaching or my classroom on my blog because i believe that will bore my core audience. i highly suggest that if you start a blog you narrow it down to a specific topic for a specific audience.
one of the keys to readership is defining your topic and audience.
choose a topic you are interested in, don’t blog about a topic because you think it is popular. blog about a topic because you really love it! this will help you when it comes time to produce content for your blog. it is so much easier to write about something you are passionate about than some random topic you hold little interest in.
back in the day if you wanted to build a website you pretty much needed to know html, nowadays you don’t need to know html you just need a good content management system. a web based software to manage all your content. i use wordpress (available at wordpress.org), and self host my blog. many hosting companies make it really easy to install wordpress.org softeware with just a couple clicks. i suggest this route if you have big plans for your blog and want to have your own personalized domain name. if you are completely clueless on publishing on the web this might require a tad of research, but the web is full of information! don’t be intimidated.
however, if you just want to blog and not get too technical i suggest using a cms platform you don’t have to host yourself. this process is pretty much is a sign up and get started approach. if you want to use wordpress but not host it yourself sign up at wordpress.com, if you want to use one of the most popular blogging hosting services sign up at blogger.com, and if you want some instant gratification/readership/response/content sign up at tumblr. i’ve been having a lot of fun with tumblr lately.
this is where the magic happens! there is a popular saying that says “content is king” and it’s a true statement. if you don’t have content on your blog you will not gain any readers. since i take my blogging seriously in the back of my head i have the number 3. i need to produce at least 3 pieces of content each week for my blog, and then it comes down to quality over quantity.
producing content isn’t always easy. you really have to be dedicated to the process. sometimes you will have writer’s block. sometimes you will just be really busy and will find it hard to produce content. but you must be consistent if you want your readers to come back.
to help you stay on track of producing content consider the following: 1) sit down at the beginning of the month and write out at least 5 article ideas, sometimes you really need to be intentional. 2) create a staple/series on your blog. every friday i do the friday pic series. the world is very chaotic, and people like consistency. 3) read! consume tons of content for inspiration. when you read make connections with your life or other text you’ve read in order to generate article ideas.
there is more that goes into blogging (seo, connecting with your audience, promoting your blog, blog design, etc) but i have given you a starting place. if you desire to create a blog i want you to start this weekend! and don’t worry if your content is a little lack luster at the beginning…you will get better! dig in, educate yourself more about blogging (google blogging and become overwhelmed! i mean, amazed!), and watch your blog grow!
if you have questions about blogging don’t hesitate to contact me! i am more than willing to discuss blogging with you.
happy blogging!
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
i have a million ideas in my head, when i share an idea with my brother i introduce the idea as my new new idea. in my evernote i have a notebook titled “business ideas” and i jot down all my little business ideas. ideas that will, of course, make me millions and millions and millions of dollars! but here is the deal, most of them are not worth my time, not worthwhile to me.
when starting anything it is important to ask two questions: 1. is this worthwhile to me? 2. is this worthwhile to the world?
the worthiness of what you start will determine if it dies or survives.
some of these ideas i speak of have nothing to do with anything i am particularly interested in. if i were to start work on some of them i would probably quickly lose interest in them, abandon them, and move on to the next idea. and i would basically be nowhere. when i do start something i try to start things that i have an interest in, something that is worthwhile to me. this keeps me going when i want to quit.
if you don’t know if what you want to start is worthy of your time consider this….would you do it for free? and further more, as a child did you do anything that is related in any kind of way to what you want to start?
i am not suggesting that you start something where you work for free, i am getting to the point of external vs. international motivation. if you are motivated by outside influences to start something it probably isn’t a good thing for you to start. it’s probably not worth your time.
the things i do today are not out of the blue. writing isn’t something where i woke up and decided to do yesterday. as a kid i wrote. the fact that i own a business isn’t out of the blue. as a kid i had garage sales on my parents’ lawn. as a kid i asked my parents for a lawn mower so i could mow lawns for money (this business adventure went nowhere!). i was a babysitter. as a 4 year old i use to untie my dad’s army boots for 10 cents. and i have many other stories! my point is that i’ve always been a hustler! seriously, starting a business for me is totally logical. it’s part of who i am. it’s in my dna. what is in your dna?
does what you want to start make sense to you? is it worthy of your time?
this question has nothing to do with pleasing people. individual people. this question has to do with using your life in a way that is beneficial beyond just you. when i started thinking about people who have started worthwhile things i thought about Jesus. at the age of around 30 Jesus officially started his ministry and it was a game changer. what he did with his life changed the world. if we are to be Christ-like i believe we should also start things that are worthwhile to the world. use your talents and gifts to start something that will benefit the greater good, directly or indirectly.
start
something
incredible!
THANK YOU for reading gloriamarie.com. my mission is to inspire you to live&create™. subscribe via email to receive my latest book a guide to doing incredible things with your life for free. follow on t + fb.
