Leave a Comment

The second week of the 52-Week Prosperity Plan has come to a close, leaving 50 more weeks of personal reflection and introspection to go. It almost scares me to think about how much I’m going to learn about myself.

Did you discover your value?  Did you work on truly feeling like you’re a rare, one-of-a-kind commodity?

Last week in my Be Positive: Week 1 Reflections post, I mentioned how I wish I could have simply stayed on that topic for several more weeks to come, instead of moving on to a new concept. Well, now I’m glad I did move on, because focusing on Week 2’s topic has allowed me to reach out and gain more readers.

See, before, when I would visit other blogs and see how many people “like” them on Facebook or how many comments just one story would have, not only did I feel a bit discouraged, but I also felt like I almost wasn’t “good” enough to gain a following like that.

Last week’s topic, being positive, helped to alleviate nearly all of these feelings, but I realized this week that the underlying issue was still there, I had simply “put on a good face” as it were. Don’t get me wrong, being positive helped me to get more done and be generally happier about how things were going, but the core issue still existed.

The more I began to think about it though, the more I began to question whether or not there was more actual value in these blogs than in mine. Sure, they have a lot more readers, and much bigger followings, and some even have published books, but these things are really just details… products of hard work and perseverance.

Then I had an interesting conversation with a friend about my blog. All I did was mention that maybe he should go and “like” my blog on Facebook (hey, I’m not above leveraging friendships…), and, politely of course, he stated that he had no need or interest in this personal finance stuff.

It was then I realized that value is completely subjective.

He simply didn’t value anything that I had to say at Financial Highway.

I mulled this realization over for a while, and came to the conclusion that, if there is no objective standard for how much value something has, for how much value a person has, then it’s really all up to how you feel inside, how much you value yourself.

How did this insight help me gain more readers?

Well, I figured that if I thought my blog had value, then it had value. Considering it’s my blog, and all the content comes from me, this means that my words, my thoughts and opinions, have just as much value as anyone elses.

This allowed me to pull out all the stops and reach out to other, much larger blogs, introducing myself and my blog to them. I implemented things here that the larger blogs have, such as a newsletter subscription sign-up box on the left-hand side of the Financial Highway home page, because I now know that my blog, and myself, have just as much value as any other blog… I just simply need to stick with it, work hard, not give up, and eventually I’ll reach the point where other, newer blog owners are asking me for advice.

Knowing I possess just as much value as anyone else has allowed me to be more genuine in my everyday life. There’s no need to put on an act to impress others or get them to like you, there’s no need to pretend like you know more about something or are better at certain activities than you actually are. There’s no need to do these things because you know that no matter what, you actually are as valuable as you feel inside, and that’s all that really counts.

Jake Evans

Jake Evans