Many people consider successful people to be their role models. A role model is a person you usually look up to when you need guidance, advice or help. Online, many people look up to a few bloggers like ProBlogger and CopyBlogger in order to improve their own blogs. Many people also try to mimic everything these types of bloggers do in order to attain the same kind of success. Unfortunately, copying successful bloggers will never result in success. You need your own unique blogging personality and mentality, that you can apply tips and advice from your role models to, in order to be successful.
Successful people do not copy others
Successful people do not copy others, nor do they mimic the efforts of their role models. A dedicated person should already have an idea of what they want and how they want it in order to be able to learn from the mistakes and advice of others. That is where the role models come in: their mistakes and advices can help you in your blogging efforts. The very concept of a role model is there so you can learn things in order to help you with what you have already set your mind on doing. A role model is not supposed to dictate what you should do.
There is no “next” big thing
Many people who look up to other people for everything without trying something creative and unique on their own depend on others to lead the whole way. These people unfortunately believe in the widespread myth that they can be the next “something“, where that “something” is usually considered to be something like ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, IBM, Microsoft, Tupperware, Nokia, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino and many other entities which are considered icons by different groups of people for different reasons. The reality is that there will never be a “next” anything in this world.
Anything effective and successful is always unique. You cannot be the next-anything; you have to be you in order to develop your own icon and model that others can look up to. You can be successful in things you want to do, but if you want to copy someone in order to have the same success, you should start analyzing the nature of your goals. Chances are your goals will be similar to the goals of your role models since you initially copied their efforts with the hopes of achieving similar success.
I try to learn from many other people
Try to learn from the mistakes and success of others and apply such knowledge to your own plans and strategies. Be your own “next” thing if you absolutely cannot let go of the “next-something” myth. Mimicking and following others will only result in you looking to others for guidance for everything and forever. I do my best everyday to do something that I feel is my own work instead of doing something simply because someone successful is doing it. I do not automatically respect a site simply because a million other people respect that site. I observe sites for my own analysis and if I feel someone is sharing a thing that I can learn from, I appreciate that person and I apply the new knowledge to my own life and online efforts.
Take John Chow as an example for something I think I did that I did not need to do. These days, I somehow feel that choosing the “dot Com” as part of a new name for my site may have been influenced a bit because of John Chow [your fault John], whose site name is “JOHN CHOW DOT COM.” Thus I have been thinking lately of stripping that last part since “The Reasoner” name will suit me better. If I can realize that something was influenced by someone else when it doesn’t go along with what is good for me and my site, I think such realization is golden and I should address the situation and learn to avoid doing things without specific reasons, no matter how small they are.
I myself try to learn from many different people like Copyblogger, John Chow and Darren Rowse who runs Problogger. I also learn from almost every site in my links section, including Valerie, SP, Ronalfy, Daniel, Vera, Nicole, Sawai and many others. Help others and learn from them also. Apply small tips and help you observe from other bloggers you look up to in order to make your own blogging efforts better.
Learn from others to be successful in your efforts
Observe your role models for tips and advice you can apply to the blogging efforts you are already focusing on your own. That is the only way to succeed. Everything and everyone that has made a difference in this world, both online and offline, either has their own unique character and entity since the beginning, or they learnt to have a unique character and entity along the way by learning from others and their own efforts. Try to follow that principle as your role model and you will achieve a lot.
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