The following daily

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 19, 2009 in New media, Social networks, Twitter | 8 comments

Simple and easy way to show some love for people who mention you:

1. Go to search.twitter.com and type in your Twitter handle with the @ sign.

2. For profiles you haven’t visited recently (blue links), control-click (on PCs) or command-click (on Macs) to open each profile in a new tab.

3. Swap through each tab (control-tab in Firefox) and click follow for everyone you’re not following.

Do this daily, every morning. This will ensure that folks who are kind enough to mention, reply, or retweet what you’ve got to share are paid attention to. Should take you a maximum of 5 minutes or so if you’re fast on the keyboard.

This is one of those things that you have to do daily. If you let it pile up, it will eat up a tremendous amount of time. If you manage it daily, it takes seconds, maybe minutes at most. Set an alarm on your calendar and do it without fail every day.

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Beating fear

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 19, 2009 in Awakening, Me, Ninjutsu | 21 comments

What makes the difference between someone who has confidence, someone who believes in themselves and in their cause, and someone who sits on the sidelines of life?

Fear. Fear of ridicule, of loss, of pain. The folks who are winners in life are the folks who have conquered their fears, trampled them as they ran towards the future. The folks who are not winners in life are the folks who are shackled by their fears, imprisoned in their self-made cages.

Let me tell you a story about fear, from the martial arts. A long time ago, a decade ago, the test in my dojo to go from green belt (intermediate) to brown belt (advanced) was incredibly rigorous. The test was typically three parts. In the first part, you as the candidate faced off against one of the senior black belts in the dojo. They had a shinai – a four foot bamboo practice sword that, while it wouldn’t cut flesh or break bones, would still hurt like hell. Their mission was to try and beat you with the stick for what seemed like an eternity. Your mission as the candidate was to escape and evade them as much as possible – not even to defend or counterattack (which was usually met with a stick to the face) – just to evade and escape.

The second part of the test was similar but unarmed, and the third part of the test, after your adrenaline was shot and your body was near exhaustion, was to demonstrate techniques in application. Somehow you had to get past your own exhaustion and summon not only physical strength but also intellectual sharpness.

During my first attempt at the brown belt test, I was outside in a rocky field, about halfway through the first part of the test. I had managed to evade with relative success the bamboo sword, when suddenly the sword came at my feet. Instinctively, I did a dive roll over the sword, but badly miscalculated where I was in the field. I landed, shoulder first, on a fairly large rock and dislocated my shoulder.

It took the better part of 3 months to heal that injury, including living in a cast for 6 weeks, and some fairly intensive physical therapy, as I’d separated and torn up a lot of my shoulder. Worse, I’d taken a massive hit to my own confidence. Getting back into the dojo was hard enough, but once I was back in class, I found that I was physically afraid of doing certain techniques for fear of re-injuring myself. It took a lot of time for me to slowly ease myself back into the full swing of things, and before I knew it, testing time had rolled around again.

Suddenly, a test that was a source of anxiety and fear the first time around became a gigantic monster made of fear the second time. I had to fight more than just a black belt with a practice sword – I had to fight my fear of re-injury, my fear of humiliation, my fear of the test and all it had symbolized as my greatest failure in the martial arts to that point.

The second time through, I failed the test again. That was okay, because it didn’t feel like a failure to me – I got through it uninjured, and so at least one fear was put down. One of the senior black belts offered to coach me in the weeks after that second test, to help me with the continued fears of injury by more or less punching me silly every week until I got better and better at evading and escaping.

The third time through the test, I felt the familiar fears, but they were muted. They could shout that I couldn’t do it, that I should just give up, that it was crazy for me to keep taking risks, but what won the day was knowing that I had the tools and the little successes and victories along the way.

I passed.

Not only did I pass, but I passed well, from what the other judges had said. My fears lost, and in that moment, my passing had exploded the confidence I felt in myself, in my training, in my teachers, and in everything I had done up to that point. All of the darkness fell away, and I came away from the experience transformed, ready to advance, ready to explore my new potential.

I tell you this story so that you can know that your fears can be conquered. Your fears can be beaten. What helped me beat my fears was knowledge and momentum – small successes that to others appeared like defeats but to me were progress against my fears, my greatest enemy. Whatever it is that you fear, start eroding at those fears today. Take little steps, little bites out of the fears. Prove to yourself that you can win against them, that you can beat them back, that you can get out of your own way long enough to win.

The strength that you need to find in yourself comes from that momentum, from those little victories that you string together. If you fear your body image, start walking or running, just a little bit, and commit each day to going just one step farther. If you fear speaking in public, start by speaking to yourself, then speaking to your webcam, then moving to small groups. Take each success and build on it until you’ve built a bridge over your fears.

The final ingredient you’ll need is the support of true friends, friends who will help you acknowledge your fears and that having fears is okay, who will support you and if they’ve faced those same fears, guide and mentor you. If you are mentoring someone, teaching them, coaching them, it’s vital that you do not make things easy for them. No fear means no opportunity to face your fear and beat it.

With this triumvirate – belief in yourself, belief in a proven way to beat your fears, belief in a strong community of friends to catch you when you fall – there is no fear you cannot overcome. If you want to improve yourself, search deep inside for your fears, pick one, and slowly start chipping away it it. Like all prisons, there’s always a weak spot from which you can make your escape.

Photo credit: Matthew Ebel

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A Thoroughly Read Review of Trust Agents

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 18, 2009 in Books | 19 comments

Had enough of Trust Agents buzz yet? I have. Let’s see if the reality matches the hype.

If you’re already a trusted community member/manager, already a thought leader of sorts, Trust Agents isn’t going to do anything new for you. There isn’t anything in the book that you haven’t already heard and practiced before. Some of it will be good reminders of things you should be doing if you’ve lapsed, but for the most part if you have the trust of your community, your tribe, then don’t expect mental fireworks. If you’ve read previous works that Trust Agents builds on, like Tribes, New Rules of Marketing and PR, Cluetrain Manifesto, The Whuffie Factor, Chris Brogan’s blog, etc. expect Trust Agents to be more or less a derivative work with a few different case studies.

If you are not a trusted member or leader of your community, Trust Agents is for you. The nearest trusted person in your community, if you’re very lucky, will buy the hardcover edition, laminate it with granite, and then beat you over the head with it until [a] you get it or [b] your forehead resembles chunky salsa. Either way, we all win.

This is the paradox, the irony of Trust Agents, and the part that I hope all the buzz and hype actually works to break:

The people who need Trust Agents the most are the least likely to read it.

The people who need to get a clue about how to manage trust, how to behave in a trustworthy fashion, how to create value instead of simply broadcasting the same crappy commercial message over and over again, probably won’t pick up the book. Ideally, all the buzz and hype will convince them it’s a must read, even if they don’t have a clue why they’ve got a copy on their desk. It’s your obligation if you work for one of these people to either make them read the book or commit homicide with it via blunt trauma.

There are a great many little things in Trust Agents that, if you’re trustworthy, should be annoying. “How to earn trust” and “how to behave in a community” sound like they were written for 6 year olds. Your inner voice as a trusted person should be saying, “DUH!” and “Is that really all there is to this book?” and the answer is yes, because you know these lessons. You’ve internalized them, you practice them daily, and you don’t need them as reminders any more than you need reminders not to shoplift at the grocery store. For the used car salesman at your office, at your business, on your salesforce, in your community, these lessons are probably the closest thing to divine revelation that they’ll get this week. Sad, but true.

In the end, if you read this blog, if you listen to Marketing Over Coffee, if you follow me on Twitter, you’re probably already a reasonably trustworthy person and you’re not going to get much out of Trust Agents. Like I said, it’s not for you. Buy it anyway, skim it, and then force it down the throat of your pointy haired boss as fast as you can.

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What if no one tells you that you're wrong?

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 17, 2009 in Rant | 39 comments

On the most recent Media Hacks, we were discussing the Crocs extortion case, and this thought popped into my head:

The most dangerous part of social media is that it’s inherently self-selecting towards agreement, which means that fewer and fewer people will tell you that you’re wrong.

What do I mean? Simple law of attraction. We follow people we like. We read the opinions of those people we generally agree with because it’s pleasant to do so. We friend and become friends with those of similar perspectives, and we attract people of like minds.

When you surround yourself – or are surrounded by – people who agree with you 95% of the time, it can seriously distort your own self perception. When nearly every reply to your blog posts is “I agree!” and “OMG you’re so right!” you can start to believe your own press and develop an inflated sense of self worth, which in turn leads to things like blogger extortion, a la the Crocs case. When you read and listen to only the things that you like, it naturally moves your opinions to be more extreme.

You will naturally attract people of like mind. That’s okay. But as your efforts in new media and social media continue to reap rewards, take time out to self-balance and self-check. Re-center yourself by talking with the best of friends – the friend who is wholly unafraid to call BS on you and tell you when you’re wrong about something. Listen to that friend, that opinion, and use it to help you discern where you can improve.

Neil Gorman talked about this at Podcasters Across Borders – how too many people are afraid to disagree with “thought leaders” and “social media superstars”. I asked him the same thing I ask you – no matter how valuable you perceive someone is, the folks who you perceive as leaders desperately need you to call BS on us when we are wrong (me especially), so that we can continue to think critically, to learn, to grow ourselves.

We need your dissent. We need your clarity. We need your honesty. I in turn will be honest in my dealings with you. During the discussions about race and gender in social media at PodCamp Boston and afterwards, I was delighted to hear that a good number of people disagreed with my views, in some cases exceptionally vigorously. Good! The different perspective lets me see more and understand more, and I’m happier and better for it. I may still not agree, but I am better informed.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from Barack Obama – we can disagree without being disagreeable. When I’m wrong, tell me. When you’re wrong, I’ll tell you. When we’re both wrong, hopefully someone will tell us.

Agreed?

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Getting better answers out of your head

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Aug 14, 2009 in Awakening | 13 comments

Did you know that your head is basically a giant computer? It’s true. It’s a massive parallel processor that has individual circuits which are not terribly fast (compared to silicon CPUs in your laptop) but that are meshed together to form an incredible supercomputer capable of processing incredible detail.

That said, your head-based computer comes with no manual and the interface is kind of clunky. As a result, many people – possibly you – aren’t getting the most out of it, just as thousands of quad-core silicon computers capable of incredible feats around the world are currently being used to play Solitaire.

How do you improve the output of your head-based computer, your mind? The same way you do on your silicon machine – with better inputs. Let me give you an example.

Have you ever been sitting around with a friend who is single and they lament,

“Why can’t I find a good man/woman?”

While you nod or sympathize or offer hugs and beer, your friend is giving their mind the wrong inputs.

Linguistically, they just asked their mind for a list of reasons why they can’t do something – and their mind will answer. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Star Trek, where the captain of the ship asks the ship’s computer a question, you can imagine the following in the captain’s voice:

Captain: Computer, why can’t I find a good woman?
Computer: [random beeping sounds]
Computer: The following is a list of 18 different reasons why you can’t find a good partner.
Computer: Reason 1: you are 24.5 pounds over your ideal weight for a person of your age and gender.
Computer: Reason 2: your chronic habit of spitting fluids out your nose while you laugh is statistically unappealing to the majority of your desired demographic.
Computer: Reason 3: approximately 44% of your wardrobe is older than 22 years beyond the current fashion trend.
Computer: Reason 4: your hairpiece adhesive has malfunctioned.

… and so on. Get the idea?

When you ask yourself a question about why you can’t, why something bad always happens to you, why your day/week/month/life is going so terribly, your mind will give you the exact answers to that question. You will get the answer to the question you asked, even if the answer is counterproductive.

Logically, the way to get better answers is to ask better questions:

- How can I turn around this situation and make it a win?
- How can I set this up so that we both walk away winners?
- What three things do I need to change to win that guy’s/girl’s attention?
- What can I learn from this scenario?
- What do I respect about that person’s opinion, even though I violently disagree with it?
- What little thing can I do today, right now to improve my blog readership?

Ask yourself questions that encourage your conscious and subconscious minds to focus on the solutions and outcomes that you want. It’s hard – very hard at first – so make sure you verbalize to yourself. You can even throw in an undo. When you catch yourself asking a counterproductive question, literally say to yourself, undo – the question I really meant to ask is… and then ask the question that will give you the solution you need.

You are in charge of the computer between your ears. It’s the same general hardware and software that Einstein, Mozart, Hawking, Obama, Lincoln, and billions of other people have. What they are capable of, what their mental computers can generate in terms of results, you can also generate as long as you use the machine correctly and effectively.

Try it out. Ask the best questions of yourself that you can. I won’t ask what’s the worst that can happen, because I want you to ask yourself, what’s the BEST that can happen?

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