It’s been crazy this month. The death of Chadwick Boseman literally shook the internet (the post about his death actually became the most liked post on Twitter – ever). The whole thing made me think about time and what it means. In order to talk about your dreams, we have to consider the effect of choice and time on it – because that is what it all boils down to.
Time is something we do not have a hold on. All we can do is to estimate when it would be gone or how long it has been gone. At every moment time is fleeting. At each moment it is experienced and lost at once.
But that’s not all. Our lives run on the branches of choices. As time progresses, we are met with options, and each option serves as a branch. With each decision we fork to one future or the other, forever abandoning the other infinite possible futures.
Once you’re born, life puts you into the oven of time and you begin to bake – transforming you to the result of your choices. And It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, you keep baking “brown”.
What this implies is that, at every moment, we are becoming better or worse versions of ourselves. And at the end of time, we become exactly what we’ve “chosen” for ourselves.
In essence, immediately you make a choice, you forgo other choices and possibilities. And your chosen path transforms you with time.
Due to the branching dynamics of choice against time, the part you chose in the past influences your life more than the choice you’re about to make now, just as the choice you’re about to make now bears more weight than the choice you would make in the future.
Each choice puts you on a path that transforms you into exactly what that part is designed to bake you into. Your choices are all that forge you. They are all that determine the quality of your life. Hence, the better the choices you make, the better the result of time’s “baking” effect on you.
As the arrow of time shoots forward, and we fork to different directions, it becomes increasingly hard to retrace our steps. One might over time become a Legendary thief or a legendary Musician, either by choice or by choosing not to choose.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Choosing not to choose is still a choice” quote=”Choosing not to choose is still a choice”]
Any part we take leads us to a whole different dream, and time is the only thing we wait for.
So how does this relate to achieving your dreams through social media?
Well, that’s simple. Social media is a “Path”. But not just any “Path”, in fact, I can argue that it is the best path you can take (in this generation), and it’s the path that leads to the most reward with time.
With social media, no matter who you are, you get the opportunity to find the path that most suits you. You get to see people who walk the same path as you. You get to see people you can follow, and who can follow you.
And that’s not all, you also get the option to speak – in real-time – with the people who you share the same path with – ask questions, and learn from them as well.
No more fear of getting lost, or being alone – no matter what your choice is.
Whatever thing you are doing or wish to do, you get the opportunity to have people you can always look up to, and who can give you feedback.
Look. Not only is social media a platform to find and follow your path. It is also a platform that allows you to create a unique path. But let’s leave that for later.
Let me give you a real-life example:
MY LITTLE EXPERIMENT
Like I said in the previous article, your friends are on the internet.
Being a lover of art, I found myself liking and joining pages and groups respectively that are dedicated to art. By so doing, I began to connect with more and more artists. I got to see those I was ahead of in the path (of art) and I also got to see those who were ahead of me.
By joining the group, I got to see both the beginning and the end of the path along with those in them: The beginners, the legends, and those at my level.
Now I had clarity. I realized that there was a bright future for artists if they get to that legendary level, however, I also saw what happens when you don’t sharpen your craft or fail to build valuable connections or have healthy publicity. I knew what to do. I knew I had to stand out to win the game. I knew exactly what to do to achieve my dreams
The same thing happened when I joined the writing community: I saw the beginners and the legends. I saw what it looked like winning and I saw what it looked like failing. I also got to see what the winners were doing that the losers weren’t doing. I knew exactly what to do. I knew I had to stand out, by both honing my writing skills and also having good publicity. I knew exactly what to do to achieve my dreams.
And guess what. I’m doing it. (stick to the end and I’ll show you how you too can start doing it)
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YOUR DREAM AND IMPACT – why internet fraudsters are morons
Your dream might be to die in a box with your spouse after raising two kids. It might be to stop world hunger or even cure death.
Whatever your dream is, its weight is measured upon only one standard and that is “impact”.
How impactful is your dream?
Did you dream small by dying in a box with your wife, or did you dream big by dreaming of curing death for the entire human race.. That is approximately 8 billion people
It’s not about being famous. You could run a charity organization without having your name mentioned even once. The point is, how many people is your dream affecting?
Every big dream has one thing in common: Huge effect.
Whether is helping or hurting, you need lots of people to make any tangible impact. Now I would assume everyone here wants the former.
Notice how this was simply about helping or hurting. Every impactful thing is either helpful or hurtful. That being said, impactful things lead to massive rewards or consequences.
If you help millions, you automatically unlock the potential of becoming a millionaire or famous. Same with hurting millions, you automatically unlock the potential of being dead or despised. That is the nature of “impact”.
And guess what, social media puts those millions of people on your fingertips. Social media grants you the opportunity of helping or hurting millions.
This is why internet fraudsters seem to “succeed”. They scam a bunch of people and wind up with expensive cars and stuff… But guess what, they get hated, and wanted. But if you decided to be helpful to those people, you would gain their love and money, and would still be able to meet with them again and again.
In essence, by being helpful, you have the opportunity to keep making more and more impact. Your potential for impact grows exponentially as you would get more referrals and your fan base increases.
The funny part of this whole thing is that being hurtful or helpful requires almost the same amount of work.
But why do people choose to hurt? Maybe it’s because they are stupid, maybe it’s because they are short-sighted, maybe it’s because they are impatient, or maybe it’s because they can’t see the full picture – they can’t picture the future.
Social media gives you the opportunity to achieve your dreams by doing exactly what you love, with the catch that you must impact people.
Your impact could be in the form of entertaining, educating, selling, crafting, etcetera. It all depends on you and how you wish to make your impact.
Do you want to be the person that made a million laugh or the one that sold the amazing gadgets to millions? I don’t know, because the possibilities are endless.
You can literally scale up the impact of whatever you do with social media, and achieve your dreams faster.
The only catch is that you must discover what would be of help to people, and then present it the well. With social media eliminating the barrier in reaching the audience, your next challenge is your “presentation”.
How well are you selling what you’ve got? Well, that’s a topic for another day
Overnight Success
I may not be a fan of “get rich quick” schemes, but I’m a huge fan of getting rich quickly.
If you wanted to travel outside the country, would you rather walk or fly?
In life, there is a need to choose the proper vehicle for your journey. Time doesn’t slow down for anyone, hence whatever you are doing, you have to choose the fastest means.
Rather than selling donuts by the side of the streets, you could sell online. By building huge online awareness, you could have people coming to you every day ordering your donuts rather than waiting for a stranger to come around and buy. You could even add delivery services, or even push things by incorporating an affiliate program: where you become the producers while others become your marketers, and even distributors
Whatever you do, you can build an online presence, and stand out above your competition.
All you have to check is that your product or service is top-notch (not necessarily the best)
The big question now becomes, how do I use social media for the best results?
How to Achieve Your Wildest Dream Through Social Media
In my previous article, I made mention of disconnecting from the wrong people and connecting with the right people online; well, that is not all: you also have to know how to conduct your affairs online, else, you would frustrate the goal of the “filtering”.
A good life is a combination of several good days. A good day should feel successful and meaningful. Hence, a good day is closely linked to how well you spent it: what did you do, and how productive was it?
That being said, even with the best things on your online space, you could still abuse social media, and make your day less productive and unfulfilling (which with time, translates to a crappy life)
It is good to checking for updates to see if there is something important and valuable to consume. It is great connecting with family and friends. It is great building connections and meeting new and interesting people online, it is very nice taking classes online, and it is also awesome doing business on social media.
However, if you catch yourself refreshing the feeds the 100th time, or going through endless streams of status updates, then you should pinch yourself and break the loop (because it never ends – there would always be updates, with the next update a little more exciting than the previous).
And finally, if you spiral down the pit of social media to start going through your exes friends list and monitoring where they’ve been and what their comments were, or you start tearing people down on social media – laughing and mocking them, or even drooling over people, things and places you wish you had or were, then you should slap yourself out of it (because such behaviors are your insecurities getting the best of you – resist the urge, turn off the data and do something better, even a nap is better)
Moderation is key.
Don’t Get Sucked In – focus on your dreams
You should understand that social media is a distorted version of reality: everything is extreme, both the good and the bad.
On social media, we are exposed to the “extremes”. The peek point of people’s cruelty (a state that we may not be shown nor told how they got to it). Same with the most empathic and noble things, we are shown a concentrated and extreme form of kindness (again, this is a state that we may not be shown nor told how they got to it).
With that in mind, it is only wise to add an extra step of filtering when viewing anything off the internet.
In life, things don’t just happen. The guy that is shown beating up his girlfriend didn’t just do that because he was evil, he most likely had a father that abused him or his mother, and that rubbed off on him; and he, being ignorant of what was eating him from within, thought it was a great idea to release pent up anger and resentment on the poor girlfriend.
On the same vein, someone that is seen doing the kindest act may have been in a situation that made them realize that indeed it was good to help those in need. We do not know what pushes people to do what they do. We only come to experience them at the peak of the reaction and then we take a clear picture of it and retweet it a million times: infuriating or awing a million people, whilst in reality, that may have just been a one-time thing, or maybe not
The point, don’t get hooked. Always proceed with a purpose and after that disconnect, else you would be drawn from one insignificant chatter to the other, wasting your time and making you cynical or expectant of the impractical (like someone fantasizing about being proposed to on a private jet with background music, flowers, and a sparkling diamond ring, whilst their partner is struggling to get through the week)
Realize that both the good and bad things you see are extremes: Very few people, if any, posts how much they suck. The millionaire may suck at relationships, or be a hopeless addict (whose addiction is killing slowly). The monster you saw the other day might actually be a nice person pushed to the extreme (The other day I saw a video of a girl slapping, punching and cursing her boyfriend till he lost it and hit her so hard she fell to the floor whimpering)
People are rarely good or bad. We are all drivers of an extremely complicated and sophisticated machine called the body: a body that both cringes in pain and laughs involuntarily. The world is a complicated place, don’t jump into conclusions after seeing a 10 seconds clip.
Filter. Do a reality check. Disconnect from things that cause unnecessary vexations
The Problem with Online Mentors – Especially when they are “showy”
We are humans, and just like a joke inspires laughter, so also success inspires jealousy: it may not be sore, but it lurks.
Success pulls us in like gravity and warps reality. It is something that almost everyone craves in some way. The difference is that whilst some use it as a fuel to do something productive, others chew on it and allow it to fill their hearts with anxiety, and sometimes spite.
Just as lust comes before love, so also jealousy comes before inspiration: there is nothing to be ashamed of. All that matters are how you manage the feelings as they come.
That being said, having either positive or negative people always in front of you could have either positive and negative effects depending on how you process it.
The point is, make it your habit to moderate your activities. Don’t go bingeing (overindulging) on social media: after a certain point it quickly swings from useful to detrimental – no matter what content you’re consuming. At some point, you should disconnect and start doing rather than watching, commenting, and wishing, unless you’re taking a course or work on the platforms.
What Productive Use of Social Media Looks Like?
As the previous article pointed out, it all starts with the right connections. After which you want to start moderating.
Due to the nature of social media, most truly helpful content creators link to other platforms like YouTube or their websites where they focus on delivering value to you without distraction and on their terms.
That being said, your job is to follow these people on social media so that you would get notified when they are releasing their contents (whilst simultaneously consuming little chunks of value they leave on their online trail)
“will be fun to watch our grandkids reading all our tweets in 30-60 years…will be interesting convos” – @Garyvee
Gary Vaynerchuk is someone who puts out an insane amount of “useful” contents on social media, however, he still has his books where his thoughts and ideas are compressed. Where the most value lies.
In essence, social media is hardly the place to go looking for value, but rather the place to go looking for people who have value so that you can connect with them and with that opportunity get to know them and what they have to offer.
I have consumed so much @MarkMansons content that I can almost predict what he would say in any situation. I still keep up to date with him so that whenever there is a new blog post (on his site) I get notified and go consume it.
After consuming so much raw and rich content from creators (on their platforms), I’ve come to realize that what you see on social media are tiny bits of what they are about. The meat is not on social media, it is in the courses, blog posts, books, and seminars.
Social media, like I’ve said before, is just a glimpse of reality (and a distorted one at that). What you want to do is simply use social media as an anchor to them: so that when the useful content is out, you get notified.
Hence, when you wake in the morning and all you see are three lines of inspirational quotes, just know that those are “craps” that are fed to the social media algorithms to appease them. If you scroll for 15mins and you still haven’t still found something that leads you out of social media into some truly valuable content somewhere else on the internet or your local environment, then click out of it.
Refreshing, spying, trolling, and drooling won’t do you or anyone any good: You’re in the matrix, snap out of it.
Even if it’s a chat with someone you know personally, know that it is better to meet in person – eye to eye. And if you are not close enough to meet, fine. Just know the difference between connecting and draining.
Unreasonably long convos leads to drainage of both time and energy. But I trust you can use your discretion
What to Do?
Achieving your dreams via social media isn’t much of a game of being on social media but rather a matter of using it.
Create your profile, connect with people who would guide you on your chosen path, disconnect from those that drain, stay updated but don’t overindulge, connect with new and interesting people, then go to work on your dream having those people constantly fueling you, as you use the same social media to reach more people who you can impact.
Read that again: Create a great profile or page, connect with people you want to learn from so that you can get notified when they post new contents that you can consume (especially on their platforms – outside social media). Then fill your profile and page with helpful and good contents so that others can come to see what you are about, and have to offer.
Consequently, the people you connected with would fuel you as you go about impacting people with what you’ve got.
I guess, the final question becomes, how do I Impact on social media?
How To Make An Impact On Social Media
Just as it is in real life, so also it is on social media: if you wish to be a truly influential person, then you have to have that influence. It’s like they say, “You can’t pour from an empty cup”
Making an impact (maybe in your business, community, or career) requires you to undergo immense self-development.
Note: the impact I refer to is the positive impact.
If you want to create an impact, then you should embody your message. People may not know you, nor where you came from, but they can smell authenticity.
In essence, become the impact you want to make, then project it on social media.
If there were a step by step guide, then it would be
- Honesty: Speak your truth clearly. Let them know who you are, what you can and cannot do for them. Resist the urge to appeal to everyone – stay real.
- Respect: Nothing beats this. You have to be respectful in order to connect with people, else you’ll only end up repelling them. It’s true that sometimes one has to polarize (and pick a side) but everything should be done with respect – disagree respectfully. State your points and speak your truth clearly and calmly.
- Empathy: Fredrick Neitzche once said “as soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position and consequently my arguments! You have to be the victim of the same passion!”. A huge part of connecting with people and making an impact is your ability to feel what they feel. You have to put yourself in their shoes and consider why they feel, think, or act the way they do. You have to feel people’s pains and then offer a solution, or help
- Acceptance of Ignorance and weakness: You also have to be comfortable with the knowledge that you don’t and will never know everything about everything. You should always stay humble and curious. Respect other people’s intelligence as you go about your activities, and also be willing to learn – always
- Tolerance: Make room in your heart to accommodate those who would never agree with you. Keep an extra space for those who would hate you and abhor everything about you. You must resist the urge to try and change everything and everyone. Let people be.
- Helpfulness: Be pragmatic as much as you can. Get a website. I’ve got a course on that. Note that a website is where you can deliver the most value to your fans (or customers) without distractions, and on your terms. A website would enable you to effectively pass your message and make more impact (or teaching, selling, or recruiting)
- Consistency: Keep at it. Don’t stop because you’re not seeing as many likes as you envisioned, things don’t always work that way. What you should focus on is your impact. How well did you impact the 10 people who usually like and comment on your posts? If you didn’t do a good job impacting them, then you prolly won’t do a good job of impacting millions
- Self-development: Keep your self-improvement on the top of your goals and to-do lists. You always want to be getting better and better: there really is no limit to what anyone can become. You just have to keep adding 1% every day for 99 days to raise from 1 to 100. Keep at it. Your hard work would pay off – soon.
- Invest: And finally, to really leverage social media to make an impact, you shouldn’t limit yourself to the people around you. Pull out the wallet and pay for advertisements. Let your works be seen by thousands and your impact be multiplied a thousand folds.
That is how it works: make sure you are doing something that would impact people positively, and then share it with the world: there is someone out there waiting for what you’ve got
Summary
Create a profile: Ensure that you put out good content on your wall (I explained this here). Set up your Profile or Page to match exactly what you want people to see you as because they really do judge you based on what you put out there on your profile.
Follow the right people: Make sure you follow people who inspire and motivate you, also make sure you turn on the notification so that you’ll know when they post something new
Limit the time you spend on social media: This is because the good stuff is usually not there: if you can’t find something worth clicking through to, then exit. Anytime spent drifting on social media platforms aimlessly is wasted (you would be entertained, but it would be wasted, unless entertainment is your goal – but I guess not, since you’re reading this to find out how to achieve your dreams)
Stay consistent: Make sure you’re consistently putting out content that resonates with the dream you’re pursuing. You want to build your online presence. And always remember that consistency is more important than intensity – stick to posting regularly (because that is what the algorithms respect)
Pay for Publicity: Rather than just waiting for somebody to share your post to their friends, invest your money on your platforms and have your stuff shown to a wider audience (usually in the thousands). And surely what you do won’t resonate with everyone, but the few that it resonates with would come to see what you’re all about, and when that happens, you want to make sure that you got step number 1 right
That is how you make an impact. That is how you achieve your dreams using social media. That being said, there are still so much to learn, but this is your “starters pack”
Next steps
Connect with me on WhatsApp to receive more value every day (I don’t send annoying broadcast messages, you only get to see my latest offers and contents on my status)
Carry out a research of the top people in the industry you’re interested in: then follow them and make sure the notifications are also turned on
Disconnect with people that pull you in the negative direction (based on the path you’ve chosen). If you’re an atheist, you prolly shouldn’t be following pages related to religious organizations and vise versa. Stick to the people who fan your flame.
Keep working on yourself. There would always be opportunities waiting, but you’ve got to be ready to tap into them. Social media may fade away someday, but you would remain. Make sure you are the best. Make sure you develop yourself to the extent that your dreams would be begging to come to you
Dick David is a freelance SEO content writer and editor with over 7 years of experience in content writing, digital marketing, and sales. He is the founder of Pawns Digital Agency. Throughout his career, he has authored over 4 books, published hundreds of SEO articles attracting thousands of monthly visitors, ghostwritten numerous works, and edited hundreds of content pieces across various industries. Currently, he works with Robert Taylor Media and has also worked with Tobi Digitals and Branditechture Design Agency, among others.