Ask anyone who is married or has been in a long-term relationship for a significant stretch of time and they’ll tell you that these kinds of relationships take a lot of work. The initial courting and dating period can be all kinds of lovey-dovey, because it’s all so exciting and new.
Then she notices that he chews with his mouth open. And he sees her without her makeup on for the first time. And they get into their first fight over something that is decidedly trivial, like forgetting to put the toilet seat back down. Relationships take work. After that honeymoon period is over, you come to realize that the other person is only human with all sorts of flaws and shortcomings. It’s when you’re going through a rough patch that you need to work the most on your relationship. That can be uncomfortable.
Some people might struggle with these kinds of relationships and they start to retreat. They become more distant and despondent until they finally break up. It’s not that they’re incompatible with their partner; it’s that they have commitment issues. They’re too afraid of leaving behind all the other fish in the sea. They’re too afraid of what else they could be missing out on. What if she isn’t the one? What if there’s someone better?
Your relationship with your online business works in much the same way. It takes work. There are going to be rough patches when you’ll question whether it’s worth all this effort. You’ll be tempted to just drop it all and walk away out of anger or resentment or frustration, because your online business isn’t living up to your expectations. The honeymoon period is over and you start to notice some of the other opportunities out there. Maybe they’re more attractive. Maybe they’re better. But maybe they’re not.
If you want to be successful in business, just as if you want to be successful with your personal relationships, you have to be willing to stick with it, work for it, and see it through. Yes, it is absolutely true that some of these relationships can be toxic and it’s best if you walk away. But it’s also absolutely true that even the best relationships (and businesses) aren’t always going to come up rainbows and unicorns.
Working on your online business, whether that’s e-commerce, blogging, affiliate marketing or anything else, can start to feel less enjoyable over time, because it’s starts to feel like an obligation rather than a passion. It can start to feel like a burden when you lose sight of why you’re doing this in the first place and you lose the kind of passion and enthusiasm you had when you first started.
But this is the most important time for you to stick with it, because that’s the only way that you’ll be able to reap the reward. If you give up, you’ll just feel resentful and neglected, like you wasted the best years of your life. It doesn’t have to be this way.
To be successful in business, to be successful in your personal relationships, you have to be willing to give it your all. You have to be truly committed to its success, and not put in only a half-hearted effort. If you only half commit to something, you can expect to reap absolutely zero of the promised rewards and benefits. You have to commit yourself fully and make it a habit.
If you don’t take your goal seriously and you let your efforts slip here and there, you’ll ultimately fall down a very slippery slope where this online venture dissipates entirely. Let’s say that you want to put up a new blog post every day. You keep this up for the first week or two, but then you have one especially tiring day or you’re feeling especially uninspired.
You rationalize to yourself that letting this habit slip for just one day really isn’t going to make that much of a difference. Except you’ve now set a precedent and you let the next day slip too. And the next. And the next. All of a sudden, you’re only blogging once a month at best… and you wonder why your blog isn’t as successful as you’d hoped it would be.
If you find yourself questioning why you haven’t achieved your online goals, you’ve got to ask: Do you have commitment issues? Are you unwilling to put the whole of yourself into something worthwhile?