In general I try to avoid tooting my own horn. When I was younger, I was quite arrogant, and in many ways that made me an unlikable person. Eventually I grew out of that, and learned to not rank myself or other people.
But as someone who advocates positive-oriented self-improvement, I believe it’s important to celebrate successes.
Celebrating Our Achievements
It’s worth remembering for all of us that huge wins and achievements are special. Nobody likes a braggart who constantly goes on about how great he is. But big accomplishments don’t come along every day. That’s what makes them big accomplishments, and they are big deals.
You should be excited about them. If you don’t share that excitement with others, they either won’t think it’s important, or won’t know it happened at all. Then the excitement and joy you ought to be feeling over this epic win will be diminished and hollow. You’ll end up convincing yourself that it wasn’t such a big deal after-all. And that’s a shame, because you deserve to bask in the satisfaction of all your hard work paying off.
Remember, your friends and loved ones care about you, want you to succeed, and want you to be happy. They’re cheering you on in your endeavors, and will be eager to share in your excitement.
Don’t worry if you’re not summitting Everest, winning a Nobel Prize, or saving the world. Your epic win could be losing ten pounds, running around the block without getting winded, or just putting on pants and leaving the house. If it’s meaningful to you, the people who care about you will be happy for you.
So toot those horns. Tell people about your epic wins, your grand accomplishments, your big successes.
Or, if you’re suffering from the Coronavirus Lazies, and all you can manage to do is exist, that’s okay too. Give yourself a pat on the back just for getting through the day.
I Haven’t Succeeded… Yet
Which brings us to my own auto-trumpet-honking.
This site is a labor of love. Of course the dream would be for me to make money off of it – maybe even enough to earn a living. Or if I’m dreaming big, to make me rich. And to build a platform and following that will help me sell my weight loss book when it comes out, as well as any future books I release.
That hasn’t happened yet. My audience is still small, and in the week that my affiliate links have been live, I’ve earned precisely $0.00. (I previously said I had earned a whopping 44 cent commission off myself, but that since has been adjusted to $0.)
I don’t get disheartened by this. Sure, it would be great to be an overnight phenomenon. But I know that most successful sites take years to build. And I haven’t yet done any marketing or influencer outreach. All I’ve really done is ask my readers to share articles and the site, and to click the affiliate links. (By the way, please do that.)
Tooting My Own Horn About a Success
But I recently saw a nice sign of success, that’s worth tooting my own horn about. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been taking free Search Engine Optimization classes from Yoast, as well as installing their plugin. I’ve been incorporating what I’ve learned in some tweaks to the overall site and individual posts.
A few hours after my post on the Coronavirus Lazies went live, I Googled “Coronavirus Lazies” to see how it was ranking. Google hadn’t yet indexed the page. However, the post linking to the article on the Self Helping Yourself Facebook page was the number two result, losing out only to the Dictionary.com definition for “Lazies.” I can’t expect to compete with the dictionary, so being second place was pretty exciting for me.
My previous best showing on Google, which I had been pretty excited about at the time, was when my Genial January post cracked the first page of results, though it was at the very bottom.
At least, that’s what I thought. I Googled “Genial January” to confirm that, and saw this:
I was the top result! This’s extra impressive when you think about it. “Coronavirus Lazies” is a term I invented that uses non-standard syntax, and climbed to the second spot out of 6,580 results. “Genial January” may not be a common phrase, but it rolls of the tongue and is certainly something other people have said. My post was the top spot out of nineteen million results.
So then I went through and Googled all my articles to see how they ranked, Genial January wasn’t the only number one Google result I had.
Self Helping Yourself’s Best Google Results
Note: Usually I link directly to articles, but here I’m going to link to the Google results about the articles.
Also, Google results are constantly changing, and can differ between individuals based on search history, location, and a bajillion other factors. I did these searches in incognito mode so my own search history wouldn’t factor into them. But it’s possible your results may vary.
Number One Google Results
- Affable April
- Less Scorn Equals More Happiness
- 13 Things I Learned From Reading 50 Self-Help Books (Okay, maybe this is a bit less impressive because the search included those specific numbers. On the other hand, it is number one out of over a billion results.)
- Foster a Positive Attitude to Improve Your Happiness and the World. (I didn’t even need to include “and the World” in the search to get the number one spot.)
- Genial January
- Eliminate Garbage Time (Or Marie Kondo Your Leisure)
Number Two Google Search
Number Three Google Search
Number Five Google Result
- Digging Out of a Slump (This was probably the biggest shock to me, since this is such a common phrase.)
What Would You Like to Toot Your Own Horn About?
Okay, enough tooting my own horn. This isn’t a blog about me; it’s about self-improvement.
Sound off in the comments. What have you achieved recently that you want to share with others?
[…] right way to boost my ego is to better myself and celebrate my achievements. Helping and encouraging someone is praiseworthy. Mocking them is […]