You’ve probably heard people say, when challenged to get up and out of their comfort-zone, something like “No; I just want a quiet life.”

A quiet life can be an asset; but only in small doses. Everybody needs some time away once in a while, some peace and solitude. A chance to unwind and review things, to make decisions pertaining to the future. – But spending all day every day doing that leads to procrastination, inaction, lethargy, lack of ambition or determination, etc. A quiet life becomes a dead-quiet life; one of tedious routine and a hard daily grind that never seems to go anywhere.
Ambitiousness and motivation are quashed and forgotten as day after day of tedium and getting no further grind by and wear away at the senses; bringing not inspiration and hope but depression and darkness.

Wake up! Smell that coffee! A quiet time is a sensible and necessary time once in a while. A quiet life is… Well, quiet, dead, dead boring. A living-death of motivation and ambition. In short; a total waste of existence. Never moving forwards, and going precisely nowhere. The epitaph:-

“ Died totally unsatisfied and unfulfilled; but had a quiet life nevertheless.”

Unfortunately many people have this quiet life; many without realising it even until the end of it comes, and even then maybe not. Why? Because they never ventured out of their comfort zone. Because they never took any of the challenges that life threw their way, because they never walked through any of the doors of opportunity that opened to them but preferred to stay “satisfied” within their own life-vision of humdrum routine and taking the easy way out.

Some try achievement at least once, but fail and give up straight away: Motivation, determination, and perseverance, vanish due to a single failure, and they give up altogether to retire back into their protective shell of comfort-zone and world-view.

What they fail to understand, the big point that they miss altogether, is that every failure is a rung on the ladder to success. Failure is inevitable at some point and in some way; but as the old adage says: –

“If at first you don’t succeed; try, try again.”

The “quiet-lifers” possibly tried once, if they could be bothered; and then gave up, either because there was a stage 2, or because stage one failed on the first attempt.

I want to use myself here in this example; not because I’m a shining light in the darkness or anything like that, but because this is my story: –

In my teens I wasn’t a typical teenager. I was to all intents and purposes a loner who was trying to find some way to set up some kind of business operation in the face of total adversity from an extremely negative, psychotic, mother. (I didn’t know it then, but I was also living with undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome.) A mother who seemed to always make certain that I never had any money, was extremely dominant, and who ensured at every opportunity that she told me that I was unable to succeed in life because I “wasn’t born for it”, and basically totally did my head in on a daily basis. In hindsight I don’t think she actually meant me any harm, but I’m fairly sure that she was looking after herself and her own future at my detriment. – Far too long a story to go anywhere with here.

It was a no-win situation, so I left home in my late teens as amicably as possible, and tried to make my own way in life. After a while I eventually settled down to a “quiet life”. Relationships were on offer but I generally declined all but a few, and had no intention of marriage/”settling down” because I knew that there was something that I’d missed along the way: Not in relation to marriage etc, but with regard to success and achievement, and I was going to find that missing ingredient first before I “settled down” in any way.

In short I discovered that a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) wasn’t the way to success: It was quite obvious that the little dictators who imagined themselves to be within a position of “power” within the artificial environment of a company weren’t real achievers: their only successes were in reality as convincers and brown-nosers in regard to their own bosses. They were totally dispensable and utterly at the mercy of the organisation for whom they worked with regard to their future. Also they only had any of their “power” by proxy from their masters, who paid them as little as possible for as much of their time and effort as possible.

Only self-employment had any solution to the problem; and that was the way I would be going. – First in the home improvement industry as a self-employed sub-contracted salesperson, then as a trader, then as an IT guru/computer builder/repairer.

On the way through life I’d managed to pick up a disability during a road traffic accident, and so, although I could still achieve most things physical, it required a lot of extra effort. In reality, although largely unknown to the outside world, I was expending twice as much as everyone else in terms of effort to achieve the same result. In my thirties that wasn’t really a big problem, but now I’m getting older things are creeping up on me and I probably couldn’t do what I used to do now.

Computer building and repair isn’t exactly physically stressful; and a lot of it is a sit-down occupation. At the end of the day, though, there’s very little money in it, plus the fact that one is also competing with the big High Street names such as Dixons, Comet, Staples, Currys, PC World, etc, in addition to the other white-box-builders.

It was just as the recession kicked off in America that I got to know David Risley, owner of pcmech.com, online. His name had popped up a number of times in the past, although I’d virtually ignored it and carried on with whatever I was doing at the time. I did buy his “Build Your Own PC” manual to see if I could get any extra tips and tricks from it for my then PC-building career, but other than that I hadn’t known much about him and would probably have said that I’d heard the name if anyone else had mentioned him.

Strangely, though, when he used to host PC Mech Live, a streaming show on Ustream from pcmech.com’s staff, I could see that he knew what he was talking about, and had a natural style for clear communication, whilst being articulate but by no means a bullshitter.

David gave me a little free advice, and I argued against it, and for it too, in an attempt to pick his brains a bit more. He told me I should start a blog and use the WordPress platform in doing so. (You’re reading it now.) This was more like it, this was cool. I blundered straight onto Twitter and announced my blog to the world. I believe by month 3 I actually managed to top 20 a day visitors even! – But there was still something missing, and despite my dedication to blogging from the word go I wasn’t making anything like the amount of money that people like Yaro Starak etc were making from it. – In fact I wasn’t making any money at all from it, and it was just another financial burden, although one that I could manage to keep going.

Suddenly I heard of a product on the market that sounded right up my street. It was from David Risley again, and it was called 3 Day Money. 3 Day Money is a short 3-day course from David which teaches you the basics of running an internet-based business. It’s good and worth the price; but it doesn’t go anywhere near as in-depth as Blog Masters Club; David’s latest internet-based baby.
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The Become A Blogger course is a great course. How does it differ from David’s Blog Masters Club course? Become A Blogger starts from the very beginning, and teaches you from scratch the stages involved in setting up a blog, getting it running, and maintaining it, plus a number of techniques to keep it ahead of other blogs. The real difference is that Yaro’s course is aimed at total beginners. It’s professionally made and very well formatted. It covers a lot of material and is precise, concise, accurate. What it doesn’t do is teach you all the powerful techniques involved in internet marketing in relation to your blog. In essence Yaro’s course starts from square zero and goes to square 40 out of 60. David’s course, on the other hand, starts at around square 10 out of 60; although it does touch on squares zero to 9. David’s course starts on square 10 and goes all the way up to square 61 out of sixty: I kid you not. – That’s why it costs a little more than Yaro’s.

Am I saying that David’s course is superior to or better than Yaro’s? Not at all: It’s a case of market sector targeting: –

If you’re a complete beginner, and maybe you don’t even have a blog yet, then Yaro’s course is more the course for you in my opinion. However, having said that; if you’ve already started David’s course without a blog then you have absolutely nothing to worry about: David will take great care to ensure that your blog is up and running and optimised in time to start the marketing part of the course.

If you have a blog, but it’s not performing as well as you’d hoped, then David’s course is the one for you in my opinion: In it, David will teach you everything that he knows – Powerful techniques and systems for marketing your blog and associated products to the point of generating a six-figure-income.

In short, then, I got up off my butt and came out of my comfort-zone. I gave up the quiet life mentality. – I’m so glad I did! My life has direction again; it has a sense of purpose and achievement. I have motivation and ambition. I desire to succeed because of the other option: failure, aka a “quiet life”.

When my life’s over and the undertakers are laying people serenely in their coffins; I want to be the one who comes sliding happily and excitedly in: Champagne and chocolate in one hand; a fulfilled life and a legacy in the other, shouting:-

“Well, I guess that’s about it huh? – BUT WHAT A LIFE!”