Personal Growth From the Bottom Up – BroderickDurisseau.com
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

I’ve been visualizing two things – improvements to the blog and building traffic. Today my visualization automatically went to the improvements side for the blog and there was very little visualization about building traffic. That’s probably because the main way I want to build traffic is through referrals which means when it’s all said and done, the bulk of marketing isn’t going to be done by me. I want the blog to be so good that people recommend it to others. I don’t think it’s there yet but I’m pretty sure if I keep going with it it will get there.

Improvements

I restructured my blog title and logo to read Personal Growth – From No Life to Prolife. Basically meaning that I want to go from having no life to having my life be my profession and I’m sharing the journey. I think just that phrase right there has the potential to help a lot of people. There’s a lot of people unnecessarily feeling shame, guilt, loneliness for simply being disconnected. Maybe they don’t have a job or a girlfriend/boyfriend or they’ve disconnected with friends and they might feel that in a way that’s a bad thing. I’m going through that transition now and to me, it just means there’s space an opportunity to create what you do want. It’s pretty simple. There’s no need to harbor all these negative feelings. I want to really raise people’s awareness as to what having “no life” really means.

Random Notes

My visualization really wondered today. I started thinking about jumping in a pool in my backyard in a house that was funded by the income from the blog. I thought about answering tons of messages and emails. I thought about changing people’s lives. I want to start talking to people who are already living like that so I know exactly what that looks like. I liked how my visualization wondered today.

I’ll probably be posting in the mornings from now on. When I write and post at night I feel rushed. Like I have some kind of deadline at midnight. Reminds me of writing college papers.

Last, but not least – Rocky and Rambo. I’ve been watching the Rocky and Rambo series’ a lot lately and I just saw them for the first time a couple of weeks ago ( I know…I’m like 30 years late). Something about those movies and seeing Sylvester Stallone work train and work that hard in them is really motivational. I want to train like that eventually.

Stats

4 unique visitors
5 page views
14 subscribers

Day 4 lets go.

Gaining that clarity from day 1 on what I was visualizing definitely helped. Now that I’m solely focused on increasing traffic and improving the blog things are much clearer now. It went so smoothly today and overall I feel the day was a lot more focused. It’s also crazy to see the amount of ideas I’ve had today. For instance, I was thinking about putting a link to my archives within each post. This way the posts I wrote a while ago still get seen by more people, specifically readers new to blogging who might not know what archives or posts are.

The next idea is a slight shift in the whole direction of the blog, but that shift is more aligned with truth so I’m really excited about it. I believe it would really help me with marketing as well. I don’t want to reveal that in this post, but you’ll see what it is.

I feel like I actually have some work to do and I’ll probably put these ideas in action tomorrow. Man, it feels good to have even just a little excitement back. This was beginning to feel like a job. I don’t know if this was all a result of visualization but I’ll keep going with it.

Stats

1 Unique Visitors
5 Page Views
14 Feed subscribers

Come on day 3!

Visualization today didn’t go like I thought it would. My prediction was that visualization would give me a lot of energy to take massive action towards my goals for this blog (1000 visitors a day and earning $1800 a month for this blog). Well after Day 1 that didn’t happen.

Clarity

A lot of what did happen is clarity. I originally said that I would be visualizing my goals as if they were already achieved and I did that. I wanted the blog to bring in an income of $1800 a month with 1000 visitors, so that’s what I envisioned. I noticed when I thought about the $1800 a month there wasn’t any surge of energy at all. Even when I thought about making hundreds of thousands of dollars from this blog there was no energy. I think that could be because I have no idea what to visualize. I don’t know what would be different with $1800 a month. There’s a gazillion possibilities of what my life could look like after making $1800 a month from this blog. Also, the bigger the income goal, the fuzzier the vision is. If it were millions I really wouldn’t know how to envision that. It seems so distant.

But anyway, I stopped in the middle of visualizing because I couldn’t feel energy like I thought I was supposed to.

Going back to the beginning

This is when I thought about my first blog, which I successfully built to average 300 or 400 unique visitors a day. I thought about how I used visualization then. I actually started off wanting to make money from it early, but I listened to different successful blog owners advise not to focus on making money in the beginning and to build traffic first, so I stopped focusing on monetizing it. It was pretty easy to stop focusing on it because there was no pressure at all for it to make money. After hearing that advice from them, I focused all my efforts on building traffic. I started envisioning lots of people on my website taking value from something that wasn’t there before I created it. That’s it. I didn’t think about the money. I didn’t even have any particular traffic goal I wanted to get to. I just was focused on improving little by little and wanted people to take away value. That gave me energy to keep going with it despite not seeing the results I was after.

There was just a whole different energy around that blog when I first started. I remember a lot of excitement, curiosity and appreciation. I saw visitors as totally different and actually more accurately. I was new to blogging so 1 person visiting my blog was truly exciting for me and I really appreciated it. I would visualize all different types of people coming to my website.

Dropping the goal

I’m dropping the goal of $1800 a month and 1000 visitors a day. From now on I’ll just envision a lot of people taking value from what I create like I did with my first blog. I want the primary focus to be on improving the blog and growing traffic. This gives me a much clearer picture to visualize too.

Random observations

I thought 20 minutes would feel like a long time to just sit still. After the first few minutes it was seeming like kind of a grind. I found my thoughts were wondering all over the place. Then they settled down and I actually started visualizing. Time really seemed to fly after I started visualizing. Once I can really establish this 20 minute habit, I might extend it to maybe a 40 minute habit depending on what kind of impact it has.

Stats

3 Unique Visitors
11 Page Views
13 Feed subscribers

Let’s go Day 2!

On October 1st I will begin a visualization trial. I really dove into visualization after I saw The Secret and it helped me take significant action. I used it A LOT to get my first blog off the ground and it’s a big reason this blog is here. If it were not for visualization and the awareness of the law of attraction, I might still be in my old, dirty apartment falling deeper and deeper in debt, not moving towards any of my own desires, and definitely not in a state where I could share anything with anybody.

I’ve used visualization every now and then, and as a consequence I’ve experienced “now and then” results. With this trial I am looking to establish a habit of visualization.

About Visualization

To anyone new to the concept of creative visualization, you’ve unconsciously already used it. When you build up the energy to go get your favorite food from a nearby store or restaurant or to go hang out with friends, you’re using the same concept. The only difference is that it doesn’t take that much visualization to go get your favorite food or hang out with friends. Those are both pretty easy to manifest, especially if you’ve done them a lot. However, the big ambitious goals that require consistent action take more visualization to manifest.

Wikipedia has a nice article about creative visualization, but basically it’s changing/creating your outside world by doing work on your inside world. Your inside world being your thoughts, feelings, but specifically your vibration. Creative visualization is living a vision in the present moment.

Pointers to Visualization and Vision

While consciously pursuing growth, I’ve come across so many sources that encourage visualization or advise “inside” work. Here’s just a few.

All Things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall receive them
- Mark 11:24

You will become as great as your dominant aspiration….Those who cherish a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in their hearts, will one day realize it.
- James Allen, As You think

What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve
-Napoleon Hill

“Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.
- Steven Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.
- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

From Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. to Oprah, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. I could go on for days with sources.

Making it a habit

As I said, even though I know visualization has been very beneficial, unfortunately it hasn’t become a habit yet and I know I could benefit immensely from making it one.

I know from my prior experience with visualization that the biggest benefit was the intense focus. It raises your awareness and puts you in a state to take laser-focused yet unforced action which allows you to build momentum. The good thing about that is that your momentum is now directed at what you want, so you don’t end up drifting playing video games, web browsing, watching TV or succumbing to any other distractions. And it literally does attract that which is consistent with your vision.

30-Day Trial

I got the idea of doing a 30-day visualization trial from this article by Steve Pavlina where he recommends visualizing for 20 minutes a day to experience a shift in equilibrium which should in turn create a shift in your reality. I’ve heard from many sources that 30-day trials are good ways to develop empowering habits, so this should be a good way to develop a habit of visualization.

Each morning at 8:30am I will spend 20 minutes visualizing. My days are pretty wide open so there’s a lot of space to attract what I’ll be visualizing. I will posting my results each day for the next 30 days.

Most of the visualization will be for this blog seeing as that is the number one goal I want to accomplish now. I want this to become a high traffic blog so I will be visualizing exactly what that looks like. Specifically, I’d like to build it up to at least 1000 unique visitors a day and at least be making $1800 a month. I may end up breaking that into smaller pieces, but we’ll see. I’ll post the results for this blog daily including traffic stats and subscriber stats. Right now I’m starting this off with basically 1 or 2 visitors a day and I just put my blog on this domain less than a month ago, so I’m pretty much starting from the bottom. If my predictions are correct my results should increase dramatically but I won’t be attached to that result. I’m just curious to see how much of an impact this will have.

Update: I finished the 30-day trial! To view the results go here.