How To Not Fall Victim To Learned Helplessness In Your Business

There’s such a thing as learned helplessness, and this is often seem as a trait in people who come into this business in a state of desperation. With learned helplessness, you’re often rewarded for your victimhood.

You have a sob story that showcases your lot in life – everything that went wrong – and others feel sorry for you, so they step up to try to lend a helping hand. This desperation never allows you to fully grow as a successful entrepreneur.

Instead, the need to be rescued will be at the forefront of your journey, and that allows others to steer you in whatever direction they want you to be in. They don’t know what’s best for you, but it allows you to avoid taking personal responsibility for your efforts.

This way, if you fail, it isn’t your fault, but the fault of someone else who guided you all wrong. This is a crutch that doesn’t help you in any way. You need to take full responsibility for every action step you take in this journey – for every decision made – good or bad.

When you act in a state of desperation, one of the most common things you might do is avoid following through on projects. You abandon them because you see a shiny new object that promises greater riches, faster than ever before.

None of it is true, of course, but you believe it because it’s easier than doing the work and pushing past obstacles. Remember, you’ll never see the money you want unless you finish what you started.

Every time you abandon a project and use some lame excuse like distraction or boredom, you are causing your own desperation. Get angry at yourself! If you truly are desperate enough, then you’ll be smart enough to plan and change your old habits.

If you’re unwilling to do that, then you deserve the panic that you feel. You’re torturing yourself on purpose because you now know the correct way to handle this situation. It’s not to quit on projects and continue buying in to someone else’s ideas.

Learned helplessness is a plague in the online marketing industry. You see it a lot on social networking sites, and the worst part about it is the flood of supportive comments, fortifying that desperate person’s actions because they feel like they should be nice about it.

The truth is, behind the scenes, true go getters are discussing how those people are always complaining and moaning about their lack of success, when everyone has witnessed their lack of commitment time and time again.

Publicly, they may support you to be kind. But privately, they show no sympathy and you need to understand that no matter how many comments you get understanding why you quit something, those people aren’t going to pay your bills.  

Create an Action Plan to Avoid Desperation

So what can you do if you recognize yourself as the kind of person who works from a place of desperation? The first step is to admit whether or not the truth of the situation is that you should go find a consistent paycheck offline.

Sometimes, such as when you’re about to lose your home, can’t put food on the table, or have had your electricity turned off, you have to put down the dream of online marketing, which takes time to build, and go find a job.

Once the immediate needs are met, then you can return to the table to work on your online career. Start by writing down the root of your desperation. Is it time? Money? Emotions?

Be as specific as possible, because you can’t calm the situation down if you can’t identify exactly what needs to be done to alleviate your feeling of urgency. If it’s money, how much, and have you cut expenses for things you don’t need, like eating out or paying for cable TV?

Create a plan with major milestones that would help you achieve your goal of not feeling desperate and then fill in the plan with action steps. For example, let’s say you’re desperate for emotional reasons, like needing to feel like you’re giving back with your career.

You want to help people and feel like your life has purpose. Do you need others to say you changed their lives or is your own opinion enough? How many people do you need to help to feel proud of yourself – one? One thousand?

Milestones might include creating something for sale or for free for the people in your niche. You might give away a free coaching call or eBook to those struggling. You might create a paid course that could help so many people.

Participate in forums to answer questions. Find the best solutions for certain pain points in your niche and help consumers find them with beneficial blog posts, a podcast or videos.

Open up a coaching program to work one-on-one with them. Then write down what steps are needed to open that coaching program – a soup to nuts strategy you can implement.

Without a plan to alleviate these feelings of desperation, you’ll continue struggling and feeling the anxiety that comes with it, rather than feeling content with what you’re doing in life and with your career.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know what you think in the comments…