Making positive changes in your life using the internet

The Great Equalizer Puts A Wealth of Exciting Opportunities at?á Your Fingertips (Literally)

Written by Hubert Lui

Via ElbertBarnes, flickr

The world has become more accessible; this is due to many factors. In fact, you could probably name quite a few just off the top of your head (transportation, media, cultural focuses, paradigm shifts, etc.)

I want to talk about one: The Internet.

The Internet has created many things for people. Distractions, destructive habits, and infected computers, are a few things that the internet has spawned. On the flip side, the Internet is a great wealth of knowledge. It is accessible to anyone with access to a library.

I’m thankful everyday that I have access to the Internet, because I have access to the Great Equalizer.

There is no excuse for people not to be consistently pushing out work. There are more opportunities out there for everyone now. The ability to self-publish and gain an instant audience has never been this widespread.

Consider two or three decades ago, when aspiring writers would often have to wait a painstaking amount of time to get a draft published (or rejected). If they did manage to get published, they’d get few dollars for their efforts, and the editor may not have given the feedback that the writer was really looking for. Now, writers simply fire off e-mails and ask for more feedback in a more specific area: ’Could I have tweaked this? Should I have said this? How could I have rephrased this?

This shorter wait time (or feedback cycle) means that there’s no reason you shouldn’t be consistently improving.

Remember, it also means that it’s a lot easier for your competition to improve as well.

The Internet makes it easier for everyone to get opportunities. You and everyone else have the tools and the ability to listen to the thoughts of your role models. You have access to ask anyone questions that you’re curious to learn more about (alright, not anyone -most people though.) You have the ability to self-publish your thoughts if absolutely no one else is willing to publish them (which is unusual.) The Internet removes barriers for everyone.

Now more than ever, your situation can be what you make it. If you are unemployed, you can choose to make it a period of powerlessness and sit around trying to cheer yourself up, or you can choose to find out how to get more opportunities.

You want some opportunities? My friend once told me about a friend of his, a student aspiring to be an investment banker. He hadn’t received any offers or interviews from any firms at the time, so he decided to do his own little experiment. He ended up buying a fruit basket for every firm on Bay Street and delivered it himself.

For those of you wondering how it worked out or whether it’s true, you may have missed the point. This guy decided to make opportunities. Walking around is free. A suit may cost some money (but casual clothes are relatively affordable), and so are fruit baskets. If you’re strapped for cash, you’d be out of luck in this case. Not so online.

All you need is an Internet connection. Walk to your local library and use it. It’s free.

If no ideas are brewing at the moment, become a freelance writer. Seriously, start a WordPress blog and create some good writing samples (Google what writing samples work in the niche you want to go into.) Decide on a niche you want to dominate, then strive to become the best writer in it.

Want to learn to write better? Take a class. Read a book on how to write better. E-mail writers in your niche and ask what steps they take before writing an article, and analyze the structure and diction of their articles. Do they use alliteration? How much time do they focus on headlines? (could be up to 80%.)

Get as much information and as many perspectives on it as you can, and then e-mail magazines and bloggers and ask if you can write a guest post for them. Who doesn’t like free submissions?

If you don’t know how to do any of this, then Google it. Or feel free to shoot me an e-mail. The only thing really stopping you is time and energy.

You can either choose to embrace the Great Equalizer and seek the opportunities that you’re interested in, or wait and have someone else take them and make them theirs.

Your world is what you make it. Maybe I’m just an idealist, or maybe I’ve gone crazy listening to too many positive podcasts and reading one self-help book too many. Maybe I’ve watched too many Nike commercials.

Or maybe you’re just making excuses.