No matter what we do, were making up rules in our head as we go throughout life. These rules put blinders on our ability to succeed, thinking we aren't allowed to do this or that.
Just last week, Shoemoney hosted an awesome contest for what I believe is the second year in a row, where he provides a top notch package to the Affiliate Summit.
The contest required you to submit a post on why you thought you deserved to win and the shoemoney staff picked 10 contestants to compete for this contest. The competitors were announced and then posted where readers of ShoeMoney could vote for their favorite. The person with the most votes would win.
What I found extremely interesting was that one contestant paid John Chow for a published post encouraging people to vote for him. Another contestant noticed that this was happening and immediately set up a campaign where people would submit votes for him and get paid $.05 a click through another site.
What happened was amazing. The contestant that paid $.05 per votes hands down won the competition and he spent a fraction of the investment that the second place guy did.
None of the other contestants thought of this, and even more interesting is that the winner of the contest, Vinay, posted his entire thought process and how he did this on his blog.
While Vinay had an awesome post and deserves to win, He also understood that having the best post wasn't the object of the contest. It was getting the most votes and that he did.
We spend far too much time trying to have the best of everything, and not enough time getting the job done. We have to ask ourselves, “Whose rules are we living by?”