You know, a lot of us choose stability over progress.
It is safer that way.
It’s really scary to move forward when you have a seemingly perfect life.
You have a constant flow of work.
Yes, some people might say that you’re working for peanuts, but why would you care?
It’s your business decision.
It’s your business model.
It brings you money.
And if you work hard enough (and by hard I mean working on every single weekend and translating hundreds of thousands if not millions of words a year) you might make a decent living.
But whatever happened to working smarter and not harder?
What happened to knowing your worth?
What happened to knowing the value of your own work?
These are the questions that I asked myself in the beginning of this year.
These were the tough questions, unpleasant ones, but I had to ask them.
It had to be me because of all the people I know I’m probably the best candidate to kick my own butt.
Call it a wake up call if you want.
But asking these questions and a year-long journey to find answers resulted probably into the best year of my entire career.
In just one year I:
– Stopped using job-biding platforms to find work;
– Increased my rates by more than 50%;
– Reduced the volume of work I do by more than 60%;
– Built this website and started writing this blog;
– Grew my online presence on Twitter and Facebook;
– Met hundreds of colleagues online thanks to this blog and The Open Mic;
– Worked on my online authority to land better-paying clients;
– And I actually did end up landing those better-paying clients because they found me on this blog! There’re not so many of them yet, but it’s just the beginning and their list will only keep growing every year;
– I’ve envisioned, founded and built The Open Mic – a new free professional community/blogging platform for translators where people can share stories, meet their colleagues, find and share inspiration and even meet clients. You might want to check it out, it’s absolutely amazing! This was one of the most epic and time-consuming things I’ve done this year (over 5 months of development).
All of those things were possible because I work really hard and I choose to move forward.
Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it means that I have to swim against the tide, but I love it and I think you’ll love it too if you give it a try.
And who knows, maybe one day we won’t have to “face the reality” because we will be the ones making that reality.
That’s why I’m asking you, please, try something new next year, start a new business or a new project, or start working on your marketing campaign and help us make this new reality happen.
All it takes is just one tiny step.
It’s great to live in your comfort zone, but sometimes you need to step outside and make a change so that your comfort zone could be even comfier. 😉
I think it’s high time for us to start dreaming big and start changing things in our own lives and the lives of the people that surround us.
This New Year is a perfect opportunity to do that.
[bctt tweet=”Dream big and you’ll be surprised of what you can achieve in just one year.”]
Thank you so much for reading, my friend, thank you for all your comments and ideas, thank you for all your support and inspiration!
Have a smashing 2016!
This is your year.
0 Comments