By Vidas Pinkevicius (get free updates of new posts here)
You owe me. I’m a freshly made Doctor. I earned my title. You should pay respects to me now. I made it. This is how I thought after finishing my doctoral studies in the US and coming back to my home country, Lithuania. It’s been deeply disappointing to see that the world doesn’t operate this way. The stars didn’t line up for me, the doors didn’t open. I thought everybody owed me attention and respect. But the truth was the world didn’t even know I exist. So nothing happened. For the first few years after my graduation, I was walking blind. Until I started to realize this: Nobody owes me anything. People will only buy from me ideas, products, and services if they know me, like me, and trust me. And trust cannot be bought or forced upon. Trust must be earned. Little by little over a long period of time. So I understood this: I have to be generous, if I want people to trust me. I started helping people. Sharing my ideas for everyone freely to use on my blog. Little by little small miracles started to happen. People began to pay attention to what I have to say on my blog. Some readers started to reciprocate. Of course, there always are those freebie seekers who only want to exploit me, who want my help but will never take action on what I write. These people are not in my tribe. I don’t have to interact with them. I know they can’t help me and I can’t certainly help them. I won’t hide the ideas from them either. So I let them be because there are others who care deeply about what I have to offer. This is for them that I do my best work. Being generous can be scary, especially when we think about our activities online. We’re dealing mostly with strangers and generally speaking we’re wired not to trust strangers. But in this day and age hoarding information isn’t a long-term strategy. How far does your blogger generosity go?
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