I’ve been reading Guerrilla Marketing and one of the points that author Jay Conrad Levinson makes repeatedly is that you have to be committed to your marketing plan. He was involved in creating the Marlboro Man ad campaign that took that brand from sales basement to sales stratosphere, from oblivion to icon. When the campaign started, the brand was #31.  After a year of Marlboro Country, the brand was…..still #31. The ad team was disappointed; but, the client had believed them when they told him that results were not instant. The client was in it for the long haul and it paid off for him in a big way, redefining #1. (Ignore the fact that we are discussing cigarettes, here, folks. Landscape. Think landscape.)

My problem is that I’m a member of the “Just Add Water” Generation. In fact, I am Queen of the Just Add Water People. I can make potatoes and rice in mere minutes.  Luscious, flaky biscuits in no time.  Heck, I can grown my own sea monkey kingdom in just a few days!  I can have nearly anything I want in less time and with less energy than at any other time in the history of mankind.  Stonehenge took hundreds of years and thousands of people to build.  Las Vegas has been built and rebuilt a gazillion times in only 66 years. It took the pilgrims about six weeks to cross the Atlantic.  The Concorde could do it in just under three hours. It took Merriweather Lewis two years and 25 days to travel from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Northwest.  Last summer, it took the Dotys five days to drive from Nashville to Tacoma … and we had my tiny bladder to deal with!

My point is this: I would have made the. worst. pioneer. ever.  Caroline Ingalls would have killed me with her bare hands and no jury would have convicted her. This waiting for a marketing campaign to bear fruit or waiting to lose a few pounds is, frankly, for the birds. I want results and I want them now!  While this Positive Thinking Blog Goddess title is catchy and all, I do not, in fact, hold sway over the laws of space-time.  Physics ignores me.  I fall into the universe of The Rolling Stones – I can’t always get what I want. Sigh.

I cannot control those things; so, what can I control?

I can control my focus.  What am I looking at?  Am I looking at past failures? Am I looking at or giving credence to head trash, either others’ or my own? Or am I keeping my eye on the prize, believing that my campaign will pay off? Do I believe that I can lose weight? Do I believe in the process?  If I don’t, then I’ve got to recommit or re-evaluate.  But, if I do, then I have to put my blinders on, ignore the distractions, keep the faith and carry on. I go from The Stones to Kansas and carry on, my wayward son.  There’ll be peace when you are done.

Peace, progress, and success – even for the Just Add Water People.