Sooner or later, if you keep working hard in a focused way on a skill or project, you will have an audience even if it is an audience of one. People are naturally attracted to the hardworking, skilled person and will want to watch or learn. Having an audience motivates most people and the larger the better. Even an internet audience that you cannot see in the flesh can motivate you. Jack Humphreys writes: "From providing a killer product or service, to top-notch customer service, webmasters get way more professional when a lot of people are looking and buying. After all, it is embarrassing to get all that traffic and have people landing on a dud page with crud products and ugly, broken links." A big audience is a great motivator. Some sportsmen and women only perform at their best when they have a huge audience. Wayne Rooney, the latest soccer sensation in the UK, tends to score goals when he has a big audience as in the recent European cup competition. Teams in the lower leagues of the soccer championships in England tend to perform miracles when they take on the top teams in front of large audiences. They frequently defeat the teams from the higher leagues. There is a danger that a large audience will be so motivating that you freeze and do not do your best. However, usually a large audience will bring out the best in you especially if you decide to go for it. Not all of us can have a huge audience, however, but we will have some kind of an audience over a period of weeks and months. If we lose weight, for example, large numbers of people will notice this over the next few months. Just one person that we respect and/or love can be enough of an audience to bring out the best in us. Most of us go to great lengths to please our parents even after they have died. We see them as looking down on us and approving our efforts. The key point in all this is that whatever we do in private, whether it is good or bad, usually emerges in the public world. The thought of this can motivate us to do more. When you are practicing your guitar on a daily basis, it is almost inevitable that a time will come when you perform in front of an audience. So don't wait for the audience to arrive. Just get practising on your own and sooner or later the audience will appear. A little marketing of course might help. The writer works away on his or her own before public acknowledgement happens. Geoff Thompson wrote his first book on toilet paper in the only private place he could find - the gents. The book can now be found on many bookshelves. Geoff is now known all over the world. So get off your butt and get working hard. Get serious and professional. The professional does whatever it takes to become highly skilled and worthy of payment. The amateur only works when he or she feels like it. The amateur can of course reach a higher standard than some so-called professionals but usually the professional is superior in performance. The professional has to produce the goods or face the sack. Robert Louis Stevenson only managed to finish his great adventure story 'Treasure Island' because he had been paid in advance for it as professionals often are. Before that he had failed to finish nine novels. Work hard whether you feel like it or not and don't give up. Your admiring audience will arrive later. Even if they don't, you, as an individual who has followed your dreams wholeheartedly, will be much happier and stronger. Back in 1990 I opened in a martial arts school in Kent. I only had one student arrive on the first night but that was enough to motivate me to keep going and gradually the numbers increased. The school is still going strong 15 years later. If you don't have an audience yet, start visualising one. If you keep working hard at your skill or skills, the imaginary audience will become a real one. Those who have a skill usually end up as leaders. They lead and teach those don't yet have that skill and leaders will gradually acquire followers and followers usually provide an enthusiastic, respectful and appreciative audience. |
