Using Objectivism To Power Your Blog or Business

I recently fin­ished read­ing this great book called Ayn Rand and Busi­ness. It was a pretty good read, and I came away with sev­eral take­aways and action steps. A great quote from Ayn Rand that she wrote in her 35th anniver­sary edi­tion of Atlas Shrugged is:

“My phi­los­o­phy, in essence, is the con­cept of a man as a heroic being, with his own hap­pi­ness as the moral pur­pose of his life, with pro­duc­tive achieve­ment as his noblest activ­ity, and rea­son as his only absolute.”

Per­son­ally, I find this to be very pow­er­ful, and very moti­vat­ing. What is life with­out pur­pose? How can you get some­where with­out know­ing where you are going? Why are you doing what you are doing?

Major take­aways are:

• Be more ratio­nal. The more you use your own think­ing, the more suc­cess you will gain in busi­ness and in life.
• To be able to live ratio­nally, be inde­pen­dent with your thoughts and actions. Don’t be influ­enced or con­trolled by others.
• Have integrity. When­ever you do some­thing, make sure it is in line with your beliefs and val­ues.
• Be hon­est. Not just in inter­ac­tions with oth­ers but also with your­self. Do not lie to your­self, or any­one else.
• Be pro­duc­tive. Being pro­duc­tive should be your goal. The more pro­duc­tive you become, the more you can reach your goals.
• Have pride. Have con­fi­dence in your­self, work on cre­at­ing the best.
• Self­ish­ness is essen­tial to suc­cess. Self­ish­ness is a major part of being a “Prime Mover”. It helps drive peo­ple to reach greatness.

 

My action steps after read­ing this book:

• Use my brain every day. Take respon­si­bil­ity for my thoughts and their results. If I come up with an idea, tech­nique, or work­flow, start imple­ment­ing it. Test it out make sure it works, then develop sys­tems to auto­mate it so I can con­tinue doing it.
• Don’t fol­low the herd; don’t blindly accept what oth­ers tell me. When I learn some­thing new, test it, and see if it works. If it works, keep it, use it, refine it and try and improve it.
• Cul­ti­vate more pride. Ensure every­thing I do is the best. Take pride in all my work.
• Become self­ish; become moti­vated by my goals, and my code of behav­ior. Focus on my val­ues. Think with my own mind. Avoid the herd.
• Come up with a long-term goal. Use that goal to moti­vate myself to achieve what I want and need in life and in business.

 

How Can This Be Applied To My Blog Or Business?

Become inno­v­a­tive. Don’t fol­low what oth­ers are doing. Do your own thing. Be proud of what you are doing. Take pride in it. Make sure it is the BEST out there. Cre­ate a goal, what do you want to achieve? Do you want to cul­ti­vate 500 daily RSS read­ers? Do you want 1000 unique vis­i­tors on your blog each day? Do you want to lower your ad cam­paigns to get 10 cent clicks? 5 cent clicks? How will you achieve that goal? What do you need to do to reach that goal?

Think about how that will make you feel, and focus on that, let it moti­vate YOU. Be hon­est with your­self and with oth­ers. If you are mak­ing no progress, fess up. Don’t delude your­self. Become that which you desire. If you want to be suc­cess­ful, be suc­cess­ful. Use Rand’s Seven Action Virtues: Ratio­nal­ity, Inde­pen­dence, Integrity, Hon­esty, Jus­tice, Pro­duc­tive­ness, and Pride. Fol­low­ing these prin­ci­ples will make you more suc­cess­ful in any and every­thing you do. If you’re work­ing with a team, if you’re out­sourc­ing your work, encour­age those work­ers to be inno­v­a­tive and develop their poten­tial.

Have a pur­pose; every­thing you do should be clear, and well thought out. Have goals, and have a way to track if you are achiev­ing them. Become a “Prime Mover”; you need to be able to do your own thing. You need to have the con­fi­dence that what you are doing is right, even if it is not some­thing cur­rently held high in pop­u­lar opinion.

Con­clu­sion

I hope this arti­cle has some way helped you. I encour­age you to try and apply these con­cepts in your life and your busi­ness. I’m going to be writ­ing another arti­cle very soon cov­er­ing another excel­lent book. That book is “The Prime Movers” which is another great book that fits in well with this book. I highly rec­om­mend read­ing The Prime Movers (if you can find it). But you can­not fully appre­ci­ate “The Prime Movers” with­out under­stand­ing the prin­ci­ples I have dis­cussed here, or the ones cov­ered in this book. (Ayn Rand and Busi­ness).

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