A few months ago, my friend Wanda, the founder of the Black Women Travel Podcast, said something interesting to me, “We can mirror a successful person and take the exact actions that they take, but that doesn't mean that we're going to get the same results that they get.”

I've been thinking about this lately, because I spent the first 28 years of my life doing what I was told would make me successful and it didn’t work for me.

I went to university, got a finance degree, got an MBA, studied entrepreneurship, wrote the 30 page business plan, got an A in the business planning class, got a board of directors and my business still failed.

In fact, I was a mess from running that business. I was stressed and had daily panic attacks.

When the business failed, I tried to get an investment banking job with all my qualifications and still couldn’t get a foot in the door.

When I decided to follow my passion and be a writer (ironically the failed business was a writing and spoken word business), I was told that it would be easier to get a publishing deal if I was a successful blogger.

So I did what all smart people do - I followed all the successful bloggers who wrote about being a successful blogger and copied all they told me to do.

I read tons of blog posts, I did exactly what the top bloggers said I should do - I studied Search Engine Optimization, signed up for blogging courses, learned how to write the right eye catching headlines, but I still couldn’t get the same results.

I’d talk about the same things they did, I even tried to write the same way they wrote and it just didn’t work.

I couldn’t grow my blog traffic beyond a certain point. I was stuck.

I felt cursed!

It took me a while to realize that people respond to our energy not our actions.