Think of this as Volume 11, Number 23 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
We all have a little voice in our head saying "no, you can't." (Picture from A Year in Pictures of Working.)
Sometimes we call it our mothers. This is unfair to mothers. It is, in fact, the voice of caution, even of reason. Caution is not always a bad thing.
But in our modern world caution needs to be put in its place. Sometimes it needs to be shut down entirely. Sometimes it needs to be transformed, through adrenaline, into that which gets us through.
I have been making a study of attitude most of my life, partly because I find it so hard to adjust my own. I get nervous in front of people, always have. I can't shut down the voice. I admire those who can.
The earliest example I can offer is from the summer of 1975. I took a summer "job" selling knives, door to door. They were nice knives, I still have some. But I had no aptitude for it. I could not shut down the voices, and give myself the proper attitude.
There was one young person, of about my age, who could. Her name then was (yes it was) Candy Cotton. I remember her as short, wide-hipped, with long blond hair. And she never took no for an answer.
She was a great salesperson. She sold knives like no one's business. I like to think she learned to sell other things, and had a happy life, marrying someone with a different last name. But in retrospect maybe that name was her great ally. Forcing people to get past it, and pointing them where she wanted them to go, may have been the necessary life-skill which made her the salesperson she was.
Since then I've met many salespeople, and while most never knew it I admired them all. It's a tough life, sales. You are constantly facing the wall of "no," and you have to find a way to break it down. First in yourself, then in others.
Recent Comments