| We all know that every
normal person loves the successes that the marketplace and life afford
us. The big question is, how do you respond to the periodic failures? I
believe more potentially great careers have been destroyed by the poor
handling of negative events and unsatisfying scenarios than practically
any other cause. High performance people know exactly how to handle the
rejection, the discouragement, and the worries that inevitably present
themselves. Do you? High performance people handle a “No” with great professionalism. Rejection for them is like water off the proverbial duck’s back. They categorize that experience, classify it, plug it into their numbers so they always know where they are, but they never ever let it psyche them out. They promptly make their call, carrying no negative emotional baggage with them. There are some people (usually lower producers) who, when rejected, let the experience really get to them. They wear their hearts on their sleeves and take the negative response personally. They don’t want to talk to anybody the rest of the day. Maybe for a week or two. A couple of careers, perhaps. They’ll do anything to avoid an interaction with another human being. Why do you think movie theaters are open in the daytime? They’re for people who have just been rejected! All joking aside, rejection is a great test. How are you going to handle it? If you are the type that folds his tent and goes away after the first “No”, you might want to look at a less-threatening career path. Few people achieve great things by relying on their first attempt for success. You’ve probably heard the old adage that you aren’t beaten until you give up. The late J. Douglas Edwards used to say that many top-producing salespeople make the majority of their sales after their fifth attempt to close. That means they experience at least four times more rejection than success in the sales process. We can never hang our emotions and our feelings of well-being on any one prospect who chooses to say “No” at any one moment. When a prospect says “No”, don’t be mad at your prospect. That is irrational and counter-productive behavior. It will psyche you out of high performance on your next calls. My suggestion is to develop the discipline of blowing it off. Forget it. The experts who have researched the topic of worry have determined that 95 percent of the things we worry about never happen. So don’t drag yourself into needless despair. Mary Crowley used to say that worry is the misuse of imagination. My friend Ed Foreman says, “Worry is nothing more than negative goal setting.” We often reinforce negatives in our mind. Repeated visualization of a negative event can create the very disaster we would like to avoid. To worry in an all-consuming manner uses up a tremendous amount of energy that we could direct positively. Worry seldom solves any problems. Henry Ward Beecher once said, “It’s not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy; it’s hard to give a person more work than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade.” One way you can lessen stress is to concentrate on keeping things in perspective. When you start to feel tension and anger rising, ask yourself: Is this situation really worth losing my composure over? Is it worth losing an hour to a headache? Worth ruining my day? Winston Churchill amazed people with his ability to ignore certain matters and yet pay great attention to others. He appeared to be forgetful and disorganized until something significant arose. Then he became acutely attuned to the most minute detail. “Winny” knew how to control stress by putting things in perspective. We should all strive to do the same. |
