Attitude

Recently, I gave a talk where I asked the audience a few of questions and the response was extremely revealing to me. Let me say in advance that I believe that reading books, particularly biographies, studying successful people is a huge key to success. Learning from their experiences, and their attitudes about business, life and what makes them tick gives us perspective on what we need to do to experience that success ourselves. The first question was, how many of you read the newspapers and practically every hand went up. The next question was how many of you watch the news and practically every hand went up again. The final question was how many of you have read the last book I placed on our website, “How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling” by Frank Bettger and practically no hands went up.

The point is that what you put in your head matters. What we think about is what we get. If we watch the news and read the newspapers, we get all the problems and troubles in the world. If you don’t believe me, look at the front page of your newspaper today. Tell me if you think that war, budget cuts, plane crashes, job losses, murders, political partisanship battles, etc is helping you build your business. Yes, you say, but I need to know what is going on in the world. My reply is why? Are you in public office? How is filling your head with that stuff going to help you succeed? If it is really important, believe me, everyone will be talking about it and trying to make sure you are as miserable as they are.

In 1980 I attended a three day sales training class conducted by Tom Hopkins. Besides sales techniques, Tom taught about the attitude people needed to develop in order to become top sales producers. He talked about how to reduce and stop the habit of worrying and about how to deal with the “no’s”. He also spoke about how, if you want to be successful you must stop watching the news and reading the newspaper in order to maintain a positive attitude because you can’t succeed in sales without a positive attitude. The news and newspapers will absolutely destroy that positive attitude you need to succeed. From that point forward I stopped watching the news and reading the newspaper except, the sports section until even that became too negative with drugs and the malice and mayhem of professional sports.



I have spent years focusing on what I want while eliminating thoughts about what I don’t want and all the negativity that bombards us daily. In order to get what I want, which is to be part of the building of a great company, I focus on that and ignore the reasons why people will tell me it can’t be done. I have become very adept at fighting off negativity and the people who attempt to deliver that news.

As I have said for years, you will win in spite of your circumstances, not because of them. Regardless of the economy, winners will find a way to win and others will make excuses as to why they can’t succeed. Winners will continue to stay positive by reading every book they can find on how others have and continue to win and go to every possible meeting and training event they can find in order to accomplish their goals. Others will make excuses about why they can’t afford to buy that book or attend that meeting and training. They will say that they have “heard it all before”.

My reply is that they obviously haven’t heard it all before because if they had really heard what the successful people were saying, they would far less likely be in the situation they are of not being able or willing to read the books or attend events.

In closing, if you want your world to change, you need to change. Remember that your brain is a computer and the expression GIGO, garbage in, garbage out, remains true. Read every book that you can, the library has almost every one we recommend. Attend every meeting you can. If you can’t afford it, change your thinking and find a way, because if you say you can’t afford to go, what you are really saying is that you can’t afford not to go. And when you go, really listen, really observe, really work, really study the people who are succeeding and accomplishing what you dream of accomplishing. Only through your focusing on what you really want, will you be able to create the life and world you want.