Always Forward! (eBook)

Discover the 7 Secrets of Sales Success

William S. Wooditch (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
172 Seiten
Indie Books International (Verlag)
978-1-941870-58-7 (ISBN)

The hard-won lessons in Always Forward! are designed to alleviate the pain and shorten the distance between where you are now and where you are determined to go in the future. These secrets can create the foundation for an exciting and rewarding life if you are willing to face your fear and become compelled to move forward-Always Forward! What we think and what we do in the moments, hours, days, or decades will determine whether our life is enriched or impoverished. The voice that seeks excellence echoes the tone of possibility; it is steadfast in the face of risk and humble in the accumulation of reward. If you are determined to make a change in your life-Always Forward! will serve as both your essential toolkit and indispensable guide. No matter what industry you're in, you cannot sustain forward movement without the unconditional resolve to give and do your best every day-no retreat, no surrender. If you can live to the spirit of this commitment, the detailed philosophies, strategies, and methods outlined in Always Forward! will help you experience a significant difference in both your business and personal pursuits.

The hard-won lessons in Always Forward! are designed to alleviate the pain and shorten the distance between where you are now and where you are determined to go in the future. These secrets can create the foundation for an exciting and rewarding life if you are willing to face your fear and become compelled to move forward-Always Forward!What we think and what we do in the moments, hours, days, or decades will determine whether our life is enriched or impoverished. The voice that seeks excellence echoes the tone of possibility; it is steadfast in the face of risk and humble in the accumulation of reward. If you are determined to make a change in your life-Always Forward! will serve as both your essential toolkit and indispensable guide. No matter what industry you're in, you cannot sustain forward movement without the unconditional resolve to give and do your best every day-no retreat, no surrender. If you can live to the spirit of this commitment, the detailed philosophies, strategies, and methods outlined in Always Forward! will help you experience a significant difference in both your business and personal pursuits.

CHALLENGE #2

ALWAYS FORWARD: THE WAY THROUGH FEAR

The neighborhood bullies were bored and on the lookout for prey. They chain-smoked cigarettes and guzzled beer and cheap wine. They stalked, much like the predators on the Savanna. Unlike the predators on the Savanna who survive by instinct, their lot was chosen.

That day, they found me. I was nine at the time.

As I would navigate the three-mile gauntlet to school every day from neighborhood to neighborhood, I was always vigilant of what lurked around corners.

The image from that day is still etched vividly in my mind. It changed the rest of my life from that day forward. I was wearing my prized birthday possession. I loved my brand new baseball hat with the small plastic baseball sewn on the front. The hat was cool because of that little ball on the front; it was unique, my favorite.

I can still remember those ornate, beveled stones that decorated the exterior of the church. There was a small enclave carved out of the façade. The bullies pounced from the shadows, the sounds of half-empty beer cans hitting pavement. The chase began. My legs were churning as I was running as fast as I could. I ran into the church enclave and was trapped. I remember the hat being torn off my head. Time was suspended and so was I, floating through the air from a shove, I watched the miniature baseball bounce around between those stones. There were laughs, taunts, threats, and anger in the faces and words of my tormentors.

I ran home, shirt torn, hat crumpled, the little baseball in my hand, my heart racing from the church all the way into my garage.

Working away in the garage was my father, a six-foot-three-inch authoritarian Pennsylvania State Police trooper. He was the county’s version of John Wayne. As usual, he was covered in sawdust; wood working was his passion and pastime. He looked up and surveyed my torn and frayed clothing.

“Dad, Dad, they beat me up!”

My father leveled a serious look at me, then offered lecture and lesson. “Son, you can keep running from the bully, but one day you will run out of room. When you run out of room, you will have to make a choice. You can cower in the corner from fear, or you can stand, plant your feet, and face it.”

That’s life, we can run but at some point we will run out of room, grow tired, stop, and surrender. Life will present us with choices—we will either slink or cower in the shadow of fear, or take the pain and move forward. Each resolute step will make you stronger, forging your resolve and creating the self-confidence to move forward.

I began to build myself up, both mentally and physically. I learned to see my problems for what they were and faced them head-on. Over time, I developed an arsenal of resolve, fortitude, and spirit to dispatch the bullies in my life. Life will test our inner resolve. It will question, we must answer. We must be able to physically cash the checks our minds write.

The bullies in life—the big boys on the block—are fear, worry, and self-doubt. When we see them for what they are, fragments of our imagination that we project to be real, we can minimize them by facing them or run for the cover of the shadows. They will chase us. The more we run, the bigger they become. The bigger they become, the more difficult they are to overcome.

It’s far more effective to draw fear and worry to the light than chase them from the shadows. When we stop fearing the shadows, we can take the first steps toward success. Bring your fears into the light of awareness—understanding can lead to the action that diffuses the energy of fear.

I owned the spirit of my father’s message. From that point forward, I never ran again.

There will be times in life when conflict avoidance is a prudent strategy for survival. You can’t fight all things at all times. Awareness of the physical and mental battles that are important to wage will dictate the outcomes of the wars you must win to move forward.

When avoidance morphs to resistance, the habits of delay and indecision can prevent or limit us from doing what is necessary and vital for our business and personal survival. We can see resistance in people. We watch as they slink into the cubicle. The phone stays in the cradle. The keys to the car stay in the desk, and they wait. They resist entering the field to overcome the dragon. They hesitate, and either the past or the present, the fear or the imagination, becomes the excuse, the condition, the unwillingness, and the end. One will never know until they are on the field, sword in hand or sword in scabbard. The dragon will be there, will you?

This is the paradox of fear—you must summon the courage to overcome the uncertainty that accompanies your need to feel safe. Humans harbor an instinct to resist the need for change and seek what they think is comfort in the safety of the known. Stepping forward, outside of your circle of comfort, is a risk. Choose to expand your horizon, learn more, apply what you learn and take intelligent risks that foster business and personal growth.

GET BACK UP

At the turn of the last century the great escape artist Harry Houdini began performing death defying escapes from straitjackets, jails, coffins, handcuffs, and shackles (defined as something that confines the arms or legs). At each performance he invited police officials onstage to examine him and his props to make sure they were real. In 1908, Houdini began performing a trick in which he was locked inside a large iron milk can filled with water. He could escape within three minutes. Here is what he had to say about fear:

Of fear I do not think—or courage. In the profession it is just habit—and nerve. Take a case. You are not frightened of falling from your feet; you balance on your feet. A good acrobat learns to balance on his head in just the same way. Then he will balance on his head on the top of a twenty-foot pole—easier there than on the ground, because you feel it sooner when you lose balance. Dangerous of course, and very few can do it. But those who can, they do not think of the danger; they began as little boys, and have practiced every day; it is habit.

Then one day they fall—ah! That is the test—that is the courage. Always after that they have the thought of falling; it has never really come into their heads before. To face that thought, to fight it down, and do the trick—that is courage. And to do the trick knowing they will fall—because you must—because the audience is waiting—that is greater courage still. You feel the body shaking like a leaf, but your spirit drives it on.

THE FIRST STEP

Those ancestors of ours who took the first forward steps were bold. The progression of history is aligned with the nature of our species that expresses itself in forward motion. Life is a quest— our search will encounter adversity to engender growth. In our quest, we will live to the spirit of our cause, refine the raw pull of our purpose, and contain those self-defeating forces that impair, impede, or prevent the triumph from the quest.

“You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.”

– Abraham Maslow

The first step is the crucial step. Nothing can happen in life without the desire and the will to take the first step. As Neil Armstrong, the first man to step foot on the moon said, “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It all started with that first step. The first step in facing fear is to locate its origin. May the journey begin.

A 30,000-FOOT PERSPECTIVE

Fear’s pathway takes both a low road and a high road to the brain. The low road is instinct, and the high road is thought and analysis. The reptile brain is instinct. The limbic system houses our emotional pain and pleasure response, and the frontal cortex is our CEO brain of rational thought and logic. Our consciousness is our 30,000-foot perspective—when we get lost in a maze of analysis, we can become paralyzed by our own thoughts. Our awareness can bring a 30,000-foot perspective. We can see the maze for what it is and understand our obligation to act upon what we’ve learned.

THE UNFORGIVING ADVERSARY

Fear is a primitive response to a perceived threat. It can be a protective and adaptive ally or a limiting, unforgiving adversary. Fear is different than the threat of danger. Danger is a person or thing that is likely to cause harm or injury—fear can protect us from the danger inherent in the physical threats from the environment, enabling us to assess, anticipate, and act. The fear we will undress is not physical threat or harm—those dangers that spark our necessary survival mechanism—the instinctive protective system that can help us avoid a deranged person with a weapon or danger from a member of the animal kingdom, insect world, or reptile phylum. The emotion we will dissect is that invisible and insidious form that preys upon the imagination—those pulse-quickening, confidence-eroding, imagined experiences that slow us down or stop us from pursuing dreams or creating our best life. The fear we must overcome is insidious; it weaves jealousy, anger, unworthiness, doubt, and shame through our psyche.

Past experiences spark the creation of imagined consequences in the future. One must find the courage to avoid looking back through the past darkly. Our imagination can...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	11.12.2015
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Marketing / Vertrieb
ISBN-10	1-941870-58-9 / 1941870589
ISBN-13	978-1-941870-58-7 / 9781941870587

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