You have a dream. You are going to be a famous singer, writer, painter or salesperson. You are going to get an award for best employee, best teacher or best entrepreneur of the year. You know that you have it in you. You can imagine it and you dream about it so often, you expect the dream to manifest itself into reality anytime soon. Every self-help book you read teaches you the same thing: Imagine, visualize, believe and your dream will manifest itself. Yes, yes, yes – You absolutely agree. When you get to the last page of the chapter on visualization, you will either put the book down for good or you will continue to read but stop taking notes.
How do I know this happens? Because that is how I do it. You see, I am a selective learner. I am the type who doesn’t want to do what I don’t want to do, and it has nothing to do with better morals. For example, I don’t want to do cold calls. I know all about the idea that says 1 out of 30 (or 1 out of 40 depending on your industry) will take your call, but I just can’t take the rejection. Each time I get a rejection letter from a literary agent, I will go through a cycle of dejection, brow-beating and then I will re-edit my book which usually means that I will not write to another agent for the next month. It is a terrible bind to be caught in, but I can’t help myself. Come to think of it, I may have edited and re-edited the same manuscript six times. It is madness, I know, but I feel that if I don’t do it then my next query is going to be an absolute failure. Is this what you call obsessive compulsive behavior? I don't know, but whatever it is, this attitude is eating into my spirit.
Then one day, I thought to myself, since I am such a lousy writer I might as well inundate the world with my second-rated ideas and bad writing style. So I joined writer groups and forums and brazenly asked if people would critique my work. Lo and behold, I suddenly learned that my stories do have some value to certain people.
When I received the first e-mail to thank me for my work, I almost fainted with joy. When the first person critiqued my short story, I choked up because a total stranger had cared enough about my writing to want to see me improve. The very act which I thought would destroy me, had been the very one that had encouraged me to continue writing. Suddenly, the world opened, as strangers introduced me to techniques and tips or even good websites that could help me improve my writing. I dug for each one of them like they were precious nuggets of gold.
I must admit, I am still a long way from my goal, but at this point I have learned an important lesson: A writer needs readers to be complete, a singer needs listeners and a salesperson needs clients. We can’t be complete without the people who can benefit from our goals and purpose, and we can only be happy and feel successful when we have them.
So pick up your self-help book. Read it from start-to-end and then do your best to emulate all the tips and advices within its pages. If you can’t make that first call, it may be because you imagine failure. Use that imagination to your advantage. For example, write a list of all the different types of no’s you imagine you will get then write scripts to counter those rejections. It is all right to have a script that says: “Thank you for your time” then put down the phone. Also don’t forget to write scripts to say to people who want to know more, because you will come across the 1 in 30.
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