personal motivation Archives

Ageism: A Sales Career Killer?

Ageism in sales clock — Photo by Erik Witsoe via Unsplash.com

You’re so good you can sell without thinking!

No really, I mean it! Think of musicians, craftsmen, and athletes. They all benefit from muscle memory. As a result, they perform complex feats of skill without much thought and their hands just seem to know what to do. Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code would say their secret is deliberate practice.

But that’s not a surprise, is it? What might be is that you, as an experienced salesperson, you have an equivalent to muscle memory for your job. Experts call it procedural memory and it enables you to work without getting bogged down by details. It’s like an autopilot that lets you focus on the customer instead of yourself.

Sound cool? It is and YOU have it! However, there is a drawback to allowing your brain’s Tesla to take control every day.

While You Kick Butt, Ageism Creeps Up

Over time, we layer new skills on top of previous ones and easily lose sight of where we started. It’s as if your skills become heirlooms, boxed and placed neatly in your mind’s attic. And if we can forget about them, you better believe your managers, present and future, can as well.

As a result, we rarely take notice when our company hires someone with half our experience to the same job we have. Instead our first clue doesn’t come until the resume we post for an ideally-matched position gets no response. No one pulls us aside to announce ageism’s arrival, it just happens.

Skeptical? According to a recent government report, six out of ten American workers reported experiencing ageism in some form. Now consider that, according to best-selling author Daniel Pink, one in nine people in the US workforce are in sales!. Yep, ageism is out there and it’s already affecting you!

That’s Ok. Who Can Question Results Like Yours?

In response to ageism, we think our experience and our numbers will protect us. Companies are dying to have someone like you – until they’re not. Your performance can make you feel rock-solid but, in the eyes of others, you may be inflexible and unable to change. And, you may make too much money, Oh yeah and, at your age, shouldn’t you be a manager?

But what about that procedural memory thing I just mentioned? Can’t managers see how good you are at all that stuff you do automatically? Some managers are sharp enough to recognize and value these skills, many are not. And be honest, are YOU even aware of all the little things you do to be successful?

Before you complain about unfairness, start appreciating yourself.

According the Harvard Business Review, too many older workers believe ageist assumptions about themselves. Therefore, in addition to the unfair assumptions others make, we often put some on ourselves.

So what’s the answer? You know how before you can sell a product you must first BE SOLD on it yourself? Part of that process, I’m sure you’d agree, is assessing the competition. The same holds true for YOU.

The following questions are meant for YOU to ask YOURSELF as a way to size up who you’re competing with in the job market. You might just be STRONGER than you think!

In the process of doing your sales job…

Do you confuse questions with objections?
When a customer cancels a deal do you give up on them for good?
Are you scared by an angry customer?
Are you unable to put your phone down in customer meetings?
If a sale takes longer to close than expected, do you automatically assume it’s a lost cause?
If a customer changes their timetable or requirements, do you get flustered and give up?
Do you refuse to ask for the help of coworkers or friends?
Do you not have any contacts or friends from whom to ask help?
Does a lackluster sales report make you conclude you NEVER will be successful?
Are you afraid to ask for a firm commitment from your customers?

Like it or not, many of your younger counterparts struggle with these very issues. And yes, you and I are losing jobs to them!

Hopefully by now you see that you bring tremendous value. Perhaps somewhere there’s a 20-something who was born will all the skills of selling. I doubt it. By now, you’ve made hundreds, even thousands, of sales calls. How could you NOT be good?

Unfortunately, there will always be people who don’t appreciate what you offer. One thing’s for sure. You don’t have to be one of them!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Perfection: A Distinctly Human Flaw

Perfection city grid — Photo by Max Bottinger via Unsplash.com

It’s so obvious. Who wouldn’t want the perfect house, career, or family? I’ll take all three please! Life, however, wasn’t always centered around the relentless pursuit of perfection. By life, I mean life on earth before before humans. Back then, nothing was perfect.

In fact, for the approximate 13.8 Billion years before humans existed, the Universe did just fine with no obvious plan or design. Evolution itself is based on mutations, or mistakes. As the theory goes, the animals with the right deformities adapted to their environments and survived while the unlucky others died off.

Nature is flawed, unpredictable, and even chaotic. It doesn’t care about precision, order, or neatness. You and I, in everyday life, not only accept but occasionally celebrate this fact. For example, no two sunsets are alike, yet each is stunning in its own way. Thus, we feel compelled to photograph them.

Ironically, what we’ve come to appreciate in nature, we seek to eradicate in ourselves. Some of us doggedly hunt down our faults while others cover them up with pride. Either way, the reason we want perfection so badly is because we think we’ve seen it before. And, we are wrong.

Human-Derived Perfection: Symmetry

Consider the most beautiful plants, animals, and even people you’ve ever seen. They probably all have at least one thing in common, symmetry. Simultaneously it captivates and calms us. Take any photo or work of art and cut it in half, and you’re typically left with two balanced pieces. That’s symmetry and we love it – mostly.

For example, think of the people you see in fashion ads. Their faces are usually quite symmetrical. However, wouldn’t the faces of mannequins be even more so? Sounds creepy, I know. Perhaps it’s the imperfections that bring a human face to life?

Even when nature presents us with what looks to be perfection, it’s an illusion. For example, the horizon at the beach fools our eye into seeing a straight line. Someone might even say that symmetrical division of Earth and sky is symmetrical. Logically we know, however, that what we’re really seeing is an amalgam of thousands, if not millions, of distant undulating waves.

Human-derived perfection: Certainty

We don’t just imagine perfection in what we see, we also project it onto situations of cause and effect. In the business world, we look to high-achieving employees as models of flawless execution. In doing so, we fail to take into account the myriad of random circumstances that allow a given employee’s labor to come to fruition. Therefore, what we really celebrate is a perfect outcome, not a perfect performance.

Still, we fool ourselves into thinking certainty exists. If we just follow the right rules, we’re guaranteed to get the desired outcome. It’s comforting to have a plan. Otherwise, we can feel lost in the wilderness of random chance.

Like the humanizing flaws on a model’s face, the mistakes and uncertainty we face are what makes life fresh and real. We say we want the steps to success when, in reality, if life was that predictable, it would bore us to death!

Randomness and the perfect snowflake

Perfection randomness — Photo by Darius Cotoi via Unsplash.com

If there was such a thing as a perfect snowflake design, wouldn’t nature have figured it out by now? Nature’s strategy, if it has one, is complete randomness. Plants, animals, people, we all enter the world in near-limitless variation.

Our response is to resist randomness with things like gridded streets and manicured lawns. We simplify and shape nature’s complexity down to the simple designs we understand. And we harness natural resources to perform the narrow tasks required to continue our pursuit of perfection.

Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Improvement

Perhaps much of what we consider to be flaws are just variation. Our genes are like a hand of poker and our traits the individual cards. Some cards are weak and some strong; that is, if you choose to accept the rules of the game. Therefore, your so-called weaknesses could stem, not from you but from the game you choose to play.

A lot of us say we only want to improve while secretly coveting perfection. We claim to seek growth when, in reality, we have some arbitrary goal we’ve set as the only path to happiness. Therefore, we continue on, seeking to eliminate imperfections, in ourselves, in others, and in the world.

Failure for the win!

Meanwhile, mistakes have spawned some of the greatest discoveries (penicillin, the microwave, the inkjet printer to name a few). Maybe we should continually seek to improve but not always to dictate the direction of our improvement. And, maybe we can be open to the idea that flaws and mistakes may bring good news.

We like to say “to err is human,” when in reality errors exist all around us in nature. A better saying might be “to perfect is human.” As for the Universe, it’s doing just fine with chaos and disorder. It was here long before us and is likely to remain long after we’re gone.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Gratitude: How to Use Nothing to Find Value in Everything

Gratitude: the gift of first sight. — Photo by Pete Wright via Unsplash.com.

Out of nothing..

There I sat in my used 2015 Volkswagen Passat at a traffic light. It was a nice car, black and shiny in the Summer sun despite it’s 120,000 miles. Waiting for the signal, I did one of the most unavoidable things a driver can do, and glanced over at the car next to me. There sat a blue-eyed boy, about eleven or twelve years old maybe, with a summer buzz cut. Our eyes would’ve met sooner if he wasn’t staring down at my car.

Within a second he glanced up at me with a look of approval. It seemed he was just impressed enough to show it on his face. Not to oversell it, this was more of a “nice house” than a “huge chocolate bar” look. Then the light turned green, and we both pulled away.

Something vs. Nothing

That boy’s expression, however, stayed with me. It was as if he saw a car like mine for the first time and had no frame of reference. While you and I know there are much nicer cars, to him it could have been the prototypical vehicle, a one of kind. For all I know, he might have spent his life in the country where pick-ups are much more common than sedans.

To someone who doesn’t drive, a car must be a thing of wonder and mystery. I imagine power in both the machine itself and the freedom it promises must be quite impressive to someone who’s spent his entire life strapped in and restrained.

The gift of first sight

This scenario, in my opinion, exemplifies an ability children have and most adults have lost. They can see things for the first time. As a result, their perception of many things is a comparison, not to anything before, but to nothing. First, there was an empty lane. Then, bam, there was a shiny black car.

Like the characters in The Polar Express, who as they grew older, lost the ability to hear Santa’s bell, we adults lose the opportunity to experience new things. We instead relate everything to something existing in our memory banks. Even mankind’s most recent space explorations get compared to Sci-Fi movies. And, naturally, we compare everything new to everything old.

Gratitude: Somthing vs. Nothing — Photo by Mark Eder via Unsplash.com

Compare everything to nothing

What if adults could somehow again experience newness? Not only do I think it’s possible, all it takes is a conscious comparison of everything to nothing. For example, that miserably slow computer on your desk, how could your perform what it does without it? And that tired old car? Surely it beats the heck out of walking twenty miles to work. The comparisons remind us what it might’ve been like before we had something.

Of course, novelty isn’t limited to physical possessions. Last night’s poor dining experience could have been spent eating crackers on the couch. Think about your shitty jobs of the past. What if, in place of your struggle, you were unemployed the entire time? We’re much less likely to resent past tribulations after we’ve overcome them.

More importantly, what if we extend this type of comparison to people? Our family, friends, colleagues, what if we didn’t have them? I don’t suggest thinking about death, but something almost as sad. What if you never knew them at all? Think of each individual person and imagine if they had never been in your life. What an empty world!

Gratitude, the ideal treatment

Admittedly, it’s a hard perspective to take. Our minds are conditioned to compare everything to the past. Perhaps we’ve evolved to be that way. All I know is that I’ve heard from many authors the same message: gratitude is so powerful, it literally crowds out negative emotions. In fact, we physically cannot experience both gratefulness and depression at the same time.

Yes, being told to have gratitude can be annoying. It’s also useless. We need to seek gratitude on our own. No one can force it upon us. All I know is that whenever I’ve taken a moment to be grateful to have more than nothing, I’ve always felt better. Why not give it a try?

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Pride: What Ben Franklin Knew About It (and You)

Aside from Electricity, bifocals, the pros and cons list, and numerous other discoveries, there’s one idea Benjamin Franklin is credited for which you may not be aware. It affects you on a daily basis and has to do with your pride. Consider the following story.

According to his autobiograhpy, Ben Franklin once deliberately asked to borrow a valuable book from one of his political opponents. The rival obliged and, thereafter, treated Ben with a greater level of generosity and respect. In fact, they later became friends. This human desire for consistency was later labeled the “Ben Franklin Effect” and, most recently, was classified by psychologists as Cognitive Dissonance.

I’m the type of person who would…

Cognitive Dissonance is the tension we feel when we act in a way contrary to our past. Ben knew if he could get his opponent to do him one favor, he’d be more likely to continue doing them. For example, the moment you order steak at the seafood restaurant, you’ve just increased the liklihood you do the same on you next visit.

Ironically, Ben used Cognitive Dissonance to change someone’s behavior when, by definition, it’s more often used as a reason NOT to change. In my sales career, resisting change has been mostly detrimental. Early on, I was the type of guy not to ask for the sale. Therefore, I lost business. Later, I was the type of guy not to speak up at a meeting. Therefore, I remained unhappy and disengaged with my job for long periods of time. Whoever we are, we usually want to stay that way.

The Ben Franklin Effect = Cognitive Dissonance = Pride

I believe the issue truly at hand is pride and what puzzles me is the following paradox: pride in a possession entails care and periodic improvement. When we take pride in our house we tend to the lawn and replace things like shingles and gutters. Pride in ourselves, however, largely means being unwavering and resistant to change. A proud person holds fast to core beliefs knowing themselves and the truth.

Why the dichotomy in our definitions of pride? I attribute it to fear of being alone. In a literal sense, anyone who doesn’t know themself is forced to uncomfortably spend their every waking minute with a stranger. Therefore, we feel we must act in ways WE can predict. Besides, the alternative is a very traumatizing condition known as Amnesia. In comparison, we can easily see in our possessions (and our relatives and friends) the constant need for improvement.

Photo by Samuel Zeller via Unsplash.com.

Can I take pride in who I want to be?

Still, can’t we pride ourselves, not by the past, but by what we want to be in the future? Perhaps, like the car enthusiast toiling for hours on a heap of metal, envision what we plan to be and take pride in that.

Our biggest obstacle is how we understand and use power. A landscaper has the ability to dig, trim, and plant with their own hands. She can therefore make what she envisions come into reality. Many of our dreams involve money or accolades coming from others. And, try as we may, we don’t control others, we can only influence and observe. As we wait for the compliments, Facebook likes, and glowing performance reports to come in, we relinquish the power to cultivate and shape ourselves.

Is change mandatory?

Yes (gasp), at least in a scientific sense. Our bodies replace most of their cells over a period of seven years. Therefore, it would be impossible for us to physically stay the same, even if we wanted to!

One could argue that, in a mental sense, change is mandatory as well. After all, the people and situations around us are in constant flux. Some degree of change is mandatory just to adjust. That said, the way we change needn’t be dictated by someone else. We can certainly act as our own catlyst.

Again, that darn pride issue pops up! We look down on people who change to please others and, at the same time, yearn for people to like us for who we are! Pride without the willingness to change is essentially a lie. It’s like someone proudly showing you their rusting car, citing how sexy it was when they drove it off the lot. Who we are is fluid. We don’t have to live in the past.

Who’s in charge here?

To those of us, myself included, who desire too much to be perfect, the very suggestion of change can be an insult. Who are they to tell us how to change? You know you’re defensive when you can’t even question yourself! This is when we have to give up and resolve to no longer defend who we were in the past and instead plan what actions we can take in the future.

Of course, not all advice is good and much of it, however well-intentioned, should NOT be followed. Still, we shouldn’t dismiss criticism based solely on the source. That would again give up our own power to choose. Rest assured, when we think for ourselves, the choice to take advice is never weak. It’s probably the only way we can excercise true pride – the kind that improves who we are and doesn’t cling to the past.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Illusion of Control

There I stood, spandex clad and heart pounding, at the start line of a bike race. BAM! The gun went off and I was going. Call it the ultimate test, me vs. the other riders vs. the muddy trail. Despite all my preparation, I got to the start line late and had to start in the back of the pack. To make up ground, I put my head down and focused on passing other riders until I was – in the front?

That NEVER happened before! I was in CONTROL! I no longer heard the other riders, just the rush of the air through my helmet and the pounding of my pulse. That day, I finished a respectable 3rd out of 20 racers. Despite leading most of the way, victory was snatched from me at the last minute.

It didn’t matter, from there on, I was hooked! I spent 2 years training and racing to replicate that result. It never happened. Later, I learned that another big race took place that fateful day and many of the skilled riders attended it. Sadly, my ability to control a race was a mere illusion.

Psychologist Ellen Langer named this fallacy the Illusion of Control. It’s the belief that we control things in our lives that we don’t. Imagine a gambler thinking she’s “on a roll” and can’t lose or a day trader thinking he can make a stock price rise just by buying shares. It’s not hard to see their folly.

However, are we able to spot this illusion in our own jobs? Do we in sales control what our competitors do? Do we set the purchasing budgets of our customers? We know these and other factors heavily influence customer behavior but ignore them after we’ve had a good year. THAT accomplishment came from us alone! At the same time, when our numbers are sub-par, we point to a multitude of factors out of our control. And, leadership often suffers from the same bias, no one wants to tell their team a dose of luck may be essential to achievement.

Therefore, we need to acknowledge that control of anything requires time and effort – two resources we MUST use wisely. When we stop straining for things out of our reach we free ourselves to be accountable for the things we DO control – our thoughts, actions, and skills.

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Mistaking Luck for Skill

Photo by Freestocks.org via Unsplash.com

As I ascended to the stage for my sales award, I glanced over to my sales manager. It was hard not to crack a smile. There I was, six months at the company, with the skill to outperform people who were years my senior.

It went to my head. For the rest of that year, I didn’t hesitate to offer my opinion at sales meetings. I was all too happy to help others improve and, you know, be a bit more like me.

Little did I know, I was a text book example of someone with Illusory Superiority. Otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, it’s the tendency for unskilled people to overestimate their abilities. In the years to come, I was to learn what I mistook for skill was a merely dose of good luck and timing.

Oddly enough, this illusion of internal assessment can take place in reverse. Skilled people often underestimate their abilities compared to others. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger demonstrated both sides of the phenomenon and published it in a study. They surmised that experienced people, knowing better their own limits, often take for granted the skills they use every day, ones that others may not possess.

So, how good are you? If your answer is relation to others, it pays to reconsider. You may be exaggerating due to the Dunning Kruger effect. Instead, why not make the unbiased choice to compare yesterday’s you to today’s?

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Bias As Usual: Errors in Sample Size

In the articles to follow, we’ll explore cognitive biases. These are the mental shortcuts we all occasionally use to make sense of the flood of information we face everyday. First up: Sample Size.

Imagine, for a moment, you are the lowest performer on a sales team. Complete fiction, I know. Now imagine that, for some reason, you enjoy wearing wearing khakis and polos to work while the rest of your team all wear suits. Is it fair to conclude that your lack of formality (and taste?) is the reason for your lower sales results?

Not so fast! Before we go explaining how formal clothing enhances credibility, there’s something more important to consider. Sample size. Exactly how many people are on your sales team?

According to Sociology expert, Daniel Kahneman, small sample sizes lend themselves to extreme results. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he and a group of experts questioned the belief that certain small towns have high disease rates due to toxic waste.

The result? The small sample size of residents in each town made extremely high or low disease prevalence more likely. This doesn’t, of course, prove industrial pollution to be harmless. It instead invalidates the data as proof that toxic waste was the cause of disease. Perhaps, if the towns studied were larger, the researchers’ conclusion may have been different.

Therefore, we in sales should be cautious about the quick interpretations we make of both success and failure. For example, it may neither be fair or helpful to compare the results of one sales rep with several medium-sized accounts to another who manages one or two large, make or break clients.

Ultimately, if we want to make better decisions, we must gather enough information and only then draw our conclusions.

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

The Stoic Salesperson: Want to Feel Invincible? First, Make Peace With Pain

Boxers make peace with pain photo — Photo by Hermès Rivera via Unsplash.com

The closest thing I’ve ever felt to a knockout punch is a well-timed, customer objection. Like an unseen blow to the temple, it only takes one of them to bring a sale down. While I suspect the pain from an uppercut can linger for months or years, I know the regret from an objection can seem unforgettable. Just as the only way a boxer can truly avoid a hit is to never step in the ring, the only way a salesperson can avoid objections is to never attempt a sale.

Sure, we don’t like the discomfort and nervousness objections produce, but don’t we feel the same when we watch a scary movie or our favorite team in the playoffs? Why then do we avoid, or agonize over, the difficult situations that can make us succeed?

There has to be more to it. A boxer walks into the ring knowing she will get hit hundreds of times and probably feel serious pain. “I was surprised how much it hurt to get punched,” said no fighter ever. Obviously, they’ve made piece with the pain well in advance.

What do we really fear?

The key problem to address is not the hit or the objection itself, it’s the pain. Conquer your fear of it and the punch no longer needs to be avoided. Similarly, when we can handle or dismiss the sting of objections, we can stop dancing around them.

I suggest the reason objections can hurt so much is the meaning we give them. Consider the following thoughts:

If I can’t answer an objection I risk losing the sale.
If I lose the sale I may not make my sales goal or lose a contest.
If I don’t make my sales goal (or lose) I’m a bad employee, parent, person, etc.

Do they sound familiar? Of course, these worries may not be at the top of our mind, but peel back the layers and they’re usually there.

How can we handle the pain?

Stoic’s, like Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, believed all we control is our own choices, actions, and beliefs. Customers make buying decisions; we do not. Managers make the only official judgements of sales performance. Again, we do not. However, feeling ashamed as a result of our job performance, that’s our choice. Therein lies a true opportunity to change ourselves for the better.

How can we change? We can choose no longer to feel anger or shame over events out of our control, like the choices customers and bosses make. In 25 years of selling, I’ve been layed-off three times. None of them were pleasant. Fortunately, I’ve learned to no longer live in fear of failure. I begin every sales call knowing, despite my best efforts, the customer may choose against my product.

No, I don’t win every sale these days but I win much more now that I don’t fear losing. I can take the punches, fall down, and get back up. No one has ever died from an objection. You can be imperfect and still be unwavering or almost invincible. First, you must make peace with the pain.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Ps. I’ve taken sales questions from over a hundred people. Check out my responses on my profile page on Quora.com!

The Stoic Salesperson: All Stress Is Internal (And Why That’s A Good Thing)

Stress and the Stoic Salesperson — Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash.com

Just to reiterate my previous post, no, we don’t control other’s and the decisions they make. And, that can be tough to swallow, especially when we must watch our friends, family, and customers make bad decisions. It’s at these moments when Stoic Philosophy implores us to take control, not of others, but ourselves. A primary example is job-related stress.

In Sales, a bad year or even a bad quarter can put us out of a job. Despite giving everything we have, we still lose deals, and when we do, it can hurt. Rest assured, it’s normal to feel this way at first. True Stoic Philosophy is not about eliminating our emotions, but getting them under control.

Although it’s unrealistic to never experience sadness or anxiety, some salespeople waste too much of their day anticipating and reliving their losses. Whether it’s the firing that never comes, or the sale that got away, we can trap ourselves in a cycle of reliving an event, over and over.

In this fashion, we waste valuable energy stressing over events we did not, or will never, control. Even worse, we confuse work and worry. If you believe the late Andy Grove, the one-time CEO of Intel who wrote a book entitled Only the Paranoid Survive, we all get paid to worry about the future. Perhaps paranoia is a prerequisite for top executives. For the rest of us, it’s a recipe for mediocre effort and even burnout.

Therefore, it’s essential for salespeople realize the choices they make every day. How do we want to feel, stressed or empowered? Paralyzed with fear or ready to take action? The Stoics would point out that our day-to-day mood, and the resulting choices we make, are some of the few things in life we DO control. It’s important to understand, one can choose not to feel stress and still be effective or even excel at work.

So, who would choose a career frought with stress and unhappiness? Only those who don’t realize or believe they have a choice. Ultimately, when we acknowledge that stress comes from within, we take back control and fuel ourselves to sell with more vigor and enthusiasm than stress could ever allow.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

The Stoic Salesperson: You Lost! Why it’s Not Your Fault

You didn’t win President’s Club!

In your place onstage stands someone else shaking the hands of senior leadership claiming to be better than you. In this moment you want nothing more than for it to not be true. No, you can’t change the numbers from the past and you don’t have to fall back on excuses or bitterness. Instead the key to your come back may lie in Stoic Philosophy.

First, ask yourself, was it your name etched onto the sales trophy at the beginning of the year? Was winning this year’s sales contest a simple matter of obtaining what’s rightfully yours? Obviously not. So how then can you lose something you never owned?

Every sale requires a choice, one made only by one person, the customer. If you don’t believe me call your biggest account and ask if you can make buying decisions for them. As you can see we in sales exert influence, not control, over our customers.

A core tenant in Stoic philosophy is knowing what we do and don’t control. In the end your sales results are the output of many decisions for and against your product. How many of these choices do we control? Zero. Come to think of it, how many customer decisions did our higher-performing co-worker control this year? Zero.

Unfortunately, most of us aren’t evaluated directly on our influence, but on our sales results. One of these data points is easy to measure; the other is not. And again, if customer influence and sales results were one in the same, we’d sign the sales contracts ourselves. Is it unfair to be judged based on decisions of out our control? Maybe, but Stoicism teaches that feeling upset by this fact is also, our choice.

Therefore, instead of personal wins and losses, you now have permission to focus on customer wants and needs. After all, isn’t that what we’re here for?

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

For a free and inspiring lessons on Stoicism, check out Ryan Holiday’s podcast, The Daily Stoic.