This message will be relative to anyone who is working at anything. The other night I was hosting a webinar/conference call where some women in my organization were sharing their successes working with our Forever Young Skin Formula tablets. They shared what they were saying (approach), what medium they were using (email, facebook, conversations, etc.), and how they were succeeding while still doing all the other zillion things they have going on in their life. They did an awesome job of authentically communicating the simplicity of the way they were working in the Process.
The next day I was talking to Paul, one of the Million Lives Team leaders who was expressing how much he enjoyed listening to them share and how well they had done on the call. Then he said something that inspired this blog post. During the call I too had shared a few bits of information and at one point I told how I had been carrying my binder with the pictures of people’s results, and while walking out of the gym, I had stopped at the front desk. There were two women there and I plopped the binder on the counter and asked them to take a look at the pictures. One looked at the pictures and looked up and me and said “I have no interest in that” and the other looked at the same picture at the same time and said “how do I learn more about this?”
What struck Paul was not the person who said they wanted to learn more, but that the other person said no right to my face. He said to me that he doesn’t hear about me talk about the people that say no to me, only the people who say yes. It inspired him that people say no to me! He might as well have taken a two-by-four and smacked me right up side the head…because I got the message loud and clear.
I often completely discard the notion of rejection. Perhaps because I don’t see someone saying no as rejection of me, but more a rejection of either themselves or simply a refusal of service at this time. I didn’t have any of the women who shared their stories on the call talk about how many people said no to them in order for them to have so many people say yes!
Regardless of what you are trying to accomplish in life, you will face rejection. You will have people telling you that you can’t, or you won’t, or don’t bother. I guess because I have had so much of this in my life that I just don’t let it bother me. Most of my family and best friends are not users of my products. I don’t take it personally….in my mind, they are the ones missing the boat, not me.
I think it is natural for someone to look at a successful person in any field of endeavor and think that they don’t get as much rejection or struggle as much as the people who don’t succeed. When in fact, the exact opposite is true! The people who succeed in anything experience the MOST rejection and the most struggles and this is exactly why they succeed. Every endeavor to succeed in life will have people saying no and doors closing in our face. We simply have to re-frame this as part of the path. The longer we knock the more doors that will open.
The bible says “Seek and ye shall find,” “Knock and the door will be opened for you,” “Ask and ye shall receive.”
It doesn’t say, “Seek and maybe you will find.” It doesn’t say “Ask, but you probably won’t get it.” It doesn’t say “Knock and the door might open.”
It is definitive. It just doesn’t tell you how long you have to knock or how long you must look, or how long you must ask. It just plainly says, seek, knock, ask! This is the beauty of the process. We gently knock, we nicely ask, and we constantly seek and while some take longer to open…over time, the right doors open.
The successful people you know have the most people say no…or as I see it, and it is usually true…what they really say is “not yet.” If you want to speed up your success in any endeavor, speed up how many times people say not now or not yet and before long you will have success beyond what your initial beliefs could see….from that point you will be able to see the next level of success to strive for.