The Two You’s

Earl Nightingale said that every person really is two persons.

“There is the one person who has achieved a level of performance adequate enough to earn his pay … and sometimes he’ll get a promotion or pay raise,  but his proficiency become‘s habitual – unconscious and he uses these habitual patterns as a benchmark of measurement for his success time and time again. This is the person his employers, family, and he himself knows…”

But Nightingale goes on to say there’s another person too… “the person that he could be – the person that if strongly motivated and equipped with the right information, could narrow the gap between his habitual performance patterns and his much higher potential.”

Imagine yourself standing inside of the chalk outline of your considerably larger self…that outline represents your highest potential & and where you stand inside of that outline – the gap between the two you’s represents your untapped, unexpressed potential.

In order to narrow that gap between who you are today and who you could be, you must do a few things.

First, you must constantly study  because what you don’t know is so much larger- why anchor your Life on what you already know?

Narrowing the gap will also take self examination – sometimes it will be painful, but if you honestly look at the loops that you continuously play back and assess who or what you allow into your life you’ll begin to compress the margins between the two you’s.

Lastly, it takes the application of your talents and abilities. You could own a whole Walgreens store of medications, but none of them will work unless they’re taken off the shelf & applied– the same is true for your Life.

If you’re willing to do those 3 things, Nightingale says that you’re in rarefied company.

Now that’s for you…

But let me tell you about others….

I think so many businesses are warped with only focusing on driving up the bottom line, but what they fail to miss is that the lowest cost method to driving the emotional and financial health of a company‘s bottom line is the development of its people.

And getting more out of someone isn’t some form of manipulation-no it’s the company benefiting because they first invested in others.  

The problem is that many leaders are fearful of sharing what they know for fear of being replaced and if that is your fear, that is an indication that you’ve stopped growing. I tell my people all the time, I want you to replace me – take this chair because if you take my chair, that means I’ve moved up. Why keep all you know to yourself anyway? Why not give it all away? If you can teach it, then it deepens your awareness of truly understanding; when you teach to others you invest in not only their future but yours as well; and if you empty yourself out, you’ll have more capacity to refill & refuel with more rapidly changing information. 

Exposing others to more will cause them to have to reach deep into the reservoirs of their ability…with your guidance, skills and abilities they never knew they were capable of are revealed and brought to the surface.

In the book It’s Not Where You Start But How You Finish, entrepreneur David Schwartz says, that at McDonald’s, “the workers’ best standard is going to be the managers’ lowest acceptable standard.

The skillful manager needs to be able to stretch his employees’ capacities by setting the high bar and encouraging better performance.” When they do, others will be able to think more confidently, independently, and produce better results, resulting in better team members & human beings in the process… and your greatest payback is knowing that you had a thumbprint in their development.

Yes, in reality every person really is two persons – the person today and the person he can be tomorrow…

…but maybe there’s a third person too…

Planting your skills and abilities into the lives of others so that they too can begin to narrow the gap between who they are vs. who they can become in the tomorrow’s that lay ahead.

Stay in The Sales Life 💪

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