Meet the charge with your presence

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I couldn’t imagine what if would feel like to face a charging lion. Boyd Varty has had plenty of experience with this in the wild. He is a lion tracker and author of “The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life.”

On his podcast, he told Aubrey Marcus that when you are facing a charging lion, you must stand, step forward, and meet the charge with your presence. A charging lion came so close to Varty, that when he screeched to a halt, the sand flew into Varty’s mouth.

“The lion must perceive you as dangerous and not one to be f’d with.”

When damaging situations arise in your life-whether it be laid off, fired, demoted, divorced, bankruptcy-or when something blindsides you, you must stand, step forward, and meet the charge with your presence. 

Running from a lion or your problems won’t help you and as scary and uncertain as things may be, stand, step forward, and meet the charge with your presence.

Although you don’t fully grasp it, you have tremendous presence about you so when situations are roaring at you, you let it know, “I’m not the one to be f’d with.”

Never settle, keep selling your way through life no matter what.

You can catch this post in a full podcast right here. (Search The Sales Life Podcast on your favorite podcast app.)

 

The snowball of Fear

Hear the full 8 min episode right here.

• Most wouldn’t think of “Iron” Mike Tyson being a fearful guy, but he is-always has been. At a young age he was abused and pushed around.
• At 13 years old, Mike met Cus D’amato and even though he prophesied that Tyson would be the heavyweight champion of the world, Cus first fought Mike’s mind before he’d even let him fight in the ring.

“Fear is your friend, but fear also is your greatest obstacle to learning. Fear is like fire, if you learn to control it, you let it work for you. But if you don’t learn to control that fear, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Fear is like a snowball on a hill. You can pick it up, throw it, and do anything you want to before it starts rolling down the hill, but once fear starts rolling down, it gets so big it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective nor save your own life.” ~Cus D’amato

• Fear can be your greatest motivator or debilitator. 
•  We all have snowballs in our lives-at one time we could’ve handled them, but undealt with fear barrels down and eventually overtakes you.
• Fear can be used either as fuel to ignite you or you can choose to swallow it and its corrosiveness will kill you. 
• Years ago while vacationing with my family, the front desk called and asked if I had another form of payment. American Express had frozen my ability to charge…I had no other form of payment (my other cards were maxed out), no cash, & was hours from home.
• • What was I to do? We needed to eat and get back home.
• Fear overtook me. I was living a lifestyle I could no longer sustain and had to declare bankruptcy.
• I’ve learned fear, undealt with, will eventually overtake you. Sure you can run, but fear will always catch up with you.
• Turn toward fear, not away from it.
• It’s written, “Speak to your mountains,” for a reason.
• Running toward fear does 3 things: Gives you control back in your own life; shortens the duration of the storm (days instead of decades), and the results are rarely worse than you imagined (if you run at it immediately).

The greatest obstacle to your potential is fear.  

Share your thoughts with me from the podcast.

Subscribe to The Sales Life w/ Marsh Buice podcast where we make a point in minutes not hours. Check it out on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

Where’s Your Stick?

Note: This is my guest blog post for AutoSuccess Magazine

Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, had a saying painted on the side of her airplane; “Always think with your stick forward,” which means do all the thinking you want as long as you’re moving forward.

My offensive line football coach in college had a theory very similar to Ms. Earhart’s. When the ball was snapped, Coach Fremin had 2 simple rules:

#1) If you forget the play, don’t just stand around; go hit somebody-anybody from the other team.

#2) Play until the whistle blows because you’re more likely to get hurt when you’re standing around the pile.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the sales profession, you’ve seen variations of sales careers that have either never gotten off of the ground or were once soaring careers that stalled in mid-flight and crashed in a fiery demise. Regardless of which extreme- unhappy endings come when you are not thinking with your stick forward.

Here are a few ways to keep your stick moving forward.

Stop Looking For Perfection : Stop waiting for the perfect opportunity. Opportunities aren’t luck, they’re revelations and are discovered only by those who are tenacious enough to keep digging, scratching, clawing, and scraping their way to success. As long as they’re making new vehicles, you’ll never be perfect in your product knowledge or negotiating skills nor will you ever find the perfect customer, inventory or management staff. Perfection is another word for procrastination; we procrastinate because we fear failure. Whatever you fear, run towards it. You want to get better on the phone? You want to close more deals? You want to be able to control your sale better? Then take action-you’ll never be perfect, but where others become bitter with each failure, you’ll become better.

No more chalk talk: No team wins a championship simply by the plays that they design-every play put on paper is designed to be a win. But what is designed in practice is refined in play and it’s learning from the setbacks and unforeseen circumstances that allow you to win. Like children, we pout when things don’t go our way; when a customer doesn’t buy, hangs up on us, or buys elsewhere we sit down and pout- all because the play we designed was supposed to work but didn’t. Pick up your lip, and get back in the game. When will you win again is not the question; the better question to ask is how long will you sit in your loss?

They’re not your problem : You’re the problem not anyone or anything else. The best place to look when things aren’t going your way is the mirror. You’re not a tree, if you don’t like where you are then get off of you ass and make a move. You couldn’t help where you came from, but you can help where you’re going. If you’re overweight, have bad credit, an alcoholic, or sell 5 cars per month, you have to own it and take the necessary steps to be slightly better than you were yesterday.

Bonus: I know I said a few, but there is a 4 ^th

You’re worth it: Enough said.

Most people live in the 8^th day of the week: Someday. Someday I’ll get my big break; someday my plans will come into fruition; someday someone will see that I’m being cheated. You’ve got 24 hours to make the most of this day-you don’t know how many more minutes, days, weeks, or years that you have left to play this game called LIFE, but one thing is certain. You have now and it’s called “present” for a reason.

Think with your stick forward.

I’ll see you next time on the Blacktop.

(HT to Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is The Way to write this weeks post.)

To Fear Failure is to Succeed at Nothing

 

The world is full of people who fear failure so much they never pursue their dreams and wind up living an unfulfilled life. We live in a world thinking “what-if” instead of living in a world of “already did.” Countless stories have been recounted and movies made depicting people realizing they only have a short time left to live. Suddenly, they set out on a quest to do everything on their “to-do” list. Many call it a “wish list,” but I disagree, because a wish is a want or desire, but stops short of putting anything into action. Hall of fame hockey player Wayne Gretzky said, “You will miss 100% of the shots you never take.” In life, you will not succeed if you fear failure. How ironic is it that a majority of hall of fame athletes not only hold the top rank of achievement (e.g. most points scored, most assists, etc) but also rank at the top in attempts.  NBA great Michael Jordan once said, “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something, but I cannot accept not trying.” By his own admission, the most famous athlete on the planet, missed more than 9000 shots, lost nearly 300 games, missed the game winning shot 26 times and what was his only excuse? ”I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

Advertisers spend millions of dollars developing slogans to shake us out of our self-imposed limitations.  Here are a few reminders:

•  Adidas: Impossible is nothing
•  Nike: Just do it
•  Apple computers:Think different
•  U.S. Army:Be all you can be
•  Red Cross: The greatest tragedy is indifference
•  U.S. Marines: Every warrior lives for the fight

You will not conquer what you never confront.  Countries fought for their freedom, companies formed, inventions developed, promotions earned and athletes achieved all because each took a chance on a dream, failed many times in the process, and eventually succeeded. Founding father Benjamin Franklin never thought he failed, he just found many ways he did it wrong. Coach Vince Lombardi argued that he never lost a game, he just ran out of time.

The reason most people do not pursue their dreams is because they fear the idea of change. “Change is inevitable; growth is optional,” leadership expert John Maxwell reminds us. Everything is in a constant state of change.  Your situation will not begin to change until you do. You can attract success if you commit yourself to learning everything you possibly can through various materials such as reading, audio and video materials (I call your You-niversity), but also staying available to the teachings life has to offer.  Your life is like that of a sea shore; the waves of life’s circumstances incessantly pound the shores of your life.  Like a thief, erosion will whisk away everything you have worked hard for if you do not do something to reinforce it. Continuous knowledge are the walls that protect success.

Fear has been acronymed  False Evidence Appearing Real or Finding Excuses And Running. Just as a soldier prepares for battle or an athlete prepares for a game, you must study your opponent in order to win.  In order to conquer fear you must first understand what it really is.  Fear is nothing more than a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, whether the threat is real or imagined. An emotion is a feeling and your feelings are often unreliable. In short, fear is nothing more than an unreliable, stress -induced emotion. Can you think of an occasion(s) where you faced insurmountable odds only to overcome them victoriously? No matter how many times you were knocked down, you got back up and by sheer determination fought, scratched and clawed until you prevailed. In the book Thick Face Black Heart, author Chin-ning Chu wrote, “Often the bravest warriors were originally the greatest cowards. The more fear you confront and conquer the greater courage you will possess.”

In his inaugural speech to the recession battered nation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He went on put the nation’s difficulties in perspective by saying, “The only concern, thank God, are only material things…yet out of distress comes no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plagues of locusts. Compared with the perils which our fathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we still have much to be thankful for…Plenty is at our doorstep.”

Tough times do not last, but tough people like you do. Do not let minute details become a roadblock in your quest for success. One day you will be able to laugh when you look back on the adversities you face today. Many of us have lost our health,jobs,homes, automobiles, marriages, and financial independence. You may have faced some unbelievable obstacles, but remember somebody, somewhere has it worse than you.  One thing you can never let go of is HOPE (Having an Opportunistic Perspective Everyday). Always keep the mindset that problems are cleverly disguised opportunities and you must be ready to seize them. Faith in your today’s will make sense in your tomorrows.

  I encourage you to take another shot at the game of life and if you fail, try, try again.  Pursue your dreams; conquer your goals; and recover all that you have wasted by allowing fear to paralyze you. Having fear condones inaction; having faith condemns it.