I was at a meeting today and the speaker was talking about success. He was a good speaker and had the entire audience engaged throughout his entire speech.
As with any speaker I am always listening to his message and at the same time I am trying to find the one nugget I can take with me. This morning I found no nuggets, I didn’t hear anything that I haven’t heard dozens of times before and I didn’t come away with a new outlook towards success. What I did get was a great idea for today’s post.
The speaker used about every old saying and cliché that has ever been written or spoken about success. It was when he said, “IF IT IS TO BE IT IS UP TO ME” that the idea came to me. Just before he made this statement, he was talking about being too dependent on others in your journey towards success.
As I thought about the two ideas I realized that there were a lot of people in the room who were misunderstanding what he was saying. I agree that you can’t depend on others to hand you success however you can’t become a standalone success either.
Every successful person has someone that was either directly or indirectly partially responsible for their success. A teacher, trainer, mentor, clergy, spouse, coach, parent or one of a thousand other relationships was there to help guide, teach or council.
No one has ever become a success alone. They may say that they did the bulk of the work, that they did the majority of the research or they did most of the planning but every one of them had that other person or team that was there for the journey.
IF IT IS TO BE IT IS UP TO ME is true, the one thing that the successful person must supply is the dream. The dream comes from within and the successful person needs to be the catalyst that gets things moving, but once they start the ball rolling they need that special person or persons to help them along the way.
So many people this morning heard the phrase and thought that they needed to do it all and no one could help them. Nothing is further from the truth.
This morning made me more aware than ever how careful a speaker needs to be. They can say all the right words, but if the words are taken in the wrong context they can do more harm than good.
As a listener we need to be careful also. We need to assess what we hear and make sure it makes sense to us. We need to listen and filter what we hear through our experience and knowledge and make sure that it is consistent with our beliefs.
As sales reps we speak to customers all the time and we need to make sure that we are making ourselves clear also. If we say something and it is misunderstood by the prospect, the sale moves a little further away from us. If we do it enough times the sale is lost.
Thinking about this morning, the one thing that is very clear to me is that LISTENING IS THE OTHER SIDE OF SPEAKING. If we don’t speak in a way that is easily understood by the listener, why speak at all.
Lorin
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