I love this song by Carl Douglas. Listen to it here. It’s certain to uplift your spirits.
I practised Kung Fu in the early nineties and entered a couple of sparring tournaments. I loved Kung Fu. The discipline and focus of it all. It’s an elegant style of fighting and something beautiful to watch.
I remember when I used to fight in competitions. The fighting started beautifully. It was an elegant and eloquent work of art encased in a tapestry of fluid movement and effortless flow.
The fighting was intense and tiring (3 x 3-minute rounds). As the fighting progressed, and the contestants got tired and hurt, it started to lose its shape. Near the end, elegance and eloquence flew out the window. It became nothing more than a common bar-room brawl. Head down, swinging wildly, hoping to hit something.
When “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” (Robert Burns), we go to our default programming.
I strive to live my life in flow – elegantly and eloquently. It has become apparent to me that I have a lot of work to do on that front. Sometimes, when I face difficulties, I tend to forget my good intentions and instead fall back on blaming and complaining.
This default setting puts me straight into victim mode. The programmers were good and coded me with shame, apathy, guilt, fear and anger. Maybe they did that to you too? Victimhood is not a path that is helpful. We can all get off that path and programme another one that is more helpful.
After all, as Carlos Castaneda said, “A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.”
We can programme a better path for ourselves, one where mastery and not victimhood becomes our default setting.
The keystrokes of courage, awe, gratitude, love, joy and peace will help us on the way to our highest aspiration: Enlightenment.
Let’s do that, you and I. Let’s play this game elegantly and eloquently. That’s a better way to live, don’t you think?
One of our biggest drivers is to feel safe and secure.
I remember a story by my teacher, Shaykh Ebrahim Schuitema, that completely changed my understanding of security.
He spoke about owning a house which is one of the cornerstones of feeling secure in our perception.
He asked me to imagine that vandals would come to my house and trash it. When I come home from work and see the damage they’ve done, I’m appalled and upset.
I spring into action to make sure that this doesn’t happen again and that I protect my home. I sign up with my neighbourhood protection service, get an alarm and an electrified fence. And, for good measure, I bought an attack dog.
He then asked me to imagine that I’m walking in the street and getting mugged. I put up a fight and got soundly beaten up. I limp home battered and bedraggled. As I enter my home, does my house say to me, “Good grief, Jacques, what happened?” “How can I help you?” “I’m going to hunt down those muggers?”
Of course the house doesn’t say anything. In fact, if someone murdered me and slept in my bed, the house wouldn’t give two hoots.
Who is protecting whom?
We live in an impermanent world. Nothing is secure and everything can be taken away from us in a heartbeat. No marriage is completely secure. No job is secure. Health is never guaranteed. Possessions aren’t secure.
From one perspective, this is a depressing thought. From another perspective, this is liberating.
Don’t take anything for granted. Live each second as if it’s your last. Appreciate every moment. Be grateful, generous, and kind.
I feel that the Buddhists have it right when they talk about non-attachment. Attaching to anything makes one feel less secure, that’s for sure.
The sales profession is one of the toughest on the planet. Not because it’s inherently difficult, but because it triggers every foible in the human psyche.
If you’ve ever felt any of these, you’re in the sales profession:
Rejection. The prospect didn’t buy. He doesn’t like me. Just like my father didn’t like me. Nobody likes me. I’m worthless. Daddy, why don’t you love me? I don’t matter.
Imposter syndrome. I closed a big deal. I was just lucky. If he knew the real me he wouldn’t have bought. I’m not good enough. If anyone knew me, they would know I’m a fraud.
Frustration. Another deal lost despite my best efforts. Why are they taking so long to make a decision? Just sign the fucking order.
Despondency. I didn’t hit my target again. I hate seeing my name last on the leaderboard, again. What a loser. Am I going to get fired?
Depression. I can’t deal with another setback. I wonder how many sick days I have left? Am I going to get fired?
Disillusionment. Nobody keeps their word. Humans suck. I suck. My life sucks.
Disgust. I had to exaggerate the features. I didn’t highlight that particular T&C. I don’t really think our product can do that, but it will probably never be put to the test, so we can get away with it. Good grief, I’m a liar. What else do I lie about? I’m a terrible person.
Shame. I couldn’t take the kids camping like I promised because I didn’t get commission this month. We had to go to Wimpy again for our date night. I’m a deadbeat parent and partner.
Perhaps you’re lucky enough to never have felt any of the above. I can’t say I’ve had that luxury.
If misery loves company, then take heart that almost every human being goes through these experiences at some stage or another.
Here’s What Weakens You and Me
These experiences typically come from our expectations of others. And, in the sales profession, it’s highlighted 1000-fold because we always want something from the other. If we’re a sales leader, we want our team to perform. If we’re a sales person, we want our prospects to buy. And, as a human being, we demand validation from others.
This is problematic because it always leaves us feeling weak, disillusioned and disappointed because it seldom turns out how we want it to.
Whenever we want something from another, we put ourselves in a position of weakness. The other can withhold what we want (an order, a promotion, a raise). That puts the other in a position of power. The who can withhold is the one with the power. In sales, prospects and customers always have the power. In work, your boss always has the power (to withhold or give that promotion or raise).
Petty Tyrants
This brings me to the concept of the petty tyrant which first appeared in Carlos Castaneda’s book, The Fire From Within.
He says, “A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction.”
“We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.”
I think that petty tyrants are marvellous creatures because without them, we’d never grow as human beings, would we?
And, the sales profession is the best gymnasium in the world to test our mettle in this regard. Petty tyrants (customers, prospects and colleagues) are our gym instructors and drill sergeants. They challenge our comfort zone and test our adaptability and resilience.
Petty tyrants can be seen as a source of frustration and torment, or as a catalyst for personal growth. If you see the former, you’re a victim, not a warrior. In the sales profession, you always want to be a warrior. Of course, you always have choice: do you react as a victim or respond as a warrior?
Castaneda wrote, “The warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one. If you don’t come upon one in your path, you have to go out and look for one.”
In my experience, the quicker you can find your tormentor, the sooner you toughen up so that you can deal with what life throws at you. As a sales professional, you know that it throws a lot of shit at you, don’t you?
In sales, it’s easy to find petty tyrants. They are referred to as prospects and customers.
If you’re a sales manager, they’re called your team.
Petty tyrants serve as valuable opportunities for growth.
Adaptability. A petty tyrant in sales might be a difficult customer who questions your product’s value or a market trend that threatens your usual sales approach. Instead of resisting change, successful sales professionals adapt their strategies to meet these challenges head-on, ultimately becoming more versatile and resourceful.
Resilience. In the world of sales, facing rejection is a common occurrence. Every rejection can make us feel defeated, but Castaneda’s idea reminds us that these moments are actually opportunities for us to strengthen our emotional resilience. The ability to bounce back and maintain a positive attitude in the face of adversity is a hallmark of successful salespeople.
Continuous Improvement. Sales professionals can use setbacks as opportunities for improvement. Each challenge provides insights into what can be done better, whether it’s refining sales techniques or enhancing product knowledge.
Empathy. Petty tyrants in the form of demanding prospects and customers can teach salespeople to develop greater empathy. Understanding a customer’s pain points and addressing their concerns effectively can turn a challenging situation into a win-win scenario.
The Endeavour of Selling is a Hero’s Journey
A career in sales is a metaphor for life. You can live an average life. Or you can heed the call of adventure and heroically try to make your mark on this world. You’re going to need guidance on this journey, so find mentors that can help take you over the finish line.
You’re going to have a shit ton of challenges, disappointment, and disillusionment. You’re going to get stuffed up, and stuff it up more times than you care to remember. But you get up every time and keep swinging for the bleachers. It’s not in your nature to give up, but to prevail.
But, there’ll come a time when you’ll want to give it up. A time when you see no hope. This is called the dark night of the soul.
Any sales professional worth his or her salt has to go through this. If you’ve never been through it, you’re just not playing this sales game hard enough.
And, you do know that you get out of the hole, don’t you? If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this piece of text now, would you? You’re still in the game, fighting every inch of the way, aren’t you?
Finally, after all your effort you get the reward you deserve. Of course, it does not always come packaged the way you wanted, hence disillusionment and disappointment.
However, if you believe that there’s a greater ingenuity than your own running the show, as I do, then the reward might come in a form that’s way better than you expected for yourself.
Then, as a benevolent and mature human, you take the reward and the lessons learned from the experience, and you share it with your tribe so that they too can benefit. So that they too can deal with their petty tyrants.
Make Art and Have Fun
Finally, have some fun. As Castaneda said, “The idea of using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior’s spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness.”
Like you, I’m an artist, and the joy is in the creating of the art. Crafting a sales pitch, presenting it and using every ounce of skill to convince someone to buy what I have to sell, is joy for me. This makes me happy. Whether my work lands with the prospect or not, it matters not.
That’s not entirely true, of course; I do need to make a living, after all. As a business owner and sales professional, all I know is that if I fail a lot, I’ll succeed a little. And, that little gives me a life I can be proud of.
Don’t take yourself too seriously; remember sales can be fun as long as you don’t react like a victim but respond as a warrior.
If you’re at a crossroads in your sales career (or life for that matter), reframe it as a positive experience. Because it really is … the right and wrong, the good and bad. It’s called being a human.
So, if you’re a sales professional, give it a real go and embrace those petty tyrants. They’re not doing things to you, but rather for you. They’re the steel that sharpens steel.
Let’s do this thing together, you and I. Let’s give it a go. Well probably fuck it up. But let’s have fun while doing it.
Because, as you probably understand by now, in sales at least, the more we fail at this endeavour, the more we succeed at it.
“Alas, for those who never sing, but die with the music in them.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
As an author, I’m well versed in the Hero’s Journey storyline. It is the most used tool in stories, movies, television, books etc. Think Star Wars and Harry Potter.
As writers and marketers we use the Hero’s Journey in our text as well (to a lesser or greater degree). Our hero is ambling along in his/her normal life. An inciting incident disrupts normal life (geyser bursts, we get ill, relationships fuck out, our car licence expires and so on). We then accept the call to fix the problem and thus go on an adventure. We find a mentor (service provider). We go through trials. We go through the dark night of the soul. We get the prize. We take the elixir back to our tribe so that they benefit. We learn valuable lessons. We grow. We are better off.
Here’s the problem, though. Most people don’t really want to grow, become better and dent the universe. We’re quite happy to stay in our ordinary world … in our comfort zone. The zone where our dreams go to die.
This is understandable, of course.
I don’t know about you, but every time I venture over the wall of comfort, I run into a lot of pain. As a writer, the pain comes wrapped up in rejection and ridicule.
And, danger.
In my case, I also write copy for clients. If the stuff I write is too far out there for them, I could lose the job. I have to eat, so I take the coward’s (or realist’s) route and go back to writing banal and safe copy. I go back to both our comfort zones because it is safer and less painful there (for both of us).
But that’s the problem with a comfort zone. We go to it because it is supposed to keep us safe. But, actually, all it does is keep our lives small.
Let no one kid you. When you step out of your comfort zone, you are going to be massively uncomfortable and feel pain. That’s just the way it is. But if you accept the call to adventure, and can cut through the Gordian Knot of complexity, pain and discomfort, the whole of Asia will open up for you. A magical world full of endless possibilities awaits you.
There’s one thing that every Hero’s Journey has that will make the journey easier, and that’s a mentor.
Taking the first step of your journey towards endless possibilities is not the real thing that takes courage. It’s opening yourself up to possible (highly likely) failure and disappointment.
The superpower that will get you through this is vulnerability. Without being vulnerable, you can’t move forward. And, we all need help with moving forward, don’t we?
That’s why we have to become vulnerable, and open ourselves up to being helped. We have to ask for help. We need mentors.
I don’t know about you, but that’s where my courage is tested. I could ask for help, and get rejected. Just the thought of being rejected makes me want to throw up and cringe in fear. It makes me want to avoid asking for help so that I can scuttle back to my comfort zone … the place where my dreams go to die.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be like that, does it? Become vulnerable and ask for help so that you can move forward. What if you could enter a world of endless possibilities? How would that feel? How would that look?
I think it would feel fabulous.
Remember, you were created as a masterpiece whose job it is to craft a master-work.
Go. Go do this.
I can’t wait to see what mischief you’re going to get up to. Whatever it is, it will benefit you and, by extension, us.
Have you ever wished that you were somewhere else or doing something else? I used to want to be somewhere else, doing something else until I came across the notion of the warrior and the artist.
It helped me shift from wanting something ‘out there’ to being grateful that I was privileged enough to be given the opportunity to become who I truly am. A being who is grateful and in awe that he gets to play around a little on this planet before he is called home.
The Warrior
A warrior fights both external and internal battles. The internal battles are infinitely harder. If you know this, you are already on the path to becoming a true warrior. The internal battles are the ones the warrior has to fight every day to become who she truly is.
The warrior understands that the ultimate victory is victory over self – the victory over sloth, selfishness, ego, vanity and pursuing stuff. The warrior gets that her job is to sort out her head and her heart and to strive for a life of selfless service to others. And, to work on stuff. The warrior is prepared to die for her comrades, causes and countries She’s selfless.
A warrior has little concept of time and place. He gets that wherever and whenever he is … this is where he’s supposed to be. In that moment. Because every moment is an opportunity to work on his inner self. Every moment is instructive and is an opportunity to do work that matters. Be it a mundane moment (replacing a lightbulb) or momentous one (really listening and connecting with a loved one).
The Artist
The artist speaks to the work we have to do. Too many of us are results-focused and we want to produce something tangible. I get that. In our work life, we’re paid for results, aren’t we? But how many of us are like artists, taking joy from the process? How many of us love the work for the work’s sake and not just for the result? Artists are nurtured by the actual doing of the work …the painting, the writing, communicating with a child, washing the dog, washing dishes, calculating a sum, solving a problem, taking a photo, serving somebody a cup of coffee, meditating. It matters not what they do because it’s all art to them. Everything we do is creation. And, I’m sure you get that we’re all artists. We all create something, no matter how insignificant we may think it is. Artists know that sometimes we’ll produce mediocrity and sometimes we’ll produce a masterpiece.
Both artists and warriors don’t wish to be doing anything else but what they are doing in this moment. Why? Because we’re creators and it makes us happy to create. Because we are warriors and it gives us a chance to fight the inner battles and become truly who he is.
However, choosing the warrior path is not easy because we actually have to deal with ourselves. And, more often than not, it’s not pretty. So, we choose not to deal with ourselves and distract ourselves with that outside of us. But, I think we owe it to ourselves to do the inner work because it’s so awesome to have been given the opportunity to play in this human endeavour, albeit for such a short time. I love Carl Jung’s take on finding oneself: “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
And, of course, choosing the life of an artist is not easy, either. Creating is not easy. It’s messy. It’s chaotic. It’s failure after failure. It’s inconvenient and seldom goes to plan. But it’s necessary. Because it’s the attention we give the moment we are in where the real magic happens. This is when we create something wondrous. Something that makes the soul sing. Something called art.
“This is no time to make new enemies”. These were the last words of French writer and philosopher, Voltaire on his deathbed when asked to foreswear Satan.
I, of course, have no problem making new enemies (and upsetting old enemies) on a regular basis. Yes, I know, being arrogant, self-absorbed, difficult, short-tempered and petulant – with a weird (if any) sense of humour doesn’t help my cause at all.
Yet, if I were a genius like Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare and Mr. Spock, these character defects would be eccentric (and expected) to mere mortals.
Being a mere mortal, my frailties aren’t cute and eccentric … they’re just bombastic and rude.
I collect enemies in three ways.
I don’t listen well.
I make up enemies.
I try to be helpful or “No good deed goes unpunished”.
Non-existent listening skills
I’m a shocking listener. I’m that guy. You know the one. That irritating creature who antagonises people by finishing their sentences for them and interrupting them in mid-sentence. And, of course, listens not to understand, but to get my viewpoint across. I promise you … nobody likes a self-opinionated smarty-pants. I’m trying to take a page out of Etko Schuitema’s book when he says that listening is a moral skill and it is suspending my agenda for the other. Not so good at it at the moment.
Manufacture an enemy
If I haven’t got a real enemy I make one up. Like I don’t have enough on my plate to contend with. I’ve conjured up an enemy. Let’s call him Jeb to save me the embarrassment of having to apologise to him later whilst nursing a black eye. The Lord knows that the log in my eye is far greater than the splinter in his. Jeb is a professional speaker. Whenever he presents a motivational talk or writes something, I just know it isn’t his own work. But, he claims it as his. Surely everyone knows that Zig Ziglar and not Jeb said, “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”
It drives me insane. And, it drives me to a froth that his audiences love him and lap up every word he says. And, Jeb, where’s the proof that millionaires read at least 60 business books a year and the rest of us don’t. I read more than 60 books a year and all I’m doing is making the authors into millionaires. I don’t know if it is that the audience loves him or that he makes more money than a small town and me (or a combination of both) that gets me so riled up?
Of course, the irony is not lost on me that I might just be projecting my inadequacies onto Jeb. I know I’ve pinched a quote or two or 50 from someone without acknowledging the source.
But, here’s the thing, Jeb doesn’t even know that I have an issue with him. And, even if he did, he wouldn’t change nor care to change. So, Jeb is in effect besting me without even knowing it. The only one who is losing in this self-inflicted drama is I.
On a side note – manufacturing an “enemy” is a good way to rally the troops and keep them focused. And, in some circumstances killed – the so-called “weapons of mass destruction” that started the Iraqi invasion cost the USA 4 486 soldiers and more than 170 000 Iraqis (more or less 120 000 of those being civilian deaths). So, conjuring up an enemy is seldom helpful.
No good deed goes unpunished – Oscar Wilde (he’s the handsome lad in the photo, by the way)
Be helpful. That’s a sure fire way of making enemies. I get an A+ in this department. I have a ‘gift’ of being able to spot a grammatical error or spelling mistake with one eye closed, even if I’m in a drunken stupor. Naturally, this gift doesn’t extend to my own work which, more often than not, looks like the love-child of Tourette’s and ADHD. When I point out a mistake (with great humility and tact, I might add) I can see the shutters go down and ire rise. It has taken me years to realise that even if people ask for critique, nobody actually likes it. Most of us just want someone to agree with our viewpoint. Criticism hurts for the simple reason that it is probably true and the person being criticised has to come to terms with his or her frailty. So, I don’t critique anybody’s work now unless they ask me to (at least three times) because no good deed goes unpunished.
I suppose that’s why I stay in my study and write as much as I can. Because if I’m out of my room unsupervised and not sedated, I will mix with people and invariably rub someone up the wrong way.
