学进去

I was taught at a young age to be afraid rather than to experience life. Don’t ride a bike because you might get hit by a car. Don’t swim because you might drown. That’s why I was initially afraid to approach others. They might say no—how could I live with that rejection?

A book changed me. Near the end of the book, the writer suggested trying out what I had just read but to pretend it was like the training game in a sport—when the games didn’t count. When my teams would lose formal games, I couldn’t bear to watch. But when they lost in the training game, I didn’t care.

I don’t know why the suggestion to pretend my attempts didn’t count could resonate with me. But I knew this new way of thinking worked for me. It gave me power to know the results didn’t matter because this was the exhibition game when I was practicing what I had learned before the real games started.

I discovered there were other ways to use this new tool. It allowed me to have a successful sales career, even though I heard the word “no” hundreds of times. It was part of the business, but I didn’t let it get me down. I turned a negative into a positive by reasoning that every time I heard the word “no”, it meant I was one step closer to “yes”. It’s amazing how powerful you feel when you remove the fear that stops you from going after what you want in life.

I still work my sales job, and we have a lot of high-school and college students working at the company. I will pass on the advice that I learned many years ago and encourage them to use that idea for whatever they want to achieve.