My
wife is a crisis counselor. One of her biggest eye-openers occurred when she
realized she was counseling the same people over and over again. You would
think that a crisis was an isolated event. Maybe for most of the population. But
some lurch from one crisis to another.
Why is that? They have not learned to
change their behavior because they haven’t learned to control their thoughts.
They have acquired patterns of thinking – which we often label attitudes – in
an earlier age, and never learned how to think differently.
On the other hand, we have all seen interviews
with highly successful people and heard them expound on the principles of
positive thinking. They will attribute their success to learning how to control
their thoughts and manifest their goals.
Learning to control your thoughts – to
choose to think some things and not others, marks a watershed event in one’s
life.
I recall the time that I made that
discovery. I had been the number one
salesperson in the nation for a company – my first full time professional sales
job. I was comfortable – adequate
salary, good benefits, company car, bonus potential, and the respect of my
employer and colleagues. But the
opportunities were limited, and I decided to move to a job that was completely
different. I took a sales job with a new
company, selling surgical staplers to hospitals. It was a huge leap from the secure job I had
to one that paid straight commission, and for which I had to buy my own samples
and literature from the company.
But I was cocky, filled with the
success of my previous job, and sure that I could make this work also. I wasn’t hasty. I looked at the amount of existing business
in the territory I was slated for and determined that if I could double the
business within six months—a doable task, I was assured – I’d be back making
about what I was used to. Then, as I
increased the business, my income and lifestyle would evidence the difference.
It all sounded good, and I left my
old job, and arrived in New York City for six weeks of intensive training on
the new one. During the time that I was
there, my district manager was replaced.
When I arrived home after the training, the new manager was eager to
meet with me. In our first meeting,
before I had a chance to begin working, he informed me that he had revised the
sales territories. The territory that I thought I had — the one I was hired
for – was not the one I was going to get.
Instead, I was going to receive just a fraction of that. And the new territory only contained about
one third of the existing business of the previous one. This change meant my plans for making a
living were shot. It now became an impossible task.
I was upset and angry. How could they do that to me? At this time, I
had five kids to support, and felt the pressure to provide. I immediately began to look for another job,
determined to quickly leave this unethical, uncaring company.
Things got worse. As I interviewed several companies, I
discovered that they saw me as the problem.
Instead of understanding what the company had done to me, they thought I
was an opportunist who was looking for an easy way out. Basically, no one else was going to hire me!
I grew more and more angry and more
and more bitter. In addition, I had
little success selling the staplers.
After six months, my temporary draw came to an end. I owed the company
$10,000, was earning almost nothing, and had no prospects for another job. I felt squeezed between the proverbial rock
and hard place.
And then, somewhere in there, I had
an epiphany. Yes, the company was
unethical. Yes, they had done a bad thing to me. But the reason I was not achieving had
nothing to do with that. It was my
fault! It was me. It was my anger, my
bitterness, my resentment – yes, my “victim attitude” that was keeping me back.
The product was still exciting, and the opportunity was still great. The real
problem was my attitude – my bitterness and anger were getting in the way of
everything.
So, I accepted my responsibility to
change my performance. I saw that I had
to change my attitude. And in order to
change my attitude, I had to change my thinking.
So, I set about to do so. I looked up Bible verses that were very
inspiring. Versus like, “If God is
for you, who can be against you?” I
wrote them down on 3X5 cards. Then, as I drove into my territory every day
along I-96 in Detroit, I held that stack of cards in my hand on the steering
wheel and read them over and over to myself.
Slowly I began to do away with my bitter attitude and replace it with
hope and expectation.
My results began to change also. Things began to go better. Six months later, I had paid off the debt to
the company, and was making more money than I thought possible. The job became more fun, more financially
rewarding and more fulfilling than anything I ever expected.
The change happened when I decided to
change my thoughts.
There
certainly is nothing new about that observation. Solomon, writing centuries before Christ,
said “As a man thinks in heart, so is he.”
The Apostle Paul wrote, “Be transformed by the renewing of your
mind.” The relationship between
thoughts, actions and results has been recognized probably since the dawn of
mankind.
The
problem is, of course, actually doing it.
One
of the best business books of the 20th century was called “Learned
Optimism” by Dr. Martin Seligman. In it,
he describes his lifework. As a research
psychologist, Dr. Seligman began by studying helplessness in dogs. In an early experiment, he put dogs into a
cage from which they could not escape and subjected them to mild shocks. After some effort at escape, the dogs would
give up trying and lay down. Later, he
put them into a cage from which they could easily escape and subjected them to
the same mild shocks. The dogs would
just lie down and give up. Surprisingly,
they did not attempt to remove themselves from the irritant. They had learned helplessness and
hopelessness.
In
subsequent experiments, Dr. Seligman found a similar behavior in human
beings. Put into a room and subjected to
irritating noises from which they could not escape, they soon learned to give
up. When put into a room with a
mechanism that would turn off the noise, they still didn’t try. They had learned helplessness and
hopelessness.
From
this beginning, Dr. Seligman continued to formulate a thesis he calls
“learned optimism.” It says,
basically, that human beings learn to have either a pessimistic or an
optimistic outlook. Dr. Seligman’s book
contains a self-assessment to measure the degree of pessimism or optimism of
the reader.
Dr.
Seligman’s thesis arises from the way people explain negative events to
themselves. When something negative
happens, as it eventually will, the way you explain it to yourself determines
your pessimistic/optimistic attitude.
There are three components of this “explanatory style.”
The
first component is the degree to which you believe the event will be permanent. Pessimists believe negative events will be
permanent, while optimists believe that they will be temporary.
The
second component is pervasiveness. Pessimists believe the causes of negative
events are universal, affecting everything they do. Optimists believe them to be specific and
limited to the individual circumstances.
The third
component is personal. Pessimists believe that negative events are
caused by themselves. Optimists believe
that the world is at fault.
Here’s
how this behavioral perspective works in the everyday life of a salesperson.
Let’s
say you visit one of your large accounts, and your main contact announces that
the vice-president for operations has signed a prime vendor agreement with your
largest competitor, and that all of your business will be moved to that
competitor within the next 30 days. That’s a negative event.
As
you drive away from the account, you think to yourself, “I blew it
here. I should have seen it coming. I’m never going to learn this job. I’ll blow the next one too. I mismanage them all.””
Now,
that’s a pessimistic explanation of the event.
Notice that you have explained it in a way that is personal, “I blew it.” Your explanation is also permanent, “I’m
never going to learn to do this
job,” and pervasive, “I mismanage them all.”
Now
stop a minute and analyze how you feel as a result of this explanation. Probably defeated, dejected, depressed, and
passive. These are not the kinds of
feelings you need to energize you to make your next sales call.
Let’s
revisit the situation, this time offering optimistic explanations. The same event occurs — you receive bad news
from your best account. As you drive
away, you think to yourself, “They really made a bad mistake this
time. It’s a good thing the contract is
only for a year. That gives me time to
work to get it back. I’m glad it was
only this account and no others.”
That’s
an optimistic explanation because your explanations were not personal,
permanent, or pervasive. How do you feel
about your future as a result of this explanation? Probably energized and hopeful.
See
the difference? The event was the
same. The only difference was the way
you explained it to yourself. One set of
explanations was optimistic, leading to energy and hope, while the other was
pessimistic, leading to dejection and passivity. The difference was how you thought about it.
Dr.
Seligman has isolated optimistic behavior as one of the characteristics of
successful people. Using various techniques
he developed; he predicted elections by analyzing each candidate’s explanatory
style. The most optimistic candidates
often win elections.
The
implications for you are awesome. If you
can improve your explanatory style, and make it more optimistic, you’ll create
more positive energy and hope for yourself, no matter how difficult or negative
the circumstances with which you must deal. It is a matter of choosing your
thoughts.
Learned
optimism can be one of your most powerful self-management techniques. It’s based on this powerful principle: Your
thoughts influence your feelings and your actions, and you can choose your
thoughts.
Learning
to control and choose your thoughts is a learned skill, just like active
listening. Learning to do so marks a huge step in our development.
That’s why it is one of the 25 most important lessons I have learned.
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