Focus: What's your WHY?
People who don’t know me well have a hard time understanding how I focus and am so successful in my work life. I have a lot of energy; I talk a lot and am interested in so many different subjects; I can easily come across as “scatter-brained” -- I have a million projects going at once and seem to be dipping in and out of them all day long -- how do I manage to actually get things done?
I’ll tell you -- I have an extremely clear WHY.
What’s my why? My mom. She moved across the world and started over in a new and foreign country, sacrificing so much for me growing up. She worked as a social worker for only 30K a year. She’s a saint, a wonderful human, and the life she gave to me because of how hard she worked? That’s invaluable to me. She’s my driving force. And now, I want to help her retire, take care of her so she can relax and live a financially stress-free life. I’m her financial provider and I don’t want her to just survive day-to-day, I want to give her every luxury she’s ever denied herself. That’s been my why for most of my career. It has helped me achieve what I have. I focused on it daily with each new task and every goal.
And now I have a new why, an additional why -- Our why is to pass on the tools I’ve gained through the struggle so others can struggle less and YOU can make more money more easily than I did.
Sure, you can flit around from job to job year after year, never focusing or achieving much but always getting by. But that’s not you, that’s not why you’re at This Sales Life. You know how essential focus is to life and success -- I mean, deer who don’t focus in the wild get eaten by wolves. It’s obvious that focus is essential to survival. Both your literal day-to-day survival and metaphorical career survival.
But before you even start to consider focus in your career, you need a clear, intrinsically motivated, core value type of why. A why that connects deeply to who you are as a person, the world you want to help create for your children, the future you see for our planet -- what is your big, wonderful WHY for your life?
Your why drives you to get out of bed, get on that sales call and nail down that new client. Your why is your motivation -- if it’s unclear you don’t run, you’ll be content to take a leisurely stroll. But if your why is strong -- I gotta pay off my mom’s loan, take care of her retirement, pay for my kids’ college and set up their futures, pay my daughter’s medical bills and refill her expensive prescription, pay off my house and travel the world with my partner -- you can move mountains.
A strong why leads to strong focus -- should I binge watch “Game of Thrones” or make another 10 calls?
A strong why leads to WHY NOTs. Once your why is clear you’ll start seeing opportunity everywhere instead of obstacles. Why not help more than just my mom? Why not create a place for other sales professionals to be successful? WHY NOT?!?
Find a why. Make it strong. Then, start asking “Why not?”
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Becoming the most successful sales professional you can be certainly doesn’t happen overnight.