Re: HELP! How did you guys overcome fear and shyness? - Posted by Bill Gatten
Posted by Bill Gatten on June 02, 1999 at 18:42:48:
Keith,
Your post is great! This is a concern that more people should ask about. There are techniques that WORK and I am living proof of that that fact. You wouldn’t know it by reading some of my post and watching me in action at seminars and workshops. I appear to be one of the most outgoing and gregarious people you will every meet…and I am too… until you take the microphone away from me. Then I fold like a salted silver fish.
First of all, let me say that the people in sales who ‘do everyday what they fear the most,’ are always top sales people (always). They are “tops” for two reasons: First… because they do everyday what scares them spitless (a “dryness of mouth” allusion, not a typo), and second because they have all learned to “adequately” (if not “over?”) compensate for an inferiority complex. Invariably, these people were shy or neglected as children and learned that it was far safer, healthier and immeasurably more productive to manipulate people, than to fight them.
Without these two specific elements in a sales person’s life, one can generally aspire to “good” to “mediocre” at best. Just watch what happens when you go up to the guy who just won that enormous Sales Person of the year trophy, and tell him that his tie doesn’t match his shirt, or that he has chunk of spinach hanging from a tooth. He will turn into a jellied Sea-Salp right before your eyes.
Number One: DO EVERYDAY WHAT YOU FEAR THE MOST. Three of my worst fears, years ago were: 1) deep water, 2) heights and 3) snakes and lizards. And…Yep…when the kids were small a lizard ran up my pants leg at a church picnic, and I made a complete idiot out of myself by screaming like a sissy banshee and disrobing in front of the entire congregation of the Trinity Baptist Church of San Luis Obispo.
The very next day, I went down to the local pet store and bought the kids (or so everyone thought) two salamanders and a seven and a half foot Boa Constrictor. We named the Boa Charlie Brown and loved him like one of our own… until he ate the salamanders and the cat and died of a fur ball (or something… wasn’t exactly like that? I think he lasted about a year before we donated him to the Jewish Defense League as a do-it-yourself cowboy boot kit).
Then…next… I relented and agreed to go with a friend (irresponsible jerk friend) on a 26 Sail Boat and got lost about 200 miles out to seas for six days with no fuel, no food no water, no life jackets and no radio. Thinking it was the North Star, we guided on the fan tail light of a steamer bound for the orient until it finally blinked out on us halfway to Okinawa. We then paddled for about 100 miles with a canoe paddle and a camp shovel before finally being found (six days later) by the US Coast Guard and rushed to the hospital for sunburn, dehydration and foot removal (mine… from his rear end).
My next challenge…the altitude thing. I gave in over a couple beers and consented to go sky diving–with two of my sons–and to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, from 14,000 feet. Of course, being a klutz, I broke my ankle in 17 places in the process. Getting me out the door of the plane was like pushing a lobster into a pot of boiling water (hands and feet determinedly braced against the rim of the door and glued with Crazy Glue). But once pried loose, I enjoyed the blood curdling screaming and exhilaration of the senseless plummet… until I landed without flaring and broke my leg trying keep up with the 40mph forward direction of the chute).
Now…do you think I regret any of these experiences? Hell yes, I do! What in world did I have to do any of those stupid things for? Why didn’t I decide which one of those activities would put a single dime more money in my pocket, and save me the expense of white rats, Sun Blocker and six weeks in a stupid leg cast.
Wouldn’t I have been far better off to simply take the time to identify my REAL fear and dispense with the baloney. My real fear all along, was public speaking and one-on-one selling. If I had known that earlier, and had gone into investing, sales and public speaking earlier, I could have made my fortune years sooner… by doing everyday what I TRULY feared the most, and what I do everyday and love the most now.
What I feared the most all along was not water, snakes and heights… it was “Rejection,” pure and simple. After I put myself directly in front of my fears daily, I quickly learned that they (prospects) would probably not kill me even if they got the chance; and even if they did, it’s against the law for them to eat me. And regardless of any of it? I make a decent living with the process.
Keith, you already know what it is that YOU fear the most. You are indeed lucky. Waste no time. Jump into the game with both feet, and relish every second of the experience that is leading you to wealth financial freedom. When you realize that you are the absolute authority, and that it’s your gold that makes the rules…you will seek out every opportunity to do more and more of it, and assuredly become VERY wealthy in the process.
Bill