The Outlook Competency
Joe DiDonato | Chief of Staff | Baker Communications, Inc.
In “Happiness Is a Choice,” Barry Neil Kaufman offered up this quote near the start of his book – The way we choose to see the world creates the world we see. Profound words indeed, and as I read further, he began to talk about our world beliefs and more importantly – the beliefs we hold as truths about ourselves. The point he was making was that our beliefs become the ‘filter’ through which we see the world, as well as what we come to believe we are capable of as individuals.
For many of us, those beliefs were not our own. They came from others around us. Parents, friends, schoolteachers – they all contributed to the view we have of ourselves. Maybe you come from a family of doctors or lawyers, and what you heard growing up was, “You have to be a doctor or a lawyer, or you’ll fail in life.” Or maybe you came from a lower-income family like mine, where my mom said to me while I was working on a fold-up tray table one weekend during a visit, “Why don’t you get a less stressful job – like bartending? Do they pay you overtime when you work on the weekends?!?” Who wouldn’t want a mom like that? “No mom, but I’ll be sure to bring it up at the next Board meeting.”
The list goes on and on. “You’re thinking of changing your career at 35? You’re supposed to be settling down.” “OMG, you’re not married at 38, what the heck are you doing with your life?”
Hugh Jackman was a PE teacher in California for 5th through 9th graders. Jennifer Aniston was a telemarketer for two weeks before she quit. Angelina Jolie applied to be a funeral director. What kind of ‘programming’ led them there? You need to follow your passion in life and invest in making that passion a reality. Don’t let your mind or others create the personal beliefs that will keep you from becoming the person you really want to be.
Self-limiting beliefs clearly fall within this topic area, and they truly affect our performance in many fields of endeavor, not just sales. If you have a belief that you’re too old, then you will probably manifest that reality and begin waiting for the inevitable end of your life, while watching your body crumble, saying to yourself, “this is normal.” Conversely, if you believe that you have many decades of living left and that medicine will continue to extend those “bonus decades,” then you will relish the thought of retiring from one career and launching that career and business idea that you always wanted to try.
If you have a belief that you’re not as ‘gifted’ a presenter as a top-selling peer, then you will shy away from those opportunities to present your ideas or solutions. But if you think that this is simply a skill that can be improved through training and practice, then you will seek out that training and coaching, and your behavior will change going forward.
As you begin to remove those self-imposed barriers that your mind has constructed, then you will start to see your true potential. It’s at that point where your outlook on life will change for the better.
It’s like the story that I told you when I defined the Supportive Beliefs Competency. That was about a young man who was failing in school, who ended up taking the SATs, and received a score of 1480 out of 1600. He said to himself, “Golly, gee… I must be smart.” Then he simply started to behave like he was smart. He chose different friends, showed up in school, went on to higher education, and then became the successful head of a huge magazine empire. Ironically, but proving the point, it turned out that he was notified many, many years later that he only scored a 740 out of 1600 – too late to undo his success or confidence.
Change your belief system and you will change your outlook and the world that you see. When you change your outlook, watch as your behavior changes to match.
If you want to be the best, invest in yourself. Go and find a course that will help you improve your skills. Find a mentor and coach who will make you incredible at what you do. As you begin to acquire this new glimpse of what your life and career can be, your outlook will change to match. And when your outlook is positive in your sales career, you’re going to start moving into that upper 2% bracket where world-class performers live. Don’t you owe that to yourself?
So, I will end this short article on the Outlook competency where I began it, with Barry Neil Kaufman’s quote and a favorite poem: The way we choose to see the world creates the world we see.
And here is the poem:
ARE YOU THE CHICKEN OR THE EAGLE?
A man once found an eagle’s egg
And put it in the nest of a barnyard chicken.
The eagle hatched and grew up with the rest
Of a brood of chicks and thought
He didn’t look at all the same.
He scratched the earth for worms and bugs
And played a chicken’s game.
The eagle clicked and cackled, he made a chicken’s sound.
He thrashed his wings, but only flew a few feet off the ground.
That’s high as chickens fly, the eagle had been told.
The years passed and one day when the eagle was quite old
He saw something magnificent flying very high
Making great majestic circles up there in the sky
He’d never seen the likes of it. “What’s that?” he asked in awe,
while he watched in wonder and amazement at the grace
And beauty that he saw.
“Why that’s an eagle,” someone said. He belongs up there. It’s clear.
Just as we– since we are chickens– belong earthbound down here.”
The old eagle just accepted that– most everybody does.
And he lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.
— written by Charles Osgood
See you on the other side of your self-limiting belief system…
If you’d like to learn more about how to use this predictive data to drive your hiring, onboarding, training, and coaching decisions, we invite you to listen to the advice and outcomes of a sales executive who changed her entire hiring and training process over to the data-driven approach. Watch the video here: https://www.bakercommunications.com/tailoredfit.html.
