"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them."
--Pablo Picasso, per Katie Westin's Facebook Profile
So our very own wonderful DEBI PASI has a fab new team member, KATIE WESTIN who has a bunch of really great quotes on her Facebook profile. She obviously is going to fit in really well with we of the pink positivity!
This quote from Pablo Picasso was one of them, and I absolutely love the "Duh," factor of this statement. This is the type of thinking we all need to do; it's the little mind-meld that separates those successful people we've all heard of from those talented ones who live in obscurity. Of course, we don't want to meld our minds quite so much as good ol' Picasso did -- I like my ears intact, thank you -- but perhaps we need a little of his bravado to get us closer to our goals.
When you offer the MK opportunity to people, how often do you hear, "Oh, I could NEVER do that!" How often do you say it to yourself about suggestions your director gives you, or ideas we hear at Career Conference and Seminar? I often work with people who have trained for the jobs they hold -- they are teachers, nurses, graphic artists. I wonder, would a nurse try to insert an IV before she'd been trained? I hope she would NEVER do that. But after she is trained, she can do it. She couldn't do it -- until she could. Are you getting my drift?
What is it that we think we can't do? I watch my son; he has no idea that a 7 month old really shouldn't be standing yet. Yet every time I turn around I find him perched precariously on his tippy toes as he hangs on for dear life to whatever inanimate object he's used to pull himself up. Like the bumble bee, no one told him he can't, so he just does.
Does he sometimes go off kilter and flop? Yep. I've considered taping a pillow to his head, because that's what seems to take the impact most of the time. He cries for a minute or two and then with a kiss from me or a tickle from Daddy, he's back to being our smiley little daredevil again. Oh that we in Mary Kay could be so resilient!
How long do your tumbles keep you down? Do you lie there for days, immobile by a "No" or a cancellation? Or do you pull yourself back up?
What do you think would happen in your business if you go out today and painted a masterpiece with the things you "can't" do? Do you purposefully seek out the things you "can't" do, or do you stay comfortable in the safety of the crib -- cuddling into the blankets of all the things you know well and have done before with little or no results? Art requires risk. Learning to walk is scary.
Have you ever thought what might happen if, when you were 7 months old, you never even tried to pull yourself up once? You'd still be scooting around on the floor on your bum. But at that time in your life, you, like Picasso, just did things you couldn't do.
After all, that's how you got to do them.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I'll Take Failure Over Mediocrity Any Day
“Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
--Thomas Edison
If any of us are to succeed in our Mary Kay businesses, we must first fail.
This may, on the surface, sound negative, but in actuality, it's not. There are so many quotations from very successful people that tell us this truth; our own Mary Kay Ash often said that we must "fail forward toward success." Jack Canfield tells us, "There is no failure. Only feedback." Winston Churchill said, "Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
These successful people understood that what we call "failure" is really just process; it is a learning experience, information that we can use the next time we try. Yet so often we are so afraid of failure that we do not move; our fear is a deep freezer and we the immoble, frozen carcass. Perhaps a small success melts us briefly, only to cause us to, like fluid water, take the path of least resistance to the next spot of immobility, where we once again freeze from fear. Does this cycle sound familiar?
It does to me. And I am just thawing out from the most intense deep freeze thus far in my Mary Kay career.
Back in November, I signed my DIQ papers. By the end of the second month of the qualification period, I was no longer in DIQ -- my recruiting was non-existent and therefore my production was, too. I felt like a failure; I felt like I'd let my family, my mentors, my team down. I entered the deep freeze -- that place where I became convinced I am just no good at this business, that I obviously am not cut out to be a director, that everything always cancels on me and that I should just give up. Not bother. Why try?
But then during a quiet moment putting my son down for a nap, I realized I could make 1 of 3 choices: 1) I could quit Mary Kay, 2) I could stay a consultant but not try to earn the car or become a director, or 3) I could try again for DIQ & the car.
As I allowed my brain to go over these options, I imagined how each one would feel. Quitting Mary Kay all together felt horrible -- I'd miss my friends, the Cadi-shack, the fun. But more importantly, quitting is the only choice that would absolutely guarantee that none of my Mary Kay dreams would ever come true. That made no sense. In fact, that's just plain stupid.
I imagined what it would be like to just be a consultant and not shoot for the big goals, and this sat like a dead weight in my stomach. For me personally, this would go against what originally drew me into Mary Kay -- the opportunity to bust through mediocrity and shoot for the stars.
The only option, then, is to continue to believe. To believe the successful people ahead of me who say, this is not a failure, it's just feedback on how to do better. How could I possibly live with quitting if every moment I was thinking, what if that next call, that next class, that next face was it?
But here is what I want you to understand: We will all at some point in time be in the Deep Freeze. And when we are here, it is a CHOICE to believe we are warm. It is a CHOICE to break free of the ice and heat up the room with our firey belief that we turn into sizzling action! It is only up to us; we can choose to be a frozen carcass -- a big chicken, a turkey, some sort of paltry poultry -- or we can ACT LIKE A WOMAN with a mission, a calling to be something bigger and higher and better than we've ever been before. Each so-called "failure", whether it's a missed goal like the car or DIQ, or a cancelled class, is simply one stepping stone of many on the road to success. And those stepping stones are what keep our feet dry from that fluid river that eventually freezes up again.
I'd rather step on my "failures" and keep my feet dry than get stuck in that frozen river!
*********************************************************
Here are some action items for you to think about till the next post:
1) Revisit a "failure" and discern its feedback. Then apply that feedback to your next attempt!
2) Are you "frozen" in fear of failure? Go do something that scares the wits out of you. ACTION CREATES HEAT!!! Melt your ice with action.
YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--Thomas Edison
If any of us are to succeed in our Mary Kay businesses, we must first fail.
This may, on the surface, sound negative, but in actuality, it's not. There are so many quotations from very successful people that tell us this truth; our own Mary Kay Ash often said that we must "fail forward toward success." Jack Canfield tells us, "There is no failure. Only feedback." Winston Churchill said, "Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
These successful people understood that what we call "failure" is really just process; it is a learning experience, information that we can use the next time we try. Yet so often we are so afraid of failure that we do not move; our fear is a deep freezer and we the immoble, frozen carcass. Perhaps a small success melts us briefly, only to cause us to, like fluid water, take the path of least resistance to the next spot of immobility, where we once again freeze from fear. Does this cycle sound familiar?
It does to me. And I am just thawing out from the most intense deep freeze thus far in my Mary Kay career.
Back in November, I signed my DIQ papers. By the end of the second month of the qualification period, I was no longer in DIQ -- my recruiting was non-existent and therefore my production was, too. I felt like a failure; I felt like I'd let my family, my mentors, my team down. I entered the deep freeze -- that place where I became convinced I am just no good at this business, that I obviously am not cut out to be a director, that everything always cancels on me and that I should just give up. Not bother. Why try?
But then during a quiet moment putting my son down for a nap, I realized I could make 1 of 3 choices: 1) I could quit Mary Kay, 2) I could stay a consultant but not try to earn the car or become a director, or 3) I could try again for DIQ & the car.
As I allowed my brain to go over these options, I imagined how each one would feel. Quitting Mary Kay all together felt horrible -- I'd miss my friends, the Cadi-shack, the fun. But more importantly, quitting is the only choice that would absolutely guarantee that none of my Mary Kay dreams would ever come true. That made no sense. In fact, that's just plain stupid.
I imagined what it would be like to just be a consultant and not shoot for the big goals, and this sat like a dead weight in my stomach. For me personally, this would go against what originally drew me into Mary Kay -- the opportunity to bust through mediocrity and shoot for the stars.
The only option, then, is to continue to believe. To believe the successful people ahead of me who say, this is not a failure, it's just feedback on how to do better. How could I possibly live with quitting if every moment I was thinking, what if that next call, that next class, that next face was it?
But here is what I want you to understand: We will all at some point in time be in the Deep Freeze. And when we are here, it is a CHOICE to believe we are warm. It is a CHOICE to break free of the ice and heat up the room with our firey belief that we turn into sizzling action! It is only up to us; we can choose to be a frozen carcass -- a big chicken, a turkey, some sort of paltry poultry -- or we can ACT LIKE A WOMAN with a mission, a calling to be something bigger and higher and better than we've ever been before. Each so-called "failure", whether it's a missed goal like the car or DIQ, or a cancelled class, is simply one stepping stone of many on the road to success. And those stepping stones are what keep our feet dry from that fluid river that eventually freezes up again.
I'd rather step on my "failures" and keep my feet dry than get stuck in that frozen river!
*********************************************************
Here are some action items for you to think about till the next post:
1) Revisit a "failure" and discern its feedback. Then apply that feedback to your next attempt!
2) Are you "frozen" in fear of failure? Go do something that scares the wits out of you. ACTION CREATES HEAT!!! Melt your ice with action.
YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome!
Welcome to this, the first post of what I hope will be many inspirational messages to help you in your Mary Kay business, or whatever endeavor in which you find yourself engaged should you be outside the "Pink Bubble" stratosphere. For those of you who don't "Think Pink", I'll try to define MK terminology whenever I can, probably via footnotes; please bear with me! Those of you in MK will know of which I speak.
This blog is a limb off a tree called The Success Club. TSC was a weekly conference call I started based on a book called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Next to the Bible, this was the most life-changing book I've ever read; it is truly an encyclopedia of all things inspirational and true, an easy-to-read, easy-to-apply manual for anyone who might like to bust through the mediocrity ceiling to the heavens of success.
The holidays came and our weekly calls started to peeter out. Then I was in DIQ (Director in Qualification) and things got too crazy to continue, but some of our members started asking about the calls again. So, I thought instead of a call that would require everyone to be near a phone at the same time each week, a weekly post to a blog might be better. I didn't want to commit to it until I found a website ( http://www.worldofinspiration.com/ ) that has all sorts of inspriational quotations -- things that helped me get through a dark time -- and all of a sudden it seemed clear...take a quote each week from the site and write about it. So here we are.
The accountability aspect might not be there as much as it was on the call (we had homework that we had to report on each week) but maybe we can work something out. Let's see if I can manage to post every week, first! :)
I am excited for the new year and all the possibilities it brings. It's time to bust through our plateaus together!
Blessings!
This blog is a limb off a tree called The Success Club. TSC was a weekly conference call I started based on a book called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Next to the Bible, this was the most life-changing book I've ever read; it is truly an encyclopedia of all things inspirational and true, an easy-to-read, easy-to-apply manual for anyone who might like to bust through the mediocrity ceiling to the heavens of success.
The holidays came and our weekly calls started to peeter out. Then I was in DIQ (Director in Qualification) and things got too crazy to continue, but some of our members started asking about the calls again. So, I thought instead of a call that would require everyone to be near a phone at the same time each week, a weekly post to a blog might be better. I didn't want to commit to it until I found a website ( http://www.worldofinspiration.com/ ) that has all sorts of inspriational quotations -- things that helped me get through a dark time -- and all of a sudden it seemed clear...take a quote each week from the site and write about it. So here we are.
The accountability aspect might not be there as much as it was on the call (we had homework that we had to report on each week) but maybe we can work something out. Let's see if I can manage to post every week, first! :)
I am excited for the new year and all the possibilities it brings. It's time to bust through our plateaus together!
Blessings!
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