Living the Significant Life (8 page)

Of course, it takes more than an active, creative imagination to build a life of significance. The trick is to channel your imagination into productive goals, but first we should address something that could derail you before you’ve even begun: fear.

PRINCIPLE #4

Don't Fear to Be Fearless

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

—Marie Curie

Fear is a difficult subject to tackle head-on but an easy one to overcome. To get a handle on fear, let's speak for a moment on the matter of belief.

Belief is the key to success and significance. No matter what career or business enterprise you choose, you must believe in what you are doing. You must believe in your company, its mission, its integrity, and what it stands for, and you must believe in the people you work with as well. In your personal life, belief is equally essential—belief in your family and the principles by which you live your life.

There's no way to fake any of this. If you don't believe in what you're doing, you simply cannot be either successful or happy.

We've all met businesspeople whose words just didn't ring true—like a Honda salesperson who drives a Toyota. How many people do you know who are trading their time for money in a job they can't stand? How persuasive, honest, and service-oriented is a person who doesn't believe in what he or she is doing for work, much less to make a living? How many people do you know who are living deeply unhappy personal lives because they are behaving in ways that run counter to their basic beliefs?

Belief, like life purpose, is one of those pass-fail things. Either you have it or you don't. You must believe in your values, unique talents and special gifts, purpose, goals, dreams, and aspirations. You must know that what you are doing is making a difference, that you and your efforts are making a real contribution to others. After all, if
you
don't believe in yourself and in what you're doing, who will?

Everything Is Sales

Belief is the key to successful sales. Every business, career, occupation, and enterprise of any kind is about sales. In fact, every interaction you have with all of the people you come in contact with each day in your personal life involves sales.

Many people don't want to hear that
everything
is sales. That's because most people are in the habit of saying (or thinking), “I can't sell,” “I don't like to sell or be sold anything,” and “I won't sell.” (How's that for no possibility?)

Perhaps that's why we pay salespeople so much. They're the Green Berets of business: “It's a dirty job—but
somebody
has to do it.” Since nobody wants to sell, it's obviously one of the most dangerous and risky jobs around, so those high income–earning salespeople must be getting hazard pay!

Just for fun, next time you meet someone who says he doesn't like or want to sell, ask him to tell you more about that. Then sit back and listen as he spends the next five minutes or more masterfully selling you on how he can't sell.

Everything is sales.

We sell our friends on going with us to the movie we want to see, the restaurant where we want to eat, and the dessert we want to share. We sell our kids on believing in themselves and on cleaning up their rooms. We sell ideas, concepts, thoughts, opinions, and feelings. Teachers sell knowledge and discovery. When we first met our spouses, we sold them on the idea that we were worth dating and eventually marrying.

But the most important sale of the day is what we sell to ourselves.

When people say they can't sell, it's simply not the truth. What they are really saying is, “I don't believe I can sell. I don't believe in myself.” And you know what? That's just not true, either! They believe, all right: they have a
negative
belief about sales and a negative belief about themselves. And every negative belief, no matter how artfully conceived or rationally explained, comes down to being one big, nearly universal, negative belief that every single person on the planet shares: fear.

Fear: Friend or Foe?

The enemy of a powerful belief is fear. Fear is what hurts us, because it stops us in the successful pursuit of our goals and purpose. Fear is what each of us must learn to conquer.

There are schools of philosophy that say, “Love your fears.” That doesn't make much sense to us. We all have fear. Some of it's healthy, too. But love it? We'd rather lose it.

Let's make a distinction here. It's good to have some fears, such as being afraid to step in front of a speeding truck. We should be afraid of things like chainsaws and other power tools, guns, cars going 120 miles per hour, 220 volts of electricity, tornadoes, drunk drivers, war, and things like that. Those are pretty healthy fears. They compel us to act with great respect and to take care when crossing the street, sawing logs, or repairing an appliance. Those fears motivate us to take positive action. It would be foolish to be fearless in those and many other situations.

What examples do you have of fears that strengthen you, keep you aware, and support you in your life and your work?

The point is that fear in itself isn't good or bad. Just like beliefs, fear can be either healthy or unhealthy. Fear is a tool, and as with any tool that can be used to build or to destroy, the quality of how it serves you or undermines your efforts is up to you. It's just another choice.

In most situations (other than crossing the freeway, rewiring your home, and other life-threatening ones), choosing fear means choosing a life of unfulfilled goals and aspirations. This choice is the true enemy of happiness.

Fear of What?

The most common fear we human beings have is fear of the unknown. For some reason, we got it into our collective minds ages ago that we had to know what would happen before we took action. “Safety first” was drummed into us until it became fear of the unknown. Although this is the most common fear of all—probably the source of that other monster fear, the fear of dying—the following story may serve to rid you of this fear once and for all.

A man was convicted of treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. As the drums rolled, the man faced his executioners. The commanding general announced, “Sir, you have a choice: you can accept your fate and die before this firing squad, or you can go through that black door over there.”

He was given two hours to think about it.

Two hours later, the man was returned to the prison yard, placed in front of the firing squad, his hands bound, and a blindfold placed over his eyes. The general then asked him, “What have you chosen?”

The man replied, “I have no idea what I might face behind that black door. It could be a most terrible fate. I choose the firing squad.”

The order was given and shots rang out. The man fell to the ground, dead.

As the gunmen were leaving the prison, one turned to the general and asked, “Sir, what was behind that door?”

The general, without expression, replied, “Freedom.”

Risky Business

Fear of the unknown comes from the desire to avoid risk. Very often, risk means anxiety. Did you know that the Chinese character that represents crisis is made up of two smaller characters? One means “risk” and the other means “opportunity.” To reduce anxiety, people avoid the unknown.

Facing the unknown means accepting the challenge of the unknown, and to accept that challenge, we must have self-discipline and belief.

Have you ever seen a James Bond movie? Secret agent 007 has a tendency to walk right into his enemy's stronghold and confront the sinister villain (Goldfinger, Dr. No, and the others) face-to-face. It's great! Bond has no idea what's going to happen, but you can be sure that if he messes up, it's going to be
horrible.
One time he was going to be fed to the sharks; another time, cut in half with a laser. But no matter—he always gets out of it. He keeps his cool. He is disciplined. He believes in himself—even when he has no idea what's coming next.

For too many people, self-discipline literally means self-punishment. What do we do with an out-of-control twelve-year-old boy headed for what used to be called juvenile delinquency? We send him to military school for some discipline—and that's punishment.

Discipline,
however, comes from the word
disciple,
which means two very interesting things: a “follower” and a “learner.” Discipline comes from following and learning from someone or something. Self-discipline comes from learning about and following one's own beliefs.

People who follow their limiting beliefs by avoiding learning about the unknown are actually very disciplined. They never take chances. You see, discipline can be either strengthening or limiting. When you're following a positive belief and purpose, discipline is actually a freeing and powerful concept, not a limiting one.

Discipline is something we can all cultivate. A good synonym for discipline is
integrity.
It's as simple as doing what you say you're going to do—keeping your word. You can do that, especially with yourself, only when your belief is bigger than your fears.

There's another aspect of fear of the unknown that most people don't consider, and that's the fear of simply
looking at things differently.
We get so stuck in what we think we know and the sameness of things, yet the safety of that prevents us from even considering something new. It's a security that prohibits us from looking out beyond that old tried-and-true position or point of view, and it's a major stumbling block to coming up with new and better ways of doing things.

Below you see a pattern of nine dots. Here's what we want you to do:

Connect all nine dots using only four straight lines and without raising your pen or pencil from the page. You can crisscross lines, but you can't lift the pen from the page.

Got it? Okay, now do it.

How did you do?

If by some chance your mind was a bit stuck in the same-old, same-old way of looking at things, here's the key to finding the answer: you've got to get outside the nine dots. How do you do that? See page 85 for the solution.

Now, if you're really stuck in a pattern of limited thinking, you're saying to yourself, “That's cheating.”

But it isn't at all. The solution follows the directions exactly. It just backs up a bit and takes a bigger picture of what's possible. It reaches into the unknown—going beyond what you think you know and even beyond what you think you don't know into the realm of what
you don't know
that you don't know. The fascinating fact is that this is the place of greatest possibilities for your success and happiness.

Live and work like an artist with a blank canvas. Be willing to risk the inevitable “failures” that going beyond your experience presents. That's where all the real rewards are. After all, if you keep doing things the way you've been doing them, you're bound to end up with what you've already got.

The reason most people aren't willing to do this is a fear of failure.

“To Fail or Not to Fail?”: What a Question!

The next fear to conquer is the fear of failure, and the surest way to do that is to change your understanding of the value of what we usually call failure.

One of America's true high achievers, Thomas Edison, had this to say about failure: “To double your success rate, you must double your failure rate.”

Author Zig Ziglar has said that if you close only one out of twenty-five sales calls, each failure is simply one step closer to making the next sale.

Do you know that failures are critical to success? There is not a successful man or woman on earth who was not a major failure many times before attaining the mantle of success.

A very wealthy businessman once began a speech by saying, “It's true that I am successful, probably the most successful person in this room. Would you like to know why? It is because I have failed more times than anyone here.”

Check out the impressive track record of another famous success story:

• Fired from his job in 1832
  
• Defeated for state legislature in 1832
  
• Declared bankruptcy in 1833
  
• Elected to state legislature in 1834
  
• Lost his sweetheart to death in 1835
  
• Had a nervous breakdown in 1836
  
• Defeated for Speaker of the state legislature in 1838
  
• Defeated in nomination for Congress in 1843
  
• Elected to Congress in 1846
  
• Lost bid for renomination in 1848
  
• Rejected for job as land officer in 1849
  
• Defeated for Senate in 1854
  
• Defeated for nomination for vice president in 1856
  
• Defeated for Senate a second time in 1858
  
• Elected president of the United States in 1860
  

Abraham Lincoln is certainly not remembered today for the many defeats and failures in his life.

The two greatest home run hitters in the history of baseball are Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron. Did you know that Hank struck out 1,383 times during his career and that Barry struck out 1,539 times? And we can't forget the Babe. Babe Ruth will most likely be remembered as the greatest home run hitter ever. Know how many times he struck out? 1,330.