What Are You Reaching For?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak to the amazing sales team at Consensus.  Rex Galbraith, Consensus' VP of Sales, asked me to speak on stretching yourself and reaching higher.  As I was preparing the presentation, I remembered an exercise I did with my 15 year old son.  I meet with him weekly to set goals and plan what he will accomplish in the coming week.  One of our sessions had us talking about what he needed to do in order to accomplish his athletic goals.  His bone age is 2 years behind his genetic age which is a fancy way for an endocrinologist to tell us that while he hasn't had his growth spurt hit when most of his friends' have, it will come soon enough.  He's had so many coaches and doctors tell him to be patient because it will come soon enough that in this session with me he told me that setting stretch goals for athletics is a waste because until he grows it won't matter.  

When he said that, I grabbed some return mailing address stickers from my desk and had him follow me into his bedroom.  As we stood by his door-frame I instructed him to reach as high as he could and stick the sticker to his wall.  He nonchalantly reached up and stuck the sticker to his wall.  I looked at it and asked him, "Are you sure that is as high as you can reach?" He shrugged and said that it was.  I promptly handed him another sticker and told him to stick that to the wall, but put it on the wall higher.  He looked at me like I was crazy and then reached up and stuck it about an inch and a half higher.

He looked at me with a smile and asked "Do you have another sticker?"  I smiled as I gave him the sticker.  With a more purposeful approach he placed this one several inches above the one he had done moments earlier.

I told him to leave those stickers on the wall and look at them as he walked out of his room every day to remind himself of a couple of things:

1. There is always a way to push yourself to do more than you thought.
2. When you reach because YOU want to, and not because someone else told you to you will always go much, much farther.

As I remembered this moment I had shared with my son, I decided to take a picture of the stickers on the wall to use in my presentation.  As I got in his room to take the picture, I saw a new mark on the wall...a glob of green bubble gum was stuck on the wall another inch or two over the previous high.  He happened to be in his room when I took the picture and I asked him why there was gum on his wall.  He told me "I had a good practice and it made me want to play even better.  When I got home I saw the stickers on the wall.  I decided to go back to the wall and see if I could stretch a little higher since I knew I had to work harder and stretch myself before the next practice.  Since I don't have any stickers I used my gum."

I had one of those cool, memorable moments as I told him to leave the gum on the wall and feel free to stick gum on his wall whenever he wanted to challenge himself.

This experience reminded me of the importance of chasing goals rather than hitting quotas.  What's the difference?  Simple:

1. Quotas are targets assigned to you by someone else.  
2. Goals are objectives you choose on your own for reasons important to you. 

As a sales leader, I learned a long time ago that the most successful reps don't just look to hit quota.  They sign up for their own goals and find ways to change how they do things so they can accomplish more.  

While there are many things that can help us maximize what we do with the limited cycles in our professional careers, I shared 4 tactics to help each of us stretch just a little higher in my speech today.  The first one is the one I think is the biggest difference maker:  Manage the Mindset.

I often refer to Managing the Mindset as the law of Focus.  On several occasions I've referenced an experience I had with John Maxwell where he said:

"There's a funny thing about focus....you get what you focus on."  

This quote becomes more relevant to me day after day.  There's a story of Dr. Vincent Peale who took an extended Sabbatical to the Orient.  While travelling he happened to find a tattoo parlor and browsed around, looking at the cultural art. One of the samples caused him to pause.  The example said "Born to Lose."

Peale asked the shop owner if anyone really permanently marked themselves with this message.  The owner nodded and offered a profound explanation:  "Before tattoo on body, tattoo on mind."

There is real power in what you put after the words "I Am _______"  I have found that you can't accomplish anything without thinking of it first.  If we fill in the blank with something positive, you are likely to accomplish positive things.  If you focus on the frustrating or the negative, these thoughts are likely to become your reality.  Earl Nightengale taught us that the mind doesn't care what we plant in it in his famous speech "The Strangest Secret."  

If you plant positive things in your mind, it will return positive results.  If you plant negative ones, it will return negativity.  The mind doesn't really care what we plant, nurture and keep focused on...it just helps us achieve it.  So be very careful and very intentional about what you put in the blank after "I Am __________."

"I Am excited about my opportunity"... "I Am able to handle this objection"... "I am a top performer"... are examples of how you can use I Am effectively.  "I Am not able to beat this competitor"..."I Am unable to connect to the buyer"... "I Am in a dead end job" are all examples of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I enjoy challenging sales teams to proactively write down "I Am" commitments to themselves.  It is the equivalent of reaching up and sticking the bubble gum on the wall to remind yourself that you are in charge of how far you go.  Challenging yourself rather than doing what is asked will initiate a transformation you will find intoxicating.  Things that were status quo will become mission critical.  You will find fulfillment in places you never expected.  Your contribution to your organization will change and the impact you have on those around you will be meaningful.  As leaders, one of the most important lessons we can learn is this:  

Companies don't push people, people must push themselves.  

Our ability to have influence on those we work with to motivate them to push themselves will drive more success than anything else we do.

Use the picture I took from my son's room as a challenge to reach a little higher every day.  Don't focus on tasks others set for you.  Sign up for your own goals and then sell out...go for it with every bit of energy, attention, and intentional process as you can and stay relentlessly focused and true to yourself.  You'll find that your activities will be more purposeful, the professional cycles will be more fulfilling, and your career will find a new pace that you haven't experienced yet...and that you will love.

What will you put at the end of these 2 words:  "I Am __________"?

As we learned from the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:  You must choose...but choose wisely.  

I echo the same cautious advice...choose wisely.  What you choose to focus on is exactly what you will find.  

The great news is that what you put in that blank is completely up to you.

Now go put some gum on your wall.