“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'”
––Muhammad Ali
To live your life as a champion, you have to go through the same training process as other top professionals whether they are athletes or astronauts, fire fighters or fighter pilots.
Training conditions you to act and react in certain ways. This conditioning becomes a way of life based on rules, principles, and systems developed to ensure your success.
One of the most important Sandler conditioning principles is maintain a healthy self-esteem. You can’t be a champion—work effectively and enjoy long-term success—if you don’t feel good about yourself. Ironically, you fill your day with activities that have the potential to chip away at your self-esteem.
You talk with your staff about accountability and changes and they justify status quo. You make calls on people who either don’t want to talk to you, or if they do, don’t have the time when you call. You make presentations to people who should want to come to work for you, or to buy, but won’t…can buy, but don’t. You hear “no” more often than you hear “yes.” It’s one rejection after another. What can you do?
You must be conditioned to not take personally the interactions you have with potential or current employees, prospects and customers. If they reject your product, service, or company, it’s not a rejection of YOU. In the rare instance when you don’t click with someone and they do reject you…so what? Maybe they don’t get along with anyone. Maybe they were having a bad day before you showed up and rejecting you is the only way for them to feel good about themselves. By rejecting you…ruining your day, their day is now better by comparison.
Your training must condition you to become mentally and emotionally tough. You must be able to accept a no, even from those who should have said yes, and then move on. If there’s a lesson to be learned from the failure, learn it, apply it, and subsequently benefit from it. It’s part of the training. If you don’t quit, you will live your life as a champion.
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