Are You Focused on the Obstacles? by Liz Monte

I was cruis­ing around bet­ter­net­worker the other day and come across an arti­cle that really caught my eye. I wanted to share it with you all here as I think it’s very valu­able. The author, Liz Monte has a good grasp on online busi­ness and attrac­tion mar­ket­ing. Although she’s mod­est about it, she has some valu­able infor­ma­tion. I rec­om­mend going to her site after read­ing this too! Going to be there off and on myself today.

www.wisenetworkmarketer.com

Are You Focused on the Obsta­cles? by Liz Monte

Recently, I heard a per­sonal story that had a pro­found effect on me. It was
told by Terri Maxwell, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer of a major net­work mar­ket­ing
company.

Terri was a var­sity bas­ket­ball player in high school, a start­ing point guard on
her team. (A point guard is the player who drib­bles the ball down the court
across the cen­ter line, and passes it to a teammate.)

Dur­ing the first half of a cham­pi­onship game, she and her team were on fire.
Play­ing with total con­fi­dence and grace, she zipped eas­ily past the oppos­ing
defender at the cen­ter line to set up one suc­cess­ful play after another. At
half­time, her team was ahead by ten points.

The sec­ond half was a dif­fer­ent story. Sud­denly, instead of one defender at
the line, she faced two. She got boxed into a cor­ner time after time, lost the
ball and saw the other team score. Ulti­mately, her team lost, and as you can
imag­ine, Terri was boil­ing mad.

The next day, while recount­ing the game to her grand­fa­ther, he asked her
some­thing that would totally change her out­look on life. “Honey,” he said,
“what were you focused on dur­ing the first half?”

“Scor­ing points,” she replied.

“And what about the sec­ond half? What were you focus­ing on then?”

“Get­ting past those [bleep­ing] defenders!”

“That’s your prob­lem,” he said. “You get what you focus on. In the first half
you focused on your goal of mak­ing bas­kets and you made bas­kets. In the
sec­ond half you focused on your obsta­cles and that’s what you got more of.”

Sud­denly, Terri real­ized that she could have sim­ply drib­bled the ball with her
left hand instead of her right and gone right around the defend­ers. But
because she was so focused on get­ting through them, she for­got all about
this option.

Terri went on to give sev­eral exam­ples of how this advice from her very wise
grand­fa­ther shaped her future deci­sions and actions.

In the mean­time, I was sit­ting there with my jaw in my lap, stunned by this
rev­e­la­tion. Maybe every­one else has already heard this a mil­lion times before,
but for me it was brand new.

Focus on your goals, not on your obsta­cles. What mean­ing did this have for
me as a net­work marketer?

Well, I cer­tainly haven’t lacked for obsta­cles in my career — I sus­pect you’re in
the same boat. Some days, obsta­cles seem to be the whole name of the
game. The primo prospect who says no. The mar­ket­ing cam­paign that falls
flat. The down­line leader who quits. A ran­dom snide remark from a friend or
rel­a­tive that seems to suck out every bit of self-confidence from you.

But after hear­ing Terri’s story, I sud­denly saw all those neg­a­tive events as
just a series of hills and val­leys. And what do you do when you encounter hills
and val­leys in real life?

Do you stop and moan about how unfair it is that the Cre­ator didn’t make
the world per­fectly flat and smooth? Do you take a dif­fer­ent route that takes
you 20 miles out of your way just to avoid them? Do you decide it’s prob­a­bly
not a good day for a hike so maybe it’s best to just go home?

Of course not! You keep right on going because you’re focused on your goal.
You know where you’re going. You see the big­ger pic­ture. And fur­ther­more,
as a wise net­work mar­keter, you KNOW that the hills and val­leys in front of
you are unavoidable.

Along the way, there are moments of exhil­a­ra­tion when you reach the tops
of the hills and see the beau­ti­ful vis­tas spread out before you. But then there
are the val­leys full of swamps and rivers. And climb­ing back to the top takes
a lot of work.

But no mat­ter what, you keep on truck­ing because YOU HAVE A GOAL! You
can see it shin­ing in the dis­tance, and that’s where your focus lies.

Is it the same way with busi­ness? I think it is.

What are your thoughts?
===================================================

She’s def­i­nitely got a good point here. It’s real easy to con­cen­trate on the wrong things and for­get your goals. Write your goals down and put them where you can see them. It’s such a sim­ple thing to do, but very pow­er­ful. Enjoy your day, and check out Liz’s site too!

~Chris

Sim­i­lar Posts:

• Net­work Mar­ket­ing and Social Media: Al Gore Does Not Want You To Know His Secrets! by John Murphy
• The Dif­fer­ence Between GIVING Value and BEING Valu­able by Matt Adamo
• The Real Job of Lead­ers: 5 Real­i­ties that Make or Break You by Ali­cia Andersen

I’m glad to see you back at The OMV. I hope your enjoy­ing your time. Feel free to con­tact me for any­thing and if you haven’t already, don’t for­get to sub­scribe to The OMV Newslet­ter. Leave a com­ment too! I’d love to hear from you.