Tag: Belief

What Door-to-Door Salespeople Would Say to Themselves if They Could Do It All Again

Working in door-to-door sales is always a rollercoaster of an experience. Almost everyone sucks to begin with, most people give up or get fired. Some people stick it out and get better and become very skilled at what they do.

So I recently asked a bunch of my friends who I’ve worked with doing door-to-door sales: If your current self could go back and talk to yourself before you started door-to-door sales, what would you tell him/her?

Here are the answers:

“Have some faith in yourself and others. Learn to be present in the moment and enjoy the process of the lows and highs. Shut your inside battles, the fear, the scarcity mindset. The best days of life as a D2D rep is when you are free-flowing, loving yourself, trusting others and yourself.”

“Believe in yourself because you can do more than you know and you deserve self-respect. Also attachment is an unnecessary stress. Money isn’t everything. Friends come and go. Sales go up and down. Focus on you and the rest will follow.”

“I would tell her focus on building yourself up, drink less, party less. Read all the books! Invest in yourself, and believe in yourself because you can be the best! Go young me!”

“Have more confidence with trying something you’ve never done before, even though the job sounds crazy as hell.”

“Be excited to be wrong, you were not born knowing how to do this profession.”

“Trust your instincts no matter what. Health is wealth. Continue growing even while you wander.”

“Trust your intuition.”

“Pay more attention to what you’re thinking and feeling than what you’re doing and saying.”

“Don’t be a follower, find your own way, find who you are and work on yourself for you and not for others.”

“This will be a journey of growth that will pay off in the long run. Effort and struggle must take place before you can become your best self.”

“Turn this into a career instead of a summer gig.”

“Think much bigger much faster and commit to mastery and being the hardest worker in the industry.”

“Work hard even when you don’t feel like it, don’t give up and settle for mediocrity.”

“Work harder.”

“Build a better system of habits – it’s important for success.”

“Try new things, find what you’re good at, focus on what you’re good at and repeat when things aren’t going as planned.”

“Study the sales system with more effort and read more door-to-door related books.”

“Enjoy the process, enjoy the people you’re working with, enjoy the people you get to meet. When you choose to enjoy the whole journey then sales will come, not the other way around.”

“Become more self-aware. Enjoy the moment.”

“No-one after you leave is going to remember you so give it everything.”

“Keep on top of every account and make sure you get paid correctly.”

“Don’t lend money.”

“Don’t do it.”

Although there was a surprising variation in the type of responses, there were some common themes of self-belief, trust in yourself, doing it as a career, working hard, and enjoying it as much as possible.

If you’ve done door-to-door sales, what would you tell yourself? Comment below!

Think Again: Real Wisdom Is Knowing When to Change Your Mind

Most of us probably go through our lives amazed at how wrong other people’s beliefs are. We’ll even sometimes try to change their mind and prove that we’re right and they are wrong. Most of the time though, we’ll meet stubborn resistance and others will defend their viewpoints ardently, even denying a multitude of points based on logic. In the end, we’ll probably give up, or agree to disagree as the friendship hangs on a thread.

Adam Grant, the Wharton psychologist who wrote Think Again asks us: Why are we so laser-focused on changing other people’s minds when ours is set in stone? How can we expect others to be convinced of our arguments when we show no willingness to consider theirs? How sure are we really that we’re ‘right’?

What usually happens when we form a belief or opinion is that we have pride and conviction in it. We then allow it to become part of our identity – the belief becomes rigid, to the point that we distort our reality to only see what we want and expect to see so that it confirms the belief. Especially in today’s algorithm culture, it’s easy to get stuck in filter bubbles and echo chambers where the only stimuli that surround us are the ones that reinforce existing beliefs.

Grant shows that we form three different archetypes while arguing our own beliefs and opinions: the preacher, the prosecutor, and the politician. The preacher requires no proof for their idea and delivers sermons on his ideals; the prosecutor relies on flaws in the other individual’s reasoning and tries to prove them wrong and win their case; the politician campaigns for the approval of the audience and attacks the character of his opponents.

Grant invites us to think more like scientists – people who are willing to find out where they may be wrong, in the search of truth. They allow peers to attack their ideas to see if they can uncover blind spots in their thinking and their experiments. They have the humility to doubt their beliefs and they are careful not to become too attached to their beliefs. They have the mindset of curiosity and discovery – they’re happy to find out that they’re wrong because now it means that they’re less wrong than before.

Try to know what you don’t know. Dare to disagree with your own arguments. Too often we favor feeling right over actually being right. Our calcified ideologies are tearing us apart, and we banish other people purely for their beliefs without understanding how they got them in the first place, and in the scary possibility that: We might actually be the one who is wrong.