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business newsIt's Your Life! No More B(lame) Excuses
Get happy, dammit!
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I recognize there are many challenges on your path to greatness, and you can often grow discouraged. But far too often it's not outside circumstances that stop you but your internal beliefs. Far too many people get in their own way of greatness by telling themselves what I call "Blame Excuses.”
For example, right now you might be telling yourself you're too old, too broke, too inexperienced to snag your passions. If so, let me tell you about a guy named Colonel Harland Sanders.
When the Colonel first tried to sell his chicken recipe he was 65 years old with only a small pension, a tiny bit of money in the bank, and an old Caddy roadster. His first plan was to sell his chicken recipe to restaurant owners, who'd give him a residual nickel for every chicken piece sold.
He knocked on the first restaurateur's door, and was greeted by a NOPE. Second door: NOPE. Third door: NOPE. In fact his first 1,008 sales calls all served up a NOPE. Still, the Colonel continued to call on owners as he traveled across the USA, sleeping in his Caddy to save money.
It wasn't until prospect number 1,009 that the Colonel received his first YES. Then, after two years of making daily sales, he had only signed up a total of five restaurants. Still the Colonel kept knocking on doors, staying passionately focused in the belief that his golden fried chicken would create a big pile of gold.
Finally, by 1963 the Colonel procured 600 restaurants across the country to sell his Kentucky Fried Chicken! In 1964 he was bought out by a multi-millionaire -- who made the Colonel a multi-millionaire himself. (KFC is now a subsidiary of Yum Brands (YUM).)
I love this story because it's an "against all odds" tale. The Colonel was a senior citizen with no money, entering a new field -- and yet he succeeded!
How? He knew how to fuel his greatness instead of his fears, insecurity, and excuses. Robert Louis Stevenson said it well when he said: "To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you that you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."
© Karen Salmansohn
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