My friend the motivational speaker Zig Ziglar liked to tell the story of his friend Walter Hailey. Although he became a star salesman, Hailey's early career in insurance sales was rough. He endured frustration, anxiety, slammed doors, low sales figures and uncertainty. One day he grew so discouraged that he went to his boss and told him that he was going to quit. His boss' response? "You can't."
He repeated he was quitting. The manager repeated, "You can't." Angry now, Hailey shouted, "Yes, I can!"
His manager replied, "Walter, you can't get out of the insurance business because you have never really gotten into the insurance business."
The words hit Hailey like a ton of bricks. For the first time in his life, he realized that you can't get something out of an endeavor if you never put anything into it. Or as Zig put it, "There are many people who 'join' a sales organization but never get into the business of selling."
As the job market has fluctuated over the last decade, attitudes toward work have changed, too. People who have jobs they love consider themselves lucky. But studies have found that up to 70 percent of workers indicated a dislike for their jobs.
Will Rogers had plenty of witty sayings, but my favorite was what he said about success: "In order to succeed, you must know what you are doing, like what you are doing, and believe in what you are doing." Let's dig a little deeper into that wisdom.
Know what you are doing. Winners prepare, apply themselves and work to become the best at what they do. They are willing to do what others refuse to do. They make the necessary adjustments and learn the important skills.
Like what you do. There are good and bad parts of every job, and if the good doesn't outweigh the bad, you're in the wrong job.
