What Elizabeth said
Elizabeth Spurry, a friend of ours who is an excellent financial/investment adviser here in Easton, had some insightful suggestions for would-be investors recently. She is Senior Vice President at Wye Financial & Trust, and though her remarks mainly concerned investment strategies, I thought they were applicable to much more.
She made these points:
1. Understand from the beginning that success is attained by the minority. It is not common, and won’t be achieved by following our natural likes, preferences and prejudices.
2. In the sales profession, we don’t like to call on people who don’t want to see us and talk to them about something they don’t want to talk about. You could apply this to many work areas, especially managing people in times of change.
3. Successful people are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with the results that are obtained by doing the things they like to do.
4. Successful people have a purpose strong enough to make them form the habit of doing things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.
5. When a successful person goes into a slump, don’t talk to them about production, talk about purpose, and they will pull out of the slump faster.
I think these principles can be applied to far more than just the work areas of our lives. I think that the ability to do what ever is required regardless of whether you like it or not or whether it is agreeable to our nature or not, is one of the chief requirements of a happy, satisfying existence on this earth.
Thanks for the tip Elizabeth,
Alan