I envy people that have a skill.
I do not work with tools, programs or machines. I start new jobs and I see people that know regulations, programs, software and I long for the weary yet confident familiarity they possess.
When I was an unaffiliated chaplain I saw that in the daily mass of catholic priests. I once strived for that with liturgical worship services I conducted. I had a skilled. I visited the dying. I performed funerals, weddings, baptisms.
I am kind of having a crisis of identity. I notice I write these posts on Monday mornings. I am working sales but I hate going to sales meetings with nothing to show for it. On trial and failure. I guess everyone would do it if it were easy?
I feel anxiety gripping my throat. I can’t breathe. I can’t move forward and get a ‘win.’ I can’t let go and accept defeat. I put myself in this situation thinking it was sink or swim. Who knew there was a third option. Just get ground down. I hate doing sales when there are no sales.
At most jobs the goals are subjective. Learn your assign tasks, do them adequately, stay in the good graces of your immediate supervisor and remain eligible for a paycheck. The main concern is about office politics, layoffs or office closures, not blocking out all noise and achieving a specific objective.
An impresario is a term to describe the producer/manager of a live production.
Dreams of stardom need a place to incubate. Talent needs a place to shine.
Being a chaplain requires certain credentials, skills, training and experience. I possessed those things in the spring of 2003.
Consequently I took a job as a hospice chaplain. I was assigned a group of patients already on service to provide spiritual care. As more patients came on I provided care to them as well. In the course of my duties I was asked to conduct worship services, funerals, weddings, baptisms and various other tasks of the clergy. It was a job I had spent years developing the skills necessary to conduct.
I did not have to think about drumming up business, finding customers or selling people on my offering. When I took the job more than enough opportunity was given to me. As I continued to work and became known in the community the ancillary requests increased as well.
I stopped working as a chaplain In the fall of 2009. I longed for adventure and competition. Two things being a chaplain did not provide. I went into sales.
In sales the goal was specifically to drum up business, increase market share and find new customers. I am not sure how good I was at sales. However, I did possess a skill for getting sales jobs.
I was good at applying, getting interviews, being offered positions and moving up in salary and rank. From the time I left being a chaplain to the spring of 2017 I had tripled my salary and held executive leadership positions.
Now I scribble blog posts and advocate for objective focused growth. I was paid a salary as a chaplain and as a sales leader. I made money because my skills were seen as valuable. I was paid a regular salary in exchange for my loyalty to the company and cause.
How to I survive doing this?
I am an introverted person. My writing is personal and reflective. Does it appeal to anyone else? How do I consistently share it in a way that is mutually beneficial to the writer and reader?
Driving to an appointment today I was overcome with a feeling to skip it or have it over with.
I didn’t want to do the very thing that would help me achieve my objective.
On a sales call I saw a new account I could hit. Since I was with my supervisor coach, there was no question I would go in. But if I was on my own I am not sure I would have. Or truth be told, I might not have even done the original call.
I had a strong lead on a sale. The kind of lead I was hoping to generate with my all my efforts. Yet went it came in I felt put out.
I spend so much energy in my mind thinking about achieving my objective but get pulled off course with the simplest thought. I am my biggest obstacle.
Sometimes I lose focus when I exercise.
I begin full of enthusiasm but as I tire I think about quitting or easing up.
I fixate on the time I have left. I ask myself why am I training so hard? I think I should pace myself or quit early.
The same is true with my career objectives. I start full of enthusiasm but when it becomes difficult I begin to pull back.
My mind wanders. I day dream about winning the lottery, catalog excuses for failure or wonder if I should look for a new job.
The fear I can’t achieve my objective, initially or consistently makes me fall back on my default objective, protecting my ego. It is seductively easy to accept failure and find an excuse. Staying focused and on task is not simple or immediate. It is a choice made every day, every minute, often multiple times a day.
on the wall in the stairwell between 2nd and 3rd floor orange coast memorial hospital.
Summarizes the objective focused mindset
The market is too saturated we don’t have the right features, I wasn’t trained. If you have worked in sales you know all the excuses for failure.
I know. I have managed many sales people. I have heard all the excuses. I have also been a sales person. I have used the excuses.
In the end there were only the jobs I hit my objective and was rewarded and jobs I missed my objective and was dismissed. I have been fired many times. I haven’t to use a baseball teen batted 1.000.
In sports the objective is clearer. You can say the defense was too hard or you didn’t have a good scheme but in the end you still didn’t score or win the game. Emotionally we naturally gravitate to excuses because they relieve the tension.
Even as you are reading this you are thinking he is a hard ass, he is too narrow focused I don’t like this all or nothing attitude. You are going back to the squares and seeing what is easiest to see and accept. And if you do what you have always done you get what you always got.
Don’t look at life as an emotional have and have not. Identify your objective, strive for it, achieve it or not then set the next objective. In your career and business life you will be much more focused and stress free.
I am in purgatory. I left jobs that paid my bills because I didn’t want to accept discomfort. I decided I could make more doing something I enjoyed.
Now I deal with the discomfort working a job that doesn’t cover my expenses and no clear path to rectify the situation. In trying to have the best of both worlds I ended up with the worst.
mikemeyer949 