How Will You Let Problems Shape Your Business And Your Life?

By Lloyd Lofton

So many things are changing - in the economy, in society, with family structures and in redefining the things many of us grew with. Do you find yourself constantly having to reevaluate what you thought you knew?

Success is a result; it is not a road or path.

The path is those things that take us on the road that will lead to success.

The road is the proven activities that result in the success we are looking for.

So what do you do when those circumstances come up, those challenges that seem to stand in the path of the road you know will take you to your idea of success?

We can recognize some common points about problems.

Five Points About Problems

1. Everyone has problems.
2. Problems have short life spans.
3. Within every problem is the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
4. Problems change you.
5. You can choose how problems change you.

 

1. Everyone has problems

 No matter who you look up to or aspire to be, they have problems. Just look around and you see a litany of people who have had problems.

Catherine Zeta Jones was a fan favorite in the movie “The Mask of Zorro,” yet she has battled bipolar disorder for years.

John Nash has been hailed as an economic and math genius, winning the Nobel Prize for economic sciences in 1994, all the while living with paranoid schizophrenia for years. Nash said he had made adjustments to live with schizophrenia, which allowed him to continue his life work. His success in making these adjustments was chronicled in the film “A Beautiful Mind.”

How many are fans of the “Star Wars” films and the star who played Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher? Off-screen, she struggled with substance abuse and bipolar disorder.

How about a Heisman Trophy-winning running back and former NFL player who has gone public about his troubles with dissociative identity disorder, Herschel Walker?

Last, but not least, we all know Michael Phelps, the Olympic gold medalist swimmer who rose to stardom at a young age who struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diagnosed when he was nine years old.

What is common among all of us is that we all have problems; that’s part of life.

2. Problems have short life spans.

When you look back on your life, no matter your age, is there a time when you remember dealing with a problem, that you couldn’t see the other side of the problem at that time? Perhaps you felt overwhelmed or lacking the skills to process a solution to the problem.

Today you look back on your problem and see it quite differently, don’t you? You now see the root causes of the problem, and you understand how you got through the problem.

Life is kind of like that; we work through our problems even when, at the time, the problem seems to be our whole life.

It's only after we get to the other side of the problem that we begin to understand that the problem was an “event” in our life, not our whole life.

Problems have solutions and consequently, in the scope of our entire lives, those problems have short life spans.

3. Within every problem is the seed of an equal or greater benefit

When we’re in the middle of a problem, we don’t realize the lessons or value we can take out of that problem.

No leader in our recent past seems to exemplify this more than Nelson Mandela.

Besides the tremendous obstacles he faced in South Africa, he became a lawyer, he fought injustice as he saw it, was jailed for close to 30 years and ended up being the president of the very country that jailed him.

When we look at the betrayal, the loneliness, the despair Mandela must have experienced over those many years of being jailed for his beliefs, what can we take from his experience?

Even in our worst time, when we make the effort, when we deal with what is in front of us (which is all we can do), we can find a greater benefit, a larger vision, a higher purpose for our lives.

It matters. You matter.

4. Problems change you.

One thing life teaches us is that the only constant is change.

The road to success is filled with people who were changed by the problems and failures they experienced in life, across all disciplines.

Athletes

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team

Stan Smith – this Wimbledon, U.S. Open and eight-time Davis Cup winner was rejected as a ball boy for a Davis Cup tennis match when he first started out because the event organizers thought him too clumsy and uncoordinated.

Writers

Charles Schultz – the famed Peanuts comic strip cartoonist had every cartoon he submitted to his high school yearbook rejected. He was rejected by Walt Disney for a position.

Seven Spielberg – He was rejected from University of Southern California School of Theater, Film and Television three times.

J.K. Rowling –The author of the Harry Potter series went from being a single mother on welfare to one of the world’s richest women in a span of only five years.

When we look back on a problem that seemed so awful at the time, we find that today we are not the same person who tackled that problem.

Like each of the people illustrated above, the mere fact of facing and working through the problem has resulted in us evolving into the person we are today.

This leaves one last principle about problems.

5. You can choose how problems change you.

It is us alone who can decide how we allow the problems we have encountered to change us.

We alone can choose to become a stinking-thinking, mealy-mouthed person.

Or we can choose to embrace the strength we have inside that allowed us to survive our problems and become the winning achiever who looks for positive ways to contribute to our business, our family/friends and our community at large.

Regardless of the challenge or problem we have encountered, despite the people or obstacles we experience along the way, it is us alone who choose how we allow these problems to change us.

Here’s to changing for the better – you deserve it!

Lloyd Lofton is the founder of Power Behind the Sales. He is the author of The Saleshero’s Guide To Handling Objections, voted 1 of the 11 Best New Presentation Books To Read in 2020 by BookAuthority. Lloyd may be contacted at [email protected].

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