Hi, this is Karen Hammond, and today I want to talk to you about How To Get Through Hard Times in Your Business.
At Emerge, the quote “We can do hard things” has become a mantra. You might be surprised to hear that if you are a part of our tribe. If you know us well, you know that we LOVE what we do and we LOVE our students. We don’t love to do the hard things, but we show up and we do them anyway.
We have been going through a lot of change at Emerge, growing pains, doing new things, and getting uncomfortable with being too comfortable. Would you expect anything less with a company named “Emerge”? If you google “EMERGE” you will find some pictures of butterflies. To become what we want to be, most of us have to go through discomfort. The caterpillar struggles to get out of the cocoon – it is a long, uncomfortable process. For most of us, we will have to do hard things to get to where we want to be.
The other day I was with my son and we were driving through some massive construction with huge dirt mounds and dust everywhere. I said something about all the ugly construction and He said, “But- Mom if you look up at the sky it is so pretty. Look at the clouds today!” This struck me because what an ability to have a shift in perspective. Doing hard things is really about changing our perspective.
One of my favorite quotes by Wayne Dyer is “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” If we are only focusing on the struggle, we have a really difficult time moving past it. When we change the way we look at it, we cultivate hope. Hope is a key ingredient in resilience.
So I want to share with you that recently, my team encountered a really hard time. We received some negative feedback from some people who really didn’t know us well. Now this is super hard to take for anyone – we all want to be liked – and for us, our mission is to truly help all of the people. So when some people were saying not nice things, we took it very hard. I was sitting at my desk thinking, “How can I look at this differently? We were in this pushing-out-of-the-cocoon phase. UGH! Please can I be a butterfly now!”
The shift in perspective was a realization that this feedback was a blessing. This feedback was nudging us out of the cocoon. Now we could have stayed stuck – in our cozy cocoon – doing the same things. Doing what was comfortable. In shifting perspective, we realized that we needed to start putting more effort into helping new companies. This feedback was a blessing. We were going to do what we needed to do to fulfill our mission of reaching all of the people.
NOW, this isn’t easy. We are still in the midst of this “becoming the butterfly”. We are doing a lot of new things that are hard. But we can do hard things….Together.
So my friends if you feel like your back is up against the wall, what is the shift in perspective that you need? If you move your eyes from the dirt mounds, where are the beautiful clouds? You don’t have to do the hard things alone. We are here to support you through it. Email me at karen@emergesalestraining.com and let me know what that shift in perspective is that you need to make. We’ve got your back.
Thank you so much for reading today’s post. To sign up for one of our free trainings on closing or recruiting, go to emergesalestraining.com/freetraining.