Jackass Pickle!

Criticism is something you can avoid easily-by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing. -Aristotle ( 384 BC-322BC), Greek philosopher, student of Plato, teacher to Alexander the Great.

You might remember playing the game pickle when you were young. The game where you try to run from base to base while the two basemen try to tag you out. Well of course, amongst “friends”, the game always goes awry and inevitably the ball is being fired directly at you, drilling you somewhere on your body and leaving a nice welt!

This week I had a great opportunity to attend a conference given by marketing guru, Dan Kennedy. The focus was the mindset needed to become a true seven figure income producer. I know many of you would love to make more money and of course who wouldn’t want to make seven figures, but are you really willing to do what it takes?

Now I’m not talking about the obvious things like the hard work, long hours, incredible discipline and clarity of goals and skills, rather I mean your acceptance of the fact that you will become hated, despised and reviled! To put it as cleanly as possible, people will think you are a complete egotitistical, self-indulgent jackass! They will fire a lot more at you than a ball.

Hence “the pickle”, the quandry, the sticking point! Since we all have the skills hard-wired to become wildly successful, the simple question is whether we are willing, as Shakespeare said, “to suffer the slings and arrows.” Consider those listed as the most wealthy and influential according to the Forbes 2009 power rankings: Angelina Jolie $27m; Oprah $275m; Trump $50m; Rush Limbaugh $54m. They’re all under attack and if anybody has made an art of the fight, it’s Trump!

So that’s where you begin to feel your own pickle. Somewhere down in your gut, you feel that warning siren that begins the internal debate filled with rationalizations. You think, I would love all that money and freedom, but I could never be like that, it’s against my principles, my religion, my beliefs. I want to be loved and admired. What would my family think if I were that successful? I’d lose all my friends!

During the conference there was a cartoon put up on the screen that made a reference to predators eating the less fit! Survival of the most hungry! Some of the crowd laughed, but others showed the instant inner turmoil by saying nothing and squirming in their seats, stuck in that pickle!

So for a second let’s get away from money and further the point by considering some of the most influential and successful people of true principles: Gandhi; Mother Teresa; Martin Luther King; The American Revolutionaries and any other upstarts! Are they predators? Are they reviled? Did they all burn the bridges behind themselves and go for what they wanted regardless of what anybody else said or thought, even in the face of the mental and physical beatings they suffered?

You see the emergence from mediocrity has less barriers than ever before. We have fewer excuses as to why we don’t have more of what we want right now. Perhaps because we never really ask ourselves why not! When is the last time you sat still and listened to your internal dialogue and became conscious of the highest pitched scream in the group? The one that is begging to be turned loose and couldn’t care less about the implications; the same voice that has been telling you forever to end the pickle and move forward. The best part of internal clarity is that eventually the rest of the voices quiet down as the leading one emerges and takes charge. How ironic is it that we’re all silently begging to be lead, when all we all have to do is lead ourselves.

So let’s consider the most influential. Those earning 7 figures in the U.S. are less than one percent!! Incredible when you really think about it! Why are there so few? Perhaps because life has gotten too easy and were not as hungry as we used to be. It’s just plain and simply too easy to sit back these days and survive on the shoulders of others.

So let’s not get into a political argument about whether the current system is good or bad, let’s just figure out for ourselves why we’re not getting more of what we want. Short of all the cute and convenient sayings about what fear is or is not (i.e. False Expectations Appearing Real) let’s get after it and challenge it. Sure it’s great to name it and smash through wood boards and walk on beds of glass to prove that we can move in the direction of overcoming, but the real challenge is too look consciously inside.

You don’t need a shrink to tell you what you’re feeling, just think! Consciously! Stop running your mouth about what you’re doing for everybody else and what they’re doing for you! Just sit back and watch the game of pickle going on in your head. Ask: What the heck is important to ME; not my spouse, my kids, my friends, my colleagues! Once you give the loudest voice air time, you can then begin to role up your sleeves and take action.

What will it take to pursue your most important desires? Who will you need to befriend, learn from, be challenged by? What will you have to give up, get away from? This action step will require all the energy you can muster, because there is no doubt that the basemen will be encouraging you to stay put and not challenge them!

As soon as you step off the bag, rest assured you’ll feel the sting of the first arrow in your back. They’ll continue to rain down upon you until you either turn back and rejoin the safety of mediocrity or you’ll simply outdistance them. You’ll find a new place that gives you more of what you want and need! Ultimately, you’ll escape the pickle, but only if you can handle the taunts of “Hey Jackass!!”