“Life is Always Happening for Us and Not to Us" -Tony Robbins [Academy]

Tony Robbins says, “Life is always happening for us and not to us.”

That means regardless of what happens to us, we’re being prepared for something better ahead for us.

That’s hard to believe sometimes when we’re faced with difficult circumstances and events we had no idea were going to happen to us.

How can some of those things be happening for us you ask? 

Well, it starts as a matter of not being angry or sad when something we don’t want to happen, happens, and moving to the attitude of, ok, so what’s the next step for me?

How do I handle this and how can I make what just happened to me a benefit or next step for me in my life?

Regardless of what’s happening in your life, good or not so good, you need to take time and allow yourself to step back and analyze the good and not so good moments and appreciate them for the possibilities they bring for you. Ask yourself, why did this happen to me and how can I turn it into something that actually happened for me so I could move on and become an even better, smarter person? Almost everything that happens to us becomes a learning experience for us.

Let’s use product performance issues as one of the most common examples of something happening to you that will often make it difficult to understand how it could happen for you.

When selling a living breathing organism like seed to farmers who rely on its performance for their livelihood, a LOT of things can happen to you. Varying performance caused by environment or mismanagement by the farmer can supply plenty of things that will then happen to you as a result. The farmer may blame the variety or he may blame the weather but either way he is blaming you because you sold him the variety he is not happy with. When that happens, and it often does, how do you turn that situation into something that happened for you and actually benefited you.

In a scenario involving disappointing performance of one of your varieties, you know this happened for you because of the many lessons you will now learn from this situation. The first lesson is a reminder that it is NEVER the variety’s fault.

It’s always the fault of the thousand variables.

Too often we forget and serves as a reminder for us. Second, this situation happened for you to remind you to do a better job of reminding customers of the thousand variables and what their impact can be so they stop blaming the variety or you for the disappointing outcome. Third, problems with performance of one of your varieties on a customer’s farm happens for you to remind you to remind customers of the need to put one variety in a field and set a bushels per thousand plant goal for each field. When you do that, performance issues go away because there’s nothing to compare the variety to. And last but not least, that situation can remind you to do a better job educating customers that the goal is not to measure the performance of a particular variety in a field, but to measure the yield average of the entire farm.

In the case of a farmer telling you that your price is too high or he can buy seed cheaper somewhere else, there are many reasons for that to happen to you. You’re reminded to reassess your sales story, your sales approach, your ability to sell value and why price even comes up at all. You’re able to reassess the real values you are offering to find out if prospects aren’t seeing their benefit or if they actually have no benefit to them. When price objections happen to you, the opportunity to assess your sales approach is the for you. 

It’s true, life is always happening for us and not to us. But the goal is to make sure we know that and we are always prepared to make the best of what happens to us the best thing for us.  I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling better already. After all, everything that’s going to happen to me today is actually something I never knew was going to turn into something special for me.

Happy Selling,

Rod Osthus