I have a friend, a female financial advisor who makes success seem so easy. She is always smiling, she works through issues with a smile on her face, and her production keeps going up. As a young new advisor, I would watch her trying to emulate all the systems and processes that she incorporated into her business. But what I have learned through my years coaching female financial advisors is that it’s not the systems that make the business it’s the ATTITUDE.
It’s not the tools and resources that make this woman so successful it’s something so simple you often don’t even recognize it. Her ATTITUDE drives everything she does and every decision she makes. She is an example of the Law of Attraction. This past week in a coaching call with one of my female advisor clients we spent a whole hour focused on her attitude. When I say attitude I’m not talking about walking in with a happy face (as that happy face can often be covering up major internal conflict) I’m talking about a whole new way of approaching everything in your life.
Years ago in the early stages of my business when the bulk of my contact list was Smith Barney clients and managers, I sent out an email titled, “Do I Stay or Do I Go?” At the time there was a lot of firm hopping going on. My email intended to help the advisors really look at their situation and not be swayed by the big check. I talked about how often you are just swapping one problem for another and the stress that comes when you switch firms is incredibly challenging (as most of you can attest to). In my own independent objective manner, I was hoping to quell the number of advisors moving. That’s not how Smith Barney saw this email. Next thing you know managers are deleting their names from my distribution list. An advisor and friend finally shared with me what happened and why I was shocked. My intent was so good how could they take it as if I was a “traitor”.
I held on to this experience along with a few other not so positive occurrences. It became a led weight making me sad, at times angry and while I loved my work there seemed to be a dark cloud over my head until I met my coaches Cheryl and Teresia. I learned that the experience was only an experience, that as long as I perceived that experience as a negative it would continue to hold me back from achieving the success I wanted.
A negative thought is like putting a ball and chain around your ankle as you try climbing the mountain. My coaches helped me to see (what my husband had been telling me for a year) that it was time to move away from my comfort zone (still working the Smith Barney contacts) and begin broadening my source of new business. While I continued to “punish” or “chastise” myself for this incident they taught me that these experiences are only detour signs on the path to success. That they are not bad or wrong experiences but present themselves to help us take the direction that we are better suited for.
Today, any negative experience I realize is a gift from God, I know it is an opportunity to learn something about myself or my business that I would never have voluntarily addressed on my own. As we learn to reframe these experiences we turn what could have been a ball in the chain into instant propulsion moving you forward faster with less effort.
As you talk with your friends, colleagues, associates even clients and you encounter those people who always feel carefree and positive about their business with a business that backs them up, notice their attitude, recognize how they handle what seems like negative situations, and begin incorporating your own process for converting what hurts or angers you into a blessing that will drive you forward.
