How to Turn Your Fortunes Around by Looking Outside One More Time

What I learnt from Stephen Covey's 1991 best-selling book 'First Thing First': Successful people practise inside first outside second, whereas unsuccessful people always look outside first inside second.

When things go wrong, successful people will first examine themselves: they look inside to see what gone wrong. Next they look outside for leverage: how to get help, and how to learn from others that have done similar things before. In no time they will emerge victorious as their approach will win support from people who too want to help people that help themselves first.

Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, look outside first whenever things go wrong. Instead of examining themselves, they blame others for their plight. After many rounds of fruitless blames, they then look inside and realize that there is nothing they can do, and they end up looking outside again. This time round there is no more people to blame and they just have to resign to fate!

We know that unsuccessful people can turn their fortune around if they can look outside one more time: seek external help or learn from others, especially the experts.

A good example is in sales. When unsuccessful salespeople couldn't hit their sales targets month after month, they blame the economy, the competitors, the currencies and even their own company's uncompetitive products for their plight. When they realize that the bad economy has affected everyone including their competitors. they start to look inside. What they see are their own weaknesses: their lack of skills and training. If they do something about it, they start to look for outside trainers and coaches to help them. This is where their fortunes can turn for the better.

So in conclusion, you can turn your fortunes around if you look outside one more time. But please make sure that you look at the right thing (the right lesson), and most importantly, take action!

By Andy Ng, Sales Trainer at Asia Trainers, details of sales courses at here.

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