“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
- Robert Fritz
While compromise can be a good thing in some instances, to compromise one’s ideals, goals, dreams and future is never good. As for being reasonable, nothing of value is ever accomplished by a reasonable person. Some of you will no doubt be inclined to argue that point, however, argue though you may, it is a fact.
If it were possible to accomplish all our goals and fulfill all our dreams without being uncompromising and unreasonable (in those things) almost everyone would be successful. I say “almost” because believe it or not…not everyone has a dream and/or a goal for their future.
I have a client who is in advertising. She had the publishers hold the back page of a magazine for a company that was not one of her clients. It’s a large, multi-national company and just finding the person who would make such an advertising decision was a huge undertaking. Finally reaching the gentleman who would make that decision, she made her presentation. The guy said, “NO!”
A reasonable person would have accepted that answer, but not this young lady. With but two months to go until the publication went to press, she continued calling this decision maker twice a week, each time with a new and different approach. Three times he asked angrily, “What part of no don’t you understand?” Did that keep her from calling him a few days later with yet another approach? Of course not – and her colleagues in the office couldn’t believe what she was doing. They just knew that this decision maker would call the boss and get her in really big trouble.
Finally, one day when she called, he was really mean. He hollered into the phone at her, told her he was too busy to be bothered with her. He stated emphatically that he had no intention of buying the back page or of ever taking another of her calls.
Even someone as unreasonable as this young lady would surely, finally be willing to hear NO! Surely after being told that her calls would no longer be accepted, she would give up, but did she? Of course not, she called again and discovered that he had not been bluffing. They would not put her call through to him and make it clear to her that he didn’t want to speak with her…EVER!
That surely did it! That was the proverbial final straw and she had no choice but to give up, right? Wrong, she sat down and wrote a poem which she proposed would be the essence of the ad she intended to sell him. She sent the poem to him via FedEx overnight and just after 1:00PM on the day he would have received it, she received a call, not from him, but from his ad agency. They, at his request, placed an ad for the entire back page.
Had she accepted the first 10 or 15 NOs she would not have sold that back page. By being unreasonable she sold the ad and gained a client for life. Not only did she gain this disgruntled fellow as a client but his ad agency, having become aware of her, began to place ads with her for many of their other clients.
While not everyone would have the confidence and expectation this young lady had, when it comes to your life dreams and goals, you must- – -
BECOME COMPLETELY UNREASONABLE!
