By Jennifer Blanchard
Yesterday at my company’s annual “Fall Campaign” kickoff event, former NBA player, Walter Bond, gave a motivational speech to help encourage the sales people (and everyone in the room, for that matter) to be confident and go out there and make sales.
Bond’s speech was very in-your-face with truth and reality. This is what made his speech so effective, at least for me.
As many of you know (and as was pointed out in a recent review of this blog), I tend to approach this blog in that same manner: being a little in-your-face with truth. I do this because I believe in telling it like it is. Sure, some people may like things sugar-coated for them, which is fine.
But only truth will set you free.
Bond’s speech gave a lot of good advice that can be applied to your writing career:
- You Must Have Confidence–When Bond played high school and college basketball, he said his teammates’ confidence always fluctuated. Some days they were confident, other days they didn’t think they could do it.
He said the difference between playing high school/college ball and playing in the NBA was confidence. Not once, he said, did his NBA teammates’ confidence fluctuate. That’s what made them successful. That’s what got them into the NBA.
“Confidence is arrogance under control,” Bond said.
- No Pity Parties–‘I don’t have time to write.’ ‘I am blocked, I don’t know what to write about.’ ‘I’d already have a book published, but my life is too busy.’ Bond said that people who throw themselves pity parties are weak-minded.”
A pity party is when someone meditates on the wrong thing over and over and over again,” he said.
Bond then went on to say that 90 percent of your life is great, and 10 percent sucks, so why place your focus on the 10 percent? He said most people do.
- If You Quit, You’re Done–“If you quit when the going gets tough, you’ll never make it,” Bond said. I agree. If you don’t push through tough times and keep on going, you’re dead where you’re standing.
In order to be successful, Bond said you “Must have an appetite for success the same way in which a person who is hungry will not stop until they have eaten.”
“Suck it up. Go for it. Get tough,” Bond said. “Only the strong survive.”
Tough love, but good advice…do you agree or disagree, and why?
