You Can Choose Your Thoughts and Shape Your Destiny 

by Dave Kahle

My wife is a crisis counselor. One of her biggest eye-openers occurred when she realized she was counseling the same people over and over again. You would think that a crisis was an isolated event. Maybe for most of the population. But some lurch from one crisis to another.

           Why is that? They have not learned to change their behavior because they haven’t learned to control their thoughts. They have acquired patterns of thinking – which we often label attitudes – in an earlier age, and never learned how to think differently.

           On the other hand, we have all seen interviews with highly successful people and heard them expound on the principles of positive thinking. They will attribute their success to learning how to control their thoughts and manifest their goals.

           Learning to control your thoughts – to choose to think some things and not others, marks a watershed event in one’s life. 

           I recall the time that I made that discovery.  I had been the number one salesperson in the nation for a company – my first full time professional sales job.  I was comfortable – adequate salary, good benefits, company car, bonus potential, and the respect of my employer and colleagues.  But the opportunities were limited, and I decided to move to a job that was completely different.  I took a sales job with a new company, selling surgical staplers to hospitals.  It was a huge leap from the secure job I had to one that paid straight commission, and for which I had to buy my own samples and literature from the company. 

           But I was cocky, filled with the success of my previous job, and sure that I could make this work also.  I wasn’t hasty.  I looked at the amount of existing business in the territory I was slated for and determined that if I could double the business within six months—a doable task, I was assured – I’d be back making about what I was used to.  Then, as I increased the business, my income and lifestyle would evidence the difference.

Scholarship for Christian Salesperson

Last year we set aside a sum of money and dedicated it to providing a $2,000 annual scholarship to a Christian university student studying to be a professional salesperson.  We made our first award of $2,000 to a student at Baylor University.

It’s time to begin the search for this year’s recipient.  If you know of someone who meets our criteria, or know someone who may know someone who does, will you help me by passing this information along and encouraging them to apply?

All the information is contained on this webpage:

https://www.thebiblicalbusiness.com/the-christian-sales-scholarship

“We want to encourage the view of professional sales as an important Kingdom effort. In the last decade or so, a number of colleges have created curriculums and majors for professional salespeople, so that young people can now prepare themselves for a career in sales at the university. We hope to seed the profession with Christians who can be salt and light to the companies and industries they serve.”

           It all sounded good, and I left my old job, and arrived in New York City for six weeks of intensive training on the new one.  During the time that I was there, my district manager was replaced.  When I arrived home after the training, the new manager was eager to meet with me.  In our first meeting, before I had a chance to begin working, he informed me that he had revised the sales territories. The territory that I thought I had — the one I was hired for – was not the one I was going to get.  Instead, I was going to receive just a fraction of that.  And the new territory only contained about one third of the existing business of the previous one.  This change meant my plans for making a living were shot. It now became an impossible task.

           I was upset and angry.  How could they do that to me? At this time, I had five kids to support, and felt the pressure to provide.  I immediately began to look for another job, determined to quickly leave this unethical, uncaring company.

           Things got worse.  As I interviewed several companies, I discovered that they saw me as the problem.  Instead of understanding what the company had done to me, they thought I was an opportunist who was looking for an easy way out.  Basically, no one else was going to hire me!

           I grew more and more angry and more and more bitter.  In addition, I had little success selling the staplers.  After six months, my temporary draw came to an end. I owed the company $10,000, was earning almost nothing, and had no prospects for another job.  I felt squeezed between the proverbial rock and hard place.

           And then, somewhere in there, I had an epiphany.  Yes, the company was unethical. Yes, they had done a bad thing to me.  But the reason I was not achieving had nothing to do with that.  It was my fault!  It was me. It was my anger, my bitterness, my resentment – y... CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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