By Neil Phillips.
Why I write this today: I’m sometimes a bit wonky, and today I probably prove it several times over. In sales (and life), we need to understand our motivations. If we don’t think about our deepest desires and how they drive us, we are bound up in an unsatisfied and brutish existence. We are continually thinking about how poorly we are being treated and how rough we have it. We are more concerned with counting the wins and the dollars than we are with being happy.
Direct selling leaders know how important it is to understand motivation: their core, their team member’s drivers, and even their customer’s drives. When you better understand the “why,” then you know how to understand better and drive the what and the how. If we don’t ask those question that peel away the layers, we can’t truly connect. Unfortunately, we often ask silly questions like, “What’s your why?”, take the answer on face value, and move on thinking we know that person. We are wrong. Our motivations are much, much more profound.
When you are clear on your material whats and emotional whys, then you usually have an easier time of finding what you want to do, when you want to do it, and what you will give up for it. You will change your life to match your insights. The changes will also stick because your anchor points are deeper and stronger.
The same is true with your customers and team members. The better you understand them, then the better you can match what you want with what they want. Win-win, right?
A great descriptor of that deeper motivation is in the concept of the “sublime.” When you’ve found the “sublime why,” then you’ve reached the real core.
The concept of the sublime dates back to a 1st Century AD Greek writer called Longinus. The idea of the sublime is elevated “above the ordinary.” While we can’t always recognize sublimity in advance, we know the sublime when we get that catch in our throat; when we can’t think of anything to say that will make the moment more perfect. It’s the feeling you get when (a) you hear thunder rolling across Texas, (b) watch a butterfly taking wing for the first time, and (c) see the casket of a fallen soldier coming out of an airplane. Those experiences are all dissimilar, and yet, your feelings are the same.
I think when we listen to our intuition, we can find those moments. Here is how Longinus describes them:
“Our soul is uplifted by the true sublime; it takes a proud flight, and is filled with joy and vaunting, as though it had itself produced what it has heard.”
“’Sublimity is the echo of a great soul.’ Hence also a bare idea, by itself and without a spoken word, sometimes excites admiration just because of the greatness of soul implied.”
“If you take away the sublime, you will remove, as it were, the soul from the body.”
We can find those moments in ourselves and with the people around us. We see them when:
- There is an extra-long pause before someone talks.
- You ask, “How much is it worth?” and the answer is “I don’t know what to say.”
- Anything you say will trivialize what you just heard.
How about you? What is the part of your life that makes those moments too vivid to hold? How will you find them in yourself and those with whom you work?
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