By Embrace the pain…it is where the growth and success are hiding.
It was the end of 2004 when she walked into my office with tears in her eyes. She had tracked me down for an interview. I had recruited her from a smaller firm where her business was not going all that well. When she joined our firm I gave her a list of what I call “success activities” and told her that if she put them in her schedule and did them every day sun or shine she would be one of the top agents in our company. She has 2 small children and a husband who works full time, but she had an amazing work ethic. She would literally get up at 4:30 or 5 every morning, come in to the office and work until 7am. Then she would go home, get her kids up and ready for school and then come back to the office and bust her butt all day doing the activities. At about 6pm she would leave to go pick up her kids from school, bring them home, have dinner and then go back to work until about 8pm to 9pm. And she did work a lot of weekends as well. She was a woman on a mission. But after probably 6 months and only 1 deal, she was on the verge of quitting and going to get a “real job.” She literally broke down in my office and told me she was not sure this job was for her. She even considered being someone’s administrative assistant. Well, after an hour or so of encouraging her and telling her not to quit, she walked out, got back on her horse and kept going. A year later she was one of the top producers in the office and today she is one of the top producers at Intero. Today she is a success,but if she had quit when the going got tough she would have failed.
If you lift weights or run or do almost any kind of training you know that nearly all of the benefit happens in the last 10% of the exercise…it is in the 12th rep of a 12 rep exercise…is the last 1/2 mile of a 7 mile run. Improvement happens when the pain is at its peak and we think we can’t take it anymore…that is how we get better. Up until that point everything is mostly just maintenance and only helps us keep what we’ve got. But if we can push through the pain even when we think we can’t take it any longer and do just a little bit more, that is where all the gain and opportunity lies. The same thing applies in business and life. So many times we see that super successful person and think they got all of the breaks…everything went their way. I can tell you that is almost never the case. There were set backs and fear and a lot of pain along the way in almost every success story. The difference between those who have massive success and the rest is not only their amazing work ethic, but their ability to push through the setbacks and pain, when most “normal” people quit. Like exercise and fitness, success at anything in life requires discipline, accountability, resiliency and doing “it” when everyone else is sleeping and/or calls it quits. It’s showing up an hour earlier and staying an hour later than everyone else. It is that last rep when lifting weights and your arms feel like they are about to explode. It is showing up and doing it again and again even when you feel like you can’t take it anymore. Push through the pain, don’t quit, and get the reward of Success.
So, who is this Success I am talking about you ask? It is Sophie Tsang in our Cupertino office.
No pain…no gain!
