My recent guest posting on The Change Blog was about Switching To A Bold Mindset, and here I build upon that concept. Boldness is not about a one-time occurrence. You have to use that mindset to influence yourself towards making progress. Instead of pairing potential boldness with a personality that gives up when an obstacle is hit, which will provide you with larger disappointments, you should be following through on a first attempt with a second response, in the same way you should follow through on a shot in basketball.
Number Guessing Involves A Process
Let’s say you are wanting to guessing a number I have picked between 1 and 100, which is 28. You guess 63. I tell you that the actual number is lower. You keep trying multiple times, adjusting from 14, 45, 30, 27, and finally ending up on 28. You have to be motivated/bold enough to offer a next number, have the resiliency to handle it being wrong, and have the diligence to try with yet another.
The Same Applies To Marketing Or Completing Tasks
Although it might have been enjoyable to do for that simple number guessing situation, the same is not always true when you see a difficult item that you have to complete. If one client turns you down, do you provide him with another offer that is he is more likely to take, or find a new client to make an offer to, or do you back down from both of these options and quit trying for a week?
Get Your Questions Fully Answered
When you take enough of a risk to ask someone a question you wanted to have answered, do you follow it up with any more questions afterwards if you still are uncertain about something? The first answer might not have provided enough information for you to continue smoothly. You either get a concept or don’t get it completely, and when you don’t understand a concept completely, the things you don’t know about it will always slow you down. You save the time you spend asking a follow-up question a hundred times over in the future.
Push For Information More Than You Currently Do
In a situation where you are asking a question and don’t show boldness and persistence, you won’t get the concept solidly enough for it to serve as a foundation for future action. If it is often the case that you don’t come out with reasonable comprehension, it is highly likely that you don’t push others hard enough. This doesn’t mean to be rude in any way, but there tends to be a good chance that the person you are asking wants to help you. Until you get some sort of indirect or direct message that you should leave them alone, ask people questions freely.
An indirect message that you are pushing or questioning too hard is that the person is slow to respond, or doesn’t respond at all. If this is the case, there might be something inappropriate in your message, or something wrong with your questioning tactic. Other than that, you might be providing the informer with a fulfilling feeling or knowledge of their own.