Denial is Not a River in Egypt
The question on our little trivia quiz was, "What is the longest
river in the world?" I guessed wrong. Turns out the correct
answer was: The longest river in the world is the Nile.
I should have known! It correlates so closely with the longest list of avoidance behaviors used by salespeople to stay in their comfort zones. Not de Nile, but denial.
Denial is right up there with whining, blaming, and stalling when it comes to behaviors people use to avoid having to do those parts of their job they find distasteful, or even fearful.
For example, way too many salespeople will do most anything in their power to avoid prospecting for new business, even though it is an absolute fact that they must sell new business to be successful. Another sales example is the resistance a great many salespeople have to completing their paperwork and turning it in on time.
Two paragraphs ago, I said, "Denial is right up there with whining, blaming, and stalling." I was wrong. Denial is way ahead of these, and every other avoidance technique I can think of.
Here's why: Whining, blaming, stalling and every other excuse merely seeks to justify why a thing was not done. However, these excuses do not absolve the person of responsibility for getting a thing done.
Denial, on the other hand, is calculated to allow people to
escape responsibility entirely, and remain in their comfort zones
without feeling the guilt associated with failure. For example:
Anais Nin says,
"We don't see things as they are,
we see things as we are."
That is what happens when you are in denial. You are not seeing things as they really are, but as you would like for them to be.
This conclusion leads to two courses of action I recommend very strongly if you are genuinely interested in taking your success, job satisfaction and personal happiness to a higher level:
1. Sit down with your coach (someone you trust implicitly who sincerely cares about you) and review the disconnects in your belief system between things as they are and things as you would like for them to be. The first place to look is where your work performance is being criticized. If, for example, your job description says you have to sell new business and turn in reports, that is reality. Don't deny it. Come to terms with it.
2. Think about the real message here in terms of your self- esteem, your career and your life achievement potential. This message goes way beyond making short-term adjustments to increase your immediate success. What this really means is that what you are denying is a reflection of your self image.
Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become." - Maxwell Maltz
If, for example, you find yourself denying that new sales are important, this tells you that your self image is not that of a rainmaker. If you find yourself denying that reporting is important, this tells you that your self image is not that of an accountable manager.
If either, or both, of these is true, what do they tell you about what the future holds for your career?
