Do You Believe You Can Be An Internet Marketer?

Recently a salesman came to my door and asked if he could interest me in something he was marketing. I replied, without opening the screen door, that I was not interested, and he said, "That's OK. Sorry to have bothered you." That man was not a salesman! He was apologizing for being there! Now, in my experience, anyone who apologizes for being there is suffering from a very low self image. He lacks self-confidence and does not value himself much at all.

But that may not have been entirely the case. He may have been trying to sell me something in which he didn't believe himself. So in many other ways he may have possessed a great deal of confidence, but, because he did not have much faith in his product, he was not comfortable trying to sell it from door to door.

I once considered selling saucepan sets from door to door, but I soon realized that the saucepans I was supposed to sell were not as good as the set I had at home. So I pulled out. Later I joined a friend in his business to help him out for a year, and found myself selling chainsaws. Now I lived in the forest and had a chainsaw of the same brand that my friend sold in his shop. I loved my chainsaw and it was not difficult to tell other people what a great saw it was. I was soon the best chainsaw salesman he had ever had.

From these experiences I learnt two important things: Believe in yourself and believe in your product. In this article I want to concentrate on your belief in yourself - your self confidence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you." And to make the most of yourself, you must be in charge of your own thinking. As a child and young man I was withdrawn and quiet. I enjoyed people's company, but rarely contributed to conversation. Somebody always seemed to have said what I had in mind, and done it better than I could. I had very little faith in my own abilities, consequently I failed my way through my educational years both academically and socially.

Then came a time in my life where I learned how to use a new tool - Self Analysis. I became more aware of how I was thinking and reacting to people and situations. As I analyzed my behaviour I discovered that I had to be responsible for my own thinking. This was not a choice. I was responsible whether I liked it or not. That meant that I was in control of my own thinking.

Norman Vincent Peale said, "Change your thoughts and you change your world." Once I became aware of how I was thinking, I could change it. In fact what was in my mind controlled almost everything that I did, and affected my responses to other people and situations. Henry Ford was right when he said, "Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right."

The next thing I learnt was that I was responsible for my own life. I actually spent many years blaming other people or circumstances for anything that went wrong in my life. Finally I realized that I had to take full responsibility for all my reactions. If I was lonely, it was because that was my choice. If I was angry, that reaction also was my own choice. And if my relationships fell apart or became difficult, it was me that had to change, not the other person. If they changed, that was a bonus! It's true that "The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs." Joan Didion.

Where this affected me most was in my relationship with my wife. It was only when I stopped blaming her for causing the problems that I was able to see more clearly what I had been doing that needed to be changed. It took us a while to sort this out, but the result has been well worth it. This same principle applied to my sense of failure in some things. It was me that had to change, not my circumstances.

Let me leave you with this final thought from Norman Vincent Peale, "Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture...Do not build up obstacles in your imagination."
copyright by: Ray Moore