Dear Reader,
I wonder why it is that life’s peaks are often followed by our deepest lows. Elijah comes to mind. We read in the Bible that he had an enormous victory over the Baal prophets at Mount Carmel. Israel turned away from God and started serving Baal, and God kept away the rain. God send Elijah to Ahab and asked him to gather the Israelite’s, together with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel. Elijah proposed a test. The prophets of Baal and himself will each build an altar and prepare a bullock for sacrifice. But instead of lighting the fire – first the Baal prophets will pray to Baal to send fire and burn their offering.
As we know the Baal prophets prayed from morning until noon with no results. Even after cutting themselves with knives and lances as was their habit, their prayers were still not answered. By the time the evening comes, they still have received no answer.
Elijah then asked all the people to come near. He builds an altar and made a trench around it. After preparing the sacrifice he said: Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt-offering. He then asked them to do it two more times. The water ran around the altar and fill the trench also with water.
Then Elijah prayed to Jehovah and God send fire from heaven. It consumed the burnt-offering and even licked up the water that was in the trench. And so, Elijah won a great victory over the prophets of Baal. The Israelite’s fell down and worship God. Soon after this, God send the rain.
When Jezebel got news of what happened, she sends a messenger to Elijah and threatened him with his life. Elijah flees to the wilderness out of fear for Jezebel. He went and sat under a juniper-tree and he wanted to die.
I have experienced this recently in my own life. After struggling to find a job for 6 months, I have joined Neolife as a distributor, even though I’ve tried selling Herbalife and Avroy Shlain previously without any success.
I was amazed that I actually managed to get some good sales in my first month as distributor, and even managed to move up a level in the compensation structure. But once the excitement passed a bit and the orders were delivered, I found myself to be quite depressed.
What typically happens is that you talk about the products to people in your network – family, friends and ex-colleagues. These people buy for different reasons. Maybe because you actually convinced them of the quality of the products, or out of a sense of loyalty. Regardless, this was good for me in a sense that I could build some confidence and get more comfortable talking to people.
But unfortunately, you can’t build a business only from your network. And this is the reason for the despair I’ve felt. Because now I have to take another step out of my comfort zone and start talking to strangers – not only selling the products, but also the business opportunity!
You tend to think it is easy to sell to people you know (now that you’ve done it!), but how are you going to convince strangers! And this is the thing with building your own business – one month of good sales doesn’t mean anything if you can’t do it again – and again. And also increase those monthly sales.
This is why I have to remind myself, not to think too far ahead. Wondering who I am going to talk to? But rather to be persistent, doing a little bit every day. And to keep on believing that when I get to that “one day” that I fear, that by then I would have received the guidance so that I will know what to do then!
So, dear reader: Have you ever experienced a low, after a huge success? How did you deal with it? Please share in the comments so that we can encourage each other!
Thanks for reading,
Susan
Life Letters 