Give and take. If you didn’t quite follow our last mediation on recognizing yourself – your soul, actually – in the mirror, that’s okay. Here’s why. It is not easy to enter into any direct give and take with your own soul. It’s very, very difficult.
That’s a good part of the reason we need others. We actually learn to recognize ourselves by observing the similarity of reaction, to us, from one person to the next. If many people laugh at the things we say, we’re funny. If many people swoon when they see us, we must be attractive. When you wish to punish someone, horribly, you place them in solitary confinement. We live on the recognition of others, and rarely do we know how to provide this recognition to ourselves. What’s more, no matter how good at doing so we may be, it can never be the same. We require others’ recognition, and yes, that recognition is one of life’s greatest rewards.
Why are rewards so very easy to talk about? Let’s look at that.
A wet, hungry, thirsty baby, possibly lonely or afraid, seeks what? Her mother and the rewards of dryness, food, milk or water to drink, holding and comforting. What are these? They are rewards, of course. No, the baby does not think of them by that or any name, yet. But, make no mistake, the basis of our obsession with rewards is the very dependent nature of life itself. If you’re oxygen starved, there is no greater reward than being granted a bit of air to breathe.
This offers us a powerful, simple formula:
Rewards = Life
What about such distinctions as “want” versus “need?” Much ink has been spent on these fine points, and perhaps more should be. I see it a bit more simply. What the body wants, it needs, and what it needs it wants. The distinction is of the mind, not the body. I prefer the body’s definition.
Out of our four elements, rewards are the ones we’re most directly programmed to seek, constantly, all day long, every day, day after day…while we live.
The tactics of this are so powerful and easy that you don’t even need the word “rewards” to ask a rewards question. “What do you want?” “What do you need?” With those two questions, you’re pretty much set, tactically.
Basic sales training about shutting up after you ask a question; or possibly the advanced training that you should take copious notes while your prospects speak, and the Black Belt training that you should feed back to them what your prospects tell you – these fundamentals will empower you greatly. But, beyond that, there isn’t much instruction required.
Which brings us back to give and take. Remember, the other person needs you to recognize his needs, his desires, the requirements his world place upon him and which, if he gets them, will be his rewards. When you give this recognition of his needs and desires to him, he’ll like want to take what you have to offer.
With that simple statement, we’ve come almost to the end of our current exploration. Tomorrow, we’ll review the story-making elements of how you build such value, by way of your knowledge, know-how, abilities and efforts. And Thursday, we’ll attempt to sum up what we’ve established on both sides of our “What’s In It For Me (Meaning YOU)” equation.
Allow me to end today’s meditation with this question. Whose wants, needs and rewards will you recognize today?
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Tender care and loving concern:
1. What triggers such emotion in you?
2. Where do tender care and loving concern reside?
3. How do you find your way there; and how do you access it, willfully?
4. Does it hold a place in your professional took kit; or
5. Is such a use and such a metaphor too commercial, too crass and too self-interested a place for such a sacred emotion?
Do share your answers or thoughts in response, please!
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