Why Are You Telling Me This?

by James Leahy

My purpose in writing these articles if they achieve nothing else is just to have you become aware of what is going on around you, aware of some of the processes that are happening in your mind, aware of some of the emotional and psychological automated processes that are happening that you are not even conscious of. I want you to be able to take control of your own destiny. It is about getting to the point where you do not feel helpless or out of control in any situation. It is about getting to the point where you control your own destiny instead of feeling like it is controlled for you. It is about moving from effect to cause, from watching things happen to making things happen.

Should I keep my secrets for myself or give my knowledge away? As you have probably noticed if you have been watching my website over the years that my business has grown and become more successful and that I have more products, suppliers and hence can offer more value to my customers and all these new and exciting things are happening for me and it has been in my opinion as a results of one of the concepts that I teach, which is - Give It Away!.

Give it away and more will come back. As a result of this line of thinking I have met a lot of other business people who come to talk to me and learn my strategies and they say, "How do I do what you are doing?". Asking me how do I sell my products online or how do I expand my business and become successful or whatever and I have this great set of new ideas. Well I say, "What are you best ideas?" Then they say something like well they are this one and this one and this one. I then ask them what are the real innovations that you are bringing to the table that nobody has thought of or ever done before and that are real wisdom.

Then I tell them to break them into some concepts and start giving it away to people. They ALL immediately break out in shock and say, "Are you crazy... That's all my good stuff, what are people going to buy then...?" I say they will still buy from you because you are going to give them the concept and then they are going to say you know what I want to learn more about that. Give the Best Of The Best stuff away. When you hold onto it for yourself, guess what? Nobody ever gets to see it or know how great it is.

Many argue with me and say, I cannot give my stuff away for free because my stuff is valuable and people will not appreciate it. When I see people who are really successful and I have met several people that are very successful in business and I get behind the scenes and I see what they are doing I often find out that the mechanism behind their success is letting other people take advantage of them! Except that in the big scheme of things it is actually working for them. Because they are only letting people take advantage of them a little bit, so that the person can build trust and learn about them. If in life you let others get the better end of the deal consistently, overall you will do a lot better, because the majority of all the people I meet think the opposite way.

Thousands of salesmen are pounding the pavements today, tired, discouraged, and underpaid. Why? Because they are always thinking only of what they want. They don't realize that neither you nor I want to buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But both of us are eternally interested in solving our problems. And if a salesman can show us how his services or his merchandise will help us solve our problems, he won't need to sell us. We'll buy. And a customer likes to feel that he is buying - not being sold. So many men spend a lifetime in selling without seeing things from the customer's angle.

Twenty-five centuries ago, Lao Tse, a Chinese Sage, said something that is just as prevalent today as it was way back then. It goes something like:

"The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So if you wish to be above all men, putteth yourself below them; if you wish to be before them, putteth yourself behind them. Thus, though your place be above all men, they do not feel your weight; though your place be before them, they do not count it as an injury."

William Winter once remarked that:

"Self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature. When we have a brilliant idea, instead of making the other person think it is ours, why not let him cook and stir the idea himself? He will then regard it as his own; he will like it and maybe eat a couple of helpings of it. Remember: First arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way."

Are you going to be like 99% of people I meet and DEMAND fairness and justice for yourself or are you going to let others get the better end of the deal? You see, I think that people have what I call an 'Infinite Justice Mechanism', we do not want someone else to get the better end of the deal. We hate it. If they get a bigger piece of pie than us, it's like, 'I should have gotten it'. We never think that if we had gotten it that they would hate me because they didn't get it. When you demand fairness and justice from others what you do is you think small. What you do is cut your noise off to spite your face. You cannot see down the road.

Honesty Or Dishonesty? If you have a sneaky mind and you find yourself not telling the truth all the time I recommend you get that corrected. I highly recommend a book called 'Radical Honesty' by Dr. Brad Blanton. I recommend it to everyone anyway. If you are already honest it will teach you to be more honest. Radical Honesty. Are you going to be honest or dishonest... You might be able to screw a few people if you are sly enough but eventually it will catch up with you. When you are dishonest you have to remember more stuff. Because you have to remember how it all goes together and what story you made up to whom and when, but when your honest, the truth is the truth. Sure, once in a while people get confused and it's like, 'Well you said this'. But you can say things like, 'If I said that, then I apologise because I must have slipped up because that is not something that I would knowingly say. Then when you have integrity and you are on people go, 'Ok Ok'. When you are a dishonest person or your sly or sneaky or a little bit weird that doesn't work and saying, 'No No Really' because people don't trust you anymore, there is no trust.

I think this leads to choosing your ethics consciously. I think that there are certain genetic reasons also why some people are prone to do things that we might consider wild and crazy and even borderline unethical. Conversely, I think that there are some people who are wired to be on the straight and narrow and live well inside the zone and be very safe.

I think you have to choose your ethics and that they are very important. I personally think that if you do not get to work on your ethics and get your naturally lying mind under control, instead of taking advantage of people and offering value you will be in big trouble long term. I think it is something that will ultimately come around to biting you on the arse. You need to choose your values consciously. You need to choose what you will and won't accept in your life, you need set standards and draw boundaries and you need to choose your own path.

Take first or give first? What is going to be your first move with people on average?  Give or Take? Are you going to lead with the giving hand or lead with the taking hand? I will suggest that if you lead with the giving hand you are going to do a lot better in every area of your life. The world is full of people who lead with the taking hand, grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous, almost unfair advantage. He has little competition. Owen D. Young once said:

"The man who can put himself in the place of other men, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for him."

If out of reading this website you get just one thing at a core level, remember that: an increased tendency to think always in terms of the other man's point of view, and see things from his angle. This concept may easily prove to be one of the greatest milestones of your life.

Be understood or to understand? If I had to break everything down into the most basic of concepts when I first start dealing with anybody it is to seek first to understand then to be understood. Seek first to understand. It is not logical or intuitive that this concept would work. Let me tell you that when it comes to persuasion, relationships, business or anything. Anytime you are dealing with a person and you have a problem that you want to get them to help you with, they are upset or you want to get something out of the situation. If you just, give a few moments of your time first and understand them; where they are coming from it will make a tremendous amount of difference to the outcome. A person that FEELS understood; is VERY different from a person who doesn't feel understood.

Here is one of the best bits of advise ever given about the fine art of human relationships.

 "If there is any one secret of success," said Henry Ford, "it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from his angle as well as from your own."

That is so good, I want to repeat it: "If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from his angle as well as from your own." That is so simple, so obvious, that anyone ought to see the truth of it at a glance; yet 90 percent of the people on this earth ignore it 90 percent of the time.