Invite to join MLM

Recently I was invited to attend a recruitment talk for an MLM business. I’m not that into MLM, but then I’m not entirely against it either. Anyway, if I can come away with one or two new lessons, it wouldn’t be a waste of time for me.

As usual, the talk began about our desire to be successful. You cannot talk about success without mentioning the barriers to success first. Among the major obstacles, according to the speaker, was our concentrating on the ABC’s of life instead of the AOC’s.

By ABC, he meant the Areas Beyond Control. Take for example, getting caught in a traffic jam. We curse and swear, and blame the authorities and what not. But what it amounts to is, we really have no control over the traffic, traffic jams happen.

What if instead of looking at the ABC, we look at what we can control, our Area Of Control or AOC. We can travel earlier or later, we can take another route, we can reschedule the appointment. (I don’t know about achieving success doing this, but it sure makes for a less stressful and healthier lifestyle.)

Another problem he mentioned was AIDS. It may not be as life-threatening as the disease caused by the HIV virus, but it’s just as fatal to success.

By ‘A’ he meant that we are always quick to Attack Others. This can be by back-biting, gossip, spreading rumors or just laying blame on others for our own short-comings.

‘I’ is for Ill Feelings. Take the case of the recent Bukit Antarabangsa landslide tragedy. There are actually people who say ‘serve them right’ for being such ‘show offs’ staying in that place ‘want to feel higher than everyone else’.

Then if anybody gives us feedback we turn to ‘D’ i.e. become Defensive instead of weighing the merits or otherwise of the feedback and taking the appropriate action.

And finally we come to ‘S’ being Self Centered. (This probably stems from our competitive upbringing. It may have been the norm in the past, but I think, today success is more about co-operation and collaboration then it is about competition.)

After looking at the obstacles, he said that success is about having the right skills. Skills can be learned, but it only contributes about 15% to success. More importantly, and contributing the remaining 85% is RMA i.e. having the Right Mental Attitude. To develop RMA, we must read more positive self-help books, listen to motivational cassettes and CDs, and cultivate the right company i.e. surround yourself with like minded, positive, empowering people.

In conclusion, the speaker mentioned that to get the success you want, you must create the change in your life that you want.

(Actually if I were to summarize the above using just one word, I would choose Responsibility as that word.)