A Success Secret That All Kids Know But Adults Forgot - Self Help
Autor: Oil Painting art | Publicado: 2014-07-03T02:46:00-07:00

More than anyone, young kids know one of the exact secrets to success. It's pretty amazing actually. Kids just have this hard wired from birth.. The sad part is through social conditioning, they lose it as they grow up. By the time they're adults, many times, it's completely gone.    If you don't have young kids or aren't around them, you may not totally understand this. But as a martial arts instructor of 20 plus years and a father of a 9 year old, I promise you, I know what I m talking about here.    Now, keep in mind, there's a bunch more to achieving success in life than this one little secret. (And I should also remind you that success is different for everyone. Only YOU can define YOUR own success.) But this is one of the fundamental building blocks. It s powerful and very effective.    Grown ups need to constantly be reminded of this. It's real easy to forget these skills. It takes constant practice and persistence.     It's one of the many things we teach at Zandri's Martial Arts in Brookfield, CT. These are the kind of skills we want to instill in our students so they can be as successful in life as they can dream.    The one secret I m talking about here is asking for what you want and not taking no for an answer. Simple, right? Not so much. Keep reading.    A child will ask you for the most insane thing and be perfectly serious about getting it. There may be no chance of you'll give it to them. And they may even know this, but they' ll still ask.    My daughter once asked me if she could drive my car. I think she was about 3. And she was dead serious.     When I said no, she kept asking if she could. She would pose the questions in different ways. Instead of asking if she could drive, she would suggest how about she just drive for a little while? When I continued to say no, she wanted to know 'How come?'    As she got older, the questioning became much more complex. She wouldn't just ask for something. She would pre-frame me for the answer she wanted. She'd essentially set me up in a way that I couldn't say yes or no, but which one.    Example: As an alternative of asking me if she could go swimming, she would ask me whether I wanted to go swimming at 11:00 or at 12:00. She was like 5 when she started with this line of questioning.    This is a strategic sales tactic (that, by the way, I paid a whole lot of money to learn about). Instead of allowing a yes or no question, you only give a choice. You can do 'A' or 'B' but you can't do nothing. Can you say 'These are not the droids you're looking for'? She didn't need to be taught this. She inherently knew to do this.    As adults, we lose this. We are taught by society to not speak out, we're laughed at for asking silly questions, we're constantly and repeatedly told 'No'! We learn to fear rejection. No hurts. It's no wonder that at some point, we learn to stop asking.    Part of teaching confidence is getting people to stand up for what they want. We have to re-teach people to not fear the word 'No'. In actuality, we want to teach them to love the word 'No'. Because statistically speaking, the more times you hear 'No', the more you will also hear 'Yes'.    Babe Ruth was the home run king. But he was also the strike out king. He did better than anyone. Imagine if he gave up after striking out?    I had a great lesson taught to me about this years ago. Our school was not doing so well. Me and my partner, Mike Zandri, were working hard but having a tough time paying the bills.    We never set out to be millionaires by running the martial arts school. But we did want to be able to provide for our families.    Out of desperation, I contacted the Martial Arts Industry Association to ask for help. They put me in touch with their executive director, one of my mentors, Frank Silverman. In addition to running MAIA, owns and operates a string of successful schools in Florida.    He helped guide me through some disconcerting waters. He helped us to really improve how we ran the school and in turn, our own lives.    But it was during one of our meetings that I re-learned this lesson. We were discussing the magazine that MAIA puts out. It's called 'MA Success' and is sent to all the school owners in the U.S., Europe and Australia.    That month it happened to have a very big time school owner, known all over the country, on their cover. Jokingly, I asked Mr. Silverman when I get to be on the cover.    His answer changed my perspective. He said 'When you pitch us a story we can use'.     I thought about that for a moment. My instinct was to say nothing. I don't know what it was that got into me that day, but I replied back to him, 'How about a story about business partners who run a school together'?     He looked at me and then told me that actually was a pretty neat story idea. I didn't think much of it until weeks later when the editor of the magazine, (The fantastic John Corcoran who wrote the great book: 'The Original Martial Arts Encyclopedia: Tradition, History, Pioneers' among other things and is another mentor of mine.), called me to do the story on us. And low and behold, we were featured in the magazine months later.    I assumed you had to boast some special powers to be in the magazine. You had to know someone or be a superstar mega-rich school owner. I never stopped to think about just asking.     Since then, when I'e wanted something, I've asked for it. I don't always get it, but I always ask. And if someone says 'No', I don't just accept it and move on. I ask in a different way. Or I ask them why not.    So next time you're scared to ask for something, think like a kid. And remember to nurture this important skill in kids. Applaud them for it. Just don't let them drive the car until their over 16.    Mike Brooks owns Zandri's Martial Arts in Brookfield, CT. Zandri's serves all surrounding towns including Danbury, New Milford, Newtown and Bethel. In addition, Mike Brooks consults many school owners around the country to help them improve their schools. He can be reached at (203) 775-7150 or via the web   				    iAutoblog the premier autoblogger software