Sometimes in life, we try too hard to make something happen.
We get so fixed on achieving a particular outcome and in doing so, we end up trying to control things that we can’t.
The only thing that we have control of is ourselves. We control our thoughts, our beliefs, our actions, everything to do with us.
Beyond that, everything else is controlled by others. Others that we can inspire or influence, but ultimately they will decide, not us.
None of us like to be controlled by others, or feel that others are trying to manipulate us. We do however respond to something inspiring, something that reaches out to our values, that matches our feelings.
When we listen to a person who is talking genuinely about something, with passion, and that person is not selling something, but instead sharing their thoughts, their story and without an agenda, then that is when we feel we have chosen, we have the freedom.
So in business, it is more important to communicate your message and then make it easy for people to buy, rather than trying to control others through manipulation. Essentially marketing rather than selling. Sharing rather than coercing. Giving instead of taking.
The harder we try, the more we have to control and the more we control, the more we erode the freedom of others and push them away.
Philip Dodson 