...your comment made me reflect on a turning point in my life (so to speak). I had started a job selling yellow page advertising. I didn't have direct sales experience and so was struggling in the beginning trying to find my niche. I sucked compared to nearly everyone else in our division and so went to work everyday thinking how much I hated being low guy on the totem pole. My sales manager felt the way to motivate me to do better was to make examples of me in front of everyone else. This further fed my "I hate my job" complex.

Finally I got a different sales manager. She was this cool, positive older lady from South Africa (cool accent) who was kind of hip and had been one of our top sales people. One day she called me into her office and as I walked in I thought, "oh boy, she's going to give me the boot because she probably only wants winners on her team."

She surprised me by opening with, "Ralph, I get the impression that you don't like your job." It was a total bullseye and it stunned me. She continued, "You know life's too short to waste it doing something you don't love. If you don't love this job there's nothing wrong with quitting and finding a job you do love. If you love what you do, you'll be more successful, you'll make more money adn you'll be happier."

I left her office thinking that every day I'd been getting up and coming to work thinking, "I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job" and I wasn't good at it as a result. I thought about how competitive I was and hated the thought of quitting something and walking away knowing that it bested me. That would gnaw at me. If I had tried my best and just wasn't good at it, well that was one thing but I knew because of my negative attitude that I couldn't honestly say I had tried my best. When I got back to my desk I continued thinking about it and decided I can't quit until I knew deep down I've given it my all and I knew I had to change my negative thinking if I wanted to succeed.

Long story short, over the next 7 years I finished top 5 in our company in sales 5 times (we had offices in over 40 states) including finishing #2 overall in 3 consecutive years. To this day I still think about the impact that sales manager had in changing my thinking and unlocking my potential.