Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you are helpless to circumstances.
I’ve written before about the importance of persevering with your industrial marketing endeavors, and my take is that at some point, you will fail, but you can bounce back.
“…There will be certain strategies and tactics you try that will fail. If an email newsletter has a poor open rate, does that mean you should never do another one? Absolutely not…”
But how exactly do you bounce back? I’m not a psychologist and I’m not a life coach, but when things don’t go exactly as planned I reflect on this quote by Charles Swindoll,
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.”
Dr. Francis Crick reminds us that ~80% of what we believe to be true is really just made up by us.
For example, many people feel as though they are unable to control their own destiny, floating along and carried away by the currents of society. But such need not be the case.
Great people create their life actively, while mediocre people are created by their life passively.
When things don’t work out in your favor, don’t immediately take on a defeatist attitude. You can choose to fail, or you can choose to persevere, learning from experience. If you give in to failure, then you’re letting circumstances dictate your future rather than taking control.
Attitude is everything when it comes to B2B marketing. As a marketer, why would you adopt a new strategy or tactic believing you’re going to fail? It doesn’t make sense.
We shouldn’t expect to fail, but it happens. And when it does, how quickly you bounce back (or if you bounce back at all!) depends on your attitude.
Photo credit: noshoes
