New Year's Revolution - Stop Hating

As a young man I was always striving to move up the corporate ladder, until I realized that climbing that ladder can be dangerous to your career.  It turns out that "playing the game" is often more important than performance, and that many people are threatened by a young, good looking, ambitious, sexy, extremely intelligent, well endowed, brilliant, funny, creative, and gregarious person. None of these words I would use to describe myself, but I've heard of these types of people before...or read about them in books.
And yet, even these people sometimes fall off the ladder of success because some jerk is threatened by them, or doesn't like them, for some reason or another. It's really sad that all we learned growing up was work hard and you'll be rewarded.  Yet in today's society, hard work is no longer the path to success. In fact, it seems that unless your working for yourself, it can be very difficult to make it up the corporate food chain. Why? Greed, envy, jealousy, or just plain stupidity seems to be preventing people from being successful. Who is responsible for this pattern of hatred?  We all are responsible.  We're the ones who perpetuate the system because of professional jealousy. Believe it or not, we are all guilty.

Ask yourself, how many times have you seen some one get up for an award at a company dinner and thought to yourself, "That girl is such a bitch.", when you know it's not true.  Or listened to someone speak at a dinner and thought, "Oh I can do a much better job than they did.  They sucked."  Maybe a coworker went with you on a presentation, and you thought, "Girl please.  You cannot be wearing that dress to my customer's account."

The reason we think this is because all of us are "Haters".  Secretly , deep inside our subconscious we want other people to fail.  If you don't know what the definition of "Hater" is, please refer to the urban dictionary.  It is defined as follows:

hater
	A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.

At times, I can be the literal definition of a hater, but at least I am objective and can admit my faults.  Too many individuals, even very successful individuals will deny they are haters.  In fact, an argument can be made, that the most successful people are the most accomplished haters. Why do you think rap stars are constantly fighting with each other, and shooting one another?  They're haters.  They can't stand that one of them is more successful than the other, even though they might be very successful themselves.

How many of you reading this blog, can't stand Justin Bieber?  I do not like the little bastard.  Why?  Because I'm a hater.  Yes, that and the fact that his music sucks ass, and he makes a lot of money selling that junk to stupid teenage girls who think Lennon and McCartney is an English cereal.   Yet I wish he would stop making music so I can stop hearing about his success. And why? I'm a hater.  We're all haters at some point in our lives, in our careers, and we should just give up hating.  Well not entirely, but at least reducing our hatred to things and topics that matter, such as Justin Bieber.

We need to revolutionize the business environment.  We need a "paradigm shift".  By the way, all the unique business terms like paradigm shift,  come from nerdy professors who have no business being in business, but like to "watch the game from the sidelines".  Damn I'm hating again.  Regardless of their pedigree, we need to change our school of thought, especially if we are to make a difference in our business and in the lives of others.

I have started a list for my New Year's Revolution. You should do the same because to be frank, it makes you feel a lot better. Stop hating.

1. I promise to not hate people who are much more successful than me, for a period of 6 months.  Going the whole year would be impossible.
2. I vow to help people be successful despite the fact that I may hate them.  
3. I will encourage my fellow sales reps to work hard and share in their success, despite the fact that they too might be haters.
4. I shall reduce my hatred of competitive sports teams to just a mere loathing and not an all out hatred of them, since it's not good for heartburn.
5. I will not hate my competition but rather I will encourage them sell their best against me.  (However if they do win a sale I will hate them again.)
6. I am responsible for myself and I can not be angry with what I can't control.  I cannot control the Kardashians so I can't be angry with them.  
7. I will stand and applaud every award winner at the company meetings...especially myself.
8. If someone wins the lottery I will not secretly hope it ruins their life.
9. I will not chuckle when I hear about celebrities or star athletes going bankrupt. 
10. When I see someone getting promoted or awarded something I will not think to myself, "Fuck up, move up.  What is this, the army?"  

We have created an environment where rather than share in one an other's success we are more consumed with tearing each other down.  The corporate ladder is wrought with haters trying to knock you off each rung, but don't let them pull you into their little game.  What matters is your health and your family, and your friends.  If you have those I'd say you're pretty successful already.

Have a great day selling!

-M