“When you wrestle with a pig, both of you get dirty, but the pig enjoys it.”

Some people like to argue. The truth is twisted, and reality is warped to perpetuate the argument. It isn’t about what is good, true, or sensible. It is about putting down, insulting, and false superiority. Miserable people like to make other people miserable.

There comes a point in an argument when it is time to walk away. When you find that another person is oblivious to reason, and when you start feeling hateful toward them, it is time to back out gracefully. It is not necessary to “win”.

Often, leaving is the best choice – it says, unmistakably, “You will not control me.”

When another person is there for control, and for ugliness, they’ll enjoy the conflict, for the sake of conflict. There is no winning against that, because the goal is not to exchange, it is to control.

I’ve encountered this in networking, in business situations, and in family. Learning to walk away was very hard – and I still struggle with it. My mind engages with a good debate. But when it makes me want to win at all costs, I leave – because I do not want to become the other person.

I don’t need to get dirty.

I take challenges because even when I’m not 100% sure how to do something, I know I can probably figure it out. Experience has taught me that. Oh, I don’t take credit for that – I know that to be a blessing from the Lord, and give Him credit in it.

But it isn’t arrogance that makes me believe I can take on certain challenges and succeed. Arrogance would have me believe I could do anything at all, regardless of my own limitations. Confidence acknowledges the limitations realistically, and stretches amazingly within them.

I’ll never be a coder. It isn’t a LACK of confidence that persuades me of that, it is a knowledge that my strengths simply lie elsewhere. I’ll never play the piano either – again, my strengths do not lie in the realm of playing more than one note at a time!

I think that someone with confidence can view their limits realistically, and go forward to accomplish the things they need to accomplish, and much more. They take their strengths and magnify them into something amazing. The limitations do not hold them back, because they don’t waste time focusing on them. They are identified accurately, and then the person moves on to work around them.

Could I learn coding? Probably. I’d spend years just mastering the basics that someone who is gifted in that area could grasp in a day. That is not a worthwhile expenditure of my time! I have better things to do!

As it is, within my business, I know I am always capable of just a little more than I am doing now. I am not pompous about that, I just know that if I ask, I’ll learn, and the Lord will bless me in that effort.

It is a good place to be – it opens endless possiblities for challenge and success. And I like that!

I often talk about the importance of loving your work. But it does not mean you love every single bit of it, and you don’t have to in order to be happy doing it.

• Probably 10 to 20 percent of it is stuff you just look forward to doing, and that is the part that gets you up in the morning excited to go to work.
• Another 60 to 80 percentage is just stuff. Ok, part of your competency, part of the day, and tasks that are neither exciting, nor dreadful. Just there.
• The remaining 10 to 20 percent is stuff you dread, and do not want to have to do. You do it, because the part that you love makes it worth it to do the part you don’t love. Of course, this is the part we hire out to others as soon as we can!

I think that this concept is one that is misunderstood in many directions. Some people don’t realize the importance of finding a business that fills the hidden corners of their heart. But others get confused and think it all has to be fun and exciting. Either extreme is untrue.

Often, what makes me love what I do isn’t even the tasks themselves. It is what we accomplish. It has meaning, and it is worth doing. That is what makes the exciting parts that way, and it keeps me going when I have to face tasks that I dislike.

If I had the money to stop working tomorrow, I would not. I’d keep it up. I’d probably hire out some of the less interesting things, and many of the things I dislike doing, but I’d keep at it, because I truly love what I do.

When you find something you can feel that way about, you got the right thing.

What they say about you has a lot more power than what you say about you.

The real power in networking connections is when they help you. But that isn’t something you can directly control. It is only something you can inspire.

When someone else says something about you, it carries more weight than when you say the same thing. People will help you promote your business for the following reasons:

1. They have reason to believe that you are a nice person. They don’t believe that because you SAID it, they believe that because of what you DO.
2. They think you know your stuff and can really help someone. They don’t think that because you told them, they think that because of what you teach, and because of the kind of help you offer, or by how you do business.
3. They feel that something you offer has value for other people. Often this is a free resource that is so good they want to share it.
4. You made a difference in their life for the better. This also takes more than words.

Are we seeing a pattern here? Other people help promote you when you help them, and when you give them something good.

All comes back to the word, “give”. It doesn’t happen from advertising, and it doesn’t happen from saying things about yourself.

It is powerful precisely because you cannot directly control it. But you can set out to inspire it, and if you give because you love people, it will come back in surprising ways. When it does, you know you got it right!