“I put The Self Empowerment Pledge to the left of my computer screen and even shrunk the sheet to day-timer size, dated it, laminated it, and carry it in my briefcase. All this was just 2 weeks ago - and I already feel a difference in my thinking. Thanks Joe!”

“I keep a copy of The Self-Empowerment Pledge posted where I can see it every day, and I can’t tell you how helpful it has been to repeat those promises to myself. Things really are getting better.”

“I have The Self-Empowerment Pledge on my overhead cabinet at the office and I’m finding it’s most helpful for me to repeat the daily message.”

The Self-Empowerment Pledge

Seven Simple Promises that Will Change Your Life

Wednesday’s Promise: Determination
by Joe Tye

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental. The questions that follow, however, are very real – and answering them honestly can help you internalize the true meaning and purpose of The Determination Promise of The Self-Empowerment Pledge.

Click to listen to audio track on Wednesday’s Promise

Rachel Williams sat in her new office chair , staring at the telephone, anxiously hopeful. The telephone squatted on her new office desk staring back, truculently silent. Last week she had sent out 5,000 flyers announcing her new business, Pretty Pouches: Purses with Distinction. In this town where so many people knew her, Rachel was sure she’d do better than the two percent response rate the marketing consultant had told her was the best she could hope for. One hundred or so orders would launch her business with a bang. Even her projected worst case of one-half percent, netting her 25 orders, would be a good start.

Not in her worst nightmares had she imagined zero-point-zero. For the third time this morning, Rachel picked up the receiver to make sure there was a dial tone. There was. She checked her email to see if there were any orders, or even inquiries, in the inbox. There weren’t. She walked over to see if the fax machine bin was still empty. It was. Then she got up to go check the mail, walking slowly through the shop she’d set up in her basement, as if the extra few seconds would give the mailman a bit more time to stuff her box full of orders. It didn’t.

Back in the shop, Rachel made rounds past the tables she’d set up. She caressed the piles of soft leather and fuzzy felt, played her fingers through the containers full of beads and baubles, and gazed at the six different purse patterns she’d so lovingly designed. Then she sat down at her idle sewing machine, not sure whether to scream or cry.

“First I’ll scream, then I’ll cry,” she said aloud, but before she had a chance to do either the phone rang. Rachel jumped off the stool, banged her thigh on the sewing machine table, tripped over the power cable, and was still able to make it to her desk by the third ring. Taking a deep, calming breath, she picked up the receiver. “Pretty Pouches, home of the Proud Peacock Pocketbook. This is Rachel – how may I help you?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, then a burst of laughter from a very familiar voice. “Oh, Rachel, I’m so proud of you. By golly, you said you were going to do it, and now you’re doing it.” It was Amy Martin, one of Rachel’s best friends, and a real role model as well. Amy was a national director with Mary Kay Cosmetics, and her pink Cadillac was well-known around town. Rachel slumped down into her new office chair.

“Oh, hi Amy.”

“What’s the matter, Kiddo, did your pet hamster just die?” Amy had a wonderful way of putting things into perspective.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Amy. It’s just that, well, I haven’t had a single order yet, and I was hoping this call would be the first one.”

“And what makes you think it’s not?”

“For one thing, you already have a purse – the one I gave you for Christmas.”

“Well, I can see I’m going to have to work with you on this.” It was the voice of an exasperated schoolteacher. “First of all, you never assume that one of anything as wonderful as your purses is ever enough.”

“Okay, how’s this,” asked Rachel in her best high school girl popping bubble gum behind the department store counter tone of voice, “you wouldn’t care to buy another purse, would ya?”

Amy surprised Rachel by not laughing. “Rachel, do you want this to be a business or just a glorified hobby?”

“It’s been a hobby for a long time. Now I want it to be a business.”

“Would you like some help getting it started?”

“I would love some help. I guess it’s pretty obvious I need it.”

“Alright, I’ll be over at 2:30 and we’ll get started.” It was vintage Amy – if a pipe was leaking, she didn’t call a plumber, she grabbed a wrench.

² ² ²

“Would you like some tea or something?” Rachel asked when Amy arrived.

“No time for that, kiddo, we have work to do. Get your pad and a pen, and let’s go to the kitchen table.”

The two women situated themselves at the table, and Rachel prepared to take notes. “The first thing you have to appreciate,” Amy began, “is what I call the paradox of selling: for your business to succeed, you must sell your product to customers, but selling is the worst way to reach your customers.”

Rachel stopped her pen mid-sentence. “Amy, that doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. What do you do with all the sales letters you get in the mail?”

“Hmm. I throw most of them away without looking at them.”

“Precisely. You recognize them as sales come-ons and you toss them. That’s why I tell my beauty consultants we’re notselling – we’re sharing our joy. Your purses bring you joy, don’t they?”

“Absolutely,” Rachel replied with a vigorous shake of her head.

“If you can share the joy you feel about these works of art – and they really are works of art, Rachel – don’t you think the sale will take care of itself?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I know so,” said Amy, “and I’ve got the pink Cadillac to prove it. Now, you told me that you’ve sent out 5,000 flyers but gotten no response. What do you suppose the problem is?”

Rachel frowned. “Frankly, Amy, I think it’s the small town mentality of this place. People aren’t willing to spend a hundred dollars for a beautiful purse when they can get something plain and functional down at Target for twenty.”

Amy shook her head. “Not so. The second thing you need to appreciate is that the customer is always right. Always. Even when she doesn’t buy from you. Never blame the customer for not buying. If you have the right product and the right pitch, she will buy. If she doesn’t buy, it just means you’ve got to work on your product or work on your pitch.”

“But I don’t want to change my product. I put a lot of love into these purses.”

“Then you need to change your pitch.” Amy was unyielding when she was right – and when she was talking about business, she was almost always right. “What do you suppose could be wrong with your sales pitch, the reason your flyer isn’t working?”

Rachel stared at the wall for a few seconds, shrugged, then ventured, “It’s hard to share joy with a mail-order flyer?”

“Bravo,” Amy applauded. “Someday Pretty Pouches might be a household name like Starbucks, and Peacock Pocketbooks will sell themselves. But until then, you have to share your joy, and that means talking to people, one-on-one.”

“But that’s the whole problem, Amy – talking to people. I’m not very good at it, and…” Rachel stopped mid-sentence. She had just stumbled upon one of the great fears in her life, a fear that had held her back for as long as she could remember. “And I’m scared to death that right there in the middle of a conversation I’ll go blank, have nothing at all to say, and just stand there like a total moron.”

Amy nodded. “Me too.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped. “You? But Amy, you’re never at a loss for words.”

“That’s because I learned the secret.”

“The secret? What secret?”

“You don’t have to say much of anything as long as you ask questions, then let the other person start talking. Like right now. You could ask me how I like the purse you gave me for Christmas.”

Rachel shrugged. “Okay, how do you like the purse I gave you for Christmas?”

Amy hugged the purse to her chest. “I adore it! And I’ll bet you want to know how it’s held up, and how it goes with the different things I wear, and whether I ever get any compliments on it. Are you getting the picture, Kiddo?”

Rachel smiled and nodded. “Yes, teacher, I’m getting the picture. What would I do without your help?”

“Another good question,” Amy replied with a laugh. “And here’s another one you could ask me – who else do I know that might want a beautiful new custom purse. Think you can bring yourself to ask that one, Rachel? You’ll never do it all by yourself, you know. You need raving fans like me out there talking about Pretty Pouches.”

“But – I wouldn’t want to take advantage…”

Amy cut her off with a wagging finger. “You’re not taking advantage of me. You’re allowing me to help you. I want you to sell lots of these beautiful purses. Then you send all those happy customers on over to me, because I can stock them up with all the things every woman needs to have in her purse. Understand?”

Now Rachel laughed. “Well, I suppose I can do that.”

“Yes, I suppose you can. Now, let’s wrap up with one final lesson.” Amy opened her purse and unzipped the inside pocket, then pulled out a laminated card. “Here, let me share something with you. It’s a promise I made to myself years ago, a promise that has been the foundation of my success. You make this promise to yourself – you live this promise every day – and your business will take off. And that’s my promise to you.” Rachel read the card:

The Determination Promise: I will do the things I’m afraid to do, but which I know should be done. Sometimes this will mean asking for help to do that which I cannot do by myself.

“If all you want to do is just make purses, Rachel, then keep it a hobby, or get a job at a purse-making factory. But it you want to create a business out of it, then you’re going to have to share your joy – transfer the joy you feel for creating purses into the joy women will feel carrying them, and the joy men will feel giving them to the women they love.”

Rachel looked at he ceiling, looked out the window, then looked at the hands in her lap. “You make it all sound so easy when we’re sitting here, Amy, but as soon as you leave, I won’t even know where to start.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll know. You’ve always known.” Amy stood up and slung her purse over he shoulder. “Gotta run, Kiddo, or I’ll be late for my next appointment.”

“What do you mean, I’ve always known?” Amy didn’t answer as they headed out of the kitchen. They walked to the front door in silence, then Rachel repeated her question, more insistently this time. “What do you mean, I’ve always known?”

Amy extracted the car keys from her purse. “Think about it, Rachel. Stop all the noise for a while and listen to your heart. I think you’ll hear the answer to your question.”

Rachel watched Amy’s pink Cadillac back out of the driveway and disappear down the street. Then she stood for a long time at the head of the basement stairs before slowly walking back down into her creative sanctuary. Across the room, a little girl was seated at Rachel’s drafting table, intensely focused on the drawing she was making with colored markers. Rachel knew this little girl with the upturned nose and the taffy-pull pigtails, this little girl wearing the fuzzy pink sweater that her grandmother had made for her sixth birthday.

Walking slowly so as not to disturb the little girl’s concentration, or to disrupt the magic of this fracture in time and space, Rachel glided across the room. She stood for a long time at the little girl’s shoulder, hardly breathing, as she watched a forest of purple trees, orange birds, and blue stick people with big red smiles flow out across the paper. She had to stuff her hands deep down into the pockets of her dress to keep them from reaching out for the little girl that her father used to call Pop Tart.

Finally, Rachel leaned over and whispered, “that’s a beautiful picture. What’s it of?”

The little girl didn’t look up from the smiley-face sun she was adding to her sky. “It’s Afca,” she said. “Don’t you see the jraff?”

Rachel now saw that one of the scribbled figures did indeed have quite a long neck. “Oh, yeah. But I’ve never seen a green giraffe before.”

“Oh, yes you have,” the little girl insisted, finally turning around to look into the eyes of the woman she would one day become.

You’ve always known. The little girl went all blurry as Rachel’s eyes welled up with tears. “Then I guess I’ve forgotten, haven’t I?”

The little girl shook her head. “You didn’t forget. You just learned too many things that get in the way.”

“What do you mean, I learned too many things that get in the way?” There was no answer. The drafting table chair was empty.

Rachel looked down at the sketch pad. Where a moment ago there had been a child’s portrait of an imagined place in Africa, there was now a vivid motion picture scene from a schoolyard. Six-year-old Rachel Williams was running laughing toward the swing set. But when her little feet could no longer keep up with her racing body, she pitched forward, face-first into the grass.

Slowly, little Rachel pushed herself to her knees, then got up to her feet. With quiet dignity, she smoothed down her dress and brushed the dirt from her knees. Then she laughed out loud and raced off again toward the swing set. Stopping just short, the little girl looked up out of the vision on the sketch pad at the older Rachel. “See?” she said with a gap-toothed smile that up until today Rachel had only seen in old photographs.

Rachel blinked hard and looked back down at the sketch pad. It was once again filled with last night’s doodles for new purse designs. You just learned too many things that get in the way. What were those things she learned as she’d gotten older? That if you run too fast, you might fall down? That if you fall down, it might hurt?

Rachel sat down at the drafting table, picked up a green marker and started to draw a giraffe. Maybe if she could somehow unlearn all those things that kept getting in her way, she could resurrect the natural wisdom that had come so easily when she was six: that when you fall down, you get back up. You brush the dirt off your knees and you laugh. And then you start running again. Because even with the falls and the hurts, life is still a wild adventure all-filled-up with purple trees and green giraffes and blue stick people with big red smiles – if you only open your eyes to see them.

What was it that Amy had told her when she’d first shared the idea of starting a purse business? Proceed until apprehended.

Rachel got up, walked over to her new office desk, picked up the telephone receiver, and punched in a number. “Hello, Gail? It’s Rachel. What’s going on?” Rachel had met Gail when they’d worked together at Empiricon, and they’d become good friends.

“Hey, Rachel. I’m just about to take the kids to soccer practice. What’s up with you?”

“I won’t keep you then, I just had a question. Do you still have that book club?”

“Why, yes. We meet Thursday evenings. Would you like to join us?”

“I might.” Rachel replied. “Let me know when you start a new book. But right now, I just wanted to ask a favor. I started a new business selling my purses.” Gail already had a Pretty Pouch; Rachel had given it to her for her birthday the year before.

“Oh, yeah, I thought I saw a flyer or something about that. Good luck with it! I really love my purse.”

“Thanks, Gail. Well, I was wondering – uhm, wondering if I could come over one evening and show some purses to the ladies in your book club.”

“You want to make a sales pitch to my book club?”

“Well, uhm, it’s no big deal, really. I mean, I wouldn’t want to intrude or anything. I just…”

Gail laughed. “Good grief, Rachel. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I’m always using your purse to haul books back and forth to the library. Why don’t you come by on Thursday? The girls would love to see you.”

Rachel hung up the phone and marked the appointment in her calendar. Then she set the answering machine and went upstairs to change into jeans and tennis shoes. The sun was warm on her face as she walked the eight blocks to her old school. She ran across the playground and plopped down onto one of the swings, then began pumping herself higher and higher.

There was a lot of forgetting of all those things-that-get-in-the-way to be done, so that she could once more remember those things she had always known, but that somehow had gotten crowded out along with the green giraffes.

At the far end of the playground, the little girl with the taffy-pull pigtails and skinned knees smiled and waved. Then she turned and skipped away.

Click to listen to audio track on Wednesday’s Promise

Questions and Exercises

Read The Determination Promise again. How different would your life be today if in the past you had really believed that you would take responsibility for your life and not blame others for your difficulties?

Think about the path that your life is taking right now. What sort of changes would there be in your journey if, beginning right now, you truly internalized The Determination Promise – from today onward, you would own your problems, and your opportunities?

If you are a parent, are your children learning and living by the precepts of The Determination Promise? What steps could you take to help them grow up to be owners, not just renters, of the problems and the opportunities that life will throw their way?

What is one specific action you will take within the next 24 hours to hold yourself to The Determination Promise?

Click to listen to audio track on Wednesday’s Promise