“How can you sell anything? You don’t even say anything to anyone”

Dad asked the question but it was a question I had been asking myself for a long time. As much as I wanted to learn how to sell, I didn’t know the first thing about it and I really, really lacked any social awareness.

When I was around 18 I was tasked with standing outside newsagents and trying to sell $10 magazines and booklets to people as they walked by. On the train ride there I was thinking about every excuse I could to get out of it. I didn’t know anything about sales, food magazines or how to talk to strangers.

Nothing kills conversations faster than one of my poorly timed jokes. I would love to tell you about everyone’s deadpan expression when I tell the joke but I’m unable to see from tears of joy that comes from laughing too hard at your own jokes.

If I sold them all, I was able to collect my money and go home. The extent of training given was “show up on time, wear this polo shirt, and smile.” So that’s what I did, I smiled, joked, talked and eventually sold everything I had to sell. I did amazingly. I was pleasantly surprised by how well I could sell. Gone was all the pressure I was putting on myself to be extroverted, thinking that I didn’t have the required attributes and training. I was just chucked into the deep end and I managed to swim.

Just because “I haven’t” doesn’t mean “I can’t”. Now, more than ever, we can learn and upskill at extraordinary rates and it’s only getting better. We’re getting smarter (unbelievable, I know) and there’s actually more and more information being produced every day. What you did in the past can be easily outweighed by your improvement today and then even more so ten years from now. You may have been lazy, socially awkward, unfit in the past but that plays a very little role in what you can be in the present or even in the future.

I could start going to the gym but I’m really weak

I could write blog posts but I’m not that creative

I could learn how to sell but I’m really introverted

When I look back at these things I could have started much earlier, I love how I trumped them up to some kind of weird character flaw and just left them there as an excuse. What really looked like excuses not to do something were actually the exact reasons I should have been doing them. If I’m weak, I should go to the gym.

You can’t get that lost time back, that much is true but the mistakes that you made in your past are not a predictor for your future performance — unless you didn’t learn from them. You don’t have to be lazy, dis-empowered, or unfit forever. There’s nothing stopping you from changing that story for yourself. We shouldn’t let our own perceived shortcomings become an excuse.