In my junior year of college, I traveled to Ecuador as part of a winter semester program. I lived with a local family and took a class on literature. It was a life altering experience on a variety of levels. Although I went there to improve my Spanish abilities, I can link many of my fundamental beliefs back to that trip. I changed as a person during my time there. One of the simple ways that I changed was that I became the “King of Introductions”. There was no official coronation! It’s an unofficial title that I developed for myself but it was a key component to many later successes.
Two days after Christmas in 1996, I arrived in Ecuador. After a few days of touring, I was paired with my ‘Ecuadorian family’ on New Year’s Eve. For the next two days, I attended no less than three family parties. If I had to guess, I was introduced to over fifty people in less than 48 hours. Obviously all of those introductions were done in Spanish. It was nothing that I had planned but the more times that it happened, the better that I got at introducing myself. With the first few people, I was only saying ‘hello, nice to meet you’. Eventually the conversations got more robust with full explanations of why I was in Ecuador and my thoughts about the country so far. The repetitions were the key. Even though all of conversations were slightly different, each one gave me another opportunity to organize, edit or add. By the end of those first two days, I was definitely the “King of Introductions”.
It seems so simple but often people ignore this methodology. People give up on things quickly because they’re not “good enough”. The need to not look foolish is ingrained so strongly within us that we tend to avoid even chancing it. So we never get past the peasant status much less reach to the level of king. With something so simple, it would seem like everyone would follow this recipe but often we don’t. Any success requires that you:
- Take action
- Notice what’s working/what’s not
- Adjust the approach
- Pay attention to those already getting the result you want
It’s almost too easy, isn’t it? The problem usually isn’t a lack of role models to follow. It’s a failure to take any action at all. When there is no guarantee of success, a lot of work and a possibility of looking foolish; peasant status is what is chosen. In the minds of so many, it is better to be the peasant that never tried rather than the one who went for the crown and failed. The most important thing for you to recognize though is that the walls between you and the crown are usually built by you. The world offers all kinds of riches and above is the plan for how to get any of them. We just need to be willing to follow it long enough to get them!
It’s good to be the king!
Pete
Huryk Unlimited 