Say that you are a politician and you have gotten 50% to 60% of the vote. There's still 40% of the people that did not vote for you who are entitled to have you look after them. Even though they didn't vote for you, they are still part of your populace, and even though your ideas might be different from their ideas, you have to find a way to keep them happy.
To begin with, people that depend on politicians for happiness, I think that that would be under the idea of what's not working. The difficulty with being a politician is that inherent in the game is a bit of stretching the truth. The truth of life in America here is that whatever you decide to have in America, you're going to have in America. Whatever results you get is going to be as a result of what you did. Granted, what you did is going to depend on what you feel, but most people don't have control of their feelings and they rely on outside forces to control their feelings. Many times that outside force is the words of a politician.
I think we all remember several years ago when President Obama rolled into the White House on a wave of enthusiasm and excitement that was heretofore unequaled. Here was the first black president, the first black president that had a beautiful family, the first black president who was as articulate as any other president, coming into the White House, and everyone loved it and his poll numbers were fantastic. Even he loved it. I mean, really, how could you not love it when you got that many people adoring you?
But now here he is, several years later, and there's an opposite truth, isn't it? Many of the people that elected him, they're criticizing him, they're disapproving of him, and that is really just the nature of things. Doubtless, President Obama wants to love people and help people, just like the rest of us. No matter what success we end up having, it really doesn't matter if we don't have anybody to share it with. It really doesn't matter if we don't have an audience to applause us for our successes. So, when someone is criticized or when their poll numbers are down, you better believe it impacts them. Perhaps it's not impacting them as much as it would impact you, and then also, perhaps it would impact you greater than what you can imagine.
The reason I'm doing this blog today is I'm just watching how the story of Dr. Ben Carson is unfolding. Dr. Ben Carson is a phenomenal human being. He's done major pediatric surgery. He's helped a whole lot of people and he wants to help a whole lot more. Now he wants to be the president of the United States, and he's receiving much accolades. He's receiving a lot of praise, he's receiving a lot of "Go, Ben, go!" But what does that really mean? That means that a lot of people are hanging their hat on what he can do for them. It means a lot of people are excited about him stepping up to become the president of the United States. He himself is really excited about it, because now he thinks that he can help even more people.
I wouldn't describe myself as a cynic, but if you got everything that you want right now, today, you probably still wouldn't be happy, because being unhappy is the default position for a human being. When we talk about happiness, we talk about how we will marry the person that makes us happy. We talk about how we can pursue our goals if it makes us happy. So if we need all these things, if we allude to all these things to make us happy, doesn't it seem like the default position is unhappy? Right now the prospect of Dr. Ben Carson becoming the president of the United States is making a lot of people happy. Some of those people are happy just because, like me, and then other sort of people are happy because they think that Dr. Ben Carson is going to do something for them.
As an extraordinary coach, you, along with your clients, want to keep ascending up that continuum of greatness. You don't want to come down that mountain. You want to go up that mountain and get better and better and better as days go by. In order for you to do that, what happens externally has to be a non-issue. Certainly you want to pick somebody, certainly you want your candidate to win. But whether or not this person or that person becomes the president of the United States is of no concern of those of us in America that are entrepreneurs, because if you are an exceptional coach, you are in the right vehicle, this capitalistic society we have in America.
Despite all its criticisms, you have the ability to do whatever it is that you want to do. Despite the complaints of inequities, you have the ability to make as much money as you want if you do what it takes to get that much money. You must, first of all, control your feelings so that it doesn't make any difference to you who wins the presidency of the United States. That cannot control you and make you happy or unhappy. The reason that you have to stay happy, the reason that you have to stay excited, is that how you feel determines what you do and what you do determines what you get.
Keep all that in mind as you ride the wave of the excitement of the presidential political season. Be excited, be involved, but be not deceived, because it's on you to make those great things happen in your life, as long as you live in America, anyway. If this blog has helped you or given you a new thought, I encourage you to share it with someone you know, and I end this blog like I end all of my blogs. I want to encourage you, today and every day, to have a good time until the next time.
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