Tools for Winning the Game

The principal of detachment is one I have simultaneously mastered and bumped up against for years. It all depends on the situation I’m in. Let me explain . . .

You know that excited feeling you get when you begin shopping for a new car? You walk into the dealership and see all the gleaming choices? Your heart begins to race as you fall in love with one particular make and model. It is called love at first sight. Within moments you’ve admired it from every angle, run your hands over its smooth, flawless body and imagined it parked in your driveway for all to envy. It doesn’t take much for the sales person to talk you into taking it for a test spin so you can really sense what it would be like to own that car.

Car dealers love customers like you. They know the more attached you become to a particular car and to the desire to own that car, the easier it becomes to Do their job to get you to pay to most amount of money they can. They can just “smell” your need to have that one particular car. They love it when you, in all your excitement, tend to “forget” that the Universe’s car lot holds an endless array of choices, and that this one you “have to have” may not even be the best of the bunch.

In that moment all you see is that one car. You are attached to the idea of owning that one car and you will do what ever it takes to own it.

We all know that feeling. And if we’re honest, we also know it can get us into trouble. That’s why, whenever friends or family shop for cars, they invite me along to negotiate. They know I enjoy working deals for other people. And they know I’m good at it because I really don’t care if the salesperson takes our offer or not.

I enjoy cars as much as the next guy. But unlike most people, I am not attached to owning or buying any particular kind of car. In addition, I am fully prepared ahead of time for the transaction.

For example, when buying a big-ticket item like a car, I always know my objective before I go in, and I never get emotionally attached to having it a certain way. Instead I detach emotionally from the outcome itself (the car) or how we might arrive at the desired outcome (the deal).

In short, I really couldn’t care less if we come to agreement or not.
If we can’t agree, I am prepared to just walk away. Then I either take my offer to another dealer or take a new look at my objective.

Knowing how I am, my sister recently asked me if I would help negotiate a car purchase for her. She knew just the car she wanted.

Even before we walked into the dealership, I knew my sister’s objectives. And before long, she was way off target. My job, as I saw it, was to remind her of what she wanted and to help her stand for that and if she could not get what she wanted we should leave.

As you can imagine, the agitated car salesman clearly did not care for my involvement. He knows that when people become emotionally attached to a vehicle—when they fall in love with a particular make and model—they will do just about anything to make it theirs, including paying way too much because they think there will be no other opportunities. I was blocking this emotional attachment.

In the end, by sticking to our objective we made a great deal and my sister wound up leasing the car of her dreams. (I am not a great fan of leasing, but this deal was outstanding and met her objectives.) While trying to negotiate a deal that was a win–win the leasing option popped up and it seemed to fit my sister’s objectives. Because we remained detached both from needing to have the car she wanted and from needing the deal to go one particular way or another, she got the car she wanted for the price she wanted to pay and could afford, and the dealer was able to make it happen.

Each one of us has such areas in our lives where it seems easy to detach. And we also each experience areas where we are emotionally tied to a having a particular person behave a particular way or to getting the particular object or outcome we desire. That tied-in feeling is attachment.

Attachment is the ego telling us that unless things go our way, unless we get the outcome or object of our desires, or unless people behave the way we want, we cannot be happy.

How do you know if you are attached or detached in any particular situation? Easy!

The detached places in your life feel silky smooth and effortless. Any outcome is fine with you. If you close the deal, fine. If you don’t close the deal, fine— another deal as good or better is bound to present itself to you.

But the places where you have attachment can be filled with restlessness, longing, doubt, worry, clinging, aggravation, fear or pain. Because you feel you cannot be happy without a particular person, object or outcome—and because you are not 100% in control of getting it— you feel unease, and often take inordinate or ineffective measures to control what you cannot always control.

Attachments weaken your personal power. Attachments lie to you and tell you that your happiness can be found in the desired outcome of outside circumstances. But in truth, your core happiness is engineered from within, from how you feel about yourself and the people and events swirling around you.

The more you are willing to detach, the more personally empowered you will become.

Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t care for people places and things. It just means you don’t have to have them in order to feel good. Detachment is powerful because it is synonymous with unconditional love.

The first step is to notice where you are attached and detached. The second step is to understand that as part of the human condition, every one of us struggles with attachment in one area of our lives or another. I am great when detaching during business deals or buying houses or cars, not so great when detaching from the need to fill my life with distracting activity when I need to just stay in stillness. That form of detachment is much more challenging for me. My ego is constantly whispering to me that I should always be doing something or achieving something to feel worthwhile. And part of me is dying to attach and comply so that I don’t have to face the fear I feel as I just stand still in a state of being.

Knowing that we all struggle with detachment (our attachment to attachment!) can make it easier to look at your attachments without judgment. In fact, you can thank your attachments for showing you places where you can practice detachment. And finally, you can just begin practicing detachment in those areas where you experience attachment, and see how it goes, how things change and ease up for you.

Make a game of letting go of the need to have people, places and things be a particular way for you. Trust that everything is perfect just as it is. Then, as you learn to relax and observe yourself detaching more and more throughout each day, you will see your life begin to lighten up.

Remember: Just play with this concept and don’t become attached to any particular result open up to whatever shows up.

The one thing that causes unhappiness…

If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.

— Anthony de Mello

Author of many books on this subject One I highly recommend is called AWARENESS

You must become an expert in how to Attract, Convert and Keep Customers.
If you want to succeed in business you must learn to master this 3-step process.

In my experience the first step is the easiest the second a little more difficult and the third is the toughest but most profitable one of all.

Ask yourself a couple of simple question:

1. How do you attract customers (What is the process you use?)

2. Once you attract prospects how do you convert them to customers?

3. Most importunately how do you keep them happy coming back over and over? (Hint: You ask them)

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,
made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Steve Kennedy is a personal coach specializing in working with entrepreneurs.
For a free 1/2 hour coaching session or to get more information directly from Steve, contact him at: steve@winningthegameofbusiness.com

Copyright (c) 2006, all rights reserved. You may copy, forward or distribute Tools for WINNING The Game Newsletter provided the copyright notice and full information for contacting Steve Kennedy are included.
You may contact Steve by email at: steve@winningthegameofbusiness.com

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