Don’t Quit Before You Reach the Tipping Point

The great Aikido master, Ikeda Sensei, says: “Aikido works. My aikido works. Your aikido may not work.”

His point is simple and profound (and all you have to do is get close enough to him on the dojo mat and you will feel its profundity as you fly through the air, landing on your back). Ikeda Sensei has spent a lifetime on the mat mastering the fundamentals of his art. He has worked to gain a deep understanding of the principles of aikido. Ikeda Sensei’s aikido works because he didn’t quit, he didn’t give up, and he didn’t walk off the mat. He worked on his aikido, and he gave it time (In his case, a lifetime. You don’t need that long for the results you want).

Why “It” Isn’t Working

The reason that whatever you are trying isn’t working is not because it doesn’t work. It’s that you haven’t given it enough time to work. You haven’t stuck with it long enough to begin to get results. It takes time for you to get a feel for things and to gain enough competency in “it” to get results.

The reason what you are trying isn’t working is because you are giving up too soon.

You’ve decided to work with a new approach to making cold calls. You try it for a couple days and find no change in your results. So you quit and quickly fall back into what feels comfortable.

You adopt a new sales process. You go all in and do your best on a couple opportunities, but you can’t tell that it’s making a real difference. You set it aside and go back to doing what you have always done.

Your company has a new offering. You don’t know if the market is right, if your market is ready. You go out and talk to a few customers and a dream client or two. No one seems overjoyed, so you go back to selling what you have always sold.

Anytime you start doing something new, you have to give that new initiative time to reach the tipping point, the point in time when you have done it long enough to start getting results. But most people quit long before they get to that point. They never give themselves time to learn and to gain the competencies they need. They never give the new initiative a fair chance.

Aikido works. But your aikido may not work.