When it comes to events in your life we have to take into consideration what you are starting with. Many times as men get frustrated with the lack of results that we get when we try something. The problem is what are you starting with? The meaning is this, guys, we want instant results. Many people grow frustrated with our jobs when we just started, we wonder why we are not higher up in the echelon of our jobs. We wonder why we have no credibility when we just start something. These are problems of us not wedding the leather before we start the pump.
What are you talking about? What I’m actually referring to are the old-style hand pumps that used to be how people took water out of the ground. You have a well whole older well you dropped a bucket down the well. But later on, you would actually have a hand pump. This hand pump was just as it sounds you actually had to take a handle and move it up-and-down up-and-down until you got water to come out
There were times that you would actually find these hand wells dotted around the countryside. Some were used a lot while others we rarely used. These later ones are what I want to focus on. Many times if you came across one of these wells there would be a bottle of water lying next to the well. Why was this bottle here? Because you have a choice. You can either drink the hot stale water that was in the bottle, or you could pour that water down the well.
Now depending on the level of thirst you had, you may be tempted to drink that bottle of nasty water in the bottle. That would be something a person with a scarcity mindset would do. Yet if you have an abundant mindset you can pout that water down the well.
Yeah, this may seem like a waste. You are thirsty NOW! Yet if you know how these old wells work you know that there are leather baffles in the well. IF this well isn’t used much those valves dry out and they shrink. So you don’t get the lift and suction you want from this hand well. You can pump and pump and pump and no water would ever rise. Yet if you pour that water down the well you wet the leather valves and they expand and start working as they are intended.
Once the valves are wet they start drawing up the water and soon you will have all the water you could ever possibly drink. Now, this isn’t the only problem. You also have the problem of how deep the well is. Sometimes you have to pump for 10 minutes or even more before the water comes rushing out. There is a saying in the south the deeper the well the sweeter and colder the water is.
You have to put stuff in before you get stuff out.
Zig Ziglar
This also goes for work.
When you first start on a job you have to provide value for your pay. The employer is actually taking a chance on you and your sales pitch. So how do you rise in the ranks of your work? How do you build the needed trust in your boss so that he knows you are up for the task with each promotion? You have to take initiative. You have to prime the pump of success. That means you have to do some menial tasks and work on them as if the whole company depends on your work.
This also goes with customers you may be trying to get to sign on with your own business. They don’t trust you at first. They see you as just another person selling to them. To wet the leather of that pump you have to take your time and fully understand what it is that they need before you offer them a solution. That may mean talking with them several times for the next few weeks. You have to listen and fully understand the problem before you do the ask.
Goes for marriages
You have to put into your marriage, emotional security. You can’t just take and take, or you will wind up with an emotionally exhausted spouse who will one day decide that she is done and leaves. This is where the nice guys always fail. He is taking emotionally by requiring emotions from his spouse or girlfriend and he never repays the emotional debt he has created.
