Guy Reams (00:00.846)
Greetings. Today is one, today is day 160. Hope is not an excuse. So hope is a really important concept. I mean, hope is one of the big three, right? Faith, hope and charity. But hope, you know, is what gives us the silver lining on a bad day. I mean, hope is probably what motivates us to get out of bed in the morning. Hope is what.
gets us started on a new endeavor or a new adventure. Hope is definitely essential for us as humans to survive and want to wake up and take on a new challenge. However, hope can also be extremely dangerous, especially when hope is used as an excuse to avoid the necessary work and the necessary basics for success. I've seen
many examples where hope can sometimes be inappropriately used as an excuse in our lives. Got a few examples.
I'll give you the extreme example first. So imagine this morning you went down to the gas station and while there you decide you got inspired to buy a lotto ticket. So you put all your favorite numbers down and you bought a lotto ticket. And let's say your hope was so acute that you know that next week when they call those numbers out, it's going to be your favorite string of numbers. And you're going to win that.
250 million dollar prize or billion dollar prize or whatever it is. It seems like it's always getting bigger, right? So let's say you win that or that you want to win that you have such an acute hope However Right now in your current circumstance you absolutely need to work in order to survive you have to bring enough money in for your family and whatever else you got going on your own So let's say your hope becomes so acute that you decide. I'm just gonna quit my job
Guy Reams (02:09.294)
Why work when I'm gonna win $250 million? So I'm not gonna work, I don't need to work, because I've got this lotto ticket that's gonna win. So that becomes hope as an excuse. So that's an extreme example, but it proves the point. Now, I've been on the lookout in my own life when I start to use hope as an excuse. And I'm also on the lookout when I hear it from others. A good example, another great example is in sales.
So I've worked with, managed, and hired a lot of salespeople, and I've been a salesperson most of my life. So I'm always in the motion of selling constantly.
And one danger that I found myself and others get into frequently is the hope that some big deal is going to close. So let's say I haven't had, haven't any one, any business for awhile, and I'm kind of getting discouraged because I'm not as successful as I might've been in the past. So I, but then I've got this one deal I'm working on. I'm talking to this one customer and we're getting closer and closer to a deal or it feels like we might be closing the deal.
And this could be very large, could be something that I have a lot of hope in. So the tendency is to use hope as an excuse. I don't need to be prospecting or talking to more new customers. I don't need to be doing any new business development because I have this big deal coming in. So I use that as an excuse and I stop doing the very, the really important activities that I need to be doing on a constant and regular basis.
that involves new business development. So I use hope as an excuse. Now I've managed thousands of salespeople and I've heard this excuse over and over again. Why are you not doing that well in yourselves? It immediately goes to, I've got this deal and it's coming in and it's gonna be huge. It's gonna be awesome. So don't worry, I'm fine. I hear that all the time. The problem.
Guy Reams (04:20.142)
That would be okay. It would be okay to hope for the big deal to come in, but not in lieu of or as a replacement of waking up every day and prospecting for new business.
So that's kind of how hope can be used as an excuse. Now, there are more subtle ways. For example, oftentimes I hear myself and others use the excuse for personal improvement and they use hope as an excuse. And the way they do that is by establishing a future date. For example, April 1st, I'm going to change my diet. I'm gonna be awesome. I'm gonna finally,
decide to eat healthy only and not to eat processed or sugary foods. That's going to start on April 1st. So now I've created this hope that in the future, at some date and time, I'm going to change my life and I'm going to be better. So that gives me an excuse now for the next couple of weeks to eat very badly, to eat very poorly, to eat sugar, to eat processed foods, to eat fast food, and not worry about my diet. I've now given myself
a false hope an excuse. We all know what happens. April 1st comes around and I decide to move the date till some day in the future. Well, I'll do this after, you know, May 1st. So I push it back, right? So that's what happens. We establish hope that we will change when we know we never will. So the best thing to do is to always do the basics.
So what I should be doing at all times is eating healthy. There's nothing stopping me from eating healthy today. That's really easy. Just eat healthy. But if I keep allowing myself to use hope as an excuse, it creates this paradigm which gives me a reprieve from doing the good behavior.
Guy Reams (06:22.669)
Hope should never delay actions for improvement. So targeting healthier habits, new sales, or whatever it might be, you definitely never wanna allow hope to cause a delay in any imperative action. Now I've seen some very success stories. For example, recently I was working with an entrepreneur who was facing failure of the business.
By the way, all entrepreneurs face the failure of their business at various times during their early stages and sometimes later stages. You never get the rest. But this entrepreneur had a hope that he would be able to raise more money in the near future. And he had several investors lined up to potentially give them more money. The more money would allow the business to continue.
However, ultimately what this business needs is more sales. So this entrepreneur could have said in his mind, I don't need to worry about sales because I have this new investment coming in and the company will survive. Rather this entrepreneur chose to do both. Wake up every day with a total focus on new business development and also a hope for the future investment.
By the way, in this example, the entrepreneur got both. They got some new sales from their efforts during the day, and they did eventually get the investment that they were seeking. So consequently, hope was something that encouraged this entrepreneur to do the right thing. Another example is I was counseling somebody who was looking for a job. They were struggling to find a new career or a new job position, and they'd been
sending out resumes, applying for jobs, talking to people with very little effect. Well, one day they actually got landed in an interview process. Now the interview process was quite lengthy, probably six or seven people they had to talk to. So while this person was going through the interview process, they had a choice to make. They could put all their hope in this new interview and focus entirely on that and stop doing their job searching activities or
Guy Reams (08:39.821)
They could continue their job searching activities, right? And also hope that this interview turned out well. This job seeker decided to do both. They focused on finding a job while they were prepping and doing the interview process for this exciting new opportunity. What eventually ended up happening to this person is they got a job, not the one they were interviewing for, but one of the jobs that they found while they were continuing their search.
This is just a good evidence that hope can help motivate you, but should never cause you to delay the core actions that are needed for what you're trying to accomplish.
We should always continue our effort, our exploration, and also at the same time hope for a specific action. So hope should never justify passivity. It should always encourage action. Thank you.