Fifty-First Dragon

The story Fifty-First Dragon was great. Many lessons can be learned from it and I was very surprised to learn of Gawaine’s reaction to his realization of the magic word. It seems that anyone who would learn that what they accomplished was because of their own doing instead of a magic word that their confidence would boost. Poor Gawaine however did not find any more confidence in himself after learning the truth.  It was actually the ruin of his career and life. In some ways, I can relate to Gawaine sad little story.

I had one experience not too long ago that ruined all my chances of furthering myself in the work I was doing. It was door to door sales and if you have any experience doing it, then you know how hard it can be, especially when you are first starting out. Anyway, I had gone through a six week class preparing myself to knock on doors and sell cable door to door. Over the course of those six weeks I had gotten pumped to get out and make some money. I was so bored with the classes and ready to hit the pavement by the end of it.

As the first day rolled around I felt as if there was nothing that could stop me from making a boat load of cash and so I began. I pulled up to my first neighborhood and discovered that it was a retirement community. I did not let that stop me or get me worried. It was actually a great thing because people were home during the day and afternoon and I soon had many contacts. My confidence continued to soar as spoke with person after person having positive experiences at each door. In two days I had sold a number of packages and I felt as if I were getting high from the sales. I had good success in my first week there and soon I was out of doors to knock in the area so I requested more “turf” as we called it.

When I arrived at my new area It was easy to see that I wasn’t in old folks country anymore. I was in a normal suburban housing section. At first, I did not let anything get in my way and I starting knocking on doors with the same confidence as the retirement community. Door after door went by and there were not many people home. My confidence seemed to wane but I told myself that I just needed to catch people when they were home so I pushed on. The amount of time spent knocking on empty doors though took its toll and soon thoughts of doubt began to creep into my mind. The biggest and most debilitating was the one telling me “you can only sell to old people.”

That thought had crippled me. Days went by and my enthusiasm deflated quicker than it took to build it up. I found it hard to even think about going to work and the hours and minutes before it started were met with foreboding and dread. I kept telling myself that the initial success was a fluke and that it wasn’t because of my skills but of only pure chance.

Looking back on that experience I will say that I was a fool to believe such nonsense. It was definitely a lesson for my learning though and the experience I gained from it has been a real confidence booster. I have also now been able to understand better the debilitating effects of self doubt. Never again will I want to emulate Gawaine for that is the way of cowardice.