Coaching: What if suddenly you are placed in an aquarium?

Jose Almeida
The Art of Sales and Negotiation
3 min readAug 21, 2023

Take a deep breath.

Once, twice, three times.

Feel yourself relax completely.

Now…

Imagine you suddenly woke up in an aquarium.

Feel yourself swimming round and round and round until you get dizzy from spinning around!

Try visiting the little ship your owners have put there.

Enjoy the bubbles bursting out of the shell.

Have you had fun?

Now imagine you’ve been there for a week.

Two, three…

One month, two months, three months…

A year, two years, three years…

How do you feel? Probably like the majority of the world’s population.

Due to circumstances or misfortune in their lives, most people live in a controlled universe where someone pours some food into their aquarium every month.

Few people take the reins of destiny into their own hands and choose to explore their own seas, even if it’s difficult at first.

However, they will likely succeed if they persist and work hard for their dreams.

Living like a fish in a controlled environment where food is scarce but certain is simpler.

However, with inflation and instability, there may be better ways.

Why not create your project?

Why not create your job?

Want an idea?

Close your eyes and dream about what you’d really like to do.

Something that gives you pleasure.

Now think of ways to make that dream commercially viable.

Imagine ways of profiting from it.

Go online and look for success stories abroad that have already succeeded.

See how they did it.

Email those responsible for the project.

Exchange ideas with them.

You’ll often find that because they’re at a distance, they’ll even help.

Spend time creating a business plan if you don’t know how to find someone who can help you check the viability of your project.

Now for some advice.

Keep your ideas to yourself.

Most of the time, family, friends, and even those closest to you don’t understand your dreams.

The typical comment is:

“Are you going to get into that?”

If you don’t have a well-defined dream, why not try a more uncomplicated strategy?

Start by finding an activity that you can do part-time.

I’m currently working on a training project that gives me great satisfaction.

It involves training a company that sells wellness and cosmetics products with a network of more than 3,000 salespeople nationwide.

The project focuses on Intrapersonal Leadership and Team Leadership and Management.

I was delighted to see people of all ages and social backgrounds participate in the training.

Even in the most challenging exercises, designed to show them that nothing is impossible as long as you put your mind to it, everyone overcame them successfully.

This made me reflect and further rooted my belief that, as long as we want to and are willing to pay the price, everything is indeed possible.

It doesn’t matter what upbringing or social environment we grew up in. The only thing that matters in this life is the decision we have to make to want to succeed and fight.

In this fantastic team, I have the pleasure of training people earning more than 4000 euros a month in sales commissions.

It’s hard work; of course, it is. It “makes them sweat blood and tears,” of course, but above all, it gives them independence and security that contrasts in every way with our world.

This week, stop swimming in circles.

Originally published at Results Driven.

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Jose Almeida
The Art of Sales and Negotiation

Sales and Negotiation, Trainer, Coach and Speaker. Author of several sales articles and books. Made his career in sales and leadership in several companies.