I went to a Nationwide meeting a few weeks back and enjoyed meeting the Nationwide agents and hearing about how they use our leads. They were great at giving feedback and we are doing our best to incorporate their ideas into our offerings.

That said, I also learned quite a bit about how energetic and friendly the agents are. They all worked together to brainstorm how to be more successful, and then enthusiastically honored the agents who had been most successful in 2007. Those successful agents were heading off to exciting, exotic spots, depending on just how much they actually sold during the year. Nice reward, and incentive, to say the least.

They also brought in Billy Riggs as a motivational speaker whom I found fascinating and fun. I guess audiences require quite a bit as this fellow is a magician, comedian and motivational speaker.

He had a hilarious bio, which made us welcome him and ready to listen. I took a note to copy his form for anytime my bio is needed; before he hit the podium I knew I'd want to be friends with him. He also had several jokes at the beginning to set the stage for his presentation:

Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

Why do they put real lemon in cleaners and fake lemon in food?

When farmers break off relationships, do they write John Deere letters?

Why do they call them hemorrhoids, when they could be called asteroids?

What I took away from the presentation was this:

It is difficult to sustain performance at a level greater than your own self image.

In other words, we are our worst inhibitors.You are probably much more capable than you give yourself credit for. More than that, you probably are able to contribute significantly to your peers and in your work environment. But we all sell ourselves short. We deal with feelings of inadequacy, feelings others are smarter, more capable, better at the job. Don't do that! Just look around; aren't you smarter than all those other people? You know you are!

If you feel you need more accolades, check out our 'daily affirmations' video.