Article

MODESTY IS NOT A VIRTUE

Written by Bill Bartmann

Topic: Business Coach and Business CoachingPublished June 24, 2007
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MODESTY IS NOT A VIRTUE WE ARE PROGRAMING OUR KIDS TO FAIL!

I’m not suggesting that we teach our kids to become braggarts or boastful. Rather we should teach them to be honest and fair. We encourage them to be honest and fair with others – we should also teach them to be honest and fair with themselves.

We should teach them to have the same degree of honesty with their successes as they have with their failures.

They shouldn’t be in denial about either. Nor should they exaggerate either.
They should be fair and treat success and failure equally - because they are equal. They are the exact opposite of each other – one is not more important or of a higher value than the other.

It is dishonest and unfair to teach our kids they should be ashamed, embarrassed or feel like something very bad and traumatic has happened when they make a mistake...and then turn right around and tell them they should downplay their successes, achievements and accomplishments.

This is important because of how Self Esteem is formulated in our mind.

Let me explain:

Self Belief is our internal view of our self.

This internal view is the product of the data that is retrieved when the subconscious mind searches for information regarding our capability to perform the mission at hand.

Before we begin any new task our subconscious checks our memory bank for the answer to these three questions:

Do I really think I can do this thing?

Do I really think I can have this thing?

Do I really think I can be this thing?

Since our memory bank doesn’t give all of the information it has gathered the same priority – it retrieves most quickly the data we told it was the most important.

It will allow us to recall in an instant a trauma we had as a child – and forget what we did yesterday or last week.

For most of us, our subconscious mind will find a lot more negatives than positives.

Why does that happen – are we all just a big bunch of losers?

No! Quite to the contrary – we are winners. We have all had many more accomplishments, successes, victories than we have had screw-ups, mistakes or failures - but we are also the victim of a very bad habit.

We have been taught to let MODESTY – trump HONESTY!

WE NEED TO BE HONEST – NOT MODEST!

When we experience our successes, our accomplishments, our achievements, our awards, our compliments, our praises – we have been taught to be modest. We have been taught to say “aw shucks – it was no big thing” or “anyone could have done it” or some equivalent statement.

How many of us have done that very thing? We’ve blown off a compliment. We downplayed an accomplishment – because we didn’t want anyone to think we were bragging or being IMMODEST.

We have been taught to downplay our successes. Now that might not have been so bad if we also had been taught to downplay our failures…but no, that is not at all what happens.

We get the double whammy – we are taught to downplay our successes, our accomplishments and achievements - and at the same time we are taught to make a big deal out of our mistakes, our failures.

When our subconscious mind searches our memory bank to see if it thinks we can safely accomplish a particular task…it finds plenty of negatives and not very many positives. Our subconscious mind can quickly find our negatives because we gave them so much importance.

Our subconscious mind has trouble finding our positives because we treated them as so unimportant.

If we had bee
HONEST instead of MODEST, if we had given our successes as much attention as we have given our failures - our subconscious mind would have retrieved ALL of our previous accomplishments. It would then have drawn an entirely different conclusion regarding our ability to accomplish that particular task. It then would have begun to assist us in the effort – instead of doing the exact opposite.

WE NEED TO BE HONEST – NOT MODEST

Article author

About the Author

Bill is the ultimate underdog/survivor/achiever overcoming personal circumstances and tragedy to rise to the top of corporate America. Homeless at age 14, a member of a street gang and a high-school dropout – he took control of his life by taking the GED exam and putting himself through college and law school.

At the request of a bank, he took over a foreclosed oil-field pipe manufacturing plant and turned it into a million dollar a month business, until OPEC slashed the price of oil – leaving Bill out of business and a million dollars in debt.

Refusing to give up, Bill and his wife & business partner, Kathy, borrowed $13,000 and created a new industry – Debt Resolution. Three years later, they had repaid the entire million dollar debt. Over the next 13 years they grew the company to 3,900 employees with revenues in excess of $1 billion and earnings in excess of $182 million.

There they pioneered novel financial instruments still utilized today on Wall Street. They also implemented unheard of perks and benefits for their employees, such as salaries at 2 times the industry standard, free health care, free on-site daycare, 250% 401K match program and legendary company trips where they took ALL of the employees and their spouses on annual trips to the Bahamas, Las Vegas and Ocean Cruises. One year they leased 27 – 747's so they could fly 6,000 employees and spouses to Disney World.

Bill and Kathy have individually graced the covers of national business magazines, Kathy on the cover of Forbes, and Bill on the cover of Inc. They were listed individually in the Forbes 400 wealthiest people in America. One national magazine ranked them number 25.

Bill maybe the only highschool drop-out who has:nn *

Created novel financial instruments that are still being used on Wall Street.
*

Had Harvard Business School use him as a Case Study.
*

Been granted a permanent place in the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History.
*

Been included in the Forbes Magazine list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.
*

Named as "One of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs of the Last 100 Years" by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, Allbusiness.com and Apple Computer.
*

Had his management techniques published in college textbooks and taught at universities across America.
*

Been awarded the American Academy of Achievement's "Golden Plate Award for one of the 20th Century's Most Extraordinary Achievers" - an award previously bestowed upon five U.S. Presidents and three Nobel Prize winners.
*

Accomplished the first "Investment Grade" Wall Street securitization of non-performing unsecured loans.
*

Accomplished 15 separate "Investment Grade" securitizations and debt financings consisting of $2.3 billion.
*

Established a $350 millio
Revolving Warehouse line of credit and a $430 millio
Commercial Paper Conduit.
*

Acknowledged by the Nilson Report as having created the "Largest, Best Trained, and Most Efficient Debt Collection Stafflin the World".
*

Acknowledged by BusinessWeek Magazine as "One of the Top 30 Family Friendly Companies" in the United States.
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Acknowledged by BusinessWeek Magazine as "One of the Best Entrepreneurs".
*

Lauded by Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas for his "Minority Enterprise Initiative".
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Acknowledged by BusinessWeek Magazine as "One of the Top Ten Family Oriented Businesses In America".
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Acknowledged by Working Woman Magazine as "One of the Top 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers".
*

Named one of the "Phoenix 50" by Success Magazinen *

Appointed by the Governor of Oklahoma to a four year term on the Board of "Oklahoma Futures"

In 1998, tragedy struck when Bill's former business partner committed fraud and sent the company into bankruptcy. Although Bill's former business partner told the prosecutors that he had acted without Bill's knowledge, admitted his guilt and was sent to prison – in the post Enron environment, U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, indicted Bill on 57 felony counts relating to Bill's partner's activities. Five years later, after a 2 ½ month long trial where the Government called 53 witnesses and produced over 1,000 exhibits, Bill rested his case without calling a single witness or producing a single exhibit. The jury unanimously acquitted Bill on all counts.

Ironically, 17 months after his acquittal and six and a half years after his company was liquidated, the Federal Bankruptcy Trustee issued his report which publicly acknowledged for the first time, “CFS was not a fraud”.

This experience would have embittered most people, but not them. Bill and Kathy now travel the country, sharing their stories of how they created their successes and how they dealt with their challenges. It is their life's goal to do for “failure” what Betty Ford did for alcoholism and Susan Komen did for breast cancer.

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