Have you gotten one of those free offers over the Internet? You know the one, get a free XYZ Computer. Your mind says “wait a minute! No one gives away free XYZ Computers…but maybe? I got one of those messages this week and thought, “okay, maybe this is really true. Let’s give it a shot!” I clicked the little button and I was in the next screen, the one that had the ominous words, “Please fill out this brief survey.” (Emphasis on “brief”) About fifteen minutes later after I had told my life story, answered a question on every product or service I had ever used in my lifetime and given away the rights to my life insurance policy, the next button appeared, “Please review the offers on these products.” Have you ever tried to review a hundred products each with a special offer such as “free, pay only shipping and handling of $7.95!” (product costs $1.95 to ship, the rest is profit on the $1.95 sunglasses) or “please review for thirty days with no obligation.” (After thirty days I can’t even remember that I received “it”) You only have to order four of these “free” products and you are allowed to go to the next screen. Now it gets fascinating! This is “the screen,” the one that will get you close to the Holy Grail, the free XYZ Computer. Simply agree to accept marketing messages from the following three thousand companies for the next year and you will receive your free XYZ Computer!
At this point it is time to consider the consequences! You will never get through all the e-mail advertisements, never have time to hit the unsubscribe button that leads you to the screen that requires a brief (there’s that word again!) survey to unsubscribe, or face the probability that you unknowingly ordered a lifetime subscription to “Zen Today” magazine. I did what any logical, busy, modern human being would do…I exited the website while rationalizing that the XYZ model computer they would have sent me was the refurbished, low end, low memory model, that would have had enough memory to maybe run my operating system. Of course I will never know. I am still getting about a hundred e-mail advertisements a day. (never would have had time to use the free XYZ Computer), and wondering what possessed me to even believe for one second that anything is “free.”
What is the whole point of this article? We spend so much time looking for the “freebies” in life or the big hit that we lose our focus on what really gets us to success in any chosen endeavor…hard work, a passion for excellence, and never quitting. Great things come to those who never waiver from the goal, who wake up in the morning knowing what they must do that day to succeed and making the commitment regardless of time or obstacles to accomplish the task at hand.
What a minute, I just got one of those hundred e-mail advertisements that have been appearing since I made my valiant effort to obtain the XYZ Computer! It says, “Get a free personal digital assistant!” You know the one, it is a phone, camera, MP3 player, organizer, takes your temperature and starts the coffee in the morning. Hey! Maybe this time? Some people never learn!