Southwestern Advantage experience

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I am truly grateful that the Sales & Leadership summer program Southwestern Advantage (SW) exists and it’s meant to build character in young students through one of the toughest and most psychologically demanding jobs: door-to-door sales. Without going further down in reading details about my personal experience, I can already now recommend to anyone doubting whether they should do it or not, to simply DO IT. “Don’t overthink” (like you’ll hear a lot in the program), just go and do it with an open mind. It’s a great place to start organizing your life, building good habits and setting meaningful priorities for yourself. Go through this summer with the best you’ve got at the moment and see what comes out on the other side.

Here is what I liked so much about this summer sales experience:

1. The people I met: colleagues, friends, managers, mentors, host families – great connections are built and some bonds are really for lifetime.
   
2. The network of SW graduates, regardless of geography or age – I am sure I can connect with any person who finished at least one SW summer and have so many things to discuss: the fun and taught times, the “war” and problem solving days, the things we used to do on Sundays, the hottest boy/girl in the org, etc.
   
3. The awesome stories from the bookfield and the amazing American (and not only) people I got to meet there.
   
4. I personally have one small, kind of silly thing, that I started doing during SW summers and still find it so awesome: when going to bed at night, to say Thank You to the body. Let it relax and enjoy the soft cushions of the bed. One small thing like this, but it’s precious in the long run.
   
5. How the relationship with my own parents and family has improved as a result of this experience – sometimes, it really takes talking to 3000 or 5000 families over a few SW summers before getting some courage to address real issues, to conflict or to say those things left unsaid or implied to our own parents.
   
6. And, of course, the unpleasant truths I learned about myself through it.

Some harsh truths that I learned during the program are:

1. What you are one day going to be, you are NOW becoming. I wish I can emphasize NOW enough so people (myself included) understand that it’s about today, this hour, this very moment… and not about the NOW that starts on Mondays, beginning of months or years.
   
2. The pain of regret is worse the pain of discipline.
   
3. People hear my words, but they feel my attitude. How we make people feel can be more valuable than what we say to them.
   
4. Nothing exceeds reality. Doing the SW program is a unique experience. There’s no way in the world you would understand what it is all about unless you’ve actually been there, done the knocks, talked to some families, been on Sunday meetings, etc.
   
5. The next one is from one of the most amazing conversations I had with my manager in my second summer: I can’t put my excitement or expectations into the big picture, because the big picture is something we have no control over. But for the big picture to happen, thousands of small (daily, routine) things need to happen first, things that we can control – so I should rather get excited about tackling those little things again and again.
   
6. Integrity and being fully honesty with myself matters. If I venture into anything having in the back of my head a hidden outcome to pursue (call it duality or fake kindness), than the only person who ends up suffering is me. Whenever I start something thinking that I am smarter than anybody else and can get something else besides what that thing was meant for, I end up with nothing, it’s like chasing the two rabbits and ending up with none.
   
7. Everybody has insecurities, but people who are aware of theirs and don’t hide them could be more secure than others. Its simply because this awareness makes them capable of self irony and fun. They don’t take themselves too seriously, so no one can use their insecurities against them, in a surprising way.

My biggest take-away from the program is that, those things they thought us, are really supposed to be applied on a daily basis in my routine life. And, I assume, the reason why today I can be grateful for it, is because I am, actually, applying most of them: schedule, exercise, self talk, choosing the attitude.

At some point, I thought that I was a failure at SW, because I wasn’t successful at building a career there, or due to other small things. But, gradually, I understood that failure at building a career in SW is just one of the many experiences I had. An experience in itself does not make me a failure. In reality, the program has done a great job at making me open my eyes and embark on my personalized journey of self discovery and self development – which is, after all, the main purpose of the program. Long-term wise, experience wise, looking at how many uncomfortable truths that project has revealed about myself – it was a successful experience! E. g. I know that I wouldn’t be writing this blog today if it wasn’t for my SW summer program. The whole realization that I want to write more, I want to explore more of my writing hobby came precisely after my second summer. So, I am glad I am nurturing this crucial habit for my emotional and mental hygiene – writing.

I know there are a few critics of the program. Deep, deep inside, I might have had some objections myself for a short time. But it was never about the program itself. From what I know now, I can honestly say that, the way how you feel about the SW program is your own personal projections, intrinsic reflections or expectations of yourself. The program in itself is solid, has existed for many years and will probably last even longer. It took me one or two years to come to this conclusion, so there’s not much to say here but a wholehearted THANK YOU.