Tuesday, May 20, 2025
One of the hardest things I ever had to do was to sell something I didn’t intrinsically believe in. I used to teach in a publicly funded boarding high school for the artistically gifted. I wholeheartedly believed in that place. It was a state-funded jewel. Recruiting was easy because I vicariously lived through my students. I would have loved going there had I had a chance to be 18 again.
I didn’t realize the principle of buy in, however. I sold myself short when I thought the “institution” was what I believed in. I bought into my gut instinct about a place. When I moved into university teaching, I felt like a phony. The last two schools I taught for couldn’t sustain my belief. My gut was right, but I didn’t listen or buy into that feeling about the institutions.
I would not have attended the schools I was trying to sell, so I became a phony salesman trying to recruit students. You can only betray yourself so long before the hardship catches up to you. It was like a person who doesn’t like Buicks, inherently, would never drive one, but who worked for a Buick dealership. The customer cannot buy your phony sales pitch.
I realized this about my church music career. I no longer felt the institution’s mission was aligned with mine. My gut was not buying it. I couldn’t sell it because I couldn’t love it. So if you’re trying to sell something that you don’t believe in, life is hard. You’re betraying the only “buy in” system that sells – you. You will know when you lose your faith in something, which resonates within. It’s not them, it’s you. Church works for many people. It doesn’t work for me, anymore. I can only sell what I buy into, and I ain’t buying it anymore. It’s not them – it’s me.