This week’s article is the first in almost two month’s time—not a good show for a feature that for the past year and a half, has run just about every week, with a few occasional exceptions. When you commit to writing a regular feature and you call it Prospecting Weekly, you had better plan on meeting that commitment.

Which begs the question: where the heck have I been? Why haven’t I written anything new? What does that say about me and my pledge to keep fresh new perspectives on prospecting and relationship building coming your way?

The truth is: I didn’t feel like it.

“Okay,” you might respond. “Wish I could blow off every obligation I had simply because I didn’t feel like it.” Indeed—that is how I would respond!

Of course there is more to it: Over the past several weeks I have had many changes in my life come to pass: I made an exciting shift in my career; I settled into a new home; I attended to some improvements to my health and I had some other long-awaited things transpire in my personal life. All is well, and I am abundantly blessed… yet I still could have gotten my weekly bloviating completed.

Maybe—and yet I also felt that if I put something together hastily and sent it out, it might do more harm than good. Do the job right, or don’t do it at all. Plus, sometimes, you have to allow yourself a break. Is this rationalization because I simply didn’t feel like it?

Perhaps. I will admit that it is a little of both. With all I had going on, it was hard to put myself into a state in which I could produce ideas and write productively. This means that I have some learnin’ to do when it comes to controlling my state. After all, if it’s up to me to make follow up calls to prospects and colleagues, I can’t blow it off simply because I don’t feel like it.

The bottom line: The most successful people in the world—in business, in family, in life, in sports, in entertainment—are masters of controlling their own states. It’s a secret to maintaining discipline. Think about this: discipline is sticking to a pre-desired pattern of behavior regardless of the circumstances—which include counter-productive states. Now if you learn to master your state at any given time, would that now help you strengthen your discipline?

So, this leads us to the question: are you in control of your state, or is your state in control of you?

We will continue this discussion next week.