BLOOD AND OXYGEN

By Miles Patrick Yohnke

© 2024 All Rights Reserved.

"Sell isn't a dirty four-letter word.  Quit is a dirty four-letter word."

I've been saying that opening quote going back to the 1990s when I was in the thrilling beauty industry as a salon representative.

Photo of Miles Patrick Yohnke by Jenn Diehl

You see I had many new salon representatives start within the two companies I worked for through the 1990s and many early on would say the very same thing to me: "I can't sell. I'm not born to sell." And I'd tell them each the same story - this story: "You came out of your mother's womb, crying, wanting to be comforted. You were selling yourself that very moment. Later you sold your parents on why you needed something, and you constantly did this through the many years. Later in life you sold yourself on why someone would want to date you." The reality is each and every one is selling themselves every moment of every day. Each one of us is a born salesperson.

On August 31, 2024, will mark five years since my dear mother went to be with our Heavenly Creator. I'd like to tell you of an event that occurred on Monday, August 19, 2019 - twelve days before she departed.

We went to the St. Paul's hospital here in my beloved Saskatoon for an update on mom's health. It wasn't good news. Mom decided no more surgeries (she had nine bladder cancer surgeries) and no more blood transfusions. She'd bleed in her discharge. The surgeries would stop it for a period of time and return. She'd get low and they'd top her up with a blood transfusion.

The doctor told us what would happen over the course of the coming weeks is that she'd get so low in blood--she'd get so low of oxygen--that her heart and or brain and or organs would simply stop.

After the news we walked side by side through the hospital - like he had earlier, no walking aids, etc., for my eighty-seven-year-old mother, but after a great distance she stopped walking, and just looked at me (she was tired) but she looked at me with a look I'll take to my grave -- I can still picture her eyes -- she didn't say a word -- and we started walking again for we didn't stop long - just mere moments. Through my mother's eyes she was telling me like she had my entire life, we don't quit.

It would have been easy for mom to say go get me a wheelchair. Just imagine her mental state. She had just days left - twelve as it turned out.

My mother got up the next day and made her bed, did her hair, dressed up, did her morning prayers and made lunch to share for when I came to visit. She did her normal routine. Later she watched her beloved Toronto Blue Jays baseball team on television and wrote down all the stats. Why? Why would she do that, she wasn't going to see the end of the Toronto Blue Jays season.

She had built up a repetitive system, a selling system if you will, to be her very best and it never wavered throughout her entire life.

It's all in your brain.

She constantly told her brain what it can do - like doing three hundred sit-ups each and every day. Yes, she did that up until she was eighty years old. She did six groups of fifty throughout the day and marked them down and kept track until they were completed. She walked two and a half miles each day starting at 9 a.m. And she did 5kms on her stationary bicycle. In fact, she had over 100,000kms (60,000 miles) on her two stationary bicycles that she had through her life. My long-time and dear friend, Marcel Toews (co-owner of Burnett's Key Shop - a Saskatoon small business landmark since 1951) would take out the tension wheel and turn it as she'd wear out one side, and he'd turn it again to get the most out of the wheel before replacing the entire bicycle for her second one.

Mother taught me and she teaches each of us that we can do anything if we really engage our brain - if we fully apply ourselves.

Each of us is filled with blood and oxygen and we don't know how long we will have it, but what we control is our brain--our effort.

In my article: 'Bridget Rose Yohnke' I write of the glorious last forty-eight hours of her physical life and so much more.

In my one-minute article: 'Mother' I speak of her more and more that she taught me that applies to all of us.

And we return to that opening quote: "Sell isn't a dirty four-letter word. Quit is a dirty four-letter word."

When I was in the exhilarating beauty industry, I was an unpaid employee of the beauty salons I called on. I worked for them, as their blood and oxygen and I poured my own blood and oxygen into them and when I switched companies all my accounts came with me putting the company I worked for out of business just a year later. You build a bond with your accounts. You know them personally and more times than not the account buys you first, the product second, and the company third.

You have to remove the tension. Wheel on past the defensiveness to get inside their brain. We rid ourselves of envy and jealousy and get to a real place. It isn't about your income, it's about what you become. You truly care for your customer needs, not your needs, and when you get to that mental state all flourish.

I'm still selling. I'm selling you on you now. I want your blood and oxygen healthy and happy. I want you to be content. I want you to be at peace. Free of being defensive. Free from envy. Free from jealousy.

If your salesperson, an artist, whatever occupation you're in you want to pour all of your blood and oxygen into it. Never make excuses, for life is a blessing, a real privilege. Don't waste a day, a moment, a single second.

Never Quit!

Miles, at age sixty. Photo by Jenn Diehl

For my mother: Bridget Rose Yohnke (March 28, 1932 - August 31, 2019)