One of April Shprintz’s friends made a $25,000 mistake just because he focused on the negative aspect of the opportunity at hand rather than its positive side. In this episode, she explains how to reframe circumstances that do not seem to go your way and make sure you do not miss out on a huge opportunity.
—
Listen to the podcast here
A $25,000 Mistake
$75,000 for the audio rights
I am so glad you’re here. I have an amazing reframe story for you. It comes from a former client and a great friend. It’s a great example of how we can take something that is amazing and make it absolute shit if we want to and how if we then reframe it for ourselves, we can make sure that we don’t miss out on a huge opportunity.
A friend of mine called. He was pissed that he’d been offered $75,000 for the audio rights of his book. I want to celebrate and be so excited because although he has been a best-selling author around the world, this was a big deal. I was super excited for him. He had co-authored a lot of books and this was a book he wrote by himself. He refused to be excited about it.
He had all these reasons. The first one was, “I had to buy my partner out of the rights for this book, so I’m only going to get half of it.” He said, “After taxes, it’ll probably only be $20,000.” I did some quick math. As long as he has a good tax strategist, half of it should be at least $25,000 or probably more than that. He then told me, “They’re not going to let me voice the audiobook. I’m so upset. It’s so disrespectful. I can’t believe they’re doing this to me.” All I could think of was, “I can’t believe you’re not excited that somebody wants those options and that somebody wants to pay you.”
They said, “We’re offering this to you. We really want you to be on board, but we normally hire a professional to voice the book. If you’re saying you have to voice the book or you’re not going to do the deal, we can go to your production company that did the book and buy it from them. You won’t get any money.” This is the universe trying to help him get money no matter what and he still was so stuck on the idea that they were being disrespectful and didn’t honor who he was and what he was doing. We all get in this place. I want to be very clear about that.
What I told him was, and this is so true most of the time, “This is not about you. This is about the fact that most of the time, people who want to read their own books can’t.” They’re not vocally trained the way he is. They don’t have the background he does. They don’t have the voice he does. I said, “Why don’t you assume they’re ignorant and they don’t understand and ask for an exception?
Instead of asking for an exception of, “Pick me automatically,” ask to be in the audition. Pick another couple of people who’d be good to read it and put your voice in there too. That way, you know your book is getting read by the best person. If you aren’t the person who gets picked, assume that there’s probably a really good reason for it.”
He was still a little irritated because he wanted to be mad. Do you know how when you get ingrained in that place and you have to be pissed and don’t want to let go of it or even when someone’s presenting you with logic, you still don’t want to let go of that anger? You’re more logical than that and you can let go of it more quickly? I was speaking for me because I could get in that place, and he definitely was.
I said, “You’ve got folks who wanted to option your books for a series. What if the reason you can’t read this book is that the week that you’d be reading it is the only week you could go out to California to talk with someone who wants to do a series on your book? You never know.” At this moment, because he was still mad, he was like, “It’s not about the money. It’s not about those opportunities.” I said, “If it’s not about the money, then send me the money. Do it to do it. You want people to get the chance to have your book on audio. I can do something awesome with $25,000. I’ll even send you photos of what I do.
Refusing Opportunities
The other reason that you don’t want to say no to an opportunity like that is because you’re telling the universe, “I don’t want this money. Maybe everyone has all the money in the world that they need, but you want to say yes to it anyway. You can give it to somebody else. It doesn’t matter.” I was tongue-in-cheek saying he could give it to me, but it wasn’t until he was presented with the idea of not having it and giving it to someone else that he realized, “There are fun things that I could do with that money.”
I want you to remember that when something happens to you and it seems so counterintuitive that you’re upset about it because it is something that somebody else would be thrilled about, it is triggering you. It is triggering something that has happened in your past. In this case, someone had, I’m sure at some point, disrespected him in some big way so any perception of being disrespected really bothered him. The way to reframe that is to assume that people don’t know. Go around assuming people are trying their best but they don’t get it. Attempt to explain it to them and show them how it can work.
When something happens to you and it seems so counterintuitive that you are upset about it because somebody else is thrilled about it, then it is triggering you. Share on XLook for those times when the universe is doing everything in the world to make sure you get what you want and get aligned with that instead of pushing against it. What could end up happening for you is something like this where you get this windfall you weren’t expecting and something that is a huge thing for your career that five years ago you would have been praying for. You can enjoy it at the moment.
If you can’t enjoy it and you know it’s something that you would be telling someone else to enjoy or something that at some point you really wanted, take a moment and think about how you can reframe it. Call someone you trust and say, “Let me talk this through with you,” so that you can get to the place where you’re living the life you’ve always wanted and you’re enjoying every moment of it. Here’s to your success.
