(Clearwisdom.net) I come from Toronto. I heard about Falun Dafa in 1998 but I didn't start to practice until 2002. I have changed from an ordinary person full of karma to a Fa-rectification period Dafa disciple. With Master's benevolent care and salvation, I have staggered along on my cultivation path over the last seven years. I have no words to express my happiness and my gratitude for a life saved and reborn, and for being able to help Teacher promote the Fa. I want to use this great opportunity to share with fellow practitioners my cultivation experience during my recent unemployment and search for a new job. Please kindly point any inadequacies in my understanding. Thank you!
1. Using Company Closing as Opportunity to Promote the Fa and Clarify the Truth
Last November, the company I had worked for over ten years announced that they would be shutting down within six months. It happened to be the busiest time for promoting the Shen Yun show and for ticket-sales in Toronto. I was one of the coordinators for the ticket booths. At peak time, we had over thirty ticket booths open and 80% of the tickets were sold at the booths during the later period of promotion. I devoted all my efforts to selling tickets. Faced with losing their jobs, my colleagues were all very frustrated and some of them even fell ill. When they saw that I acted like nothing was going to happen and seemed to be happily busy with what I was doing, (actually they knew what I was busy with), they were envious of me. When I began practicing Falun Dafa, I promoted the Fa in my company. Many people read the book, and learned the exercises from me. When they saw how I was both physically and spiritually fit, they expressed interest in learning Falun Gong. I used this great opportunity to further promote the Fa and clarify the truth to them.
I used to promote the Fa and clarify the truth to only those departments that I had associations with, and dared not do so on the company-wide email list. I was afraid that personnel in the Human Resources Department would have a different opinion. This time I thought if I didn't do it company-wide, it would be difficult in the future to have another opportunity. This company was founded over thirty years ago, and many colleagues sounded hopeless and sad in their farewell emails. I used this opportunity to send out an email, sharing with them my cultivation experiences and how I became healthy both physically as well as mentally. In the email, I also listed the websites for "Falundafa.org and Minghui.org." Because it was my own experience, and I did it for the benefit of others, my emails really touched my colleagues. They came to my office one after another to shake my hand and hug me. Many expressed their thanks with tears in their eyes. As a result, my manager had to stand at the door to keep order.
Some asked where they could buy a copy of Zhuan Falun, and the exercise DVDs. Some asked where to find practice sites and others asked about the persecution happening in China.
One of them said, "You have given us the best lay-off package." One held my hand and said, "In this company, the biggest reward for me is to have known you." Another person hugged me excitedly and said, "I know you are very busy, but no matter how busy you are, please don't forget to come back and visit us." I said, "I will, but if you go to the park to do the exercises, you will see me there every week." She asked, "Is it true? Then I will go."
I am so grateful to Master for giving me this opportunity to clarify the truth about Dafa to everyone in the company before it was shut down.
2. I Found The Best Job in the World
About six months ago, our newspaper, the Epoch Times in Toronto, was urgently in need of a full-time reporter. I discussed it with my husband and we decided to have him quit his job and become a full-time reporter for our truth-clarification media department. My work at the time was a comparatively professional job and my manager once told me, "Your job is very special. If we are going to lay off people, it won't be you unless the company shuts down." Unexpectedly, the company really did shut down.
When I was busying myself with Shen Yun promotions, I didn't have time to think about the lay off. But when the Shen Yun Shows in Toronto ended, and with free time on my hands, many human thoughts suddenly appeared and I wondered to myself, "I am out of a job now. What am I going to do next? What means should we live on? What about our child's tuition for attending the university?
One day when I was studying the Fa, I read Master's words:
"It depends on you. I've talked about these things many times, but there will always be a need for people to do things like visiting potential clients and doing sales and marketing.
As you are Dafa disciples, whatever it is you are asked to do--be it writing articles, distributing materials, or going out to the streets--you can do it well. But it seems that if you are asked to visit potential clients and do sales and marketing, you don't want to." ("Fa Teaching at the 2007 New York Fa Conference")
I have been the community reporter and speak Cantonese. Furthermore, for the past years, I had been coordinating the ticket sales booths in the Chinese community. So it dawned on me: Yes, I am going to do the advertising sales for the Epoch Times newspaper, focusing on the Chinese market. Once I made up my mind, I went and applied for the job. Luckily, I was hired very quickly. After one week doing the job, I realized that I had found the best job in the world.
In the office, we start doing the exercises at 6:30 a.m., study the English Zhuan Falun at 7:30 a.m., and then we recite Hong Yin. Our work begins after we send forth righteous thoughts.
We have our sales meeting once a week. Everything we discuss is related to our cultivation. For example, unselfishness and thinking about others before oneself, how to eliminate various attachments, etc. Each of us shares our cultivating experiences that derives from our work and we improve ourselves. And then we set our sales quotas for the following week. I work in an environment which I believe I could never find anywhere else. This is why the advertising sales in Toronto became the strongest in our global team. I thank Master for giving me the opportunity to become a member of this sales team.
3. Every First Is A Test
a. The first day at work: I said I am quitting
When some fellow practitioners became aware that I was going to do Epoch Times sales, they shared with me their different thoughts. Some said, "Now is the most difficult time to do sales, since many clients have even withdrawn their advertising with us. You are new, that is even more difficult." Others said, "Look at your character, you are impatient and so sensitive about your reputation. Can you really sell advertisements?" Some others said, "When you were a reporter, it was always others who made a concession to you, now that you are doing the sales, you have to give in to others. Can you really do that?" I went to work the first day with a very unsteady mood. The first thing I said to our director was, "I am quitting sales. I want to go back to being a reporter." She was quick to reply, "You have been a reporter for many years, and I did not see you making any progress. You'd better do sales." Seeing my indecision, she encouraged me by saying, "We are currently lacking people doing sales in the Chinese community. You have accumulated a lot of experience in the past with selling tickets, so it really fits you to do sales in the Chinese community. Based on your optimistic character, I trust you are the best candidate." With her encouragement, I started my first day as a sales person.
b. The first sales meeting: My sales quota was no quota
When I joined my first weekly sales meeting, I mostly wanted to listen to fellow
practitioners' sharing about how they cultivate themselves while securing
advertisements. But when it came to the point where everyone had to set a sales
quota for the next week, I was nervous. I recall the first sales meeting, where
every fellow practitioner set their monthly quota at ten thousand or more. When
the sales manager asked me, I said, "I have no quota." Then she said,
"How can you have no quota? I will set you a quota with six hundred a week.
If you cannot make it, you should ask other fellow practitioners to help you to
achieve it." I looked at this serious sales manager who is always gentle
and refined during non-working time, and I felt she was very admirable. So I
made up my mind and took the job.
c. For my first appointment, the client refused to meet me
Once the quota was set, I started to look for clients. One fellow practitioner told me, "The Chinese market is very difficult to start with. When I first started to do sales, I could not find one client even after I made two hundred phone calls a day. Then I changed to the non-Chinese market. You should start by making phone-calls." I was thinking, "That is because you don't have the skills for making phone calls. I don't think I need to make so many phone calls." It did happen that when I made the second call, I succeeded in making an appointment with a client. I was ecstatic! Then the fellow practitioner reminded me not to have the attachment of zealotry by saying, "It is Master who is encouraging you." However, I could hardly control my attachment of zealotry and showing off. I thought, it doesn't seem that difficult to get advertisements.
Several days later, I was fully prepared to go with a fellow practitioner to see my first client. However, when we arrived, his secretary told us that the boss had to attend another meeting and could not see us. When the fellow practitioner saw me so disheartened, he said, "This happens often. You will gradually get used to it."
After this rebuff, I started making phone calls more seriously. Whenever I encountered any refusal or impolite clients, I endured it much better than before.
d. My first client: You are talking business in the same seat as the Prime Minister
When the fellow practitioner noticed that I had made almost enough phone calls, he told me, "You should start to go in person to do sales." The first and second day, this fellow practitioner asked me to go, but I used all kinds of excuses not to go. On the third day, I felt that I had no more excuses, and then I asked the other practitioner to go with me. We went out but only received rejections. When the fellow practitioner got in the vehicle, he was saying to himself, "Dafa practitioners are so great. We are starting the future for human beings." Upon hearing this, I suddenly felt much more clear-minded and realized that this was Master's encouragement.
I then started going out to do my sales pitches with Chinese restaurants, supermarkets and shopping centers, etc. I took an Epoch Times newspaper with me, the order forms and maintained strong righteous thoughts as I went from one place to another to talk to future clients. I had the mindset that if only they will listen to me, I won't have any regrets. Eventually, many people learned the truth and got to know about our newspaper. At the same time, my sales skills improved.
Master said:
"So it's exactly because right now there are many things that need to be done and many people are still not aware [of what's really going on] that we have the situation we are seeing today and there is a need for you to do things. And the changes to this state are in turn inseparable from everything that Dafa disciples are contributing as they clarify the truth and save sentient beings. Of course, the effect of the Fa-rectification's situation is part of it too, but if the Dafa disciples don't all clarify the truth to individual people, or clarify the truth to society, then as for the process of ordinary people's minds being transformed at the surface level, that's not something gods will do for them on an individual basis. So things that involve the surface level of human beings have to be done by Dafa disciples." ("Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital")
Upon a fellow practitioner's suggestion, I visited a restaurant in Chinatown to discuss business. After I introduced our newspaper to the boss, he pointed to my seat and said, "Do you know you are sitting in the same seat where Prime Minister Steven Harper sat when he came to our restaurant?" Then I said, "Really, I feel so very honored." He then said, "Since you sit in that seat as the Prime Minister and want an advertisement from me, then you do whatever you need to do." So, he became my first client.
4. Any Environment Can Be a Chance to Elevate Oneself in Cultivation
After I did sales for two weeks and still didn't receive any orders, I started to give up. At the sales meeting, I complained that I had not received any training, and no one showed me how to do the sales and let me perish by myself. When a fellow practitioner noticed my attachments, he said to me, "Do you know why you can't get any advertisements? Because you have too strong of an attachment to validate yourself." I felt I was totally wronged and thought that if I get an order, it means I have validated myself. But I didn't have any clients, so how can this show that I am validating myself? When I calmed down and studied the Fa, I understood what the fellow practitioner had said to me.
When I looked deep inside myself, I noticed that I had a very strong attachment to validating myself for a long period of time. I am a person who is very warm-hearted and optimistic, therefore I became the coordinator for some projects. Gradually, I formed some attachments that I was not even aware of. I like to hear people say good things about me, and can't tolerate anything that is not in my favor. I show off everywhere and look down upon others. I was new in this team, and I felt that no one was helping me. My attachment of feeling unbalanced was more obvious. So when I couldn't get any advertisements, I felt that I was losing face, had no talent and was inferior to others.
Actually my fundamental attachment was selfishness, and it was hidden deeply. This selfishness formed a field and enveloped me. I have been cultivating for so many years, and believed that I am pretty good about thinking of others first. Actually, deep in my conscience, the word "selfishness" was hiding. I cared about being healthy, have a good feeling, my own consummation, and how many things I accomplished. Many attachments originated from this "selfishness." However, we are the lives in the new universe, and should conform to the criteria of the new universe, which is doing things for others. I should genuinely realize that the purpose for me to be in this human world is to save sentient beings instead of worrying about my own consummation. At this very last stage of saving sentient beings, I shouldn't follow my own feelings, since there are still many predestined people waiting to be saved.
Master said:
"There's something you must pay attention to: you are validating the Fa, not validating yourselves. A Dafa disciple's responsibility is to validate the Fa. Validating the Fa is cultivation, and what you remove in the cultivation process is none other than the attachment to self; you can't, instead, go and exacerbate the problem of validating oneself, even if you do it unwittingly. When you're validating the Fa and cultivating, that is a process of removing self, and only when you do that are you really validating yourself. That's because ultimately you have to let go of all your human things, and only after you've let go of all your human attachments can you step out from the throngs of everyday people."
"You are a cultivator, so you need to have mighty-virtue. And where does your mighty-virtue come from? Doesn't it come from letting go of self and being selfless in this grueling environment, and being completely responsible to the Fa as a Dafa disciple? Isn't that, itself, mighty-virtue? And what's more, you did it in a grueling environment. The more you put you first or mix in [factors of] self, the less mighty-virtue you have, and that's why it is less likely that you succeed at things or do them well. Dafa's things should be the most sacred, and that's why the less you have of your own notions and involve your own factors, the better you can handle them and the more likely you are to succeed." ("Teaching the Fa at the Meeting with Asia-Pacific Students")
When I realized that I had this huge attachment, I tried hard to eliminate it. With a purified heart that wanted to save sentient beings, I made phone calls, made appointments with clients and went to see them in person. I felt that when I had a light heart, the clients I met also looked happy. I realized that the mission for me to do the advertisements was to save sentient beings.
I really cherish the current environment where I can both work and cultivate. Fellow practitioners' diligence motivates me, their unselfish help encourages me, and their skills also give me the strength to go forward.
No matter what path Master arranges for me, I will follow Master home.
Lastly, let us encourage each other with Master's poem:
Discarding Attachments
"You may talk cultivation
But you have to discard the attachments
that you hold deep inside
What's given up is not oneself
But instead the folly of delusion"
(Hong Yin Vol. II)
Thank you most compassionate and greatest Master! Thank you everyone!
