The Art Of

Selling
Yourself
A Roadmap
By Peter Fritz Walter
 Contents
Introduction 3
The Inborn Talent 5
Qualities and Styles 10
The Do Mindset 25
Grasping Opportunities 27
Points to Ponder 35

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 Introduction
Selling always implies selling yourself. If you can’t
sell yourself because you are blocked in your self-ex-
pression or you suffer from feelings of guilt and
shame, you are ‘not outgoing’ in the very sense of
this word. You are living in a shell, then, and by the
way, many people live these kind of existences. They
are the lunar, introvert types. By contrast, the sales
personality is the solar, extrovert type. The good
salesperson has a strong but structured ego and a
good communication ability.
But that is not all. What I am going to show in
this guide is that there are two levels of success in
selling. There is the ordinary level of success, as it
were, that I was just mentioning, that goes along
with an outgoing, social-minded personality, a strong

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focus, good organizational ability, excellent commu-
nication skills, and generally, a pleasant personality.
There are two types of good salespeople, those who
have the above-mentioned qualities because they
have built them, and those who do selling like we
breathe or eat because they have the inborn talent.
It goes without saying that the first group of peo-
ple can be trained and developed, while the second
group do not need that, as they have it inborn; they
choose sales because it’s a highly pleasurable activity
for them, and something natural. Long ago, I have
discovered that among school children, you always
find a few of the latter type, and they are usually the
group leaders.
What is it that animates these people and makes
them so highly successful in selling? I have analyzed

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that over the years, having repeatedly encountered
persons of that group, and every time it was a very
enriching experience for me. For these people are
original in all they do, they are not imitating others,
or if they do, they do it for a while only, just for exer-
cising themselves in a new life skill, but they always
fall back into their own pattern.

The Inborn Talent

Before I start, let me list the qualities and jobs
these people are not good for, and usually not inter-
ested in:
‣ Academic work
‣ Work in institutions
‣ Work that is supervised
‣ Technical, meticulous, precise work
‣ Bureaucracy and government work

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 Why do they not like these jobs? Naturally, they
display their unique soul values in their work, which
is why they are daring, original, bold and exuberant.
Whatever they come to do, whatever product they
sell, whatever things they are generally enthusiastic
about, their interest is not a fancy but to be taken as
a genuine expression of their soul. It is amazing to
see that for these people there is no self-reflection;
with one word, they are generally not aware of their
brilliance. They are just naturally deploying their be-
ing, without guilt or shame. They have very little
anxiety, or hide it very well; in truth they may have
strong anxiety inside, but are able to not display it in
relationships.
I have also discovered that when they sell, they do
not really sell the product, but themselves. They put

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their whole personality in the deal, and this with
quite an emotional drama sometimes; in fact, you feel
compelled to buy from them because you feel you
are enriched through the relationship!
They also often have a liking for luxury, for ex-
pensive things, famous car makers, huge houses, and
this independently from their actual earnings. In law
school, I met a young man in his first semester who
did not look and act at all like a first semester law
student, but like a born business man. He was play-
ing Bridge with about everybody important in town,
and was dreaming of buying his favorite car, a Rolls-
Royce, after finalizing his diploma. He said the
dream, as it was so big, gave him enough drive for
pushing through the otherwise rather boring studies.
He was a very social and outgoing person, an excel-

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lent bonder, easy-going and smart, good-looking and
witty, brilliant in what he did, outspoken and honest
with the professors and his colleagues, but not at all
out for favors. Another colleague at law school was a
young economist who already in the 6th semester in-
vested the sum of twenty thousand Deutschmark to
buy stock options. He had taken a loan, and took of
course all the risk as he was speculating in options
and currency trading. And he had the same kind of
personality, outgoing, positive, smart, a tall guy, who
had strong focus in all he did. Needless to add that
he was highly successful and told me shortly before
finalizing his diploma, he had made already two
hundred fifty thousand marks from his investment,
which was of course a phenomenal success for a
young student.

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 I also observed that these people have very high
ambition in whatever they are doing. They think big
and want to realize success; they do not have a com-
placent mindset but like to take challenges when
these challenges are conducive for bringing them
forward. On the other hand, they are smart enough
to avoid unnecessary risks, those that do not bring a
direct result for their progress in life. For example,
they are not the social fighters, they are not those
who want to help poor children in the third world,
and they have a healthy focus on themselves and
their own little life.
They generally do not bother about politics and
the usual overall stupidity of our leaders and role
models; they just take it with a smile, and care for
their own business. That is a very healthy attitude

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when you see how sick and perverted many of the
NGO people are, who are as it were ‘caring for the
good,’ while they are doing the most atrocious things
to people in the name of their mission.
What makes it refreshing to deal with these in-
tense and smart men and women is that they are ba-
sically non-judgmental in their relationships; they do
not observe what their neighbors are doing, or if one
should go to church at Sundays; they do what they
do with a healthy conviction that it’s the right thing
to do.

Qualities and Styles

What are the qualities I observed with these and
others I met and found to be highly successful both
in relationships and in business? I list them here and
please bear in mind that the list is not exhaustive:
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 • fearless, daring, bold, outgoing, smart, easy bonders
• no display of anxiety, no talk about problems, cheerful personality
• high ambition, high self-esteem, high expectancy to be rewarded
• facing problems, they do not fight for ‘the right’ but solve the problem
• overall very effective in all they do, rather than ‘hard-working’
• able to receive criticism and learn from it
• learn from their failures and stand up after falling down
• have a positive mindset even in very difficult times
• firm and outspoken to counter corruption in relationships
• not easily tracked into codependent relations
• generally have a well-structured ego and high autonomy
• while being self-affirming, they basically accept all people
• can be warm and helpful when seeing people in trouble
• quick in decision-making when opportunities arise
• able to calculate risk under stress, avoiding excessive risk
• choose business and marriage partners for ‘the good opportunity’
• display strategic thinking, applying certain tactics

Before I come to talk how these men and women

are subtly playing their social game with their soul
values as invisible weapons, let me quote somebody
who is an authority on the subject.

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 Edward de Bono, the well-known think tank and
highly successful corporate coach has written a book
on the subject. The book is entitled Tactics: The Art
and Science of Success (1993), and it’s actually a team
work project that received quite considerable fund-
ing. It’s perhaps the best that ever was written on the
subject from an empirical perspective.
This book, which is based on the thorough stud-
ies of Piers Dudgeon and Valerie Jennings, presents a
precious analysis of how to be successful. The study
is based on fifty-five interviews with men and women
who have been outstandingly successful, among
them David Bailey, Chris Bonington, Nolan Bushnell,
Roy Cohn, Hans Eysenck, Malcolm Forbes, Lord
Grade, Robert Holmes à Court, Felix Kroll, Paul Mc-

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Cready, David Mahoney, Clive Sinclair, Jackie Stew-
ard and Virginia Wade.
With his usual lucidity, Edward de Bono analyzes
the quite different paths to success these people have
taken, revealing some striking truths such as ‘Build-
ing your strengths brings you more success than
compensating for your weaknesses’ or ‘People care is
of huge importance in achieving success.’ Excerpts of
the interviews together with de Bono’s very insightful
classification of success in various categories and
subcategories make the core of this most unusual and
highly readable book.
To be true, the book is a treasure! The informa-
tion you get is among the most valuable you can ob-
tain not only for your business career but for your
life as a whole. Most of the people interviewed

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showed uncommon views, high originality, and a
daring, non-conventional, high-spirited, intelligent
and bold approach to life, an approach that is never,
in this form, taught or encouraged in school or uni-
versity.
Let me start with having a look at the main charac-
teristics that the author found to be valid for success
in life and business:
‣ Creative style
‣ Energy, drive and direction
‣ Confidence and self-confidence
‣ Stamina and hard work
‣ Effectiveness
‣ Ruthlessness
‣ Ability to cope with failure
‣ Tactics

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 These were found to be the positively stimulating
factors of success. Interestingly, not only the positive
stimulants such as power, money or self-image were
found to be contributing to success but also negative
stimulants such as anxiety.
The latter view is most unusual. Especially the
exponents of the positive thinking movement some-
times seem to suggest that a well-directed life is al-
ways or at least most of the time free of anxieties. Yet
very successful entrepreneurs such as Robert Holmes
à Court speak another language. Let me quote a pas-
sage in which de Bono summarizes the findings col-
lected from different interviews on the matter of anx-
iety:

It is interesting that with successful people the

anxieties are propellant rather than retardant. The
anxieties push the entrepreneur forward rather

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 than hold him back. There does not seem to be a
search for the easy way or for security as such.
(Edward de Bono, Tactics (1993), p. 60)

In the introduction, Edward de Bono cites several

traditional positions that people have seen to play a
major role in success, such as—
‣ Being lucky
‣ Being a little mad
‣ Being very talented
‣ Operating in a rapid growth field

However, despite the fact that each of these posi-

tions can be defended, which de Bono shows in de-
tail, he summarizes that there are complex constella-
tions of factors and characteristics which the reader is
entitled to assemble in any way he or she wants.

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 For those of you who practice astrology in a seri-
ous manner, it is a fact that two persons with similar
astrological constellations can show very different
ways of how they have realized the potentialities that
their birth charts reveal. Therefore, initiative, drive
and a sense for action at the right time and place is
decisive for success in whatever field or profession.
De Bono affirms that action does also encompass
any kind of preparative action such as reading a
book. A very important part of the study deals with
ideas and the question in which way ideas are rele-
vant for practice and for successful action. Let’s see
what one of the interviewees, Lord Grade, has to say
on this subject:

The ideas you want are real ideas; they’re not fan-
tasies. There is a difference. The real ideas can be
put into action. They are not dreams; they’re

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 something real. And what gets the team confident
is that the entire team, the whole company, is
successful. (Id., p. 38)

The question of style emerges boldly in this study.

De Bono makes the interesting observation that
changing one’s personal style and imitating some-
body else’s style is not a success formula!
This should perhaps be noted by trainers who
practice role modeling, a technique that in a way con-
sists of modeling the style of some other successful
person. In my experience, this approach works in-
deed, and is quite powerful, but to the detriment of
the self. It alienates people from their original self,
and thereby from their soul values; it might well lead
to worldly success, but at the price, for most people,
of the loss of their soul.

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 De Bono states that the best way is to polish and
somehow upgrade one’s style, even though it may be
a style that only few people possess. In ‘Characteris-
tics of Typically Successful Styles,’ de Bono gives ex-
amples for energy, drive and direction as one success-
ful style among many.
Let us see what David Mahoney who was named
in Fortune Magazine as one of the ten toughest boss-
es in America, has to say about this subject:

I just keep moving every day as hard and fast as I

can. High-intensity and high-voltage. Light
comes from that, not from passivity. I insist we all
do our best every day. I’m intense in everything I
do and I expect others will be, too. There may be
timing factors in it, good luck and fortune fac-
tors, but the question is, do you utilize it? Some
of it you can’t control—some of it goes against
you—it works both ways. You run to daylight—
where you see the break you go. Most people
aren’t even aware of what’s happening around

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 them. Two-thirds of the people don’t know what’s
going on to them, personally. (Id., p. 39)

There are of course other styles, such as the cre-

ative and inspiring style of Alex Kroll, president of
the world’s largest advertising agency, who transforms
every challenge into a game-like setting that is inspir-
ing for himself and his staff. This is how they find
creative solutions, namely by playing around with
the factors and parameters involved in a complex
business situation. In addition, there are the manage-
rial and the entrepreneurial styles. The question is if
ego-based styles or can-do are original styles or if
they are just attributes to other styles?
Chris Bonington who climbed Annapurna II, the
Eiger North Wall, Kangur, Ogre, Annapurna South
Face, and South-West Face of Everest says that it’s

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also the great drive to find something in yourself, or
a curiosity of finding whether this can be done. In
the self-assessment program that is part of my own
personal growth workshops, I have found that I am
myself primarily motivated by this subtle curiosity.
The question if one can achieve something daring
and difficult seems to be a constant in the lives of
highly successful people. There is no security in this,
no conviction. There is only intuition. This intuition
can however be very strong, as in the case of Paul
McCready who incarnates the Can-Do style or atti-
tude. This man made the first plane to fly using mus-
cle power on its own, without any motor device, and
he says:

I went single-mindedly and with considerable as-

surance towards the goal. (Id., p. 41)

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 Nolan Bushnell, who created the billion-dollar
video game industry and who was worth $70 million
after the first decade of running a company with a
$500 investment, says that he always feels like there
is a solution. There we are indeed in the realm of
feeling, of sixth sense, of intuition, and not any fur-
ther in the realm of rational and calm planning.
Another style is self-confidence and a certain
amount of conceit. Roy Cohn, described by Esquire
Magazine as a ‘legal executioner, the toughest, mean-
est, vilest and one of the most brilliant lawyers in
America’ says:

You also have to have a certain amount of con-

ceit, which leads you to believe that you and you
alone can get things moving. (Id., p. 42)

In this chapter, de Bono examines all these possi-

ble styles and gives examples out of the abundant
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material that the interviews provided to this purpose.
At the end, he summarizes that as a preliminary con-
dition for success one should find out for sure about
one’s personal style and maintain and develop it,
building one’s strong points rather than trying to alter
one’s weak points, tracking every single decision or
choice for compliance with one’s style, choosing cir-
cumstances that best fit one’s style and, in addition to
being bold and egocentric, using failure as the shad-
ow that gives dimension to the picture:

An inflated balloon is vulnerable, but that is the

only way it is going to fly. (Id., p. 57)

The remaining chapters of the book deal with

what stimulates success, and what are the factors that
may subtly influence success from as early as child-
hood. Part II of the book teaches how to prepare for

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success and Part III points out seven practical factors
that are important to practice for everyone who sets
out to be successful. These seven factors are:
‣ Strategy
‣ Decision-making
‣ Opportunity
‣ Risk
‣ Strategy for people as resources
‣ Tactical play
Now, we saw that my own little list of qualities
observed with the successful people I met is quite
identical with what this study found. What does that
mean? It means that these criteria are more or less ob-
jectivized, that they are not just depending on your
own way to look at people or the world, that you are
going to find them more or less with all successful
people around the world.

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 What de Bono did not emphasize directly, but
well by implication, is that these people have a rather
positive mindset.

The Do Mindset
What does it mean to have a ‘do-mindset?’ It
means one does what needs to be done without be-
ing held back by hassles, trials, routines and boring
stuff.
People with a ‘do-mindset’ are not positive all the
time, which would be neurotic behavior somehow,
but they kind of fall back in their positive continuum
when they get at rest; and significantly so, I have ob-
served with unsuccessful people, and myself during
times I had no success, that it’s exactly in those mo-
ments of rest, that the worry pattern sets in, that re-
sentment and frustration are likely to get ‘all over the
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place,’ which often leads to alcoholism and other ad-
dictions.
Successful people have problems and solve prob-
lems just like everybody else, but they do not make a
paradigm out of their trials, they do not generalize
their hassles and problems in a way to say that ‘hu-
manity is perverted‘ or that because of lacking spiri-
tuality ‘people are morally corrupt today’ and similar
rants. They understand that when they got a problem
it doesn’t tell them they are bad people, only that
they may have done something in a way that is inef-
fective; thus, they see that the problem is related to
the action they did, not to themselves as a person.
This is a very important point, really. I have found
throughout my life that people who are filled with re-
sentment and hostility tend to react to any kind of

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setback, criticism or problem with the idea that they
themselves are faulty as humans. They tend to argue
that only they have those problems, and others not,
thus relating the problem with their person, not with
any action they did that actually attracted the prob-
lem.
This is something very dangerous to do because it
gradually undermines your self-esteem, and it’s a vi-
cious circle because next time you will attract an
even bigger problem and again relate it to your insuf-
ficiency as a person, and that will drag you even
deeper into a self-defeating pattern.

Grasping Opportunities
Resentment and frustration are habits formed by
our ego and that distort our real-life perception be-

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cause of what psychologists call the ‘reactivation of
the narcissistic wound.’
What does that mean? It means that those, like
me, and perhaps you, who had a hard childhood and
rarely got even minimal encouragement of their real
soul interests from their parents and educators, later
tend to be oversensitive with regard to any matter that
involves their intrinsic talents and gifts; this further
means that these persons lack the fundamental ro-
bustness needed in today’s global market to succeed,
because there is an enormous amount of competitors
who have the same or similar qualities to offer.
That means also that success is not always merit-
ed and earned and there is a good part of luck in the
game, but luck comes to those who are basically pos-
itive, not to those who are torn up in resentment and

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self-pity. That is simply so, for reasons that today are
more and more elucidated by transformational psy-
chology.
It’s a fact that destiny always sends us opportuni-
ties, but when we are trapped by self-pity, excessive
pride or a general feeling of defeat, going along with
depression, then we regularly will disregard to grasp
opportunities; we simply worry too much about the
consequences, or resent a new failure. Every new
start in life must be founded on a basically positive
mindset, because otherwise we go downward or
backward; negative thinking is not natural.
When you observe nature closely, you see that it’s
always positive. For example, a plant that is unlucky
to grow under a huge shadow put up by a tree or a
house, and that undoubtedly will not develop the

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same size and beauty as a plant of the same kind that
grows in a sunny location, will not for that reason be
‘unhappy’ and moan its destiny, but it grows and
lives as joyfully and as it were ‘carelessly’ as all other
plants.
It’s because plants don’t ‘think,’ because they are
totally connected with all-that-is, while humans can
be split apart through the interface of thought. When
the thinker is set apart from the doer, he becomes the
‘sufferer of destiny’ instead of being a co-worker with
destiny. This is where soul values come in, as they are
like the hangers for your mission. Your soul values
help you to be rooted in the earth like a plant or a
tree, so that you always receive nutrition from moth-
er earth; and when you are connected with soul, you
are connected, like the plant, with all-that-is without

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your thought getting in the way. Soul power is intu-
itive and spontaneous. When you try to lead your life
solely from your thought interface, you cannot be ul-
timately and hugely successful. You may achieve
normal or ordinary success, but not grandiose suc-
cess.
I have mentioned already that highly successful
business people like for example Bill Gates have a
rather playful approach to life. They know that
thought and reasoning is rather limited and thus they
are connected to the greater vibrational body of the
universe through the use of their strong intuition.
They play with their assets.
Bill Gates is known to do random investments,
finding out after years of analyzing know-how com-
panies, that the final results are quite similar when

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choosing companies randomly. This is highly uncan-
ny and many ordinary business people would not
agree here, and even argue that such behavior is
‘pure madness;’ yet it is practiced by one of our most
successful entrepreneurs or even the most successful
entrepreneur of all times.
Of course, you give destiny a much higher chance
to let synchronicity play in your favor when you give
up control and give a place to chance events. I have
done this in my art and music since now twenty
years and the results are quite unbelievable. But they
are not impossible. If you call this connectedness
‘god,’ ‘spiritual connection,’ or ‘being blessed’ doesn’t
make a difference.
These are names only, but we are talking about
alignment here, cosmic alignment. And most people

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probably would not count Bill Gates among the peo-
ple highest to be classified in our society as ‘being
spiritual;’ yet when you look at things from this per-
spective, he of course is highly connected, and has
realized his soul values. And so he is well spiritual in
that widest meaning of the term; it simply can’t be
otherwise because we are talking here not about ran-
dom events, we are not talking about a lucky streak
in someone’s life but about something ongoing, a con-
tinuum.
In that sense, Picasso, an agnostic all his life, was
of course also a highly spiritual person, who was re-
ally connected with the emotional flow of his time,
and even the whole of his century, as this is what he
expresses in his fantastic art works.

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 So what I want to say here at the end of this guide
is that the terms you are using to describe this con-
nectedness, if you call it soul, if you call it god or spir-
ituality, is really not important; and I would even say
it’s easily bringing confusion as we may get into word
fights when we are basically talking about one and
the same thing.
This whole book was about how to bring about
this alignment, how to get you to a point to open
yourself for this direction that is always available, but
that many reject for various reasons. When you are
following your inner voice, and ask for direction, you
shall receive it, and you shall be blessed, and you
shall realize your own unique way of expressing your
soul values, and this, by itself, is a very beautiful

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thing to happen and perhaps the essence of life and
living.

Points to Ponder
—This guide was giving you some detailed advise
about how to sell yourself in the sense to be not only a
person with a strong self-identity, but also one who is
socially and financially successful.
—It is essential that you keep your style and just
upgrade it, instead of imitating the style of another
person, how successful that person may be. The re-
search I quoted here clearly was not conducive to the
often suggested idea of people changing their style,
and to ‘duplicate’ the style of a really successful per-
son. It doesn’t work that way.
—You may want to duplicate the attitude of a suc-
cessful person, for example their way of getting along
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with lots of people from various social environments,
and with ‘duplicating’ their excellent communication
skills, but you cannot duplicate their style.
—In general, the key to success is in my view not
to duplicate or clone, or model another person, but
to become more of your own real self. When you do
what you really like to do, when you work for the
mission that you feel is uniquely yours, you get in-
sights, dreams, intuitions, in one word, guidance from
the universe that leads you where you want to get.
This guidance is not automatic and you can actually
get more of it through practicing Affirmative Declara-
tions, and by being firmly focused upon your soul
values; but even without that, simply by doing the
work that you most like to do, you will receive that
guidance.

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