“Knock, knock,” said the speaker. “No,
this is not a knock knock joke like the kind you used to tell as a kid,”
said the lecturer. (I was in the audience of a self-help training
seminar for a group of agriculturalists who had come to hear a famous
motivational speaker.)
“When I said
knock knock what did you hear?” asked the speaker. “Some of you heard
opportunity knocking. You are optimists, you are optimistic about your
life and your business. We refer to you as “Bulls.” Now there are others
in the audience, you know who you are, who heard that sound of
opportunity knocking and just complained about the noise. These people
we call pessimists. In business we refer to you as “Bears.”
‘Which are you,” the speaker asked. “ Are you a bull or are you a bear?”
“Have
you ever wondered why we refer to an optimist as a bull and a pessimist
as a bear?” (I was paying $250 to learn something and the speaker was
asking me all the questions!) “Financial bears actually take on the
characteristics of their namesake. Financial bears generally have shaggy
hair, hairy bodies and wide heads. They live in the dark and have teeth
suitable for grinding. Financial bears are also an endangered species,
the last ones being spotted during the Carter administration. They sleep
half the year, have bad dispositions and can be very dangerous when
injured. Financial bears never make as much money as bulls.”
“Bulls on the other hand, are noble animals,” said the speaker
(obviously a bull). “Bulls have been around since the Stone Age and have
always been known as work animals. They can adapt to changing
environments, are easily domesticated and haven’t read a newspaper for
the last three years. They generally don’t worry about what happens as
long as it happens to someone else. Nearly all rich people are financial
bulls,” said the speaker. “Now that you know all this which would you
rather be, a bull or a bear?”
Having
posed the question the speaker went around the room and asked each one
of us what animal we were. There were several sub-species of bulls in
the crowd. The optimistic bulls included cattle feeders, millionaires
who got into the purebred business, real estate brokers, 84 year old
codgers who still flirted with women, stocker operators, single men who
were contemplating marriage and other optimists. We bears tended to
migrate towards the back of the room. Our group included cow-calf
operators, cowboys, bankers and other married men.
Naturally, the speaker zeroed in on our sad, little group figuring we
needed the most help. He asked each one of us to stand up in front of
the group and tell how we had become so bearish. It was kind of how I
envision Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. A cow-calf operator stood up and
said, “I’d sure like to be a bull but I worry about being too
optimistic.”
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