She blamed the diets, the aerobics class, and her hectic work schedule. Worst of all, she blamed herself. I never saw a person's self-esteem sink so low in such a short period of time. She cycled through periods of, "Yes, I can do this!" to "I'm such a loser," every few months.

Stephanie overcomplicated things. She talked about portions, and after such-and-such week she could eat this, and then she would move on to the next step of the program which would open up a whole new set of possibilities, ad infinitum.

She forgot the basics. She had gotten so far off track that each time she failed she found it more and more difficult to rediscover her original commitment. This frustrated her; she lost her focus and panicked.

What are the basics? It doesn't matter what you're doing, everything can be reduced to the bare basics, the essentials of what is necessary to get what you're after. The basics aren't hard or complicated. The can even be formulaic.

The basics of weight loss, for instance, reduce to 2 factors: How many calories you take in, and how many you burn off. It's all about diet and exercise. Period. Simple as that. You can complicate it like Stephanie did, but it all boils down to those 2 factors.

You can also complicate your network marketing business in much the same way. You can bounce from company to company, lead service to lead service, believing that it must be something other that what you're doing (or not doing) that's responsible for your lack of results.

Sooner or later you start to believe that you're just not good at network marketing. You convince yourself that network marketing takes some sort of magic that you just don't have. You lose sight of your original commitment. You quit.

Before you do this, you need to ask yourself, "Have I lost sight of the basics?"

You might misunderstand the first essential basic, which is optimism. Do you think of an optimist as a fluffy, positive-thinking person who always sees the glass as half full? Do they shun reality in favor of some unreachable ideal? That's not an optimist.

Do you think your future will turn out good or bad? How you answer this question tells whether you're an optimist or not. It really is that simple. also, how you answer this question will determine what actions you take, both in your business and in other areas of your life.

True optimists never lose sight of what's real. Optimism means having a positive long term outlook, hoping for good while taking action. It means getting things done and exercising an action-oriented mentality.

Do optimists get down? Yes. Do they sometimes feel bad? Yes. Are they always smiling? Absolutely not. They do, however, recognize that bad times are temporary, and they know that as long as they stay committed, they will succeed.

It doesn't matter how you feel. Your mood swings, and even personal events that happen to you aren't necessarily important to your network marketing success. You can feel however you want. Your personal life might crumble all around you, but as long as you take action, you will succeed.

What specific actions do you need to take? Just like weight control, which can be broken down into diet and exercise, network marketing also breaks down into 2 essential components. Everything else focuses on ways to accomplish these 2.

As a network marketer, you must prospect and lead. That's what it all boils down to. You prospect to find new business associates and retail customers, and you lead to keep your current customers and downline satisfied. That, in a nutshell, is what network marketers do.

How can you be more effective at prospecting? You must have a steady supply of new leads. You can buy lead lists, but most leads on these list I've found are lukewarm at best. Generating your own brings you the best results.

Lots of tools out there today teach you how to generate your own leads, from PPC advertising to your own web site, to more methods being invented every day. I can tell you from experience, most of these work in delivering targeted leads directly to you.

Generating your own leads does not mean, however, that you never have to pick up the phone. Quite the contrary. Network marketing is still very much a people business; that hasn't changed.

The leads you generate on your own, however, will be much more receptive to what you have to offer than those on a list that you buy. They already saw your ad or web site, and will remember you, considering you contact them in a timely manner.

Yes, you still need to develop your people skills, keeping in mind that if you can help enough people get what they want, then you can have whatever it is you want.

So, if you're thinking about giving up on your network marketing business, it's probably because you've lost sight of the basics. They're not hard. Remind yourself why you got involved in the first place, and make a commitment to get back on track.