Positive thinking: How Often Do You Utilise it’s Power?
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Positive thinking and its power has been a topic of discussion in a number of areas we have been involved in, this week. Not least of which is if we think positively it might just stop raining this summer!!….of course we do live in the UK!
As the week draws to a close I have been going through my usual practise of thinking and asking myself questions. Such as “what is working?” “how could I do things better?” .
Its something I started a couple of months ago to really utilise the power of my subconscious mind.
The business community as a whole is becoming much more aware of how having a particular mindset can make a major difference to results. If we think and then act in a particular way we will get particular results.
So why not think and then act as the person we are becoming rather than the person we are leaving behind?
We are running a sales training programme with a colleague for an insurance group at the moment. Its great to have the luxury of running a full day on how to manage thoughts and develop the act as if mindset.
Which brings me nicely onto an article from an ezine by Bernadette Doyle. It a great example of believing and doing and what results can occur!!
Hope you enjoy it
Several years ago, I was on holiday at Club La Santa in Lanzarote, a sports resort where there are lots of fitness classes scheduled throughout the day. One lunchtime I was lounging by the pool in a perfect position to observe the following scene as it unfolded before me.
An aqua aerobics class was scheduled for midday. Shortly before, the instructor arrived, set up her music and waited for her participants. There had been a big party the previous night, and I did not predict a huge turnout for the class. But when it got to midday, not a single person had turned up. I saw the instructor walk towards the music system, and guessed that she was about to pack up and leave. To my surprise she started her music and started her warm up, calling instructions to an empty pool.
I was stunned. It must have taken some courage to lead an empty class. But I was also impressed by her commitment. As far as she was concerned, she had been booked to lead the class, and just because participants hadn’t turned up, that wasn’t going to stop her from showing up and doing her bit. She didn’t run around the pool trying to rally support and persuade us up from our sun loungers. She just started the class.
Years before I had even considered the phrase ‘client magnet’, I was witness to this demonstration of client magnetism. Because after a few minutes, the combination of loud music plus the spectacle of an aerobics instructor shouting instructions to an empty pool pulled a few curious observers. A couple of them got into the water and joined in. Before long at least 10 people had joined the class. The instructor didn’t care how many people turned up, she had decided that nothing would stop her from fully showing up and give 100% commitment to the class. In doing so, the instructor became a powerful magnet who had her vision of a full class manifest before my eyes.
This memory was a big inspiration for me when I was preparing for my first paid teleseminar. As the date approached, only two people had registered for the class. Of course I was tempted to cancel, but then I remembered that aerobics instructor and realised that there is something very powerful about following through on our intentions. I ignored the little voice inside that said ‘who are you to talk about being a client magnet when there are only two people in the class?’ and stayed committed. And then a funny thing happened…
On the day of the teleseminar, as I was making final preparations for the calls I received not one, but two enquiries. The second call came just 30 minutes before the teleseminar was due to start! This felt like a lot more than coincidence, and it felt like just as the instructor attracted participants through her willingness to show up, that my willingness to show up was acting as a magnet too.
Fast forward a few short years, and since that bumpy start teleseminars have become a very important part of my business. From a starting point of just 4 people, these days I’ve had over 950 people register for a single call. But I can’t help wondering what would have happened if I had given in to that temptation to cancel. Would I have ever mustered the courage to try again?
I’m sharing this story today for two reasons. First I want to ask how often do you set an intention and then cancel it due to apparent lack of interest? Are you really showing up? Or are you waiting for clients to show up first? Maybe you’re the one who needs to demonstrate commitment before you can expect clients to do so.
Second, it’s a word of encouragement to anyone who is feeling how I felt when the day of my first teleseminar approached. Keep going! Don’t give up. If you’ve said you were going to do something, then follow through on your word. Recommit to your project and trust that whatever happens is perfect for you. In my first year of business I was tempted to cancel a course because I was barely covering my costs. I proceeded anyway and one of the participants went on to refer over £18,000 of business to me over the next 12 months. The truth is, you never know what’s around the corner. But if you give up this time, you’ll be tempted to give up the next time things get tough, and the time after that.
I’ll wrap up with one of my favourite quotes, one that I live by and has served me well, ‘the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.’
Until Next Time!
I hope you found this article from Bernadette Doyle inspiring. Being the ultimate professional is about doing what you need to do no matter what.
Have a great weekend,
Best Wishes
Denise
Popularity: 29% [?]
How to Refocus after setbacks
How to Refocusing after setbacks is the subject of todays post.
First an apology on lack of blog posts ! I am just getting used to this technical thing! and forgot to load up the posts to automatically come on while I was out of the office last week.
Whenever I am out of the office and with clients there is always lots of rich material and learnings to share. Last week some clients we are working with had a couple of setbacks. The session was spent helping them reframe what had happened and looking at strategies to deal with set backs as they arise. I thought it would be an idea to share it with you.
It would be great to think that everything in life will turn out hunky dory? Well this isn’t usually the case. In honesty we wouldn’t want it to be either.
I don’t know about you but often the toughest times I have experienced have taught me the best lessons ever. Setbacks do have a place.
How many times have you started a diet, a new way of thinking, or tried something different and then a setback occurs and you just go back to the way you were?
Don’t worry, you are not the only one!
Setbacks difficulties or challenges as I was taught to call them!! occur all of the time – they are a natural activity of life.
There are two ways of facing challenges.
You either change or alter the difficulty or you can alter yourself to be able to deal with it.
Deal with difficulties correctly and it will enhance your confidence, deal with them incorrectly and they can do some serious damage to your self worth.
When you are faced with any setback your ability to deal with it can be turned around into a position of strength by asking yourself positive empowering questions.
There is an unwritten rule that says:
Ask your mind a stupid question and you will get a stupid answer!
So, if after setback you ask yourself something like
“Why does this always happen to me, I never have any luck?”
Your mind will probably come out with:
“Because you are useless and good things do not happen to you!”
Sound familiar?
Instead, if you ask yourself a positive empowering question like:
“What did I learn from this setback for next time?”
Your mind will kick into solution mode and help.
Here are some rules and things to think about when setbacks do occur:
Acknowledge that it has happened. Don’t hide from it. These things happen. So what?
What positive empowering questions can you ask yourself?
What is good about this situation?
How can I make the most of this situation?
What can I learn from it?
What are the facts about this problem?
How can we make it a successful outcome?
• Acknowledge that setbacks occur to everyone and you are not being singled out.
• View them as a challenge to overcome rather than an issue or problem
Think about the negative dis-empowering thoughts that you think on a regular basis after a setback.
What new empowering questions could you ask yourself to give some better answers!
Write these down now and make them a habit.
To you and your teams Success
Denise
Popularity: 26% [?]
J.K. Rowling Harvard Speech Part 2: Imagination
Carrying on from a couple of days ago part two of J.K. Rowlings Harvard speech. This time on the power of imagination. A skill we have in plentiful supply when we are younger. Then suddenly it seems to disappear as we take on board messages that living in your imagination isn’t the way to get on in life.
Oh dear I would suggest combined with action it is the only way to get on.
Enjoy the post
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation.
In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart.
The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters.
At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much
Wow a great reason to remind us to use our imagination.
Take Care
Sharon
Popularity: 27% [?]
Failure: A Good or Bad Thing
I must be one of the few people on the planet who has actually not read any Harry Potter Novels.
That still does not stop me from having total admiration for J.K. Rowling ( always sounds so formal …don’t you think…there’s branding for you)
Below is a short video from You tube and excerpt from a speech she made at Harvard to a group of graduates. It is longer than normal and really well worth the read. I will post the rest next week.
The topic of this section is one we hate to talk about in sales. Failure.
Is there such a thing? Rather than waffle on why not read the article and let us know what you think.
“President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty.
They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.”
I guess she is a writer so its great to get a perspective that is so positive about failure and all the positive results it does bring for us in our life.
Take Care
Sharon
Popularity: 32% [?]
Selling with Video: Is it the next big thing for sales people?
The epic living blog by Eric Pennington has an interesting question for us in is visual media the next big thing. On the Internet definitely. In one to one and group selling calls yes to!
How do I know apart from personal experience is some great evidence. Aristotle was actually your man who first talked about the five senses and how they work and contribute to our experience in “sensing” the world around us.The thing about us humans is that we have different sensory preferences.
Visual
Auditory
kinesthetic.
We all have an element of each though usually more preference with one or two.
An interesting fact is that over 40 % of people are visually preferenced. So a big percentage of your sales team and their customer base as well. At your peril ignore this and you will soon realise why some of you team don’t get what you are saying. So one one of your guys says show me what to do.
They don’t mean talk them through it. Get out your note pad and draw it!
So when your team are telling you they don’t want to use the sales aid or brochure you have the answer and its based on fact!
To you and your teams success,
Denise
Popularity: 30% [?]
Motivation and Learning
Motivation and its link to learning is something all new sales managers would do really well to know about from day one of their career.
Motivation is the fuel that fires every human achievement, and learning is the perfect example. Image yourself in this situation: You are just starting a new job and you know very little about what is involved in doing that job successfully. Nevertheless, you are really excited about your new sales career.
You are motivated to learn as much as possible to overcome your feeling of ineptness and to make a good impression. You might think that with so much at stake , you would absorb your lessons quickly and retain them until they were second nature, right? unfortunatley wrong!
When people are given too much information in a short time period, panic sets in. Human beings experience stress when they implement new behaviors, especially when they perform them imperfectly.
As a sales manager and coach, you can play a crucial role by helping your sales guys and girls over the rough spots. It’s all right for them to make mistakes.
In fact, it’s necessary so they can improve their competence through practice, practice and more practice. Your job is to assist them by following up their new knowledge with concrete skill development. Encourage them over these hurdles and you and they will reap the harvest of perseverance. Competence breeds confidence which, in turn, leads to inner motivation.
Bite Sized is Best
A key factor that influences learning is the nature of the subject. It comes as no surprise that simple material is easier to master than complex. Have you ever learnt how to play a musical instrument?
To enlighten you if not all music students start with scales and work their way up to performance level pieces. At any level of proficiency, the key to making a subject easier to learn is to break it down into small, simple increments. The same can be said for training. Often, sales managers with a big quota or target overwhelm their employees with massive amounts of information in a short period of time. The outcome is “information overload” and confusion.
An analogy is the sponge. It will absorb only so much at which time it reaches a saturation point where it will absorb no more. When this happens to sales people, they learn only what is necessary to get by or just those subjects that come easily to them. The rest doesn’t get soaked up and falls by the wayside. The solution is to break down training into bite size pieces that can be readily digested, absorbed and put to work in the field.
Popularity: 34% [?]
What Makes a Good Leader?
What makes a good leader is often the first question asked on any management or leadership development programme. The real truth is nobody really knows.
It’s all a matter of perception and what people think you are capable of. The current US elections are a great example of the power of perception and how we can really impact what people think of us.
Apologies if I offend any of our American readers though I am sure I won’t.
Many researchers find it a challenge to come up with consistent traits of what a great leader “should” be like. This is a great shame because if they did it would be so easy to copy and save ourselves endless days of courses and time reading books that don’t make sense.
Though researchers may not have the answers Joe public often does. Including probably yourself and people in your organisation.
General traits are identified such as:
Vision
Confidence
Good communication skills (umh and interesting one!)
Courage
Decision makers (with the help of a few hundred aides)
Truthful and honest (lets side step that one)
The televised debates in the US are a great show ground to put out the best persona possible. This is where many decisions are made by the US Public. The message being even if your skills and talents may be a little underdeveloped at least you can look the part.
Act as if is a great and underused strategy. More of that in another post.
So as a sales manager new to your post what is your equivalent to a US debate.
Like the future US president you are always on display. So any interaction with your team. Including team and Company meetings along with of course one on one. Never miss an opportunity to demonstrate who you are and what you stand for.
The good news is that your values shine through you no matter what you do e.g. Honesty, integrity and consideration.
The even better news is that lot of the skills can be developed as well. Great communication skills, confidence, courage, and decision making are just a few that with
A desire to learn, some practise and application you will be able to excel at. This will shoot you up the ranks as someone your team perceive
That they can respect. Because guess what most sales managers don’t bother developing themselves at this level. Through no fault of their own they don’t realise how powerful some of these skills really are.
So what can you do now? Well make a list of your favourite top 5 leaders of all time (either in or out of your organisation)
Then write down what it is about them that inspires you. Then ask yourself:
So which of these do I have?
What would I really love to acquire?
Which are the skills I am already pretty good at and can develop even more ( Top tip great to start with these ones)
Comment on the blog and let us know the areas you want to work on for yourself and we will post some top tips to help?
To you and your teams success
Sharon
Popularity: 32% [?]
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