The Upside of FEAR
Whether we're aware of them or not, our thoughts, beliefs, and expectations have a huge impact on the results we see in sales and in life. If you want to change your sales results for the better, you must first change your thoughts and expectations. As Albert Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them." Once you understand how much your thoughts affect your sales results, you can begin to do the work of changing your thoughts and developing the right mindset for success. To get there, you can follow a simple but powerful process I came up with called FEAR.
FEAR stands for Focus, Emotional Commitment, Action, and Responsibility. Using this process, you'll accomplish two things: First, it will help you get clear on your goals, identify existing thoughts that might be holding you back, and replace them with positive ones about what you really want in business and life. Second, you'll learn how to reprogram your subconscious mind to follow the direction you need to go to get what you want. It will take some time and effort at first, but eventually you'll get to a point where following the right path is second nature.
Think of it like this: The first time you drove from your home to the office of a new job, you probably had to use a map or GPS and stay focused on the directions to ensure you got where you needed to go. But after driving the same route every day for a while, those directions got programmed into your subconscious and the drive became second nature. Your brain works the same way when it comes to learning directions and processes for everything else, including sales.
I go through each step of my FEAR process in detail in my new book, Consistency Selling, but here's a quick overview to give an idea of how it works:
Focus: The first step is to get laser-focused on your goals, and the general path (or directions) you need to follow to reach those goals. You don't have to outline out every single step you'll need to take, just the most important two or three things you must do to get to where you want to be.
Emotional Commitment: To be successful, you must make a deep emotional commitment to the goals you identified in the Focus step. Here's how to get there in three simple steps:
- Write down your goals and what you need to do to achieve them.
- Review them for 10-15 minutes every day in a quiet space.
- Allow yourself to experience the emotions of reaching your goals as if it's already happened.
Action: Ultimately, action is what separates the winners from everyone else. Once you've completed the steps above, you'll find yourself automatically taking actions that will move you toward your goals. And once you start taking that kind of action, success is pretty much inevitable.
Responsibility: The final step is responsibility. When you take responsibility for your life, it means you recognize that your life is a reflection of your choices, and that you--and only you--are responsible for the choices you make. Everyone makes poor choices sometimes, but if you hold yourself accountable and learn from your mistakes, you'll start making better choices more often--and before you know it, you're looking at homes in a new zip code!
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