Recently a client who is a well -respected photographer was explaining his thoughts around a new service that he has been thinking of offering to businesses. If it worked it would generate a significant amount of new business during the slower months. The problem was that he was a photographer and not a sales person and wasn’t particularly comfortable trying to sell an idea to business executives. After much deliberation, he approached a client whom he felt would be the most open to this. The client liked the idea so much, he opened his checkbook and signed up on the spot. What is telling is what happened next. The photographer said, after that experience I felt emboldened, so I decided to call on another client. He too, loved the idea and said yes. Now, the photographer really wanted to get moving on this. He decided that over the next 3 months his goal would be to book 3 appointments a week with businesses to pitch this idea. If he could close 50% of them he would have a great first quarter. What do you think was the driver behind his motivation? Of course it was having success with the first client, but if you look deeper it was the emotion that his success created. He felt emboldened! It wasn’t his goals that drove him to do more; it was how he felt. He later went on to say that if he hadn’t had success with the first prospect he probably wouldn’t have moved forward.
This is a critical point in motivating ourselves. Goals alone will not help you achieve what you want. Writing them down won’t mean a thing unless you have the proper emotion to go along with the goal. if you don’t feel “emboldened” all of the goal setting and accountability won’t do a thing. Successful people learn how to cultivate the right feeling that will help them achieve the goal. Scientists have proven that it is possible to choose how you feel. You just need to learn how to access the proper emotion. Think of it this way, inside your brain is a compartment with hundreds of potential emotions. You can use any of them at any time. You just have to learn how to access them. If we look at what the photographer did in this situation, he unknowingly accessed this emotion by setting himself up for success. By calling on the person most likely to say yes, he was creating an environment where he would have success and feel good about it. There are hundreds of ways to create the proper emotions, here are a few.
1. Make emotions an important part of your strategy. Recognize that how you feel will go a long way in determining how successful you are.
2. Choose the emotion that you need to access to help you achieve the goal. Research has shown that just by saying to yourself how you want to feel will activate that emotion in the brain. what this means is that just saying to yourself; “ I feel emboldened” your brain will access that emotion and you will begin to feel that way.
3. When venturing into a new and somewhat uncertain area, set yourself up for short term success. If you have to convince people you work with about a new idea, go to the person most open to new ideas first. Don’t go the most difficult person. Create small wins to build the proper emotions within yourself.
In the past ten years scientists have learned a lot about emotions and how they impact our success and happiness. It is no longer ok, to catagorize emotions as something that is soft and fuzzy. They are real, they are occurring in our brain 100% of the time, and to be truly successful one must learn how to manage and use them to their benefit.
