How to toughen up

COLIN WOODFINDEN provides some tips for building your resilience

In the last edition I discussed the importance of resilience in sales and looked at why having a positive mindset is so difficult to maintain: our “inner caveman” makes us naturally designed to seek out the negatives in any new situation because of our survival instinct. Here, I want to follow up by providing some tips to help build resilience. As I mentioned in Part 1, however, I firmly believe that resilience cannot be taught, but is built through the accumulation of life’s experiences and learning from them – from knowing that you have faced a similar situation in the past and survived.

What can be taught, however, are the skills of mindfulness and self-awareness, giving you the ability to put things into perspective and break through all of the noise of a situation and focus on what it important. To start doing this, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself: “On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being death), how bad is this problem?” BEGIN ‘ACTIVE THINKING’ Once you begin to look at the challenge you face in those terms you can start to look for solutions. In order to get yourself out of a negative situation you need to take action. As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the biggest causes of stress is the feeling of being powerless. Take control.

In order to shift your mindset into active thinking, ask yourself questions such as: l How can I contain the problem so that it doesn’t get worse? l What can I do to limit the problem’s scope or duration? l How can I reduce the downside of this adverse event? l How can I increase the potential upside of this event? l What aspects can I control? l How can I best respond? l Where are the opportunities in this situation? l But what if things work out well? FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN INFLUENCE In his best-selling book, The 7 habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey talks about only focusing on the things you can influence. We spend a lot of our time and energy focusing on things we have no influence over and cannot change, and the more you focus on

these the more prominent in your thinking they become. If you focus on negatives, your brain will actively seek out more negatives to reinforce your thinking.

The same psychology is at work in the old adage of thinking about buying a new car: once you have got your heart set on a particular make and model of car, suddenly that particular car is everywhere and you believe that it is fate that you should buy it. It isn’t – it’s just that you have brought that make and model to the forefront of your consciousness, where it remains lodged.

One of the biggest causes of stress is feeling powerless over a situation, with your concerns constricting your thinking and reducing your circle of influence (illustrated on page 44). Active thinking is about trying to focus on the things you can influence. What can you do to widen your circle of influence over a situation (the circle on the right in the diagram)? Once you start thinking in this way, your brain will start to look for opportunities instead of hardship.

MAKE A CONSCIOUS DECISION TO BE AN OPTIMIST It takes a lot less energy when you perceive something as a challenge instead of a hardship. If you view a situation as a threat, your inner caveman starts acting up. In contrast, when a situation is viewed as a challenge, your body releases hormones such as endorphins, dopamine and serotonin that promote cell repair, trigger relaxation responses, and stimulate efficient energy use. Resilient people feel that they can cope with whatever life throws at them. This doesn’t mean that when something goes wrong they pretend that “One of the biggest causes of stress is feeling powerless. Active thinking is about trying to focus on everything is fine and that things will fix themselves. It simply means that they see the situation for what it is, but the things you can influence” they’re confident that by taking the right action they’ll be able to overcome the adversity and continue on their way. I once heard that in the military, when troops are faced with overwhelming odds, instead of saying, “We’re outnumbered”, they are trained

to say, “We’re in a target rich environment.” CHALLENGE YOUR EXCUSES AND OWN YOUR FEELINGS Challenge every excuse you make to yourself and take ownership of your feelings. Just because you know that it is your caveman thinking, doesn’t mean you can use that as an excuse, just as if you had a dog and it bit somebody, you can’t turn around and say, “It wasn’t me, it was the dog.” LOOK AFTER YOURSELF Don’t feed your caveman. Drinking, drugs and overeating never help. You may think they do at the time, but again, this is your caveman brain doing the thinking, the part of the brain that looks at pleasure, pain and reward. If you are run down, ill and lethargic you are naturally more prone to stress – your body knows you are not at your best and you are vulnerable, so cortisol is released in order to protect you.

DECIDE WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU As I mentioned in Part 1, by simply knowing what you are trying to achieve, your behaviour changes automatically. So set smaller milestones as you work towards a goal – as you achieve each milestone your body will release dopamine. When we were cavemen and were tracking an animal, we would release it when we found tracks. Dopamine is an achievement chemical and it is addictive, we simply could not afford to wait around until we were hungry to start looking for food, as there would be no guarantee of finding any. By releasing dopamine, our brain forced us to go looking for food even when we were not hungry.

By setting goals, you will develop clarity, which is important for putting stress into perspective. In times of crisis or when you are feeling low it is good to hold on to the fact you can always have something to look forward to.

EMBRACE MISTAKES AS LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES It is important not to dwell on the past. You can’t change it. Mistakes are going to happen, but they will keep happening unless you learn from them. Look to widen your circle of influence. MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK If you want to feel empowered and in control of a situation, you need to stop believing that your circumstances are because of bad luck. Thinking this way will only make you dwell on the event and stop you from thinking actively.

I remember Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud scoring a goal against Crystal Palace that illustrates my point. As a cross came in, Giroud attempted a scorpion kick – he caught the ball perfectly with his heel and the ball looped over his head, off the underside of the crossbar and into the net for a goal that was described as either sheer genius or pure luck. At the time, I was reading The Compound Effect, an excellent book by Darren Hardy in which he describes the formula for making your own luck – and the Giroud example of luck seemed to fit perfectly: Preparation – Giroud’s teammates later said they were not surprised by his goal because, “He does things like that all the time in training.” Attitude – He believed that it could be done. One of the reasons he believed it was possible was that a week earlier Henrikh Mkhitaryan had scored a similar goal for Manchester United against Sunderland, so when the cross came towards him it was in his mind and seen as an actual scoring opportunity. He had belief. Belief is extremely important. Roger Bannister was the first man to run a mile in under 4 minutes, but until it happened everyone said it was impossible.

COLIN WOODFINDEN is sales training manager for online electrical retailer AO., which is an ISM Recognised Centre for the delivery of Ofqual-approved ISM sales qualifications. Visit www.ao.com CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE

WIDE CONCERNS

WEATHER

KIDS INFLUENCE TRAFFIC

CLIENTS

CAR PULLING OUT CONTAINED CONCERNS

INFLUENCE

But once he had done it, within 2 years, no fewer than seven other athletes had also broken the 4 minute barrier. Opportunity – Normally, when a cross goes behind the receiving player, it is derided as poor. But because Giroud had the right attitude he saw it as an opportunity. With the right attitude, you will also find opportunities in unlikely scenarios. Action – He took the action of attempting the shot, and his action was rewarded with some luck by striking exactly the right spot. Like Giroud, when golf legend Arnold Palmer holed an unlikely chip, his playing partner commented, “That was lucky.” Palmer replied, “The funny thing is, the more I practise, the luckier I get.” CONQUER ANXIETY Finally, I’d like to share two really quick techniques to relieve nerves and stress, and to help bring you back into the present when anxiety kicks in.

The first is a sensory awareness exercise. When you begin to feel stressed, overwhelmed or simply about to “lose it” in an argument: l Simply name five objects you can see in the room with you l Name four things you can feel (“chair on my back”, “feet on the floor” etc.) l Name three things you can hear right now (or three sounds that you like) l Name two things you can smell right now (or two things you like the smell of) l Name one good thing about yourself.

The second is a cognitive awareness grounding exercise that enables you to reorientate yourself in place and time by asking yourself some or all of these questions: l Where am I? l What day is it today? l What is the date? l What is the month? l What is the year? l What season is it? l How old am I?

These grounding techniques can be useful in many circumstances, not least when you are about to deliver a sales presentation.