Are You In Your Own Way?

I’m training a group of door to door salespeople. 

They work out of campers in places so remote, I’m elated I can’t train in person. Knocking on doors in a freezing drizzle, they sell. The owner of the company sought out my training understanding that the mindset of his people is the difference of tens of thousands of dollars for him, and them.

As is often the case, sales quotas went up after the first class, motivation hit a high. Then an arctic rain, a car wreck, a lost sale while waiting for the installer, an ex-wife calling for money and by the next week, sales had plummeted, people were in bed, one guy went home all together.

This is normally where corporate training programs leave off. People are temporarily motivated, but with no clue how to implement and sustain the changes they seek, they’re brain and body lure them back into business as usual.This is where the work I do just begins.

For example, I think that I’d like to go off sugar, and though I start each day with this thought, by night fall, that idea is hiding under a stack of skinny jeans in my closet.

Why? Because while one part of my brain has a great idea, if I don’t actively engage the rest of my brain properly, my body with its incessant cravings, will all too happily sabotage me.

With everyone in my group giving into their old habits, beliefs, and emotional addictions, we spent the third class digging in. 

What caused each person in this group to make the choices they made week one versus the choices they made week two is understood in a very simple, yet scientific process. It’s the same process you’ve used when you’ve made a successful or unsuccessful change. 

The problem is, we don’t spend much time consciously analyzing the difference between the two. Instead, we prefer to blame the rain, the ex wife, the slow installer, the constellation of the stars for why sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t.

But if you look at the last time you accomplished something important to you, it started in your neocortex with a thought and moved through different parts of your brain predictably.

First, you had to stop thinking old thoughts and start thinking new ones regardless of whatever trumped up circumstances you’ve decided to use as your excuse.

In order to do the work I’m doing now, I had to stop thinking that our family business couldn’t survive without me or that my husband would blow a gasket. I had to start remembering I have a master’s degree and decades of experience.

I had to stop thinking I was being selfish and start thinking I was worthy of taking a risk to do the work I love.

I had to unmemorized certain emotional states like guilt and fear and instead, teach my body to memorize joy and inspiration.

This is the work my door to door group has done and they are seeing amazing results... but they had to do the work!