How many struggles have you encountered this week?
How many times have you bounced back quickly from each one?
Struggles are a part of everyday life, especially if you’re in sales. Each time you walk in a new door, you don’t know who you’re going to face, how you should address their concerns about your product, or what rebuttals you need to have ready. Living with so many variables is a touchy way to live.
Yes, you do your homework, but until you’re in the trenches and have come face-to-face with their situation, you don’t really know who they are or what they need to hear.
Then, say you don’t close. There’s another struggle (or three) because you have a quota to reach this week and you aren’t on target for said quota. Sales is a jungle. Period. And even if you’re the king of the beasts, it’s a difficult life.
Unless you’re grateful.
An attitude of gratitude makes the difference between feast and famine. Well, you won’t actually get rich just because you’re grateful, but you’ll feel like it.
And if you feel like it, you’ll perform better at your job, as well as at home.
Shawn Achor has been studying the effects of gratitude for decades and in all of his research, he’s discovered that gratitude: Makes us healthier, allows for better quality of sleep, gives us a greater sense of well-being, enables us to emotionally help and support others, and allows us to achieve more goals.
“…and allows us to be more successful.” Really.
The Gratitude Challenge
Are you ready to put yourself to a gratitude test? I challenge you, for the next 10 weeks to sit down each night and write down three things you’re grateful for. Three things. That’s all. If you can come up with more, that’s great, let’s see them.
But at the very least, I want you to think back on your day (and I don’t care if you had to walk 10 miles to the nearest gas station because your Lexus ran out of gas on the highway) and think about a minimum of three things that you’re grateful for.
They don’t even have to be monumental events. Getting out of bed can be one of them. Because, truly, if you think about it, that’s where it all starts. If you’re able to get out of bed, then you accomplished A LOT more than so many others.
Don’t Get Lost
You see, we get tangled up in the details. We get tangled up in the “woes me”. We get tangled up in the crap that doesn’t matter. And we let it bring us down. And when we’re down? We don’t perform well. We can’t think clearly, and we struggle with the smallest things.
But if we take on this challenge, if we work hard to find things we’re grateful for, then, all the crap falls away. We’re left with the positive vibes and energy that we need to power through to the next phase of the day.
So developing an attitude of gratitude isn’t something for the weak, or the faint of heart. It’s for those of us who are ready to conquer the world. And you, my friend, are ready.
Let’s do this!