Are you judging yourself negatively because of poor results? If you’re not, consider yourself lucky, because MOST PEOPLE do!
Most people judge themselves negatively when they don’t get the desired results, and usually, they’ll take it a step further and internalize the results, pretending it means something negative about them as a person, such as being a poor leader, poor salesperson, not good enough, and so forth. That’s when it can get real emotionally ugly!
Please remember, results are nothing more than feedback.
They don’t define you as a person in any way. So don’t make them any more important than they are. Results are simply outcomes which will help you adjust your approach so you can create what you want to experience in your world.
Now, there are a select few people out there who thrive by focusing on the desired results, and will do whatever it takes to get the results they’re after. But they are few and far between. Even though many people think they operate that way, the fact of the matter is that this approach rarely works for most of us.
By the way, if you are in this small percentage of people who can focus on results to motivate yourself, once you realize most of your team members can’t do that, you’ll understand why the “Just do it – that’s what I did” training approach doesn’t work very often. 😉
A better way to do it for almost everyone is to focus on actions. And appreciate yourself for doing the actions, instead of beating yourself up for not getting the results.
Here’s how it looks: Instead of having a goal of 2 bookings, determine what actions should yield you 2 bookings.
Let’s say you generally book 1 out of every 3 people you talk to. Therefore, in order to get 2 bookings, you’ll probably need to talk to 6 people. And if you generally talk to 1 person for every 5 calls you make, you’ll need to make about 30 calls to talk to those 6 people, to get those 2 bookings. Got it?
Now, making 30 phone calls is an ACTION. It’s something you control. So when you make each call, consider it a WIN! (Regardless of whether they answered the phone, declined your offer, or told you to get lost.) While you can increase your chances with proper rapport techniques, none of the outcomes are under your control.
When you take the focus off the results, and define a ‘win’ as doing the action, you’ll appreciate yourself for each win, which will help you be more excited about continuing to do the actions and the results will eventually take care of themselves.
Using this strategy, many individuals have said they’ve gotten bookings on the 19th or 27th phone calls, instead of quitting after 5 or 6 calls like they usually do when they’re focused on results.
In other words, your results will increase as soon as you stop focusing on them.
