by Tech Support | Aug 26, 2015 | Education, Leadership, Management, Motivation, Sales
Some of stress is good–even exciting. Some is not so good. So what do you do with it?
This summer, Shawn Achor spoke at Bowl Expo. My entire team got pumped, and we all read The Happiness Advantage. Allison decided for Q-3 that one of her “big rocks” would be to create a Happiness Initiative and so she set up a private Facebook group for our team. Periodically we all check in and post the meaningful things that come up each day.
This focus has provided an outlet to manage the “not so good” stress of the day to day. I personally am pretty darn driven, and when I get into something I get “all in.”
My follow up read after The Happiness Advantage is a book titled Positive Intelligence. The author, Shirzad Chamine focuses on how our brain plays saboteur or sage. The profound impact of how our “natural neurological wiring” influences the way we are able to manage our stress is revealed in a way that even this “hillbilly” can understand. Positive Intelligence goes beyond the “fake it till you make” positive self-talk.
One of the things that is on my mind today is an exercise Chamine recommends to strengthen that sage part of our brain that manages stress from a place of wisdom and logic, rather than emotion. That exercise is pretty simple and I am compelled to share it with you.
Take the stress that seems to have you in its’ grip. You know what I mean. You are paralyzed and can’t do whatever it is that needs to be done. You are agonizing over the time you don’t have to get that “thing” completed. You have some unreasonable worry about something that may never come to be (and usually doesn’t). OK-you have that picture in your mind? Take that stressor and place it… now move out to the end of your life. Look back on that thing. Does it even matter now? Is it one of the things that you’ll be thinking about as you take your final breath? Probably not.
I don’t know about you, but for me, when I do this, there is instant perspective about the reality of the things I’m stressing over. I think that I can explain it the best by saying that there is some type of “normalization” of that thing that has me stressed out and then comes a calm which is a super antidote for the stress.
I’m sure this isn’t new information for you. It wasn’t for me. I think my 10th grade geometry teacher said something like, “it won’t really matter if you understand why X = Y (still seems stressful and weird to me) when you are on your deathbed.” Nonetheless, getting the perspective of having this as an exercise that I can go to in moments of worry or procrastination is powerful.
I don’t know how stress shows up for you, but I’m sure you have some. I encourage you to try moving out to the end of your life and look back on the stressor to see the impact. It works for me-at least for today. I’d love to hear how it works for you.
by Tech Support | Aug 20, 2015 | Performance, Personal, Sales, Training
I spend a lot of time on the computer typing. When I say a lot, I mean A LOT–but hey, we are a virtual company! That means lots of typing emails, notes, posting on social media, etc. It also means I am not using the muscles in my hand like I did before. Do you remember the days when everything had to be handwritten and you actually used pen and paper?
I know that seems like a distant memory in the era of smart phones, tables, and laptops, but for the past 8 weeks I have been in a cast with a broken arm. With the cast, I was so amazed that I could still move my computer around and type but I couldn’t write! Well, if I did it looked like my four year old wrote it. So now that I am cast free, I can actually use and write in my planner again. Bad news is, the muscles in my hand are weak and my handwriting looks horrible! I decided to start practicing my handwriting again. Once a day, I write out the alphabet in upper and lower case in print and cursive, then I write out my family’s names and my name, and then the months. Try it. Your hand is going to hurt before you are half way finished with the months!
This had me thinking. Just like the muscles in my hand becoming weak caused me to have poor handwriting, if we don’t practice what we have learned and use it over and over, then the muscles and knowledge we have built and strengthened become weak.
I know you have heard us teach about the CQPC process over and over, and for those who are in our mystery shopper program, we even provide you with a script to use following the process. I see it all the time. Someone was trained on the script and initially kept it front of them by the phone, but then after a while they stopped using the script because they felt they had it memorized, but do they really? One of the things I love about our program is that we record each shop. Everyone thinks that they hit each objective during their shopper calls, but when we go back and listen, we can hear what was left out. I hear all the time, “but I have it memorized….I have done this a million times.” It has sometimes been a while since they placed the script in front of them while fielding calls. Having the script in front of you is like running; you wouldn’t head out the door to run without your shoes, would you? Why would you take a call without your script?
That’s the interesting thing about training. You can’t just use the weights (or script) once or twice and keep that same muscle mass (knowledge). You have to use it daily, and work at it to get better at it.
So this week I encourage you–if you have implemented a script or follow-up program or process in your center, and have fallen away from using it, to start again and pick it back up! Just like it’s never too late for me to perfect my handwriting, it’s never too late for you to start over and flex your sales skills.
by Tech Support | Aug 13, 2015 | Management, Motivation, Performance, Personal, Sales
- Countries in Europe are like states in America (size wise). I had the amazing opportunity to visit 8 countries in about 14 days! England, Holland, Sweden, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Germany, & Denmark. Every place was incredible!
- A world perspective is a good thing. We had the opportunity to interact with our tour guides who had a great deal of knowledge and pride of their home. It was very cool to hear from them.
- I like the ballet! Who knew? Of course it would have been difficult to not like the ballet in Russia. We saw Swan Lake in the front row of an intimate theater in the Hermitage. It was Catherine the Great’s private theater!
- The throne room in any castle is super cool! I admit that I imagined myself seated in each one.
- I must read a biography of Catherine the Great. She was way ahead of her time with women’s rights and quite the cougar!
- I love Swedish meatballs-especially in Sweden!
- Bike riding in Copenhagen is awesome and dangerous. I’m grateful that I did not take out a pedestrian or get run over by a cab. And for the record, (3) is the most difficult gear for pedaling. I didn’t learn that until the end of the ride. My thighs are still a little sore.
- My daughter is wonderful. I already knew that, but she upped her wonderful card by purchasing private tours for us with local guides. It was incredible to experience the cities through the perspective of locals who love their homes.
- Celebrity Cruise Line is spectacular. The service, the food, the staff, and the cleanliness. The ship itself was (by far) the nicest I’ve ever experienced.
- I love art and artists. We took this vacation in part because we were invited guests of Park West Art Gallery. The event included meeting 4 artists over the 12 days, and having the opportunity to rub elbows with them. Park West has an incredible marketing model that I admire and appreciate. Thank you Selena, Jason, Morrie, and the crew.
Finally, I learned that I really like vacationing with my family. Jerry, my husband, Leslie, our oldest daughter, Kendel, my husband’s brother and I all had a great time with one another.
My commitment to work during this time was to keep up with email. I also put about 5 or 6 little project things on the list, and I didn’t do any of them. SHOCKING really. I had a melt-down about not doing those things on the last day of the cruise. My wise daughter looked at me and said, “Mom, why did you put work stuff on the list for your vacation? If you had not put those things on the list you would not be feeling this way.” In a moment, I knew she was right.
For me there is a giant lesson. For all of us who get so much joy and satisfaction from work, there is another side of life that is GRAND. I’m pleased to have discovered that time away is wonderful. I’ve read about it. I understand the concept of renewal. Now that I’ve taken the time to do it, I’m a believer!
I don’t know that I’ll take as many days off in a row as I did this time, but I do know that once a quarter I’m going to go somewhere with people I love and not work. 🙂
by Tech Support | Aug 7, 2015 | Sales
I can’t work out in the mornings–and I DON’T run.
These are two universal truths I’ve held onto for the last ten years. In conversation with a friend not long ago, I touted my truth for the thousandth time and she responded with, “What do you mean, you can’t work out in the mornings?” I said, “I can’t. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work for me.” Knowingly, she replied, “You’re just going to have to get over that and get it done.” I confess I was a little insulted. Hadn’t I just said that I don’t do those things; that I couldn’t? I rolled my eyes (we were on the phone so she couldn’t see me) and said I’d think about her advice (of course I had no intention of doing that).
Then something happened. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, moved to the living room, counted sheep and just tried everything I knew to fall asleep. I think I finally drifted off just before 5:00am for a couple more hours before starting the day. I woke grumpy and was short tempered all day. After all, I hadn’t slept well. How terrible.
Later that day, I was listening to Shawn Achor’s book, the Happiness Advantage, and trying to give myself some shots of positivity. I started reading about what positive psychologists call an optimistic explanatory style. Basically, there are two kinds of people, those who naturally respond to adversity with an optimistic explanation and those who respond pessimistically. He states (and has scientific evidence to back it up), that those who choose to see events in an optimistic way outperform their negative counterparts in test scores, sales, and even athletic performance (Achor 124). He gave a great anecdote to illustrate the styles: A lone gunman walks into a bank, fires one shot and leaves. It so happens that the one shot fired hit you in the arm. You’re ok. Now, how do you feel?
If your response is that you feel lucky to be alive, that no one else was hurt, relieved, blessed or something similar, congratulations you’ve probably already got an optimistic explanatory style. If you feel like you had the worst luck ever just by being in that bank at that moment, then you might have a pessimistic explanatory style. The good news is there’s a choice, and you can choose to adopt whichever style you want. This really stuck with me, because hey, who wouldn’t want to be 37% more successful like the insurance sales reps that I read about in the Happiness Advantage? That’s not fluff, but rather clear evidence for me to know I wanted to make a change.
The next morning, I was awake again at 4:45 and I decided to have a different conversation with myself than the one I’d had the previous day. Instead of bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t sleep, I decided to take the opportunity to get up and go for a walk. I downloaded a “Couch to 5k” app on my phone, turned on music and walked/ran for about an hour. You know what? Afterwards, I felt like a MILLION DOLLARS, and that positivity stayed with me for the whole day. So the next day, I had the alarm set for 5:00. I didn’t want to get up so I turned it off, but I woke up an hour later and went out again. The next day, I saw the sun rise at 5:30 and now here I am three weeks later and I simply CANNOT wait to get my running shoes on and head out the door at 5:00 every day. The switch for me was this: just because in the past I didn’t run, it didn’t mean that had to stay true for me forever. And just because I used to hate morning workouts didn’t mean I always would. I just had to look at that one 5:00am moment as an opportunity to try something again.
I think positive psychologists are really onto something we can use in our business. We hear all the time from clients who “don’t call churches because they won’t book group events” or who “can’t have great parties because moms won’t let us interact” and it makes me think, if that was true in the past (one time or even several), does it always have to be? What if it could be different? What if we decided to look at those kind of moments of rejection as opportunities to call upon different churches, or ask about fundraising events? What if we tried to set mom’s expectations earlier in the process so she knows interaction can be an amazing part of what we offer? What if we simply decided that one call or one mom would give us a great opportunity to try something new vs. believing that ‘we tried it, and it doesn’t work, and it’s awful’? Would we feel like a million dollars when it turns out positively? Would it be worth trying? I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to find out. Are you?
I would love to hear about your explanatory style, or your response to Shawn Achor’s book. It has already made such a difference in my life, and in our company. So drop us a line or meet me for my 5:00am run and we’ll watch the sunrise together.
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