Sales is a tough gig day-to-day, right? It’s possible to get a negative mindset in a lot of ways. It could be a tough market we're selling into. It could be seasonality. It could be our pricing. It could be just overall competition. There are so many things to focus negatively on and not only that. All the call rejection, and the number of no’s we get versus yes’s, it can be tough!
Do you find yourself sometimes in that negative place? If you do, there's a biological reason for this.
It’s your amygdala.
It’s at the base of our brains and has been evolving over tens of thousands of years. The amygdala is that part of your brain that, thousands of years ago, when our ancestors were at a campsite, would lead them to listen for the rival tribe that was coming over to steal their stuff or tell them that a tiger could be lurking in the bushes or a storm was on the horizon. Or in the case of Chicago and Illinois weather, gathering food, wood and supplies for winter.
The amygdala was programmed for us to have a fight-or-flight mechanism to look for dangers and to survive.
Now the problem is:
- You probably don't have a rival tribe in your world today coming to steal your stuff.
- You probably don't have a tiger lurking in the bushes.
But our brain still has the amygdala.
There's a part of our brain that gets a reward from looking for negativity.
I mention this because in sales if we don't have a way to counteract the amygdala and the negative thoughts, it can get defeating. We have to get in a place to make sales calls, we have to be in a place to have these business conversations and engage with people. If we're not careful this negativity can be overwhelming.
What you can do, whether it's journaling or being part of a mastermind group or filling your head with the right podcast or right audio or diet or exercise, to fight the base brain amygdala response that wants to kick in on a daily basis?
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