“Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi was right. Our thoughts and words really do have the power to change our world. Affirmations, in particular – the words we repeat to ourselves purposefully, whether out loud or silently – can and do have a dramatic impact on our outlook. This is a particularly important point for sales professionals to understand.
Notice Gandhi’s emphasis on the importance of thoughts … and then ask yourself a simple question: When you think about the marketplace in which you sell, how do you perceive that marketplace?
Is it:
A. An abundant universe of untapped potential?
B. A universe of scarcity and limited opportunity?
As you ponder that question, consider that your mental attitude about possibility or scarcity is what will determine your personal outlook on your world.
You and you alone control the thoughts and words that define what you experience … which means you and you alone control your attitude toward your company, your product, and everything else in your life. Your attitude can be positive (answer “A”), leading to an outlook of possibility (“There are countless opportunities out there waiting for me right now”) ….
… or it can be negative (answer “B”), leading to an outlook of limitation (“The competition out there is fierce now, and deals are hard to come by.”)
Whichever of the two outlooks you choose to affirm with your thoughts and words– possibility or scarcity – that will be the reality you experience.
There’s an old saying: “No thought lives in your head rent-free.” It means simply: What you think and say matters. The words you choose to think and say can help you to see all the ways to make something happen … or they can help you identify all the obstacles that would prevent it from happening. It’s up to you.
Winners choose the outlook they will maintain—one of possibility rather than one of limitation – and they consistently use affirmations that support the possibility outlook they want. For instance:
- There is always a great new opportunity for me to pursue.
- I consistently take action to pursue the very best opportunities.
- Our clients receive significant value from what we do, and they pay us accordingly.
The possibility outlook reflected in the affirmations you just read takes a little effort and a little practice … but the effort is worth it, because it helps make high performance a daily reality. The scarcity outlook, on the other hand, comes very easily to most people, but at a heavy cost: it destroys performance and potential.
So: Which experience do you want? Possibility … or scarcity? Which reality will you choose to affirm?
These are major questions. They’re not “touchy-feely” at all. They connect directly to the bottom line. The choices we make about our outlook, about the attitude we adopt will have a greater impact on our ability to reach our goals than almost any other element.
Why is this so? Because we all tend to develop beliefs that are shaped by our outlook. From those beliefs, we make judgments about which actions are appropriate and which are not. And it is from those actions that we achieve results that, by the nature of how they evolved, can only serve to reinforce the original outlook!
Simply stated: If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t!
