What's Stopping You?

Are you letting fear and inaction stop your success?

Too often we doubt ourselves or allow others to make us believe we are unable or unworthy of achieving success. To be successful, you must adopt a positive mindset and you must Believe to Achieve!

Most entrepreneurs are plagued by three types of negativity: fear of failure, voices in their head, and negative people surrounding them. Below are suggestions for turning the negative into the positive to navigate the road to success.

My definition of fear of failure is when you try a strategy, find it does not work, and then you beat yourself up. This process is repeated indefinitely until you give up in frustration and say “It can’t be done”!

Instead, focus on positive aspects of the negative, and on what will work thus giving the process momentum for moving forward. When something does not work to your satisfaction, be wise enough to say to yourself, “Oh, this did not work; now I know and can move on to another project that may work.” And instead of referring to what did not work as failure begin recognizing it as your “marketing research”.

You will find it difficult to learn of a businessperson who succeeds 100% of the time. Even big companies such as Coca Cola make errors and learn to move on. If you will recall, they tried changing their secret formula which turned out to be a disaster. Coca Cola quickly returned to their original formula and re-named it Coke Classic!

Are you wrestling with negative voices in your head and self-doubt? The easiest way to combat this is to remain focused on your near and far-term goals. Pursue them every single day . By so carefully concentrating on your goals, you will not have time for those negative voices and they will jump from your head into that of someone else.

The final strategy for working with negativity is how to handle negative people around you and their unwelcome comments. Here is my 3-step process:

1. Smile and acknowledge the unwanted comment made
2. Agree with the person that they might be right. This is the quickest route for getting rid of the unkind person. They feel they have won and will walk away.
3. Mentally think to yourself as you are smiling, “Just watch me”!

After that person leaves your presence you will want to contemplate what just happened. Was there an element of truth to what they said? Perhaps this is the impetus you needed to get started and your time is now!

This is precisely what happened to me. Years ago when I told a man in our social network that I was about to begin a sales training company, he rolled his eyes so far into his forehead, I thought he was going to lose his eyesight! He made me feel incompetent.

Because of the feeling of inadequacy, I set out to learn how to do what was needed to move forward. I persevered to turn Smooth Sale into an LLC sales training company. I have continually educated myself on what the next necessary steps are to advance.

All of the marketing materials I read said to write a book. I took a year off to finally accomplish a self-published book. This book was out only two weeks when the same man said to me with a haughty voice, “If your book were any good, a publisher would have picked it up.” This is where I used my own advice. I smiled and acknowledged the comment, and said, “You may be right.”

The very next week, I met a woman who represents authors at the BEA fair in New York to find publishers. I hired her on the spot.

The very first publisher I contacted said “Yes” to the manuscript. Sourcebooks entitled my book “Nice Girls DO Get The Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results”. Many media interviews were secured on my behalf including TIME Magazine, the book has been translated into three languages (more are on the way) and the book is selling worldwide!

So you see, although the original comment of “if your book were any good…” made me angry, by taking action rather than letting anger and inaction take control, I was able to bring many good things about. In fact, I can’t wait to hear the next thing that this man believes I can’t accomplish! I use him as my anti-coach and his negative comments are free – it’s the best of all worlds!