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Shame and stress will kill your business

I watched again the video interview from Tom Bilyeu to Drew Manning from fat2fit2fat.com and I couldn't help noticing the similarities between his clients' journeys to health and my clients' journeys to healthy business lives.

Drew's interview, which I am posting below, is quite long but it is worthy to watch because it has a lot of tips that can help you also in your sustainable & healthy business journey.

There are so many metaphors here that are transferable from health to business that is amazing, and on top of that, this video can help you to gain confidence about staying fit physically.

I am going to summarise some points that caught my attention and reframe them so you can use them to build your business, increase sales and doing it all with more ease and less stress.

1- Success is 90% mental, emotional and spiritual and 10% working out.

Over my more than twenty years business and sales experience I heard these sentences many times: "sales is all about the number of phone calls you make", "increase your customer visits and you will increase your sales", etc. etc. This resulted in frantic attempts by my colleagues and myself as sales person, and also by the business people I coached and consulted with, to try and get client's visits no matter what ( in my early consulting days I would secure appointments for my clients for a retainer. Not any more, because it is not about the sales visits at all cost. I can help a team develop the mindsets that lead to successful sales visits).

The equivalent in fitness will be to think that is all about what you eat and what your exercise regime is, underestimating the power of the emotions and how spiritually centered you are.

Because you can be eating right one day , going to the gym and the next three days eat a package of cookies each day and blow your calorie budget. When your emotions and your mindset are not right, anything will trigger you in the wrong direction (I have been there, so I know what I am talking about).

In sales, you can push and push to increase your number of calls and customer visits, but if you are not centered in a strong purpose and passion for what you do, in a mindset of service and in qualifying the perfect customers to work with, all those visits will be just a monumental waste of time and money. And I have seen it again and again: expensive visits around the world with three executives fueled by ego, trying to close a deal that was not closable, long sales cycles that were based on wrong premises but people didn't want to give up, etc. etc. I am sure it sounds familiar.

Get your fundamental mindsets and emotions in line first and then those visits will be so much more aligned with your goals, and sales will flow to you with grace and ease.

2-Develop positive routines and habits that make an impact and do them daily.

Drew Manning mentions three habits here that I swear by: meditation, a gratitude dairy and harnessing the power of words.

It took me 33 year to adhere to a daily meditation routine and it was only when I developed a painful chronic issue on my left pyramidal muscle that I decided that I had to do it, yes or yes.

Meditation has so many benefits that is difficult to count them all, but one that I will say is critical for business is the effect on your triggers and your "fly or fight response" that is pretty much your stress or survival response. When that is triggered, in turn, increases your levels of cortisol and inflammation and shuts down your inmune system which can have awful effects on your health as it was my case.

Now after 4 months of daily meditations my muscle pain has been reduced to only the occasional and minimal reminder that once was a terrible pain there, so as not get comfortable with stress. At some point I could not sit at all and could hardly sleep but that is no longer the case at all.

Health problems can severely disturb your attempts to develop your business but the insidious effects of stress are less noticeable because it's almost socially accepted to be stressed out with your work. A daily meditation will slow down your stress response and your triggers. Where you would immediately have gotten anxious before, now you react in a calm and elegant way. Your potential clients love it when you are chilled out and listen to them. They feel so at ease with you that they are ten times as likely to give you their business. In contrast, if they perceive your stress, fear and anxiety to get results, that is a major "turn off". On top of that, when you are not triggered by your emotions, your neocortex opens up, and the most innovative and creative part of your brain goes to work. That is why Einstein spent hours in the bathtub, where he developed his relativity theory (or so the urban myth says...)

Keeping a gratitude diary will also get you out of your stress response, because you can't be in gratitude and on stress and anxiety at the same time.

And the power of positive or negative words is understated. Words of encouragement, of appreciation and inspiration for your business mission will go a long way to unleash yours and your team creativity. In contrast, words of criticism or sarcasm will demoralise and paralyse yourself and others.

3-Shame is a toxic emotion that could paralyse you and kill your business

And finally, I thought that Drew Manning was very brave here talking openly about tricky issues that will envelope any human being in shame.

But it is not necessary to have the same issues than Drew to be paralysed with shame. Shame is rampant in the business world and is used all the time as a control mechanism.

Guilt is a feeling that we get when we realise that we have done something wrong, and have crossed our own moral boundaries, when shame is the feeling that we are inherently wrong as a person.

Guilt can be overcome by reparation of the wrongdoing. Shame can not be easily shaken off because we start believing that we are a failure and will never recover because that is who we are.

It is important first to become aware of when someone is shaming us. Shame is such a powerful force that people will do almost anything to avoid being shamed, so it can be used to try to control us.

And secondly, it is important to become aware that in many cases we have internalised this system of control, and we try to will ourselves to do things that we don't want to do, using shame. And once we have entered in that perception that there is something inherently wrong with us, it is a sticky feeling that permeates our life, actions and feelings and is difficult to get rid of.

You could use the power of words, gratitude and meditation to get in contact with your center of peace and calm that is fundamentally good, relaxed, smart and free of guilt and shame.

And why push yourself using shame to do things that you don't love to do? When you are connected with a strong purpose you are passionate about, you will work and will be productive, without having to use shame as a weapon on yourself. Believe me, it's not worthy. Operating from a center of calm and connected with your purpose and passion will take you to create the thriving and sustainable business life that you want.