Today's post is by Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine and host of the Sales 2.0 Conference.
Anyone who has heard me speak live knows my passion for helping sales professionals ditch negativity and cultivate a winning mindset.
The right mindset will not just help your sales grow. It will also help you succeed in all areas of life. There are actual, scientific benefits to changing your brain patterns to embrace positivity. I spoke about some of these at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on May 2nd. Just a few of these benefits include:
- An increased ability to focus,
- Lowered stress levels,
- Lowered anxiety levels,
- Stronger immune system.
We all have what I call an “inner CEO” that we can tap for amazing and powerful results. This potential lives in the capacities of the prefrontal cortext of the brain, which is where neural connections form based on our experiences, emotions, and ideas.
However, I've found during my long career in sales that many people never examine their preconceived notions and feelings, despite the fact that they inform their every interaction and overall perspective on life. This can have a significant impact on your productivity and success.
For example, just believing negative ideas about the process of aging can actually decrease your life expectancy by 7.6 years. This means that people with a positive mindset actually live longer.
At the event in Boston, a few people came up to me and asked where they could learn more information. I recommended reading the books that I cited in my presentation, and I decided to share these titles in a blog post (see below) for any other sales professional who wants to add these to his or her summer reading list.
You can hear me speak about mindset and success again on July 18-19 in San Francisco at our second Sales 2.0 Conference of the year. A number of truly terrific sales leaders and experts will be taking the stage as well. I encourage you to register early and take advantage of discounted rates.
Summer Reading List for an Improved Mindset
Why are some people able to make positive change while others remain the same?
In his international bestseller, The Happiness Advantage, Harvard trained researcher Shawn Achor described why happiness is the precursor to greater success. This book is about what comes before both. Because before we can be happy or successful, we need to first develop the ability to see that positive change is possible. Only once we learn to see the world through a more positive lens can we summon all our motivation, emotion, and intelligence to achieve our personal and professional goals.
In Before Happiness, Achor reveals five actionable, proven strategies for changing our lens to positive:
· The Most Valuable Reality: See a broader range of ideas and solutions by changing the details on which your brain chooses to focus
· Success Mapping: Set goals oriented around the things in life that matter to you most, whether career advancement or family or making a difference in the world
· The X-spot: Use success accelerants to propel you more quickly towards those goals, whether finishing a marathon, reaching a sales target, learning a language, or losing 10 pounds
· Noise-Canceling: Boost the signal pointing you to opportunities and possibilities that others miss
· Positive Inception: Transfer these skills to your team, your employees, and everyone around you
By mastering these strategies, you’ll create an renewable source of positivity, motivation, and engagement that will allow you to reach your fullest potential in everything you do.
In this life-changing book, Dr. Herbert Benson draws on his twenty-five years as a physician and researcher to reveal how affirming beliefs, particularly belief in a higher power, make an important contribution to our physical health. We are not simply nourished by meditation and prayer, but are, in essence, "wired for God."
Combining the wisdom of modem medicine and of age-old faith. Dr. Benson shows how anyone can, with the aid of a caring physician or healer, use their beliefs and other self-care methods to heal over 60 percent of medical problems.
As practical as it is spiritual, Timeless Healing is a blueprint for healing and transforming your life.
Why is it so difficult to change our beliefs and behaviors even when we know they no longer serve us? How can certain individuals reverse "incurable" disease while others suffer the effects of childhood wounds despite years of therapy? How is it that the centenarians make up the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population—even though the majority of people over the age of 100 rarely visit their doctors?
When Dr. Mario Martinez began his career in clinical neuropsychology, he was determined to find the answers to baffling questions like these. With The MindBody Code, he shares the rewards of an investigation that has spanned generations and cultures to reveal the most effective methods for initiating deep and lasting change—and the empowering new science of biocognition that substantiates their results.
Far from a quick-fix approach, The MindBody Code will challenge you to embrace a bold paradigm for health and wellbeing that requires your courage, patience, and commitment. You will not only learn the basics of this cutting-edge science, you will learn to communicate with your body in its own "biosymbolic" language to begin making changes that till this point may have been elusive at best. Through fascinating case studies and practical training in embodying the methodology, Dr. Martinez illuminates:
- The overt and subtle ways our cultural beliefs impact our immune system—and the pathways to healing the archetypal wounds of shame, abandonment, and betrayal
- How to break through the ceilings of abundance that limit prosperity and create the "subcultures of wellness" that will help you reach your full potential
- Lessons from the centenarians—how to transform "aging consciousness" to continually increase your value and competence as you grow older
- Psychospiritual conflicts—getting to the root of challenges often mistaken as psychiatric disorders
World-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, in decades of research on achievement and success, has discovered a truly groundbreaking idea—the power of our mindset.
Dweck explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success—but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset. She makes clear why praising intelligence and ability doesn’t foster self-esteem and lead to accomplishment, but may actually jeopardize success. With the right mindset, we can motivate our kids and help them to raise their grades, as well as reach our own goals—personal and professional. Dweck reveals what all great parents, teachers, CEOs, and athletes already know: how a simple idea about the brain can create a love of learning and a resilience that is the basis of great accomplishment in every area.
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