2 Simple Questions To Improve Your Life

This time of year can be incredibly stressful on anyone, especially sales professionals and business leaders.

Maybe you’re trying to salvage a rough year, make it to 100% or trying to capitalize on a great year and make a bonus.  Either way, finishing the year strong is critical and maybe even more important is setting yourself up for a great next year.

What habits are you creating now that will help you finish the year strong? Are you waiting until January 1st to do anything differently? The best business professionals I’ve worked with leverage a growth mindset, to learn and grow after every single experience. Even when they lose, they realize it can help them grow. You can either see problems as awful experiences, or gifts to help you grow. The choice is up to you and only you.  

While you sit there, ask yourself; What did I do well this year? Write as many things down as you can think of, big or small and appreciate them. Then, ask yourself; What would I like to improve on NOW? – (write these down) and start thinking about what you can do right NOW to take action. At a course on Negotiation at MIT Sloan, Jared Curhan talked about building the sales/negotiation muscle by leveraging these 2 simple questions. I can’t count the number of people that tell me they aren’t “sales people", but yet we are all selling in some form or fashion every day! As Daniel Pink talks about in To Sell Is Human, he says everyone is a sales person, you may just not realize it. Whether it’s lobbying a coworker to support you on a project, getting a spouse to do something you know is good for them or getting a child to do their chores. These are all forms of selling.

Letting the excuse of “I’m not a sales person” may be true, but you still practice asking for resources in some form or fashion almost every day. By looking at all areas of your life as a muscle you can build it will open up tons of new possibilities you may have never seen before. By adopting a Growth Mindset, you move away from Win or Lose and can start adopting a Win or Learn mentality. One of the best ways to do that is reflecting at the end of each day, week, month, quarter year on; What went well? What will I improve on? 

 By asking yourself these questions it will condition the brain to start seeing your actions as skills that you can grow, develop and improve on. This will set you up for success for anything you have coming to finish the year and get you in a great habit to realize even more success and growth next year!

What are some of the things you’ve done well? What would you like to improve? Share in the comments and pass this to your teams to see where you may find some help holding you accountable to getting better next year! You can also DM me and I’m happy to help you push through to the next level!