88. Keep walking

Today’s thoughts from Steve Chandler are tough for me to relate to as I’ve honestly let myself go physically. And I know, I need to change that. And I will. But how to relate to that today, how to share something positive.

Besides exercising the body regularly, we always need to challenge and exercise the mind as well. As I specialize, consult and encourage sales professionalism I’ve elected to share my one-a-day plan. 15 minutes of your life that, if followed, will lead to mastery, accomplishment and financial success for anyone. Think of it as a 15 minute professional workout at the start of your day.

A good balanced cardio/resistance workout at the start of your day sets up your metabolism for a good 4-6 hour high. Improves brain functionality and makes you feel better about yourself and life.

A good breakfast, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, can change your outlook for the whole day. A good breakfast jump-starts your metabolism! Breakfast improves academic performance! Breakfast is the key to weight loss!

I’ve been known as the "one-a-day man" for a while now. Why? Because every chance I get, I get up on my pulpit and preach: Read, one customer story a day. Read one sales blog a day. Read one industry article a day. Each one takes 5 minutes. Each one you should muse on, internalize and work to apply during the day.

Why do it?

Customer stories increase your confidence in your company, your product and in yourself. They broaden your experience in terms of the challenges your customers are facing; how they saw the solution come about and state why they selected your company and product as their ultimate solution. These points can become the foundational materials for having C-suite level discussions and keeping you in the C-suite.

Sales blogs increase your exposure to other techniques and ways of approaching sales challenges, objections, and executive communication. I have taught 7 sales methodologies over the last 35 years and I can tell you there is NO silver bullet, no always, no never. Read your sales blogs, and I encourage you spread your interest across many and not become the acolyte of just one. There are “gold coins” to be found in everyone of them. (If you don’t have a favorite check out: Jill Konrath, Art Sobczak, the Rain Group, Hubspot, John Barrows)

Industry articles (example google: top trends in “manufacturing”/top challenges facing the “automotive”/risk in “financial services” today) will arm you with relevant information, educate you regarding the trends, risks and challenges the industry your researching is facing and provide you with noteworthy references to open up C-levels to a true business discussion and avoid an immediate “sales” discussion which will just end in you being pushed away.

Why do it?

I promise you, if you do this, after 20 days you will have 20 customer stories under your belt and 3 will resonate with you and become your go-to stories. We all know. “stories sell and facts tell.” At the end of year you will have read 240 stories, 240 sales blogs/lessons and 240 industry articles. You will have earned the equivalent to a Master’s Degree in both sales and business.

Today's chapter from the book 100 ways to Motivate Yourself by Steve Chandler reminds us all to expand ourselves, exercise our minds each day as well as our bodies. I make it sound like simple stuff but, consider this: “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” — Charles Mingus

Steve’s book makes motivating oneself seem simple. Today I challenge you to look at your career. Your future. What are you doing to improve it each day? I challenge you to go to your daily calendar and set a daily reminder at the start of your day, a 15-minute appointment, to read ONE story, ONE blog, ONE industry article. A year from now you’ll thank me for your success and your paycheck.

As for me…I’ll start the physical walking part…

I hope you enjoy each shared chapter –

 Matt

88. Keep walking

Ever since I was a child, I had a recurring dream that I began each day facing a mattress. The more I pushed into this mattress before my day began, the more the indentation went in, and the more saved-up the sprung energy of the mattress got. The more the mattress was indented with my pushing at the start of the day, the higher it would spring up when I lay down on it to sleep at night. I would lie down on this mattress at night and see how high my dreams would send me. How high I flew would always depend on the indentations I gave the mattress during the day. The impressions I gave it. How impressive I was. The difference I made. After thinking about that dream, I decided to step up my walking. I decided that the recurring dream was the way my subconscious chose to tell me something vital. Something about the difference walking made. Something about oxygen being pushed into my system. Walking would be an action I could take while wide awake. Walking would drive more oxygen into my lungs. I would become more like the great football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, who lived to be 103 years old. Amos Alonzo Stagg was asked how he lived to be so old (the average life expectancy during his lifetime was 65) and he said, “I have, for the greater part of my life, indulged in running and other vigorous exercise that forced large amounts of oxygen into my body.” I increased my walking just to see what would happen if my lungs became my mattress. I began to get happier. I began to enjoy life more. I began to be more motivated. As I walked, I wondered: What if the spirit lives as an aura around us? What if the spirit were a cloud of energy that exists around and outside our bodies ready at all times to be breathed in? Drawn right into the soul? What if when you breathed deeply, you pulled in your own spirit? And you received energy for action—energy for an explosive take-down of one of your out-of-control problems. What if the solution to problems outside you was inside you? Deepak Chopra quotes an ancient anonymous Indian sage as identifying humanity’s near-fatal superstition: “You believe that you live in the universe when in reality the universe lives in you.” Many modern scientific books are now referring to the human brain as the “three-pound universe.” When the body moves, so does the mind. So does that inner world. When you’re walking, you are organizing your mind whether you want to be or not. Soon we realize that the mind and the body are connected. When the Greeks said the secret to a happy life was a sound mind in a sound body, they were onto a powerful truth. I try to talk myself out of that truth many times a week. I’m too tired to exercise. I have an injury. I haven’t had enough sleep. I should listen to my body! I would be short-changing my children of the important time they need with me if I selfishly went out for my long walk. But I am always better off if I choose the walk. I am even better at relating to my children, because walking takes me to the soul. That’s why I can’t leave it out. I can’t pretend it has nothing to do with this subject, because it’s how I pull the truth to me. I pull the globe around toward me under my feet by walking. As the world turns, the lies leak out of my mind, into space. As the body becomes sound, so does the mind. It’s true.

There is something about walking that combines opposites. Opposites: activity and relaxation. (This very paradox is what creates whole-brain thinking.) Opposites: out in the world and solitude. (Alone, but out there walking.) This combining of opposites activates the harmony I need between the right and left brain, between the adult and the child, between the higher self and the animal. Great solutions appear. Truth becomes beauty. You have your own walking available to you, too. Yes, indeed. It might be dancing, swimming, running, racquetball, boxing, or aerobics, but it’s all the same thing. It’s all a way of moving the body around like a merry plaything and oxygenating the spirit in the process.