How to Build Sales Confidence | #9.1 Mind, Body, & Confidence - Mindfulness

Implementing Mindfulness into Your Business & Your Life.

Mindfulness, to me, is an exercise in pausing, breathing, being present, and not being anxious or concerned about what lies ahead. It takes a bit of time out of your day to centre yourself, be present, and pause. Taking time to reflect and be present before entering a conversation is critical to centering yourself. When you’re nervous about going into a situation, you start to escalate your thinking so remember to take a moment before the situation to breathe, centre yourself, compose yourself, and be present. If you prepare yourself this way, you are less likely to be swept up in any anxiety about the situation, and you will feel more grounded. Then, once you’ve centred and given yourself some capacity to breathe, you can start thinking about what you’ve got ahead of you.

Three Tips for Mindfulness

1. Do your best to find somewhere quiet, and turn off all notifications and distractions. Make sure you give yourself enough time to fully unplug. You don’t need to take more than five minutes, but I try to take at least five minutes to become still, pause and be without distraction.

2. Be aware, but don’t judge the unconscious trail of thought going on in your mind. Just watch it and let it pass. Your mind will be talking to you regardless of whether you’re trying to be at peace, but let it flow.

3. Centre yourself. You can do this by quietly naming things in your head. For example, name something you can see, something you can feel, something you can smell or taste, and something you can hear. By grounding yourself in the present moment, you are less likely to feel anxiety moving into the next moment.

Body

Being a salesperson is like being an elite athlete (I hear you laughing but hear me out on this!). It’s like being an athlete because so much is involved in the upkeep, as you need to tend to both your emotional and physical well-being to be at the top of your game. To be a high achiever, you need to have a healthy body. From a nutritional perspective, you should be mindful about eating healthily, and eating at reasonable times. It’s also essential to exercise daily, even if that means simply going out for a walk for 30 minutes. I think more than ever people need to invest in structured time for exercise as we’ve all reduced our daily steps because of the lack of movement in office work and especially from working from home. Often, we move from our? bedroom to our kitchen and our desk only. That reduces the activity in our daily lives and will ultimately make us unhealthy and unable to perform at our best. Anything that raises your heartbeat will increase those positive endorphins, helping you maintain a peak body and, therefore, peak mindset. Body and mindset are intertwined and must be looked after effectively.

I train in the gym about five times a week, with a mixture of cardiovascular exercise and weights. I enjoy running and using the rowing machine, but I also do body weights, from squats to deadlifts and bench presses. My routine allows me to get away from the stresses of work and focus on myself. Enhancing my body and becoming stronger makes my mind healthier, which helps my productivity from a success perspective.

Even if you aren’t naturally active, you should think about getting up from your desk more often and be careful about being stationary too long. If you find that difficult, you can schedule when you need to get up and move around by setting an alarm on your phone.?

I work in ‘time blocks’. A time block could be a 90-minute time block of productivity before you have a break. If you can create a plan in your diary that schedules you to go for a walk or get up from your desk, you will start to notice how little you were doing it before (and how good you feel once you start!).?

For others, bodywork might be low-impact exercises like yoga or pilates. I would advise trying several different exercise options and seeing what works best for you. If you don’t like gyms, or you work from home and have children, hundreds of thousands of free videos are available to suit any person or workout situation. Even if working out is new to you, I stress that you should begin with some movement each day and see how it radically changes your life.

James Ski is CEO & Founder of Sales Confidence, a company dedicated to the professional advancement of sales professionals, & author of the debut professional development book How to Build Sales Confidence.?        

This is an excerpt from How to Build Sales Confidence by James Ski, the full version of which you can purchase here .