You actually can control your emotions because emotions are not caused primarily by external circumstances. They are caused by how we interpret our circumstances and the meaning that we give to them.
Let's take an example of a boyfriend and girlfriend and the boyfriend is always late to dinner. Depending on how the girlfriend interprets this will dramatically change how she feels about the situation.
For example, if the girlfriend thinks, "Oh well, he's staying late at work because he wants to make more money to buy me things because he loves me so much," the situation could actually make her feel pretty happy,
But if she sits there and she starts thinking that the reason her boyfriend stays after work is that he doesn't want to be around her and he likes his secretary and the reason he's not coming home is that he doesn't love her, well, then she's going to feel pretty lousy.
Why choose meanings that don't serve you? There may be a time for evaluating situations, but 90% of the time, you don't have any evidence one way or the other, so why not choose to believe the thing that will make you feel good? Why is it always the default to choose the thing that will make us feel anxious? Why is it that if we have five amazing things happen to us today, and one bad thing happens, the movie that we choose to live in for the rest of the day is the bad one?
This doesn't have to be your default. It's as simple as changing the channel. When you recognize that you were in a negative loop pattern, STOP.
Change the question that you ask yourself. Change the story that you're meditating on. Come up with a possible alternative meaning to the situation that you are over-analyzing. Bask in the mental movie of what it will feel like when your favorite vision comes true.
So what does this have to do with sales?
If you have five negative customers that come to you in a row, if you interpret that to mean you're a failure, you'll be stressed and unable to maintain your enthusiasm with call number six.
If however, you're able to reframe the situation and say, "Awesome." Another opportunity to cheer up a hurting person, or some positive frame that works for you, then you'll have taken the power away from others and taken their ability to drain you and poison drip you.
When you're at home, I want you to take out a piece of paper and think of one thing that usually upsets you and ask yourself, why does it affect me?
What am I believing that makes me upset? What other meaning could I give this circumstance? And then ask yourself the question, so what? Basically, you're going to look at something in your life that stresses you out. For my situation, it was the director. So I would ask myself the question, "Okay. So what?" As in why am I afraid of this? Well, if he's angry and upset, maybe that's because he doesn't like me, or thinks that I'm doing a bad job and then you get the next layer, so what? Well, if he thinks I'm doing a bad job, maybe he won't hire me again. Then you go to the next layer. Well, so what? Why does that make me stressed? Well, it makes me stress because if he doesn't hire me again, I might not ever eat, or I might starve to death if I don't make money.
Now we've gotten to the core fundamental fear that is stressing me out. But now you have to ask yourself “what is the lie that I am believing?”
Because is it really true that if this director doesn't like me, that I'm going to starve to death? Probably not here in California. There is usually a fundamental lie at the core of stress that we are believing.
When you ask yourself so what enough times to get to the deepest fundamental core reason, you can then evaluate, is it true? Is this a lie that I'm believing? Or is this a real fear that I should be concerned about?
So on your own, do those two exercises.
So what? And what else?
As in, what else could this mean? What other meaning could I give to the situation that would be positive instead of this negative spin that had been giving it?
Anytime you find yourself getting stressed out or emotional this week, ask yourself these two questions and see if you are able to change the way you feel.