The Problem With Affirmations (And What To Do About It)

By Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales

To start with, let me ask you the most important question of your sales

career: Do you have an affirmation card, a few sentences or a paragraph, that describes in detail the feelings and emotions that you will have once you have accomplished your current financial goal?

And if you do, do you have it on you right now?

Most sales reps, managers and business owners will answer no to that, and that’s too bad. Without a doubt, the most important determinant to your success is what your belief and expectation of your success is. Every sales rep already has an image of what their results are going to be, a number, if you will, of how much they are worth and how much they are going to earn, and it is that image that will always determine your results.

Not the economy, not your leads, not your territory or the price of your product. Rather, your belief and expectation of your performance is the BIGGEST predictor of your results. What you believe will happen, happens.

What you think about all day long becomes your reality. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this:

Isn’t it true that what you are currently thinking about all day long, in every area of your life, is exactly how your life currently is? Think about your weight, your income, your success, your relationships – aren’t they the mirror image of what you think about all day long?

Of course they are. That’s why the only way to really change anything in your life is to first change how you think about it. There are hundreds of great books about The Law of Attraction, and I recommend you buy some of them and read and apply the truth immediately, but the bottom line is that until you change your currently dominate self-image or picture, your results won’t change.

And that’s where affirmations come in. The proper use of carefully crafted affirmations can and will change your image, your actions and your results faster and more effectively than any other tool you have access to. The problem is that most people give up on affirmations because of one big mistake they make at the beginning:

They set their goals too high and because of that, their affirmations are unbelievable. The fact is, most people who write affirmations make them so unrealistic that their subconscious minds reject them and so they feel they are just lying to themselves, and, in a sense, they are. That’s why they stop using them after just a few days.

For example, if you make £1,500 a month in commissions, and you read a book on sales or goal setting and affirmations and get fired up and think you can make £3,000 or £5,500 the next month or two, chances are you will have some self talk that says, “Who are you kidding?” And it is that voice that will win out and in short order you will go back to earning your old self-image of £1,500 a month.

The solution is to make incremental increases that you can truly believe in. For example, can you actually see yourself making £2,000 a month, or £2,500 a month? Which amount truly feels like a realistic (and yet still stretches you a little) goal that you can really believe in? Once you determine what truly feels achievable, set a goal around it and begin affirming how it feels now that you’re earning that amount.

This is the proper use of affirmations and you will go much further by setting realistic goals and then achieving them. In three or four months, you can revise that goal higher because the more you achieve the more you will believe you can achieve.

If you have given up on affirmations because they never worked for you, then revisit them TODAY and develop ones that you CAN believe in. Then begin using them immediately. Remember, the fastest way to change your results is to change your image of what is possible for yourself, and using affirmations, properly, is the most effective way to do that.

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Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance.