We all have a lot to do, and thank goodness we do, because that means we’re achieving something.
Problem is that in being busy, we tend to also do a lot of worrying about what needs to be done.
This subject came up recently in a session I was conducting in Asia on the topic of Sales Leadership Excellence.
The more people talked about how they worry about things, the more obvious it became that much of what we worry about is stuff we can’t control. I was tempted to jump into the discussion and make a recommendation, but I held back to let the participants see if they couldn’t on their own reach the idea I was set to suggest.
The recommendation I give to salespeople is if you’re struggling with too many things on your plate and worrying about all of them is to make two columns.
One column is a list of everything you can control that you worry about and the second column is a list of everything you worry about that you can’t control.
The objective is to quit worrying about what you can’t control because what we don’t realize is we spend a lot of time worrying about that type of stuff.
When we worry about the stuff we can’t control, we wind up wasting valuable intellectual capacity — namely our own mind. And we don’t have enough energy left to deal with the things we really need to deal with.
There are numerous factors we can’t control — the economy, value of the dollar, new government regulations, etc. — and this is just a quick sample. What I find is we spend a lot of time worrying about them for no reason, since there really isn’t a whole lot we can do about it.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be prepared for certain situations, but once you’re prepared, then let it go and quit worrying about it.
Focus your time on what you can control and you’ll be amazed at how much better your decision making process is.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
