How to Immediately Influence Yourself

Sometimes we have an inaccurate perception of the happiness of successful people in business, politics, and entertainment. In reality, regardless of their socioeconomic success, a number of them are messed up on the inside. In fact, many times we have discovered they are depressed, abusive, suicidal, and addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.

Ironic?  Yes!  Think about it.  In our society, people believe that happiness and success are derived from earning a significant income, acquiring material objects, traveling to exotic places, eating in the best restaurants, and staying in the finest hotels.  Yet, I imagine that you can think of a few famous people experiencing all that, and more – but they are miserable.

Why?

Apparently, they have mastered influencing others, but haven’t yet succeeded in influencing themselves. Specifically, they haven’t truly learned to manage their own emotions. So they drink too much, too often, take illegal and legal drugs, and/or eat too much, or too little.  All of these self-destructive actions are done in effort to change the way they are feeling in the moment. And, unfortunately we have lost some very talented and gifted people such as Chris Farley, Curt Cobain, and most recently Michael Jackson – because of their choices to indulge in such self destructive behaviors.

One measure of success in the outside world is the ability to influence and persuade in a way that causes other people to take action. But success in your personal life depends on your ability to immediately influence yourself at times when you feel all hell has broken loose.

What Hell Has Broken Loose in My Life

The reason I know that to be true is 10 years ago, I battled depression for a few months after having experienced a big financial setback. I was able to come back from the edge by utilizing the tools you are about to learn. In addition to that, I am very aware of research involving 3 million people from every walk of life who’ve dealt with every possible problem – but have successfully turned their lives around.

So how do you immediately influence yourself?

Three Ways to Influence Yourself Quickly

You can do it three ways. Before you read about the three ways to immediately influence yourself, let me ask you a question. How do you feel right now? Are you bored? I hope not. My guess is you are probably in a heightened state of curiosity, mixed with some excitement because you’re learning something new.  Our research indicates that at any given time, the emotional state that you are experiencing is affected by the way you use your body, the focus of your mind, and your language patterns.

I’m curious to know if you’ve ever heard Tony Robbins ask this question? “Have you ever done something and said to yourself, “I can’t believe I did that, I can’t believe I said that; that was so stupid!” Since Tony has coached over 3 million people, I’m going to guess that you have.  You might have also heard him ask,”Have you ever done something and said proudly, “Yeah… that was me!”

Listen, it’s wasn’t your ability alone that produced a particular result, it was the emotional state you were in at that moment. Are you with me? Often times people do not produce the results they want because they haven’t learned to manage their own emotional states. All human behavior is the result of the state we are in at any given moment in time. And the quality of our state always effects our performance. Think about it this way.

Our research shows that top salespeople believe that selling is the transference of emotion, so they are extremely aware of the importance of being in a powerful emotional state of mind before talking with a customer. Before each presentation, before each key time during the day, they get themselves into state so that they can get peak performance from themselves and effectively influence the state of the people they are dealing with.

Play along with me.  Imagine being in a frustrated emotional state before meeting with a customer, you’d behave differently than if you’re in an emotional state of excitement. Wouldn’t you?

That actually reminds of a story I heard a few months ago.

Early one morning the Vice President of Sales at a Fortune 500 company came into the office and noticed that his top producer wasn’t on the phone yet. The VP of Sales watched as the top producer paced back and forth for a few minutes before going over to talk to him. When the VP of Sales asked the top producer why he wasn’t on the phone yet, the top producer quickly responded, “I’m not in the right frame of mind.”

The VP of Sales knew the top producer had a routine he followed each morning, so he asked him, ”Have you listened to your music this morning?” The top producer replied, “No, I accidentally broke my IPod last night while working out”.  Without hesitation, the VP of Sales whipped out the company credit card, handed it to his top producer, and insisted that he run out and buy a new IPod right away. After the top producer had purchased a new IPod and loaded it with his favorite tunes, he returned to the office later that day and outsold all his peers.

What’s Your Routine?

I’m wondering if you see the benefit of having a routine that puts you in the right frame of mind before meeting with a prospective or existing customer? Do you have a routine? Our research shows that top producers do – and sometimes aren’t even aware of their routine until something happens to interrupt it. Think of a routine as a way of taking control of your emotions and conditioning yourself for success.

I’m curious. How often do you think you should take part in a routine like that? Let me ask the question with a slightly different twist.  Would you clean your house once and say, “I won’t ever have to clean my house again!” Of course not, right? You have to clean your house on a regular basis. The same thing applies to using a routine that puts you into a frame of mind or the emotional state that enables you to outperform your competition.

What routine could you create to put yourself in an emotional state that will empower you to behave in ways that lead to the results you want? Let me give you some important distinctions that will help you come up with a routine to take complete control of your emotional state.

Again, there are three major factors that determine your state, that is, how you feel, and ultimately how you will behave:

You may remember these from earlier – but I’m going to give you more details now.

#1.  The fastest way to affect the way you feel is to become deliberate about how you use your physiology, i.e. your breathing rate, your posture, the way you are using your facial muscles, etc.  All of these affect your state. Picture this for a moment…

If someone’s body is stressed, tense, or in pain, it will cause them to be in different state than if their body is relaxed. Obviously these two physiologies will create two different states, and two different behaviors. Make sense?

“Success People Do What The Failures Won’t!” -Jim Rohn

Let’s play a little game to illustrate how physiology affects your state, okay? Now I want you to know that this exercise may be different than anything you’ve done before. But in order for you to get results you never had before, you must do things you’ve never done before. I know that’s an old burned out phrase but it’s true. Listen, Tony Robbins’ first mentor, Jim Rohn says, “Successful people do what the failures won’t.”  So play along with me. Okay?

Think of something you’re not sure you can do… now. As you are thinking about something you are unsure you can do, I want you to notice your posture and your breathing.

Now, sit the way you’d be sitting if you felt completely and absolutely “unstoppable!” Feel it in your body, in your breathing, and in your posture! Then go back to “not sure.” Then snap back to “unstoppable!”

From the physiology and state of “unstoppable,” think of the thing you didn’t think you could do. Stay in the state of “unstoppable.” And notice how differently you feel about it now – it feels like something you can do now, doesn’t it?

Bottom line is this: Changing your physiology changes your state immediately, which changes your behavior and will enable you to produce better results. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?

Let’s move on to the second factor that determines state. Focus: Specifically, the focus of your mind. What I’m referring to is the dialogue you are having with yourself and/or how you are representing things in your mind. We represent events in 2 ways:

a) What, and how, we are picturing images in our mind. Let me give you an example. Just suppose you have a presentation to do later today. If you start picturing how nervous you are going to be, what impact do you think that will have on your actual performance? Not good, right?

b) The other way that we communicate with ourselves is through what we say to ourselves, and how we say it. If we talk to ourselves in a loving tone of voice, we’ll be in a different state than if we talk to ourselves in an angry tone of voice. Once again, the two different states will yield two different behaviors.

Time to play again: This time you’re going to experience what happens when you change the way you represent a past event in your mind.  Think of an experience from your past involving another person that has really bothered you.

As you are thinking about that experience that really bothered you… you might want to close your eyes and see yourself and that person in the emotional state each of you were in. While you are seeing yourself and the other person, I want you to imagine that they were in shackles. Now. go over to them and take out a large, red magic marker and color their nose red. And give them a hot pink goatee. Now, imagine putting a rainbow colored wig on their head and watching them shrink down to the size of a mustard seed.

Make a movie of that experience – go to the last moment of that movie, then run the whole movie backwards, seeing the person complete with red nose, hot pink goatee and rainbow colored wig, make the person’s voice sound like Winnie the Pooh, and perhaps hear the theme song to your favorite cartoon from your childhood playing in the background.

Open your eyes. How do you feel about what happened now? See how quickly you can change the way you represent a previously unpleasant experience so that when you think of it now, it makes you laugh, smile, or wonder why it bothered you in the first place. Remember: it’s also through your mental focus that you create whatever emotions you experience.

If I had more time, I’d walked you through a process that would allow you to trigger several positive emotions in yourself, on cue. But, for now you have a few tools to immediately change your emotional state, so that you can experience a better life.

Wishing you and yours incredible success,
Ron

P.S. If you have debilitating emotions and/or destructive behaviors that you know are preventing you from experiencing the success you dream of, I invite you to sign up for a FREE Success Strategy Session. Get more information by clicking on the “Solutions” tab above now.