If you read my work, you know by now that I don't feed you any of that motivational BS. Everything you get from me is truth, fact, proven and scientific. If you want to build a more successful business (or life), keep reading.

Phase One

Use Your Mind's Eye and Visualize!

Picture yourself on your seminar stage. You look out into a sea of faces, recognizing many of them as people who repeatedly come to your program but never become clients. You know they also attend other programs and safely assume they don't become clients of those advisors either. You've wasted time and money on them again! You feel the tension of frustration tighten on your chest. Your breathing gets shallow. The muscles around your mouth tighten. What can you possibly do to stop wasting your time and money with those people?

Picture yourself in your office sitting at your desk. On the other side of the desk is an empty chair. The prospect just left without doing business with you. You feel your heart get heavy with frustration. Your head gets heavy and you look down at your hands. What can you do to convince people that you can help them? What can you do to make more sales?

If you can relate to either of those uncomfortable and disheartening situations, if you can feel any frustration, notice exactly what you're feeling and where you feel it in your body. Notice where the frustration or stress or sadness is, where the sinking feeling is, where the anxiety is. What you're finding is the "physiological cocktail" of that emotional state. That's important because if it's a state you go into often, it is also a state that is getting bigger and stronger each time you go into it. And, that's important because if it's getting bigger and stronger, you're losing control of it.

Simple Science.

That's just the way the brain operates. Emotional states are nothing more than chemicals and attachments inside your noodle, like little engines in your brain. Because it's just chemicals, you can change the mix. Think of it as the difference between a Margarita and a Martini. Different formulas for different emotions.

Without going into too much detail, all emotions are caused by chemicals released in your brain. Your body becomes literally addicted to those specific chemicals. So, if you get frustrated, or impatient, or angry during most days, you are probably addicted to the chemical formula released by that (or those) emotions. That makes you your own worst enemy. Without even realizing it, you have become the saboteur in your own house. Want to learn how to get clean? Do this…

Recognize where in your body you feel the physical manifestation of your emotion. It lodges itself some place. Your shoulders, your stomach, your thighs, your neck – find it. Now, do something different, anything. Stand on one foot. Force a big goofy smile onto your face. Raise one eyebrow. Flip a coin. Count your change.

The logic is this – the emotional state you are in is directly attached to your body. Change the body and you change the state. See, the postures you go into and the movements you make are merely expressions of your emotional cocktail. Ever know some one who was a door-slammer? "I'm outa here! I'm leaving. I mean it. Don't try to stop me. Hey, are you paying attention to me yet?" That's a common emotional expression. All that guy has to do is pirouette instead of slam the door and he'll start to get a handle on that emotion. A more subtle expression is raising one or both eyebrows and passing judgment. "I didn't want that jerk as a client anyway!"

First step. Immediately, stop and look inside yourself. What I'm asking you to do is recognize when the emotion is in your body. Then, notice where it is. That's your first significant tactic for making all your dreams come true. Simple, but probably the hardest thing you've ever done in your life.

Second step. Do something different. In the same way a pinch of salt changes a Martini (into swill), changing your posture or movement changes your emotion into something else – something less toxic, maybe even something positive.

By doing something different, you take your first baby step to expanding your horizons and gaining access to a more expansive universe. In real-life terms, it's how you open the door to improving your business.

Take two emotions and call me in the morning. Repeat that tactic every time you go into a negative or unresourceful state, and you'll discover that the state comes to you less often and is less intense. What you're doing in effect is weakening the negative cocktail.

Phase Two

Third step. Identify the negative emotions that impact your life. Here's a simple chart naming many of the negative emotions you probably experience on any given day. It's one half of a larger chart titled the "Structure of Relevance." I developed the chart earlier this year to help my coaching clients understand the range emotions they experience.

(C) 2005 Michael Lovas

Find the words that represent the negative emotions you feel yourself pulled into most often. Then, make a simple list of them. To illustrate, let's say you recognize five emotions that plague you. I'll just list some at random:

1. Inadequacy
2. Guilt
3. Frustration
4. Anger
5. Stress

Fourth step. Find a trigger for each one. That's a type of situation that causes you to go into a specific emotion. For example, in Dallas I worked with an advisor who felt highly inadequate when he was talking with wealthy people. (How's that for a self-sabotaging mental trip?) To get him to go into that state, all I had to do was portray myself as one of those wealthy people. Just listing my hypothetical holdings would send him withering into a state of inadequacy.

Here's what your chart might look like

Your job is to create your own chart, listing the negative emotions you fall into and listing the things that trigger those emotions.

Next Time – In my next installment of this series, I'm going to explain to you the rest of this sequence of steps. I'll explain and show you how to replace those negative emotions with positive ones that you choose.

Remember, we started by talking about new year's resolutions? Go ahead and make a list of what you want to accomplish this year. Quite smoking? Get back into shape? Lose 20 pounds? Improve your marriage? Make the list. When we finish this series, you'll have a psychological strategy you can use to accomplish those things. And, when you're ready to implement them, call me.