The Importance of a Mantra

You've probably been there. Sitting in a sea of people, while you watch someone on stage try and help you get "better" at whatever they specialize in. We try and stay off of our phones, try and grab one or two things from those sessions in an attempt to better ourselves. We are off of our laptops for a day anyway, so why not get something out of it.

Three years ago, I sat in a session similar to this. The speaker was fabulous and was tasked with teaching us how to "transform our sales process". Interesting thought I suppose. Tricky, but interesting.

He started talking and it became really clear that there would be audience participation.

Now is a good time for me to take a step back. You see, I am an introvert in an extroverts' body. I can be a chameleon during events like this and work the room, participate, and have a pretty good time, but the truth is that I would much rather watch Harry Potter in the hotel room than socialize in big giant groups. As I have gotten further along in my career, I have found that this is not a special trait, but worth noting.

Well, needless to say, the audience participation piece was pretty intimidating, but as you have probably started to gather, I'm like a Karaoke singer. I don't necessarily want to get up there and talk (or sing), but say a little prayer for yourself if I get a stage, mic, and a decent story to tell.

All that said, the speaker started asking for volunteers to answer different questions and get involved. The more I did, the better I felt about the whole process. See, this wasn't a different sales process, this was a completely different mindset with a repeatable process that allowed you to execute well. This "sales process" involved the creation of a mantra. During that session, I took a minute to look up what a Mantra was:

A word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation

Okay, I can do that. Well, the process for building that mantra required that we had to work backwards to figure out pain points, current state, future state, and required capabilities to get there. Interesting thought. I'm not sure if, at that point, I believed that it would really help me in sales, but that's a story for a different time.

Likely, the most important skill I learned in this session was probably something that I should have learned in therapy a long time ago:

In drafting the elements of a mantra, you can find a way out of what causes you the most pain.

Here goes it.

1. Write and rank your pain points and try and think about how they are negatively impacting the life that you currently live. The metrics section really asks the question of how do you know the negative impact.

2. Build out your future state based on those pain points, how in the world is your life/situation going to look better in this new scenario

3. Think about what meaningful steps you can take to get to that future state. What will the results be, how will you measure success, and how are you going to do it.

The reality is this. Just taking the time to go through this process immediately starts a process of transformation. You don't need to think about this process as a "sales" process, although it has been helpful. You need to think about this is a decision process. The decisions that you put thought into and that have a measurable result are going to feel the best to make and execute.

The training was Force Management. The speaker was Patty Mac. It was 3 years ago. I have followed this process in all aspects of my life everyday since then. It changed me professional and personally.