“I won’t negotiate with myself.” Tony Robbins
I heard Tony say this on a podcast when explaining why he does a cold plunge every morning. He said he never wants to do it, but once he does, it drastically improves how he feels and gives him energy for the rest of the day. I feel the same way when I take a cold shower in the morning or do something else I find extremely uncomfortable. From time to time, I negotiate with myself and can rationalize why not to do something, but I try to remind myself of how good I will feel when it’s over. I preach about doing things that are uncomfortable and getting out of your comfort zone and, like most of my writing, it is also a reminder to myself for how I want to grow in this world.
One area that can be extremely uncomfortable for me is sales. Sales is something I have struggled with my whole life. My dad could tell you a great story about when he tried to get me to do a door to door sales campaign for my school as a kid. It may be the only thing I ever flat out refused to do and boy was he upset! believe this comes from my fear of rejection and caring too much about people saying “no.” Over the last year, I’ve gotten a lot better at this with the help of friends and mentors who’ve been in the sales game a long time. Each “no” just brings me closer to a “yes” and allows me to improve on my techniques. The uncomfortable physical activities I do also helps. The ice baths, the pool workouts, CrossFit, endurance events, and getting pounded in jiu-jitsu, all force me to improve my responses under pressure and deal with rejection. They help me “callous the mind” as David Goggins would say.
Where are you negotiating with yourself? Is it waking up early in the morning to get a workout in? Is it eating those extra sweets? Or, like me, is it putting off making that sales call you know you need to make? We all have areas in our life where we try to negotiate and rationalize doing something other than what we need to do. Tony’s quote is my new mantra that I taped to my computer as a daily reminder that there is no negotiating, just action. Take a look at your life and see what areas this mantra could help you.
With that said, let’s jump into this week’s links.