Are you having a bad day, or in a lousy mood? We’ve all experienced them. They are the times when things don’t seem to go our way no matter how we try or what we do. Most people don’t know how to shake the negativity and stay stuck there all day.
The fact of the matter is we don’t always have the luxury of indulging our moods, as much as we may want to. The rest of your team, family, customers, or colleagues don’t really care that you’re having a bad day. Others depend on you, and besides, when you’re in a slump, it seems everything just serves to make you more depressed, so there’s very little upside to staying there. Having said that:
What if I told you that YOU have the power to turn your day and your bad mood around? It’s true! I do it all the time and have taught literally hundreds of thousands of people to do the same. It’s called mastering your Little Voice – you know, the Little Voice that just said to you what little voice?. I learned these Little Voice mastery techniques from some of the brightest people on the planet. The techniques are short (they can be practiced in 30 seconds or less) and incredibly powerful.
Here are some of the best techniques I know that have worked for me and thousands of others to pull yourself out of a bad mood, or to just keep positive energy flowing:
How to Deal with Adversity
What do you do when somebody says no to you? If somebody were to say, “Look, we really like you, but we don’t like your product-don’t come around here again, you walk away feeling defeated.” This can happen.
What you say to yourself in the first minute after something likes this happens is very critical.
Don’t attribute the problem to yourself personally. I’m not saying you’re not going to take it personally, because that’s hard not to do. But what’s easier to do is to say, “Obviously, I was not aware of the other circumstances or other products that they were looking at so, while I’m responsible, it’s not all because of me.”
The thing you don’t want to say to yourself is, “There’s something wrong with me, or I’m not cut out for this. I knew this wasn’t going to work.” If you hear yourself saying those things, say, “Stop!” enough times that you stop seeing it that way. Look, it doesn’t even matter if it’s true. You have to learn to control your own Little Voice. So, you attribute it to outside sources.
Secondly, when faced with adversity, say to yourself, “This is an isolated incident, which has no effect on the rest of the week,” as opposed to, “The rest of my day is ruined. The whole week is going to be like this.” You’ve got to turn that around and isolate the incident. Do not allow it to expand beyond that moment. Even say to yourself, “I’ve got a new call to make. This is a new page. It’s over and done with.”
When you are first practicing these techniques, say them out loud. They will have more impact. Some people may think you’re crazy, but that’s okay. If you watch athletes, many times just before their competitions, you can see their lips moving. High jumpers at the Olympics do this all the time. They’re talking to themselves before they go over that bar. They’re applying Little Voice management tools of their own to get themselves over that bar.
And third, never allow to the problem to be global. In other words, don’t say things to yourself like, “The same things happening to me at work. The same things happening to me at home and with my friends, and this is also why I’m broke.” If your Little Voice starts saying that, you have to say, “Stop!” Say that immediately and turn it around. Again, isolate the incident. Say something like, “Obviously I had a tough time with this call, but I still have great relationships. This doesn’t happen all the time.”
We’ve all felt that poor me thing, wondering why these kinds of things always happen to us. The truth is, they don’t. Think about it. Look at your track record. The truth is that the number of times it actually happens to you is relatively small to the rest of what is happening in your life. Somebody backs into your car and you immediately think, “Why does this always have to happen to me?” It doesn’t always happen to you. It happens to you once every five years or so. If it were happening to you all the time, it would be happening five times a day.
So you have to manage your Little Voice carefully because it can lie to you. So, after you say, “Stop!” you isolate the incident. Then stack the evidence in your favor and say to yourself, “This doesn’t happen to me in any other part of my life; it’s very isolated. It’s not an indication of anything else except that this was a bad experience.” Say it out loud, even if you don’t believe it. It will still help re-frame how your mind sees it.
Celebrate All Wins!
If you can celebrate when things are going right, it will help you isolate incidents and keep-in mind all the things that are going well in your life. To do this:
Capitalize on even your s
mallest of successes: Did you get out of bed this morning? Take the dog for a walk? Make yourself or a loved one breakfast? Those are ALL wins! Focus on what you DID and not on what you didn’t!
When you have a success here’s how to celebrate:
1. You want to anchor the experience of success into your body whether it’s with a high-five, a clenched fist, or some other method you prefer. No matter how small the success may seem, celebrate all your wins- and the wins of everybody around you as well. This helps you become accustomed to being a winner and to recognizing that feeling and associating it with yourself.
It also becomes contagious to those around you. Celebrating the wins of others is also an excellent form of acknowledgment and it helps to remove any resentment you may have toward others, or that they may have toward you. It creates the feeling that everyone is constantly winning. So when you see a win, celebrate it even if the other person is a bit shy about it.
So, with every success you achieve, anchor it in by making a fist and saying “Yes!” Do it a couple of times to emphasize the point. Or, if there is someone else around, give that person a high-five, a handshake… something physical (I don’t recommend headbutts).
2. Now that you’ve mastered the physical part of celebrating wins, you need to deal with your Little Voice. When you get a win, what does your Little Voice say about it? Does it say that you were lucky, or does it say that you earned it? Don’t let your Little Voice diminish you accomplishments. Studies show that if you tell yourself, “I deserve this because I’ve earned it,” or “I deserve this because I was prepared,” your energy and resilience will increase.
3. Tell yourself that the rest of your week is now going to be great. Have you ever reached into your and pocket and pulled out a $20 bill that you had forgotten you put there. From then on, your day starts going great. People start opening doors for you. All the traffic lights turn green for you. Think about it in those terms. Don’t think about it in the same terms your Little Voice might, and say to yourself, “Well, it’s a win, but I still have all these other problems.” If your Little Voice starts throwing those little darts, tell it to “Stop!” When you hear it going in the wrong direction, say “Stop!” Say it out loud if you need to. I know it sounds crazy, but you have to disrupt and reverse that normal pattern.
4. Lastly, let your win just cascade into the rest of your life. You need to tell yourself, “The whole week is going to be great, and because of this I’ll bet work is going to be awesome today. My golf game will probably even get better!” If you find the $20 bill in your pocket, you say, “You know, this is a statement of my life. My marriage is great. My business is great. This is a sign from the cosmos that things are going to continue to be great.”
Now, I know it sounds ridiculous, but when you think about it, this is what great athletes do. They take the smallest of wins and make them great. How many times have you seen a football game where a team is struggling to come from behind? Each time they gain a few yards, they celebrate. They jump up and down, high-fiving each other and laughing. Why? Because it builds energy, hope, and confidence. They know they have to build that energy in order to carry themselves on to success.
By simply reading this, you’ve probably found that your body and emotions have shifted a bit. This is a very powerful exercise to try when you’re either coaching or being coached by someone else. You can do this with yourself, with your kids, or with your spouse.
Your spirit naturally wants to be big, and this process unleashes that.
Incorporate these techniques into your life and you will find that you can change your mood in seconds and start to create and experience more successes for yourself everyday!
To learn other powerful Little Voice Management techniques, go to www.LittleVoiceMasteryTechniques.com.
Let’s take a look at some of the things that your little voice may say when you’re faced with a challenge:
And so, you don’t start the program for kids that you constantly think about, or write that book you’ve dreamed of writing? Because you don’t value what you have to offer. You think you aren’t smart enough or that what you’re offering wont be good enough. You say to yourself:
To pick up the recent holiday issue of Economist magazine entitled “A Rough Guide to Hell” depicting the woes of climate change, economic trauma, gluttony and violence, you would have to assume tough times. To watch the news on any given network or internet news sight you could certainly get depressed as well and would even ask yourself is 2013 going to be more of the same?
