4 mental hurdles preventing your success

I was introduced to Don Sanders through a mutual friend at lunch one day. Don and his co-author had written a book called Cut the C.R.A.P. and Resolve Your Problems. Kinda catchy, isn’t it! As psychologists they found that many of their patients could solve their own problems if they could just get beyond 4 mental hurdles… the CRAP in their minds.

In 2003, after several lunches and conversations, Don asked if I thought their methodology could be applied to the professional sales process. After reading their book, I could see how these same hurdles torment the struggling sales professional. The publisher wanted to create a series of books based on a Cut the C.R.A.P. and ________________ model. They already had the second book title in mind. It would be called Cut the C.R.A.P. and Make the Sale. Don asked if I’d be willing to write this sequel and I agreed.

What are the 4 mental hurdles?

All of us struggle with these four hurdles at one time or another. Each of these can rear it’s ugly head and absolutely kill our forward momentum.

Catastrophizing

I honestly think Don made this word up, but it holds so much truth in it. This is a form of chronophobia, or fear of the future. This is when you assume a future catastrophe is likely or even imminent if you proceed on your current course of action. The sheer anxiety of the potential future state stops you in your tracks.

Rationalizing

This one really is a word. I checked. The layman’s term for this is “making excuses.” After we make a decision to act or not act, we justify our decision in our mind. For sales professionals and leaders, supporting your poor behavior or actions with rationalized excuses will erode your success.

Agonizing

This hurdle creates a type of apathy or inertia. There is no movement. The mental anguish of the internal struggle prevents you from making a decision. The major struggle is with risk. If the risks are seen as too great, it becomes safer to just not decide. As a result, nothing happens and agonizing over the decision continues.

Procrastinating

Anyone else familiar with this one? It’s okay – you can put your hands down now. Me too, by the way. I’m not going to tell you when I’m writing this post. Most of us are very familiar with putting off something until later. A better question is how can we overcome this hurdle so that important items don’t get left until the very last minute?

How can I overcome each hurdle?

Over the next four weeks I’m going to address each of the mental hurdles, one per week. I guess I could have said, over the next four weeks I’ll be giving you a bunch of CRAP. But, for some reason that didn’t sound so good. I do have a marketing degree and I think I just put it to good use with that judgement call.

Anyway, next week we will address the first hurdle. The one with the non-word label: Catastrophizing. See you next week!