This week we are featuring Taran Hughes, who will be hosting our upcoming The Grid Workshops, The Conscious Sale, June 7th, 7-9pm at Cloud Coworking, Calle Sardenya 229, Barcelona.
Like many writers on the web today I was going to share with you my 3 steps to mindfulness in business, that silver bullet to transform your crazy busy lifestyle into a harmonic oneness with all that is commercial. However, I realise for many that concept is just a string of meaningless words. For some it has resonance but for many, it’s still just a topic people are talking about to make people more productive in what they do.
I have been in commerce for over 20 years, but more recently I have been speaking on success mindset in business. When speaking I share my 3 core principles of State, Intention, and Belief. They serve as the foundations to my conscious awareness practice and is precisely what I encourage people to adopt in their daily and professional lives. However, to some State, Intention, and Belief have an abstract quality without context. So rather than offer the 3 steps, I want to start with what Conscious selling means in my world and why I believe it creates a success mindset which fosters deeper connections with my clients.
When I’m asked what the Conscious Sale is, my answer is it’s simply staying in the moment. This means momentarily suspending the constant flow of thoughts, emotions, feelings and opinions that often run in the background as internal dialogue or as the need to be right or get your point across.
When you can observe what you do for your client, it is always with a sense of focus, clarity and purpose. Perhaps you may not normally direct into all your tasks, workflows and opportunities, but you sense the quality in what you do for them. That is a movement towards conscious selling.
It doesn’t mean that you give a little fist pump and say “yeah! Look what I’ve done!” You just have an inner knowing that you have put meaning into that work because you can, because you wanted to, because you are building on something larger than for recognition of self. In that moment when you’re working in that capacity, you are without ego, you are being in true service of your client. That is authenticity, that is conscious selling.
When you come from that energy you enter into the present moment, becoming aware of where you are and what you are engaged with. You are not thinking about the past issues or future successes. It’s acceptance of whatever is showing up in your world at any and every given moment. As it was described to me, being present is to make friends with what is, offering no resistance. When you think about it, that is the complete opposite of almost everything in business and daily life. We have so many objectives, goals, responsibilities, and expectations, it all adds to the mountain of thoughts that often occupy our waking day. In fact, according to a Harvard study, it found that people’s minds wander on average 47% of the time, regardless of what they are doing. The study also revealed that mind wandering caused people to feel unhappy. So if half the time our mind wander leading us to unhappiness why do we continue to leave the now?
Step 1
Recognise that there is only ever one step, a single step that will take you to the next. What is your first step? Meditation is a wonderful tool, but to many, the idea or the practicality of mediating is a huge challenge. So your first step is to make a routine activity into your mediation. Choose a function of your daily activity that is normally undertaken robotically. Maybe you are walking to a meeting: in that moment choose to take the walk as a conscious practice, focus on each step or each breath you take. See everything around you, be alert, be aware of your surroundings but place your breath or your footsteps at the centre of your attention.
You’re not going to master the rest of your life in just one day. So relax, and simply seek to master the moment. Then the next one, and the next one after that. Just keep doing that every day.
Just do one thing really well. Then when you have completed that choose the next task, use the same focus and clarity of what you want to achieve. Simply engage with it. Mindfulness in business is just choosing the present moment over all else, it is making friends with whatever you are engaged in. It is not offering any resistance even when you find yourself being asked to undertake something which you might otherwise run from. If you are going to do it, you might as well not make more pain for yourself through resentment or resistance, which comes in the form of complaining whether inwardly or outward to others.
This, of course, is contrary to the egoic voice in your head, the one that likes to keep a running score of all that is “good” and “all that is “bad” that happens to you. If you can choose to accept the situation for what it is, it means less resistance, and less resistance means less energy diverted from productivity.
So much of what we think of ourselves is tied up with the idea of what we accomplish. That conceptualization of self-worth is further strengthened by the idea that you must strive to become successful in what you do. This is evident in our Western society and the industries we find ourselves working in. You can only be successful in what you engage with in the present moment.
A lot of what I speak about is centred on the present moment, awareness of our daily lives. To this awareness, I anchor three core concepts to bring about change in the experience of success in the sales environment. In truth, it applies to all business, and in fact, it applies to our lives in general. My career spanning 2 decades has revealed to me that there are things that actually influence success we seek to experience. After all, why is it that two relatively similar people with relatively similar skills, education and opportunity can have such different experiences of sales success? What is it that the 20% responsible for the 80% of production do differently?
Continue reading next week to find out!
