How your values and beliefs drive your success and happiness

I really enjoyed reading a recent article on self questioning by Marshall Goldsmith on self questionning. In summary it explained the value and importance  of asking yourself a set of questions each morning to analyse how aligned you are to your values to help you achieve happiness and sales success. 

The following article builds on the article by Marshall Goldsmith.

I recommend you combine this with setting goals using SMART objectives and regularly review how you are performing to achieve optimum sales success and life happiness.

Beliefs are formed by the age of ten, known as imprinting. They are influenced by family, friends, environments, media and experiences so our upbringing is a major influencer in our beliefs. Beliefs which are firmly rooted can be difficult to change. For example if you never recieved praise as a child when you did something well then you may not feel it necessary to praise your team for a great performance if you were a manager.

Beliefs influence our values, values influence our attitude,our attitude drives our behaviour, our behaviour drives our actions and our actions equal our results

So how can you achieve sales success and happiness each day or at least how do you greatly influence your results? 

1) Write a list of your core values. Ask yourself what values are important to you? What do you feel will make you successful and happy?

E.G. Hard working, committed, honest, creative, flexible, competitive, friendly, passionate etc

2) Then write down a question you could ask each day regarding the values you have listed. Maximum of 5 questions per value. Keep it to a mangeable total (less than 30) so it takes less than 10 minutes to complete. E.G Did I do something today which demonstrated my ability to be flexible? 

3)  Put this into an excel spreadsheet and do this at the end of every day or twice a week and assess how you are performing against your 'values to success planner'

There are 3 different values you can based your list on : achievement, relationship and personality. Happiness in our personal life is equally important as our business life, if the scale is balanced then you have the perfect mindset to achieve your goals. When there is an inbalance then we focus more on the other E.G. unhappy in our home life we throw ourselves into our business life.

A good way to define your value list is to ask yourself the following:

Personality values - ' if I died tomorrow and everyone was at my funeral what would I want to be remembered for and what would I want people to say about me?' 

Relationship values- 'if I was stuck on an island with my partner what would they say my best qualities were in terms of being a partner?'

Achievement values - 'if I left my current company how would my x boss, clients and colleagues describe me?'

Values ultimately driver your results so this is an exercise worth undertaking.

If you want to be successful at selling then ensure your values and beliefs align well with what it takes to be a successful sales person. More advice on this will be available in future articles. I will be running a series of the top 10 values of high performing sales people and going into detail with each one.

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We look forward to helping you achieve sales success and business growth.

Debbie Sweeney- Lead trainer of Solutions2Success