By Lorraine Blackley

This is an awareness exercise designed to clear the subconscious blocks that can exist around selling.

Whether it is selling something for a profit or making a volunteer event successful, if you have reluctance or an uncomfortable feeling when faced with selling then work through this exercise. 

By Lorraine Blackley

This is an awareness exercise designed to clear the subconscious blocks that can exist around selling.

Whether it is selling something for a profit or making a volunteer event successful, if you have reluctance or an uncomfortable feeling when faced with selling then work through this exercise. 

The best time to do so is immediately prior to selling or if you are feeling a lot of discomfort and resistance in the middle of it.

Step one: Get a pen and paper, free up 20 minutes and find a quiet place

• Bring your awareness into the present moment by noticing your surroundings and the different sounds you can hear around you. 
• Now turn your attention to the uncomfortable feeling you experience around selling.  Where in your body do you feel it? 
• Continue to connect with that feeling for a few moments.  Let the feeling grow.  Bring it fully into your awareness rather than trying to push it away. 

Step two: Consider what words go with that feeling

• Take the paper and pen and write what that feeling has to say.  An example might be ‘I don’t want to do this.  It feels scary and uncomfortable.  It makes me feel vulnerable.  I don’t want people to say no.  That would feel like they are rejecting me.’
• Write and write and write until the feeling has nothing else to say.

Step three: Look at what you have written and name the core belief that sits underneath your written words

• A core belief might be: ‘I’m not confident enough, I’m not strong enough’.  Maybe even, ‘others don’t value what I have to say'.
• The thing about core beliefs is that they are not true.  They have been set up from things we experienced when we were very little and although we still experience them as a memory, that is all they are.
• Core beliefs influence our perception but do not tell us the truth about the present.

Step four: Challenge your core belief

• Ask, yourself, is it true?  You might say ‘of course it is true’ because you still believe it.    
• Now go for a mind shift and update your self concept.  Search for all the evidence in your life that shows the opposite of your core belief. Remember all the times when you have been brave and bold and pulled things off successfully.  There will be heaps.  Start remembering them.
• It might take a few moments to throw off the influence of your core belief and for the enabling memories to kick in.  So just sit quietly and once one memory pops in it will begin the process.
• Remember as many things as you can and write them all down.
• If you are having trouble with this, as sometimes your core beliefs can blind you, ask a long time and good friend to help you recall times that demonstrate the opposite of your core belief.

Step five: Did you know that we become whatever it is we tell ourselves?

• Start telling yourself about all the clever, brave and outstanding things you have done, or whatever the opposite of your core belief is. 
• This is not just positive thinking because you are finding the evidence in your life to prove it.
• Our memories tend to be selective and will gather information to support our core beliefs, until we tell our memory to do otherwise.

Step Six: Ask yourself two questions

• How do I behave when I believe my negative core beliefs to be true? Write it down.
• How would I behave if I no longer believed this core belief to be true?  Write it down.

Step seven: Use your imagination to create a new reality

• Spend a few moments visualising yourself, in your mind’s eye, being successful in your selling, leading, persuading task.

* * * Now go to it! * * *

Do this exercise as often as you need to - whenever you feel a reluctance and resistance to selling.