Affirmations or Ask-firmations how to make affirmations better
Popularized back in the ‘60s affirmations are something TONS of coaches, influencers and even psychologists will recommend their clients practice regularly. There’s science to back up the effectiveness of affirmations, too! After 60 years it’s worth asking, can we make affirmations better and the answer is, yes! Instead of a practice of affirmations, a practice of ask-firmations can make this practice even more effective. Before you read on we thought you might be interested in downloading our free guide: 70% of Entrepreneurs Fail – The 6 methods to make sure it’s your competition and not you! In this guide we walk through the most common ways professionals fail and most importantly provide you with immediate action items you can implement to make sure you’re ahead of your competition and successful! You can download the free PDF here. Affirmations are positive phrases or statements used to offset and challenge negative thoughts or beliefs. For those of us caught up in negative self-talk or looking to raise our self-esteem or create a more positive narrative of ourselves affirmations can be incredibly helpful. Research done in the 1980s as well as the last couple of decades shows the positive benefits of affirmations. They help to drive our self-identity and regular, consistent use of affirmations can shift how we think of ourselves. Talk about a powerful tool. After 60 years of popularity, it is worth exploring if simple affirmations can evolve and if we can level up the results we get from this practice. I first heard of ask-firmations from Coach Machen Macdonald, who joined us on our podcast. If you would like to hear him talk about ask-firmations you can head over to our podcasts here. Ask-firmations are another way of saying an affirmation. A traditional affirmation likely will have a clear formula of: Visualized and present tense, declarative sentences. For example: Today I am experiencing tremendous gratitude and am drawing my ideal clients to me. An ask-firmation on the other hand will rephrase this into a question formula: visualized and present tense, interrogative sentences. For example: How can I experience tremendous gratitude today and draw my ideal clients to me? Coach Machen isn’t the only one talking about ask-firmations, however. In one of my favorite sales books out there – To Sell Is Human, by Daniel H. Pink, Pink mentions the strength of ask-firmations. Both Coach Machen and Pink establish clear and logical rationale for an ask-firmation instead of an affirmation. Ultimately, affirmations are build me up declarations and ask-firmations are questions. The difference in how our brain reacts to being told vs being asked is immense. In sales, telling isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s not all that effective. The best sales tools use good questions. This is because people respond MUCH BETTER to questions than they do to being told. What’s true about other people is also true about us. Asking ourselves a question about how we are going to make our traditional affirmation happen, does something to our brains. It makes us problem solve! By asking ourselves a question we are much more likely to try to reason out ways we can achieve our affirmation. If our affirmation is to experience gratitude and draw clients to us, we will start thinking about HOW we can experience gratitude and in what ways can we help our clients find us. The difference can be startling, and we encourage you to try this methodology out. Run an experiment and see if it’s a change that benefits you. For more direct help with changing your behavior and your mindset you can always contact us directly for our 2 on 1 coaching. This is a truly unique coaching paradigm marrying behavioral modification expertise with blue-blood sales and presentation expertise. You can contact us here! If coaching is on your bucket list but you’re concerned it’s not something you can afford, that’s ok! We offer scholarships to deserving individuals. You can request us to review you for a scholarship right here! Not a member of the Entrepreneur Mastery Lab yet? For direct access to JB, The Doc and a ton of other professionals you can connect with us personally in the EML, our FREE, private Facebook community.
Finding and developing context in your conversations AND Asking the right questions
Finding and developing context in your conversations is at the heart of the biggest riddle anyone in sales can face….what are the right questions to ask? Asking good questions is an art form. Speak to any master salesperson and in today’s world, it’s not about slick talk, it’s about meaningful questions. Ask someone a meaningful question that gets them thinking and you may just open their eyes to a problem they didn’t know exist, or at the very least, key in on the true issue at hand and the real problem that needs to be solved. In Humble Inquiry, Edgar and Peter Schein attempt to provide us with a guide to asking good questions. As someone in sales that has always wanted to know what the ‘right’ questions were, this was an incredibly helpful book. After all, how many books out there really train you on how to ask good questions? It’s generally not the most popular topic people are talking about. It may end up being one of the most important books to read as a business owner, however. In a day and age where sales has evolved from being an offensive game to one of collaboration and partnership, asking good questions is the ultimate consultant move. To be clear, this isn’t to say I loved the book, that would be a lie. It felt and read a little too clinical and technical for my taste. Still, there were some tremendous insights in the book that are worth sharing, especially around context. Context is brought up in the book from many perspectives, and, rightly so! Here are the primary areas of context that are especially helpful to a service-based professional or business owner. 1. Why am I asking this? It’s easy to ask questions. We’ve been doing that since we were kids. Asking the right questions that will elicit an informative response from our clients and prospects is an art form. The first step in gaining expertise in the art of question asking is to ask yourself first! Yup, that’s it, right there. The very first question to ask is internally, to yourself. Why am I asking this? If your answer is internal and not external (about you and not about them) you need to pause and re-think whether it’s the best question to ask. 2. Why are they asking me this? What’s really behind their question. Is it what they are asking? Often times the questions we are asked to respond to are not the questions that will address an issue at hand. Technical questions are a great example of this. Most of the time the technical information being asked for is easily accessible, who doesn’t have google, after all? Answering here will still help address something directly, you just need to consider what’s the driving force behind the question and is that really a technical issue or is it something wholly different and greater that needs to be answered. In short, the Schein brothers ask you to ask ‘why?’ In a world where it’s very easy to speak fast and barely listen, it’s time to step back and consider the context of why we are asking a question and why a question is being asked of us. Why? To help you get better at what you do! Serving others and guiding them to make great decisions! If you’re looking for more insights and help with some of your challenges, be sure to check out our podcast! Once a month we offer a podcast where we answer questions directly from members of the Entrepreneur Mastery Lab. You can check out the podcast here! If you aren’t a member of the lab yet and want to join, it’s free, and designed with you at the center of it. You can request access here. Many of the people we work with find us through referrals and our content. If you’d like to contact us directly you can reach out to us via our website at our contact page. Others, want help but don’t feel like they can afford it. Don’t let that stop you…we offer full scholarships to our courses and coaching to deserving and diverse candidates. If you’re on the fence, take a few minutes and tell us about yourself on our scholarship page!