Expanding your Goals

Day 329 / 365

In the book “100 ways to motivate yourself”, Steve Chandler gave an example of how he helped a salesman of his meet his sales targets. The salesman was being pressured to sell 150,000 dollars worth of product in a month. Even in his best months, he had only been able to sell a 100,000. He had no clue how he could increase that.

What steve suggested to him would seem senseless to many, and it surprised the salesman as well. Steve asked him, what would he do if he had to increase his sale to 200,000?

Big problems are intimidating. We approach them from a position of weakness, thinking that it’s impossible for us to solve them. This limits your ability to come up with creative solutions. But if you magnify your goals, you now have power over the problem. Not only are you planning to solve the problem, but even surpass it!

The effect is purely psychological, but it does work. The salesman was skeptical about this as well, but Steve insisted that he give it a go. He asked him to write down 20 ways he can think of increasing his sales to 200,000. It doesn’t matter how outlandish the solutions were, as long as it got him thinking. Sure enough, he came up with a few creative ways to increase his sales. And although he couldn’t hit 200,000, he met his original target easily.

Don’t be intimidated by problems. Think of them as challenges and then double the challenge itself. Then really think that you must win that challenge. You would be surprised at what you are capable of.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog —Problem-solving Vs. creating new things