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BlogsTaking it to the Bank
Thinking Negative to Get Positive Results
By Pamela Black
February 4, 2011
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Change is such a tricky thing. Advisors struggle with this every day in trying to improve and manage their businesses successfull.
Everyone believe “geting to the next level" is the biggest challenge.
Tim Ursiny, founder of Advantage Coaching & Training addressed attendees at a conference of bank and credit union advisors in the USAdvisors Network in Minneapolis last week about how to overcome emotional blocks and do better.
Typical blocks to growth include feelings like fear of the unknown, fear of failure—or success, the sense that you’ve already paid your dues, or just not making a decision.
In order to a make a captivating reason for clear decisions about moving to the next level, he suggests doing a pain/pleasure analysis. List what pains you about moving to the next level and what gives you pleasure about staying where you are. This describes your blocks. Then list what gives you pain about staying where you are and what gives you pleasure about moving to the next level. This hopefully will start to give you reasons to overcome your blocks.
For example, a pain of growing to the next level might be having to work harder, or fear of failing, not knowing what to do next. Meanwhile the pleasure of staying where you are involves being in your comfort zone, feeling safe, knowing what you have to do.
Next list what’s painful about staying at the same level: boredom, making less money, being unfulfilled. The pleasures of going to the next level might include helping more people, working at your potential, making more money and being more fulfilled.
In the pain column you have to cross off anything that is just perception. For example, one advisor was afraid he would have to work too harder if he became a bigger producer. But then he interviewed a $2 million producer and found out that if anything, he was working harder at a lower level of production. Anything that is just an assumption, you have to prove, anything that is not, you can problem-solve.
Another step in getting to the next level involves using a reverse psychology. Looking at the negatives to find the positives.
For example, he lists seven daily attitudes, both negative and positive. What is your attitude that is keeping you where you are? What is its opposite? Laying out attitudes and their opposites allows you make a positive choice, switch your attitude and position yourself for success.
For example here, where you see problems you get stuck in the problems and limited by them, but an opposite attitude is to see opportunity where there are problems. Another negative/positive attitude combo: fighting versus embracing. If you are fighting things that are beyond your control, you are causing yourself unnecessary pain. Embrace the things that are beyond control and do something about the things that are in your control.
Other oppositional attitudes to choose between each day are gratitude vs. entitlement. Are you feeling entitled, like the world owes you something or grateful for what you have to work with? Are you worried you are disappointing your clients? Shift the emphasis to delivering to them.
How do you turn these positive ideas into action? Go back to your pain/pleasure matrix and use a reverse methodology to figure out what to do to get to the next level. For example Ursiny says he lost 70 pounds by finding out what the diet habits of a sumo wrestler are and doing the opposite. If you want to know how to do something right ask yourself how to do it wrong.
So use that reverse psychology on your list of pains of staying where you are. Say a pain of being at your level is stagnating, but you don’t know what to do to go to the next level. Ask yourself three questions: If you wanted to stagnate what would you do? Where would you put your focus? What daily and weekly activities would you do?
List the opposite of these answers and they will give concrete ideas about how to not stagnate, or reach the next level. Where would you keep your focus? What kinds of thoughts would you fill your mind with? What specific daily attitudes would you have?
The final step is forming an action plan around these ideas by taking one to three specific and measurable actions you will take, putting a time frame on them and finding someone to help you be accountable for doing them.
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Pamela J. Black is editor in chief of Bank Investment Consultant. A former editor at Financial Planning, Business Week, Worth, Individual Investor and Folio; and a senior financial writer at J.P. Morgan, she has been writing and editing financial stories for 25 years. Her has work also appeared in Barron¹s, The New York Times Magazine, Smart Money, The New England Financial Journal, Bottom Line and Ladies Home Journal. She is a graduate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
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Pamela J. Black is editor in chief of Bank Investment Consultant. A former editor at Financial Planning, Business Week, Worth, Individual Investor and Folio; and a senior financial writer at J.P. Morgan, she has been writing and editing financial stories for 25 years. Her has work also appeared in Barron¹s, The New York Times Magazine, Smart Money, The New England Financial Journal, Bottom Line and Ladies Home Journal. She is a graduate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
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