How To Calm Sales Anxiety

The perpetual stress of sales can accumulate leaving us anxious, irritable, or burnt out. This leads to poorer performance and even physical issues. We explore what’s actually happening in the body when in a stress state. We then do a practice that teaches us how to de-stress our body and mind so that we can proactively replenish ourselves and come back stronger.

Transcript

Hello my fellow salespeople and welcome to this session on restoring balance and calming the nervous system.

A meditation to do that for you.

Quick intro about myself.

My name is Danny Ingrico and I have been doing tech sales for 12 plus years and for the past four years I've been doing sales and mindfulness training for large organizations as well as startups.

I'm going to be sharing some of the tips and tricks I've used to be more successful at this and these are also tricks I wish I would have known much earlier in my sales career.

So hopefully they will be helpful for you now.

And today we're doing a meditation to restore balance and calm the nervous system.

Let's talk about what that means.

Raise your hand everybody if you think that sales is a stressful job.

I'm just kidding I can't see you this was pre-recorded but I'm sure you probably have your hand up by this point.

It is a stressful job and that's part of the nature of the business.

Sometimes we kind of thrive on it but to ensure our longevity both physically and mental health wise I'd argue that it's quite critical to have healthy ways to be able to de-stress and to calm ourselves.

Let's be honest there are multiple ways that we do this.

Going out with our friends for happy hour,

Whatever type of I sometimes would do extreme activities like mountain biking or skydiving.

But there are other ways to do that as well.

And I'm not trying to say that any of those necessarily bad.

You're just giving other potentially easy ways to de-stress and calm the nervous system.

And so let's talk about what's actually going on when we talk about the nervous system.

So we have basically two different systems or nervous system type of states that we can be in.

One is called sympathetic and the other is parasympathetic.

The sympathetic nervous system is often called the fight or flight.

This is when we're really revved up,

We're go go going,

Really just making stuff happen,

Energy,

Adrenaline,

All this stuff.

This was used traditionally for fight or flight when we were attacked by an animal potentially or hunting.

And then the other side is parasympathetic.

This is also called rest and digest.

This is more when we're calm,

You know,

Think maybe when you're getting a massage,

When you're sleeping hopefully,

When you're just relaxing,

Maybe watching TV for example.

But also during this stage your body's able to rest,

Digest,

And repair itself.

You know,

Basically this is sending energy out and expending a lot of energy and this one is restoring energy.

And so the challenge comes in sales is we can live about 99% of the time over here.

I am as guilty as anybody,

Still can be at times believe me.

But when we're always in this stage it can lead to challenging stuff.

This is how over time we get very fatigued,

We get burnt out,

We get exhausted,

Or it can be the high stressed,

We're anxious,

We're angry,

We're short tempered as well.

And so it's important to understand how can we sort of return on this part of the nervous system in order to balance ourselves out and calm so we can restore and not slam into the wall of burnout or overstressed or anxiety.

And that's what we're doing today.

And basically through guided meditations or sitting meditations we can actually trigger our bodies to enact more of our parasympathetic nervous system.

And that's what we're going to be doing today.

We're going to be doing that by relaxing the body,

Relaxing the mind,

And allowing ourselves to resettle.

A lot of stress is held in the body.

You might start to notice that if you've been in high stress for a while maybe your shoulders are sore or your neck's tight,

People even get clenched jaws,

That all adds up.

The body and the mind really interact in that way.

So I'm going to lead us through a guided meditation to try to relax that.

The other videos that I have here are kind of more how to do something quickly in the heat of the moment type of thing.

Whereas this one is more of an overall type of practice or exercise you can do maybe at the end of the day,

Maybe on the weekend,

Maybe on your lunch break to just sort of down regulate the nervous system,

Bring it more to that calmer state again so you can go longer and be more consistent over time.

So let's give it a try,

Shall we?

And I'll invite you to find a position to sit in that's both comfortable yet alert.

The goal is not to be too perfectly upright or too uptight,

But it's also,

You know,

If we're going to slouch down we might fall asleep.

So comfortable yet alert.

You can begin by taking three nice deep breaths at your own pace now.

You can allow your eyes to either close gently or just lower your gaze as well.

After those breaths you can begin breathing at a normal pace.

Nothing to do,

Nowhere to be.

Just sitting right here right now.

We're going to try some specific breathing patterns that actually signal to the body to relax itself more.

I'll explain it.

Basically I'm going to invite you to breathe in through the nose,

Maybe like you're smelling a really nice cup of coffee,

And breathe into the stomach as opposed to the lungs or the chest.

It's called diaphragmatic breathing.

Feel that stomach come out,

You can put your hand there to feel it,

And then we'll breathe out of the mouth slowly in a slow metered way,

Almost like you're sort of cooling off,

Trying to cool off that cup of coffee.

So let's try it on about an in count of three and then an out count of three.

So we'll go in through the nose now.

One,

Two,

Three,

And then out through the mouth.

One,

Two,

Three,

And then in through the nose.

One,

Two,

Three,

And then out mouth.

Two,

Three,

In through the nose.

One,

Two,

Three,

Out through the mouth.

Two,

Three,

Four.

Now just try a couple on your own.

You don't have to count necessarily,

But if it helps go for it.

We're doing this in a seated meditation,

But this is something you can do anytime when you're walking across the room,

When you're even on a call.

This is a great way to relax a nervous system.

You can allow that breathing to continue if it's comfortable or allow yourself just to breathe whatever feels natural.

We're going to now relax the body.

Now you see if your shoulders can drop a little bit.

You see if your jaw can drop a bit.

Maybe we can even relax the tongue in the mouth.

Maybe relaxing the eyeballs inside of the head.

The whole face.

Maybe releasing any tension you might be feeling in your chest or stomach.

Try breathing it in and breathing it out.

You can feel yourself firmly rooted in the seat,

Your bottom being supported by your chair.

Maybe notice the sensation of your hands and fingers or whatever they're touching right now.

Just see if you can put all your attention to your fingers and hands,

The sensations there now.

Now to your feet.

You can try this saying,

I allow my body and mind to let go.

Repeat it back to yourself.

I allow my body and mind to let go.

Maybe see if you can just enjoy the feeling of just sitting here in this relaxed state for a few moments.

If your mind wanders,

That's fine.

That's how it works.

That's normal.

Re-bring your attention back to your hands and what they're touching there to ground yourself in the body.

Now as we end this meditation,

I'll invite you to check in with how you're feeling now.

Maybe feel a bit calmer than when you began.

If you're not,

That's fine too.

There's no judgment.

Just noticing.

We'll take a few more breaths in.

We can return our attention back to the room,

Giving a nice stretch if you'd like to bring some energy back into the body.

Great.

Welcome back to earth.

Hopefully that was nice for you.

You can always try this on your own and also just do a shortened version if you only have literally a few moments over the course of three breaths.

The first breath,

Allow that body to relax.

The second breath,

Allowing the mind to relax.

And the third breath,

Just kind of sitting there and allowing yourself to just be for a few moments.

Great.

So you can try periodically either throughout the day,

Before or after work to bring that nervous system back down so you can avoid burnout,

Maintain quality consistent energy,

And keep doing well in that sales role.

All right.

Thanks so much.

Have a nice rest of your day.

Bye.

Reviews

Excellent! Having been in sales for 25+ years, I found this to be very helpful, especially the breathing tips. Well done!