Harnessing Thoughts that Stop Success: What’s Your Success Point?

When I was a National Accounts Sales Manager for a major corporation, I noticed how some of my sales people would either sabotage a sale or after getting a sale, find a way to sabotage themselves from getting more sales. As a successful business leader who also is a body centered therapist, I went deeper into what caused them to sabotage their own success, mentally, emotionally and physically and this is what I discovered.

Your body is familiar with a certain flow or influx of positive energy, and we all have a glass ceiling or success threshold. It may sound strange at first, but your nervous system is acclimated to a specific range of success. This is similar to the homeostatic mechanism in the body that keeps you at a familiar weight or what doctors and physiologist’s now call your set point. Your emotional life is similarly maintained by a Success Set Point that keeps you in a familiar range. When we hit our upward threshold, we automatically start to sink into downward energy. There are lots of lottery winners who blew their winnings quickly because they were used to being broke, not rich.

Here is an example of how this plays out and could be playing out with some of your staff.. A sales executive is driving to a customer’s location to make an important presentation. She’s excited, thinking that today is the day she will make that big sale. This is what I call an upward thought. As she exits the freeway her thoughts change direction: but I didn’t get my Power Point presentation updated and the one I have isn’t very strong. This is what I call a downward thought. Her energy shifts in a downward direction as she starts to sink into the driver’s seat. She does not notice this, however, and her thoughts are on automatic pilot. She thinks: I’m not ready. Perhaps I should call and cancel or tell them I’m sick. This is what I call a wayward or escape thought.

Can you see the progression? This sort of thinking goes on all the time; it can feel like being bounced around inside a pinball machine. No wonder we want to escape. By learning to detect downward thoughts, we can begin to recognize any moment of self-sabotage and minimize its effects on the decisions we make.

Positive thoughts tend to generate more positive thoughts and progress in an upward direction—for a while. As mentioned above, each of us has a sort of inner barometer that keeps us from exceeding our success threshold. When we hit our limit for success, a bounce-back effect occurs and we start to contract.

Let’s return to the earlier example of the sales executive. Say she picks up her cell phone and bows out of the scheduled presentation. The pressure she was feeling is instantly relieved. That is the immediate payoff, but there is a cost involved. The opportunity to make the presentation and walk through her fear passed her by as did a chance to do the inner work and grow from it.

Here’s the answer to this epidemic. By learning to detect downward thoughts by noticing our IQ, EQ and what I coined BQ tm, we can stay more aware of how our thoughts affect us and begin to recognize any moment of self-sabotage and avoid acting on wayward thoughts that steer us away from achieving our goals instead of toward them.