If there is ONE skill in life that guarantees success in life, it’s knowing how to be assertive, confident and effective with people.
The most successful people in business aren’t the ones who possess special skills or knowledge. They’re the ones who can confidently communicate with people and arouse in them a spirit of cooperation …whether it’s an employee, a boss, a coworker, a customer, a client in your business or a business partner.
You may want a better relationship or a less stressful work environment, but if you can’t resolve conflicts and issues with people successfully, you will never truly achieve the positive results you want.
You may have good ideas, but if you can’t enlist the support and willingness of others, those ideas aren’t going to be accepted or acted upon, no matter who you’re dealing with.
Good people skills produce good results… in any walk of life.
After years of experience I realized that the UNDERLYING TRUTH about why we have so much difficulty being successful when dealing with people and relationships is…
Your automatic unconscious reactions prevent you from being confident and assertive!
That’s right! I’ve learned that no matter how much information you have and no matter how much you know about dealing with people, if you try to deal with people while feeling even slightly angry, afraid, unhappy or stressed, you will always AUTOMATICALLY do the wrong thing!
If you say or do anything from a negative emotion, you will always have a negative outcome in the end …Even if you had good intentions in the first place!
The reason that people FEEL difficult to deal with is precisely because they trigger our negative emotions. In other words, they “push our buttons” …even momentarily.
When someone pushes our buttons they are touching a sensitive spot in us, which triggers a negative emotional reaction. The result is the “fight or flight response” – we either feel angry and annoyed at the person or we want to escape and avoid them.
We can also have a “freeze” response, which is often experienced as a momentary lack of confidence or an inability to be assertive.
These reactions are instinctual and automatic self-preservation responses, which are deeply programmed within your psyche.
Numerous psychological studies have shown that the stress emotions, such as anger, frustration, anxiety or fear, interfere with your performance. In other words, your negative emotions actually interfere with your ability to solve problems and your ability to show assertive behavior.
Most people can understand this when the emotion is extremely intense… Just think about “stage fright” and how it affects someone’s performance. But most people don’t realize that even BRIEF negative emotions cause us to be ineffective, too, by making us say and do things that we regret later.
But it gets even worse!
These momentary emotions cause you to say things that you wish you hadn’t said, or make impulsive decisions that you later regret.
Then, your negative reactions, even small ones, trigger negative emotions in the other person! And in the exact same way, the person you are dealing with reacts negatively as well.
It all develops into a nice little vicious cycle that I call, “The Difficult People Tango”.
Sound familiar? Watch for it. You’ll see it in the way people react to someone who is being difficult.
But you DON’T have to be caught in your automatic reactions any longer…and it all starts with this one simple concept!
There is a hidden source of power within you.
Within each of us there is a secret reserve of creativity, wisdom and power that can come to your aid, if you know how to tap into it.
I became aware of this phenomenon during my years of work using clinical hypnosis with my patients. It always amazed me to see the things that people were capable of doing in hypnosis… things they had NO IDEA could ever be possible!
This hidden power can also appear in times of crisis. For example, Bob, a friend of mine, fell off the ferry into the ocean without anyone seeing him.
Nearly drowning, he heard a calm clear voice speak to him, “300 strokes, Bob… 300 strokes”. Bob miraculously found reserves of strength from within to swim over 8 1/2 hours throughout the night until he was eventually rescued the next morning!
I experienced the phenomenon myself when I was struggling with a difficult relationship issue. Using a particular therapy technique on myself, I experienced a sudden change… a feeling of calm came over me… followed by a feeling of strength welling up from within!
I had discovered how to tap into my unconscious reservoir of strength and confidence in the face of a difficult interpersonal issue.
These sudden experiences of creativity, strength and confidence are what I call the “Wellspring Phenomenon”.
… learn how to use the Wellspring Phenomenon to enhance your success
