Pain is the Price of Progress

by | Nov 11, 2018

TRANSCRIPT: Hi guys, it’s Ben Lai from Sales Ethos. Today I’m going to share with you a couple of thoughts about the subject of pain. Now, we all experience it from time to time. But how we think about it, and how we handle that situation will determine whether or not that pain is productive or not. What I want to emphasise are three main mindset shifts to help you to cope better with these situations in your sales career and in your entrepreneurship journey.

Pain is the Price of Progress

My first tip for you is to remember that pain is the price that we pay in order to enjoy success. Everyone who’s achieved something worthwhile had to go through some sort of pain. Whether it’s criticism from the family members and friends, or the pain of rejection on a sales call. They had to go through it.

This is just a necessary price that we pay in order to achieve a better future. Jim Rohn puts it this way: He said that “Each of us must choose the either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. And regret weighs a tonne more than discipline.” And so rather than running away from it and avoiding it, we need to accept that it’s a fact of life and it’s a necessary requirement for success.

Pain is Highly Instructive

My second tip for you is to think of pain as a learning lesson. You see, each of our emotions has with it a certain signal and information for us. Pain is a simple signal and indication that we’ve made a mistake… That we need to do things differently next time. So let’s just say you’re making a sales call, and the person flatly rejects you. Rather than becoming despondent and not making any more sales calls, think to yourself “What did I do that caused this to happen?” and “how can I do it differently?” That way you’re going to improve the quality of your sales calls. And, you will experience this pain less and less. So think of any situation where you’re experiencing pain and think to yourself, “What can I learn from the situation?”

Pain is Always Temporary

The third mindset shift I’d like to suggest for you is to remember that pain is always temporary. Therefore, we don’t need to be so scared about it. I’m speaking from a perspective where in my teenage years, I actually experienced chronic depression for 14 whole years. Now, the reason that I was able to make it through that difficult time was because I had these mindset shifts. I knew that it was going to be temporary, and I knew that there were lessons to be learned.

As a spoiler, at the 14 year mark, I discovered that the cause of my suffering was actually my stinking thinking. I was thinking a lot of negative thoughts about myself, which was causing the pain and the depression. And so, recognise that it’s only going to be temporary. Look for solutions actively. This is the surest way to shorten the length of suffering. But at the same time, it makes it the most productive thing that you can.

Conclusion

So remember this, that that pain is highly instructional. It’s a signal that you’re making progress. Finally, it’s always going to be temporary. If you’re going through it on a routine basis, it’s probably an indication that you’re on the road to success. A person that risks nothing actually risks everything. So keep that in mind as you go about your selling activities this week.

What do you think? What do you think are the ways to think about and to cope with suffering better? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for joining us, and I look forward to seeing you next week.

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Sales Ethos is the only provider of sales training for introverts. We also provide sales coaching, sales process consulting, and sales training in Melbourne & Adelaide.