It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

I’m noticing a trend that is holding many of my clients back. It may be affecting you as well: you are taking things personally. You get offended when clients do not say yes to work with you. You take it personally when people don’t get back to your proposals. You are personally incited when your assistant puts another client’s work over your own. Therefore you are running your business from an emotional place, not a logical one. When you do this – the journey of day-to-day business becomes incredibly painful. Everything tends to set you off. And you find yourself sad and frustrated often.

Here are some examples that I’ve worked with my clients through. Perhaps you can relate.

One of my clients sent three proposals out within a week to work with three different organizations. She was so excited because each organization seemed very interested, and she was certain she had three new clients. After diligently spending hours on each proposal, she sent them out.

None of the organizations responded at all. Not even a thank-you e-mail. No response – total quiet. My client immediately went into a mixture of emotions. She blamed herself – maybe she had done something wrong. Maybe she had written the proposals wrong? She also got a bit angry. How could people just ignore that much time, effort and work?

Here’s the point. She took it personally. She assumed that the organizations were actually thinking about HER. And it took her out of action and into anger, blame, and overwhelm. The truth is that the people who received her proposals probably just got really busy and didn’t get a chance to respond. It had nothing to do with my client! It wasn’t personal.

The next step for her was to follow up and keep following up until she heard from those that she sent the proposals from. And next time to make sure she had solid meetings lined up on the calendar to do the follow up.

She missed that prime follow up time because she was busy beating herself up in the moment.

Has this ever happened to you?

Here’s another example I see many of you making. You take a “No” from a potential client personally. When someone says, “I don’t have the money to work with you,” and you know that they do – you start to go into your own head. Why isn’t anyone saying yes? Why isn’t this working? What’s wrong with me?

As soon as you go into your own head – you can’t help the person in front of you work through her objections. You’ve lost the ability to really connect with her and determine why she is saying she can’t work with you.

Ninety percent of the time her reason for not working with you has nothing to do with you!

It has everything to do with her life. And it is up to you to stop taking things personally, get out of your own head and get into her head. You have an immediate opportunity to talk through her financial obligations, to help her find new sources of income and help her re-prioritize.

But you can’t do any of this if you are stuck in a place of “She doesn’t want to sign with me. There is something wrong with me. This just isn’t working.”

The bottom line is that when you take things personally, it leads you down a road full of emotional reactions. And these reactions take you out of forward momentum and into a place of lethargy and sadness. They literally derail you.

Look at your business now. Where are you taking things personally? I know it is a brand new skill to learn to shake things off, move forward and assume that it has nothing to do with you. It is well worth it. For those of you that need a little more support around it – read the book: The Four Agreements. This book will give you the spiritual underpinnings of not taking things personally.

In the meantime, get present to when you start to go into your own head to blame yourself. And in that moment, take a deep breath and focus on the next action in front of you. Remember, it’s not about you!

Here’s to you not taking things personally – and making a ton more money in the process!