A little bit of sales training can go a long way towards improving your business and career. In this post I want to look at why you should be raising your expectations of yourself, and how you should set those expectations.

Let’s start with a quote attributed to the industrialist Henry Ford that goes to the crux of the matter: “If you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right.” So much of what you can achieve is dictated by what you believe you can achieve.

Henry Ford’s belief is also backed up by modern psychology: Simon Cassidy from the University of Salford in England says his research shows that judging yourself as capable of success increases your actual success, while judging yourself as incapable of success decreases your chances of actual success.

So, if expectation of success breeds success, how should you be setting your expectations? First, it’s time for a bit of self-reflection, think about these things:

• What area of your life could do with a change of perspective or you would like to develop? This will of course be an aspect of your life that you are not 100% happy with.
• What are the reasons behind this choice? These can help you to think of goals for putting that change into action.
• Make a list of things that you could do that would help you achieve your goals in this area: Whatever things you choose, they should be things that push you out of your comfort zone. For example: learning a new skill or developing something that you are only slightly familiar with. You should make sure to reject all ideas that don’t push you out of your comfort zone.
• Choose three of these activities: You should make sure they are ordered in terms of ascending difficulty, so that the first one is quite manageable, and the last one is quite challenging.

The mere act of setting expectations for yourself should be motivational in itself, but if you are still struggling after taking these steps I would refer you back to the previous episode (episode 37) which should help you motivate yourself and start thinking in positive terms about your life and career.

So this week, follow the steps above and try something that you haven’t done before. Feel free to let me know the types of things you’ve been trying!