Gaining Control by Letting Go - The Mind-Shifting Lesson I Learned From My Clients

Some of the biggest breakthroughs in my personal development come via my work. And this week was no exception.

I had a real revelation about the quest for control in our lives, and the way each of us, unknowingly, self-sabotage, although we are convinced we are acting in our own best interest.

Let me start with the context. In the past 2 months I have been involved in several very interesting training projects about managing and controlling emotions in the selling process. The audience? Sales people, of course, coming from several different companies. They all had something in common however - they were smart, hyper-competitive, pragmatic and more or less dissatisfied with the way customers treat them, with the perceived insufficient support they receive from their home company and with the difficult market conditions they have to work under. In other words, they tended to feel that they did most things right, but circumstances were often against them.

What were their expectations from the training program they took part in? Well, basically, they wanted to receive some magical recipe for turning every prospect into a customer and every difficult client into a loyal one.

The program involved approaching selling from a completely different perspective - an emotional one. We debated the emotional processes that take place in the sales person's mind, as well as in the client's mind and we practiced techniques for self-management. The goal was to keep emotions under control, thus keeping our rational minds clear and managing to stay open to the client's needs. If one manages to do that, there is a good chance of influencing a difficult client for the better.

As usual, I learn from my participants much more than I can ever hope to share with them, and these projects were no exception.

What did I learn?

I realized three things that got me thinking:

1. People would rather look for solutions outside of themselves than within

The fact that we have tremendous control over our own minds is a huge surprise for many of my participants. As is the fact that we have incredible resources and answers inside.

They almost always tend to look for solutions for their problems on the outside - perpetually looking for that magic technique and constantly ignoring the immense influence their own mental state has on the relationship they build with their clients and, as a matter of fact, with everyone around them.

2. People believe that more control over others means more success

People constantly tend to seek control of those around them and of the interactions they have with others- we try to lead our clients where we want them to go, we don't ask them open-ended questions for fear they will say something we're not prepared for, we create scripts in our heads and rigidly stick to them, fearing that otherwise we will be lost.

Once a manager, we try to get our teams to work in the way we would if we were them, at home we control our children's and partner's behaviors, habits, actions. And we do all that for "their own sake".

I, too, often catch myself being a control freak - and it's somewhat scary how empowering that can be.

3. When things go their way, people take credit; when they don't, they blame outside circumstances or other people

If you accept the previous two ideas to be true, this third one isn't surprising - if we tend to look for solutions and answers on the outside, this implies a certain reluctance to take responsibility for the final outcome.

At the same time, since we have this tremendous need for controlling what goes on on the outside, it's only natural to be happy and satisfied when things go our way, taking credit for it, while blaming circumstances when they don't.

Why am I sharing this with you?

The three observations I shared above got me wondering why we waste so much energy trying to control what cannot be controlled (the outside), while constantly ignoring the only thing we can control (the inside)?

Also, why is it so hard for people to turn their eyes and thoughts within? Why is it so hard to look at ourselves and take responsibility for who we are, how we act and who we would like to become?

I don't have a definitive answer to these questions, other than our innate fear of confronting our authentic selves, with all the good and the bad in us. We tend to act a bit like Snow White's stepmother, when she looked in the mirror and she was told she was no longer the most beautiful in all the land - get mad and perhaps even break the mirror (and set off to kill Snow White, but that is another story).

What was the lesson for me in all of this?

I realized that in order to be truly free and powerful, the first thing we have to do is let go. Stop trying to control others. Stop looking for the 3 magic steps that will take us wherever we want to go - close that sale, start that business, achieve that target. Instead, we might just look in the mirror, accept ourselves for who we are, and then start working to get better from the inside out. This might also mean that we start trusting that we hold the answers, and all we need to do is "dig" for them within.

I realized that the best sales-people prepare for their sales meeting just like all the others, but they do one essential thing differently once they get in front of the customer. They let go. They keep control over just one thing - their emotions. Other than that, they are open to whatever might come from the customer, always confident that they will have an answer or a solution to whatever request might come from the person in front of them.

Same goes for the best managers - they control themselves first, so they find the power to trust others and give them freedom to act, innovate and be themselves.

Presenters are no exception - the best ones are not afraid to engage their audience, and don't feel the need to speak incessantly, like a tape-recorder, just so the public don't get a chance to ask some uncomfortable question. And they are able to do that because they trust themselves enough to manage the unknown.

If I were to put this mind-shifting lesson in one sentence, I'd say that I learnt this:

We are truly in control when we have learned to manage ourselves and let others be. That is real power!

And you know what? When we finally do that, when we finally control ourselves enough to respect others' rights to be themselves, we somehow start a self-fulfilling prophecy, subtly influencing the other person into being their best self. And things go our way much more often than before.

I'd be happy if you shared your thoughts on this. What are your own stories of letting go? What have you learned by looking inside?