Take a breath to make better decisions. You know what it’s like. The uncertainty around a big decision makes you tighten up. You begin to worry about all the ways what you say or do something wrong. Maybe your mind is flooded with the memory of the last time you made a similar decision and it didn’t go well. Believe it or not, you can blame this on your brain. Your brain’s first job is to keep you safe. Anytime it perceives a threat to your safety or comfort, it does two things. First, it floods your nervous system with two stress-producing hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. This is where your feelings of nervousness come from. Second, it introduces scenarios of all the way things could go wrong. This distracts your thinking and discourages you from coming up with creative solutions.
So how do you get past this? Take a breath, a nice long one. Do it right now. There are physiological and psychological reasons why. Taking a breath, or even two, reduces the impact of the adrenaline and cortisol coursing through your body. This relieves the physical stress you feel. Taking a breath also buys time. It interrupts the momentum of worry, slows your thinking down, and puts things in perspective. We live in a pressure-filled world. But it is still okay to intentionally slow the pace in order to make the best decisions. Teach your reps to do this as well. They need the break too.