Hitting the wall is a universal experience, and anyone who works exceptionally hard, pushing towards a goal over an extended period of time, will eventually be faced with this seemingly-inexplicable phenomenon. It often shows up without warning. Your momentum suddenly comes to a grinding halt, and you find yourself uninspired, unmotivated, unfocused, anxious, bored, pissed off, and not knowing what to do next. If the effects are severe enough, you might even find yourself questioning your choice of career.
I’ve recently been talking with clients who’ve crashed head-long into this frustrating experience at some point in their professional lives, so I thought it would be worthwhile to share 7 fixes they’ve employed to get themselves back on track.
While these strategies are geared toward business, they can be applied to other facets of your life as well. That said, these suggestions are NOT intended to address/treat depression or anxiety—both of which call for the attention of a licensed health care provider. These “fixes” are presented for the purpose of jiggling readers out of their professional ruts.
So here you go—and not listed in any particular order.
Stop the insanity!
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Even if you know the truth of those wise words, it’s easy enough to fall into the trap. So what can you do to get yourself off the hamster wheel? Sometimes it requires a major tweak to your sales process. Other times it might be as simple as asking a new or different question in your initial conversations with prospective customers.
Coaching Tip: Take some time to analyze your sales processes and daily routines, and see if you can pinpoint an action that would change the game for you. It might also be worth seeking the opinion of a mentor, coach, or colleague to uncover a potential blind spot. (Here is an entire article on this subject.)
Below the line and above the line.
Complaining comes naturally when you’re feeling challenged. In moderation, venting about your job, your colleagues, or your professional endeavors can help to relieve some pent up stress. But if you spend too much time in this mode, you can reinforce a negative mindset and make yourself feel worse. It will be far more beneficial for you to spend time coming up with creative solutions for addressing your challenges.
Coaching Tip: Below the line is an expression that describes all the things you cannot directly influence or control. (This is the focus of most complaining, in general.) When you’re discussing a challenge in the context of a business-oriented situation, let the person know you need to do some venting, and bracket a limited amount of time for expressing your feelings about that which is below the line. Shoot for 5 minutes, and then, deliberately shift the conversation to that which is above the line, i.e. resources, actions, or tactics you can directly control or influence.
Is the right IPA really the right IPA?
IPAs (income producing activities) are defined as anything that has a direct impact on driving revenue, such as sales calls, meetings with new prospects, closing deals, etc. However, actions such as sending out promotional emails, creating new products, and servicing existing clients also fall into the IPA category.
Coaching tip: Identify the top 2 activities that make the biggest impact on growing your business and/or advancing your career in the right direction. I call these your Chief IPAs, and you need to dedicate time to these activities on a regular basis. This type of thinking is significantly different than simply focusing on maintaining the revenue flow you’ve already got.
Your plate runneth over.
Taking on too many tasks at one time is a sure-fire way to get yourself overwhelmed, and inevitably, it will shut you down. Your personal sales goals might be unrealistic, or perhaps you are attempting to grow a specific division of your company in a ridiculously limited amount of time. Throw in volunteer work, family obligations, and an attempt to maintain some semblance of a social life, and you’re bound to hit the proverbial wall. If this is you, it’s time to just say no to some of the stuff on your plate.
Coaching Tip: Identify all the things you feel obligated to do personally and professionally, and pinpoint at least 2 activities you could potentially drop. You can temporarily put a volunteer job on pause to create extra time during a holiday rush. Or perhaps you can employ outside help with tasks you typically do at home yourself such as cleaning the house or mowing the lawn.
Re-evaluate EVERYTHING!
Doing the same thing over and over again can be a fruitless grind. (See: Stop the insanity!) Making major tweaks (or even small tweaks) to your sales systems and strategies usually does the trick. However, you need to reexamine your original goals on a regular basis to determine if they’re still pertinent, because everything always changes.
Coaching tip: Periodically revisit your short-term (90-day) goals and your mid-term (1-year) goals. See what’s changed in your business landscape such as shifts in market trends, loss of clients, or opportunities that landed in your lap. Examine how these variables affect the relevance of your current objectives. Then, determine if your daily routines need adjustments to align with your re-evaluated goals. Usually the list stops here. Note: It’s equally important to evaluate your personal life as well. Examine how both aspects affect your new goals, and adjust accordingly.
Be grateful for what you have.
Needless to say, the essence of goal-setting is to change your situation for the better. However, when you’ve been focusing your efforts for months, or perhaps even for years, and significant results continue to elude you, it’s easy enough to shift your awareness away from appreciating what you have, and to focus squarely on what you don’t have.
Coaching Tip: Make a practice of acknowledging what you do have on a regular basis. Take inventory of all the things in your life for which you are grateful—your family, your job, your home, etc. You might even want to keep a gratitude journal to log and reflect on the events, people and things you value most in your world.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
It’s easy to get so caught up in striving for your big, lofty goals that you might blow right past your accomplishments, and even your milestones, without taking note. When you hit the wall and start feeling like a total failure, it’s prudent to step back and take stock in how far you’ve come over the years. Perspective is the by-product of time, experience and wisdom.
Coaching Tip: Think about where you started—how much you didn’t know, how much you’ve grown and learned and accomplished. Sometimes it helps to recall an earlier chapter in your life when you experienced a significant setback. What did you do to overcome it and move forward? If you were previously successful at navigating a sticking point in your professional life, chances are, you can do it again. Some aspects of the strategy that worked for you in the past might work for you now.
Hitting the wall is part of the human experience. It can be especially difficult for highly-driven individuals who are determined to conquer the world—even when the world decides to push back with equal force. More times than not, however, these stalemate moments present you with an opportunity to discover a lot about yourself and your situation, to gain clarity on what you really want to accomplish, and to continue evolving professionally and personally.
