Some people are naturally resilient and nothing will get them down for long. When I worked at Progressive Computer Recruitment you could tell in the first few months of starting whether someone would be a top biller or not. The way they dealt with the sometimes never ending ‘no’s', or how they laughed off the rude manner of gatekeepers or even how quickly they bounced back when a job offer was rejected by the ‘dead cert candidate’.

Maybe these high performers knew that time was precious and so getting back on the phones was the best remedy rather than wallowing or bringing down others with them. I believe the key to being a consistent high performer is how you deal with the lows and how you build upon the ups.

Recently I interview 30 top performers in various sales roles for research for my book Fight Back! When presented with set-backs or challenges they all seemed to respond in a similar way using some or all of the steps below:

1. Keep your thinking and your energy directed to future goals and how you are going to achieve them. Break goals down into smaller targets that can be achieved in one afternoon. The small taste of success will help you get back into ‘the flow’ of being at your best.

2. Soon after the set-back has occurred spend at least an hour on a part of your job you really enjoy and that energises you. By doing something that plays to your natural strengths and that you can loose yourself in will help re-adjust the mental and emotional reaction to what has happened.

3. Kick the ‘self-doubt gremlin’ into touch. You know him/her that annoying voice that starts making you doubt whether you are actually suited to the job you are in or the decison to go freelancing or even attributing previous success to luck! Instead focus your thoughts back to the times you have been really successful and how you felt and what you did well. High performers have minimal self doubt – kick your gremlin into touch!

4. Resilient people have varied ways of managing the emotional reaction to change, problems or challenges. Whether it is taking the positives, learning from the experience, spending time with people that make them laugh or a hobby – they have a route to channel negative emotions. Do not store yours up – find a way of handling them and moving on – FAST! Fight Back!

5. Some people were quite practiced at the steps above and even had a conscious strategy for ‘bouncing back’ that they could teach others. If you don’t bounce back quickly you need to start adopting some of these steps, if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got!

If you would like to learn how to put these steps into practice there are loads of tips, exercises and stories in my book Fight Back! (See below for details).

Finally I will leave you with a quote from Helen Keller:

“When one door closes, another door opens, however we can spend so much time looking at the closed door that we don’t see the one that has opened for us.”

Hannah’s book is available to order online via Paypal.

Fight Back (Paperback) £8.99
Fight Back (e-book version) £4.99