Is Your Childhood Affecting Your Confidence?

Are emotions from childhood affecting your confidence? Are you struggling in some area of your life and you do not understand why?

You may not realize that childhood emotions can still affect you. Many of you were not taught how to release emotions that no longer serve you. If you have no method of releasing emotions, they are still an active part of your life.

Lee learned how releasing the past could improve his sales? What do you need to release?

A case study

Lee called because he was having trouble closing sales and was losing confidence in his ability to succeed. Lee was working with a new venture, selling an industrial product. He thought he was doing a good job of locating potential customers and showing them how his product would benefit their company. Yet, no one was buying.

Lee told me when he hung up from a sales call he had the feeling he was not leaving his clients in a good place. Something was going on and Lee could not see it. I asked if he would be willing to explore his emotional responses during the sales call. At this point he was willing to try anything to regain his confidence. Lee described his emotion as “yuk.” He wasn’t able to give it a traditional feeling label (happy, sad, etc.). My guess is that many of us would call this feeling fear.

Emotions from childhood are still with us

Using the poetry of emotion process Lee discovered that he was carrying a fear of rejection from his childhood. Lee released this fear and reclaimed his confidence, but Lee wanted to know more.

Lee wanted to understand how his childhood could affect his sales. Without the stuck emotions, he had a more accurate view of his childhood. He realized that his mother was inconsistent in her parenting style. Sometimes he would be punished for the smallest infraction of her rules. Other times she ignored him no matter what he did. As a very young child Lee developed a set of behaviors to cope with this inconsistency. He would try to gain his mother’s approval and when that failed he tried to avoid her rejection.

Emotions from childhood can affect your sales

Lee became aware that he was doing the same thing with his customers. He would try to please them and when they did not immediately decide to buy he would try to avoid rejection. Lee would start talking about himself and his other projects to show he did not need this sale.

He realized that he was not putting his customer first. He was trying to get his own needs met during the sales call. His behavior changed immediately. He began getting orders and his confidence returned.

Are your problems related to your past?

Are there some areas of your life that are not working? Are you struggling with confidence at work? Could these problems be related to your past? You can read more about how emotions from your past are holding you back from living the life you dream about.

(Image: Rosalxxi @ Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/31065361@N06/4501889891/)