Gaslight Yourself

Lessons learned from a fan poster

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of competing in another Ironman race. As always, thousands of fans lined the streets and cheered us on as we swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles, and finally capped it all off with a 26.2-mile run. The 12-13 hours it takes me are physically brutal, but the greater difficulty is the mental challenge. Starting a marathon after 8 hours of physical exertion can wreak havoc on your mind. Every voice in your head is screaming for you to quit, which you know you will never do. You search for every ounce of willpower to keep going.

Fans and the posters they hold up all day are of course encouraging. However, after doing these many times, the signs are fairly typical. Some are funny, like “You paid to do this”, or “It seemed like a good idea six months ago”. Some are basic encouragement like, “You can do this”, or “Never give up”.

In last week’s race, I saw one of the greatest posters. It simply said, “Gaslight Yourself”.

For those that don’t know, gaslighting is typically used in the negative sense of the word. It is when someone tells you something, which is probably not true, but you eventually believe it to be true. For example, you complain to a manager that they are overly critical. Your manager then gaslights you by telling you that you are being irrational. Soon, you begin to believe you are irrational. As mentioned, this is the typical negative view of gaslighting. Someone manipulates another person by repeatedly telling them something that’s probably not true.

Yet, this one person with that one handwritten poster gave me a great mental strength tool which helped me keep running through 26.2 grueling miles. I did exactly what the poster said. I gaslighted myself to keep running. Normally, the marathon becomes a walk-shuffle type event. Pure agony as you try to fight the lactic acid buildup, dehydration, and lack of electrolytes.

I used the power of gaslighting to convince myself that I could keep running one more mile before starting the walk-shuffle style. It started early at mile 6. Then I gaslighted some more to get to 7, and again to 8. On and on it went. It was working, but for how long. I kept thinking that any minute, my body was going to realize that my mind was lying to it.

Here is the strength of gaslighting. At mile 6, if I contemplated that I still had 20 miles to go, I would have mentally quit. I would have easily rationalized that I deserved a break, to walk, and eat some aid station food. After all, I worked hard for months, years to prepare. I had worked so hard all day. The swim began at sunrise and now the sun was setting. It would be so easy to convince myself to walk. But seeing that sign at that moment reminded me of using this normally negative mental tool for a positive result. It worked! Running the entire marathon that day allowed me to set a personal record by more than an hour off my best time, qualify for the world nationals in France, and most importantly, learn a new mental strength tool.

How to “Gaslight Yourself”

Let’s look at times in selling, growing your business, and building a sales territory when most of us want to quit.

On the long drive home, I realized that this tool could be used at any difficult moment in your life. There are plenty of mental challenges in selling. We struggle to keep going. Wanting to persist, but not be pushy. Wanting to protect our ego by avoiding rejection. When the going gets tough, we often quit. And by quit, I mean we occupy our time with busy work or service work on a current account.

Have you experienced any of these tough times?

It’s late afternoon and you want to quit for the day. It’s been a fairly unproductive day as appointments canceled, your voicemails weren’t returned, and you still have an hour’s drive to get home. Your mind negatively gaslights you by saying, “What difference will one more sales call make? Just quit for the day. Tomorrow will be better”

Prospecting. Almost the entire time from the cold call until their first order, you have no idea how close you are to making a sale. You don’t know if you are on mile 1 or mile 26. It can be mentally discouraging as your efforts seem fruitless until they agree to buy. Then you are glad you persisted.
How about when you get your annual sales goals? Grow market share by 10%… Sell 6 new customers each month…… Achieve a 100% engagement score or Net Promoter Score from your customers. You know how hard it is to sign up one customer. And you have to do it 6 times every month? Your mind convinces you that it’s darn near impossible. So, your mind tells you (gaslights you) into quitting.

To Gaslight yourself:

Create a very, very, very short-term goal. Did I use “very” enough? This is the most critical component. When times are tough and darkness rules your thoughts, you can’t even imagine continuing on your journey. It just seems like a waste of time to drive another 30 minutes to call on a prospect, who probably isn’t home. Even if they are home, they are probably busy and don’t want to be bothered. After all, it’s 2 pm on a Friday. When you are up against this type of negativity, you need to create very small and easy steps. Step one to gaslighting yourself might be to just stop at the next exit. Then tell yourself that you will just try calling them on the phone once. Next is to just start driving in that direction. And keep taking those baby steps until you are turning down their driveway onto the farm or into their business.
Promise yourself that you will quit after each step. Yes, this is lying to yourself. Just think of it as a positive lie to get positive results, which it is. Also, you know it’s a lie and that should make it ok. This is the mental power that allows you to keep going.
Quit if you must, but only in short bursts. Stop for a Quick or Kwik Trip bagel, then get right back in the race. After breaking my hip, my therapist taught me a running trick to keep running but reduce the pounding on my recovering hip. She called it “3 and 1”. You run three minutes and walk one. Run three more. Then walk for one. It’s actually not that much slower than continuously running at a slow pace. That short relief is also a way to gaslight yourself. You run to the goal and then get a short reward for one minute.
Remember, if gaslighting yourself doesn’t work and you end up quitting anyway, you got further than if you hadn’t.

Good luck with your personal Ironman adventure in sales!