Having a positive attitude is an important factor in your sales & marketing professional success. You can be the best salesperson in the world, but if you don’t have a positive attitude, success is significantly more difficult to obtain. In previous articles, I have written many times on how your emotions contribute to success. For example, here is an article on how you can maintain a positive attitude.

Here is another one on how top performers are able to stay positive all the time. I have even made the argument that being positive is important because optimism is crucial if you want to make it in business. People tend to focus solely on positive thinking because it’s a major contributor to closing sales.

However, as we all know, it’s impossible to stay positive all the time. We are not robots. We are human beings with real feelings and emotions. Some days, we can do our best to be positive, but it’s completely normal to experience stress, frustration, sadness, and overall negativity. Rather than getting more upset that you are not positive, let’s focus on dealing with those negative emotions in a positive way.

Accept that Your Attitude Needs Changed

The hardest part about dealing with negative emotions is that oftentimes, we will brush them off or try to completely ignore them. If we never really accept that we are in a bad mood, there is no way that we can fix the problem. Accepting that your attitude needs work is the first step to handling bad emotions.

Recognize the Effects of the Negative Emotion

Defining the consequences of your negative emotions are a great start to changing your attitude. If you are able to say “I’m stressed, and because I am stressed, I am going too fast and making mistakes at work”, you can work to fix the problem before you continue working. This will allow you to take a time-out from everything until you are able to deal with the emotions.

Work to Fix that Emotion

Once you identify what the emotion is, recognize the consequences of it, you can work to fix the negative emotion. This can be easier said than done, but there are things we can certainly do to help the process easier. For example, if you are stressed because you have way too much on your plate, take a time-out for 5 minutes and just deep breaths to clear your head. Another example: if you are mad because your sale fell through, take a short walk around outside and get some of that energy released in a positive way.

Negativity can be debilitating to your success. While we seek to be positive all the time, it’s common to have bad moods and bad attitudes once in awhile. Recognizing the problem, realizing the effects of it, and fixing the root emotion in a positive way will help you snap out of that bad attitude and start performing again.