Today I remembered one of my favorite movies. I was coming back from a successful meeting via a beautiful quiet single lane moorland road with great music on the stereo and really positive feelings and thoughts running through my mind and body. The movie is Boiler Room and that’s where the phrase “motion creates emotion” comes from (at least in my memory).
In the movie, he’s embroiled in an essentially aggressive training pitch for potential new brokers at a dubious “boiler room” investment firm, which Ben Affleck passionately delivers. But even something used in such a negative app like this has incredibly useful, positive benefits for all of us.
I’ve come to the end of quite a hectic week this week – a lot has been happening, a lot has been done and has been very successful. One of the reasons is that I have been moving a lot. I’ve had drive-thru meetings, made and received all the phone calls while standing and walking, waving my arms, and even hosted a client event that I had to bike to because my car was stalled. Service. The positive benefits of not being static are incredible – the exponential increase in energy created by using energy is incredible.
Again, this is something else I came across in my recent NLP course. Cold sales calls are one of my least favorite parts of my job, but unfortunately they are necessary from time to time. As part of the course, we model some of the times when I have energy and enthusiasm, and then translate those to times when I’m making sales calls. The biggest differences were in movement.
In front of clients in a management training course, I am on my feet, moving, active and energetic. When I use experiential training techniques, I am outdoors, with physical problems. When I’m on my bike, I push myself to ride harder, faster, longer. When I’m climbing, it’s about pushing myself mentally (I’m afraid of heights!) and physically to do harder routes and longer climbs. And oddly enough, I feel great in all of those moments!
Knowing, understanding and (most importantly) believing is the key to improving other parts of my job as well. If I feel good when I’m active, why would I spend more than absolutely essential time sitting still? If I get energy from movement, why would I make a phone call while sitting down?
Often it’s the really simple things that get overlooked, but they can make the biggest difference. Try it. The next time you’re on a phone call, get up from your seat, walk around, wave your arms, and really engage in the conversation as if the person you’re talking to is right in front of you. Even if you get funny looks from your colleagues, you won’t mind, because the results you get will be so positive that everyone around you will end up asking how you do it.