Relaxation is a key skill that all business owners need to add to their repertoire. Watch our YouTube clip about the importance of being able to relax in less than 10 seconds …

How to relax in less than 10 seconds

Many years ago I learnt this technique, and the technique was How to relax in less than 10 seconds. It was a technique they were teaching athletes at the Institute of Sport in Canberra. Of course, under those circumstances, when you are playing sport, the ability to be able to relax immediately is very important, very critical, especially in games like golf and tennis where you’ve got a very short time to reset and it’s a solo, individual sport.

However, I looked at that and I thought, “Where in my life under pressure, when I’m not relaxed, does it trip me up?” We’re all in business. Things like sales: when it comes time to ask for the money, if I’m stressed or I’m under pressure I don’t ask the sale because I’m starting to panic, I get a dry mouth. All these things can contribute to losing a sale. If you look at the average lifetime value of a customer or one of your clients, what they spend with you over a year, we’re talking big money. That’s one example.

Think about conflicts: if I’m having a conflict or a conversation with someone that leads to one of those challenging conversations, you cannot be relaxed enough. So I behave and respond in a way that is in line with my values and I don’t behave in a way that I’m going to regret later.

Giving presentations, giving talks, any area that you can think of where you’ve experienced pressure … In our two day business building seminars I teach this method and I show you how in just 18 minutes you can learn to relax. To the point where you can just click your fingers and in less than 10 seconds you’ll get yourself into a relaxed state so that you can perform and get the most out of yourself.

It’s one of the biggest things that changed and transformed my life. If you’re in business and you need to make important decisions, are you making it because they’re the ones you need to do, or they’re the ones that you want to do? There’s a big difference. We all have automatic default responses: some of them are positive and some of them don’t give us the results we want.

So my big tip is: learn this method, whether it’s this one or another one, and invest time in learning how to relax under pressure so that you can get the most out of yourself. It’s critical in your success moving forward. There’s more to it, but I recommend taking time out daily to learn how to relax when there’s every reason not to feel relaxed.