Selling in a Crisis

9The Trouble with Doom Scrolling

The challenge you face in a crisis is that you'll be under a constant barrage of negativity from external forces. What you allow in will shape your mindset, your self-talk, and ultimately your outcomes. When you are reading, watching, listening to, and engaging in negative social media posts, it will impact your attitude.

Attention is currency. News organizations and social media platforms make money by selling your attention to advertisers. They know that the easiest way to grab your attention is with bad news. Their entire apparatus is set up to take advantage of the way your brain works.

In the mornings you wake up and, like a moth to a flame, you are drawn to your phone. You roll over and open your news app or social media app. Instantly, you are immersed in negativity. As you watch the news, scroll through your news apps, and follow the chatter on social media, you feel panic and fear. Your mind turns to the worst-case scenarios. Rather than focusing on what you can control, you dwell on what you cannot.

Here is how one rep described a doom and gloom day in her life:

This morning I got up at around 6:00 am, made coffee and turned on the news. I flipped from one cable news channel to another but it was all bad news. They were talking about how the economy is spiraling downward and saying that the stock market was going to have a bad day. You won't believe how much I've lost in my 401(k). And all the divisive politics! By the time I got ...