Always Negotiate Mindfully

Life is full of negotiations. Whether it’s with our significant others, friends, colleagues or a traffic cop who wants to write us a ticket, we face negotiations every day.

In the professional realm it’s particularly important to master the art of negotiating, because it can have a significant impact on your career.

Most people get emotional when they negotiate: we’re angered when our wishes are ignored and feel happy when we get what we ask for. These emotions can either help or hinder a successful negotiation, which is why it’s crucial to be able to manage them. This is where mindful negotiation comes in.

Mindful negotiation means being fully present, so that your thoughts don’t wander into the past or the future. This allows you to avoid emotionally stimulating thoughts, so you can focus on the task at hand.

Say you’re negotiating about salary with your boss, whom you despise due to some past unpleasantness. If you let yourself drift into these hostile feelings, you’ll become overly emotional in the negotiation, and probably won’t get what you want.

But if you negotiate mindfully, you’ll be able to focus solely on communicating why you deserve the salary you’re asking for, and not on what has happened in the past. You’ll be far more likely to succeed.

The key to negotiating mindfully is keeping your emotions toward others out of the equation. For example, if someone does something to upset you, don’t get angry, but instead try to understand what feelings drove them to it. This emotionally neutral perspective will help you negotiate with the colleague in question.