Would you agree that your success, in business and in life, is determined by your ability to successfully ask for, and get, what you want? It may have begun when you first asked for a cookie. Today, you may be asking for a $50,000 contract or a higher discount on supplies. The principles are the same. Yet I find people often miss the mark. Clients tell me that they fear negotiations will result in anger, so they never even ask for what they want. Or their negotiations bring about a stalemate. In every instance, we find that four specific keys are missing.

Good negotiation skills can actually increase your credibility, your communication and your business. These simple steps will make all the difference:

Begin with a clear understanding of what you want from the negotiation. Dig below the surface. If you are negotiating for a higher sale price or a discount, you could get stuck on a line item; instead, consider the total picture. What gets you the highest return? Are there tax considerations? Are there costs the other side could absorb? Are there other requests such as timing, financing or down payments to consider? Understand WHY you want what you say you want. Creativity could result in getting a vacation at the end of a conference – with your client picking up the travel cost to the event. Or you might take an equity interest in a company as part of your compensation for potential long-term return. When you recognize your short- and long-term objectives, you are in the best position to negotiate.

State your intention for a win-win negotiation up front. Remove any potential adversarial positioning by addressing it clearly. You might say, “I want to discuss some additional areas where I would like to see changes. My intention is that we reach an agreement that is unquestionably fair to both of us. Is that OK?” Get agreement for the discussion and the ground rules for openness and fairness before proceeding.

Ask questions to elicit the underlying needs of the other party. As you probably discovered in the first step, there may be many important points requiring discussion. If you were negotiating to purchase real estate, you might ask what the sellers intended to do with the money. Knowing whether they had already purchased another home, or whether they wanted ongoing cash flow from an investment, would dictate entirely different approaches to handling the transaction. Keep asking questions until you have a very good understanding of what will satisfy their needs. You are then ready for the next step.

Be flexible in meeting both parties’ needs while making small concessions. If you have done the first three steps, you now have a significant list of possibilities…and it is time to be creative. Do you have services or connections that would assist the other party? Can you offer discounts or timing flexibility? Be prepared to expand beyond your original request. Make small concessions one at a time in order to keep the conversation moving forward. Never give your final offer until you have already conceded many small points. Why? If you give a final offer without first realizing that you are giving something valuable, you may reach an early impasse. And it is entirely possible that by using this method, you will reach an agreement far more favorable to you than you originally imagined – while also satisfying the other party.

By following the four keys above, you will enjoy significantly greater success in negotiations. However, if either party is doing one of the following, the negotiation has little chance to succeed.

FATAL APPROACHES IN NEGOTIATION

Fixating on the impossible. There are times that a past event becomes an issue. Perhaps a deadline has passed, or an event was ruined. In a recent negotiation, the mother of the bride repeated the statement that her daughter was crying on her wedding day. It is important to acknowledge that YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE PAST. The point of negotiation is to agree to something that is in the present and carries forward. Both parties must agree to consider only the options available at this point. Fixation on the past can be a no-win tactic because it puts greater emphasis on the currency of emotion.

Negotiating for power or pain. In divorces or other emotionally charged situations, there is often little possibility of a win-win outcome, because one or both parties care only about bringing pain to the other side. Money is simply a vehicle for distributing the hurt – and as a result, no one can really win. If you find yourself in this situation, go back to step one. Get to the bottom of what you really want and encourage the other party to do the same.

Mastering these principles requires great introspection, listening skills and clear communication. But they can make you a skilled negotiator. Not only that, skilled negotiations can increase the confidence that people place in you.

Ready, set…negotiate!

Being present and feeling bliss is the moment in which you are not thinking of anything else, hence the concept that we are already enlightened, is because what prevents enlightenment is living in thoughts of past or future, i.e., memories.

By being fully present in the very moment, we are no longer in memory and that gives a state of pure bliss by removing us from the thoughts which we worry about. The practices of meditation or anything in which you can put your entire concentration into a single point is the method of taking your mind from memories and putting it into the very present moment that provides a blissful experience which is the benefit of meditation or rather, the pleasure of meditation.

If we can truly focus long enough on a single point and stay out of memory long enough, then a much more profound experience can happen. What keeps us in memories? Fears, self centered egoistic desires, attachment to our human life and existence, anything that happens to us as a human being, what we fear or desire to happen, to avoid pain and seek pleasure, which sets in motion a chain of events of conditions and circumstances related to the item we are preoccupied with.

The question is how to get the mind to be so fully present long enough for the experience to occur. The analogy is if you are holding a ball or other small object with your palm facing down at shoulder height, and you let it fall, then as it is falling, quickly catch it again before it hits the ground.

This is what our mind is like when we do achieve a certain level of concentration, we can get the feeling of freedom of having let go, but we so quickly return to our habitual thoughts that we never actually complete the journey for the mind to attain complete rest.

As the ball falls through the air, that is the length of the experience. But because we catch it before it hits the ground, it never stops moving. We lift it back up again and repeat the movement, never completing the journey and stop moving. The mind never rests on the firm foundation of the ground, or rather our own true nature, the ultimate end of our seeking.

We must do this with our mind, to be able to lay it to rest, let it fall all the way down to total stillness without catching it with other thoughts which keep it moving.

This is where finding a person who you so deeply love and trust allows you to let your whole body and mind completely melt and rest without any mental movement by being so totally focused on your union. Even a hug is capable of achieving that same experience of total relaxation and release of all physical tension, if there are no other thoughts than the hug.

Other practices are certain breathing techniques, Tai Chi or Qi Gong if done correctly, are methods which require total mental focus and relaxation of the body such that the mind can be released from its habitual thoughts long enough to reach a profound state of inner peace and calm, which if maintained long enough brings a more profound experience of enlightenment. This then brings the experience of being truly awake and present. Being fully awake is what the word, ‘Buddha’ means. Buddha means, the awakened one. Thus enlightened means awake.

The method to achieve this requires the acceptance of the futility or irrelevance of everything in life. The ultimate irrelevance of everything, but that can be depressing because if that is true, there is no point or purpose to life. This is the danger of following a path towards enlightenment, is that it sounds contradictory and most definitely counter productive if a person does not understand how life can be totally pointless and yet extremely valuable at the very same time.

A WORLD OF OPPOSITES

It is in knowing that all things exist only because their opposite exists. This is a world of duality. Hot cannot exist without there being cold. It takes a lot of contemplation to comprehend the concept of the law of opposites that everything must have its opposite in this world. The great importance of things is on one end of the scale, the total irrelevance is the polar opposite, thus both must exist simultaneously for every subject.

The relevance has to do with your human existence, the irrelevance is the reality of the eventual end with the passing of time, even it that is hundreds or thousands of years. Of course we are not speaking of the great masters throughout history, Da Vinci, Mozart or the inventors of fire and the wheel who have given society great advancements. We are speaking of us, the average people, and there are more of us than there are geniuses. We are the ones I am writing for.

Every normal person has a life which we will live, and hopefully attain a great state of bliss and happiness. A friend of mine who was a judge for 30 years said that he has discovered something about humanity. All the crimes are committed by 5% of the people, another 5% make the world go round, the other 90% just eat the food. If you are in the 90% who exist and your life does not change the world in any way that will alter the future of humanity, you may be mistaken.

One by one our lives become better and thus in the very long term have a beneficial effect on humanity. If enough of the 90% become more awake it is inevitable that there will be a long term alteration of humanity.

Consider this, we as individuals are going to die, but as a species, humanity will continue. By simply bringing yourself to a state of balance, happiness and freedom, you will inevitably influence others in this way, and that is how the one who just eats the food becomes a vital part of the evolution of humanity as a whole. This happens by realizing that everything is very important in our life, the relative reality. At the same time remember the absolute reality is that ultimately everything is irrelevant.

“Eventually, everything become irrelevant”

With this understanding of the eventual end, we can release our fears and enjoy what we do have and with this positive attitude many better things will come into our life.