Energy flows where attention goes.
If you've found yourself slipping down a slope of frustration, anger, or just general doom & gloom, have you noticed how that sounds inside your head?
Let's say sth didn't go to plan, and internally you start thinking "What's wrong with me?", "Why is this happening to me?", "Why can't it just work?" or "How could s/he do this to me?"
One thing these questions have in common, is the focus on the problem - what's going wrong, and who can I blame? And that will always put you into a position of a victim, unable to change things, feeling dis-empowered and frustrated about yourself and life.
In order to be in a powerful position of being in charge of our lives, we need to shift our focus by asking better questions.
Ask instead:
"What is this situation teaching me?"
"How am I going to be even better after this?"
"What can I do right now to get one step closer to a solution?"
The quality of our questions will determine the quality of our answers.
Questions like "What's wrong with me?" or "Why is this happening to me?"can only bring us down. There's no constructive place to go from there, that's why this kind of self-talk has the power to erode our self-esteem, our mood, our happiness, not to mention our productivity.
Instead, be proactive about your attitude to life. Put yourself into a resourceful mindset from the get go.
A great way to do this is to build a routine into your life where you ask yourself better questions. That's one of my practices to get into a really good mindset. You can do it in the morning or evening (both very good times) or at any other time that works for you.
I'm using a high performance planner that has a 'morning mindset' section with questions like this:
- What's one thing I can get excited about today?
- What kind of person do I want to be today, and why?
- Who can I surprise with a note of gratitude, a gift, or appreciation today?
- If there was a situation that could stress me or throw me off my game today, what could it be? And how would my best self handle it?
- What's one brave action I could take today?
- If I was my own high performance coach, looking at the big picture of my life, what advice would I give myself?
- What would I need to have done or feel at the end of today to know the day was a great success?
These are some great ones to start with.
Also add your own powerful questions, those that are sure to give you a positive boost.
Some of mine are:
- How can I live from my values (choose one or two top ones) today?
- What impact do I want to have on the world?
- What steps can I take today to move in this direction?
Getting into a great mindset, and changing our day for the better, doesn't need to be hard. It's as simple as choosing what you focus your attention on. Either doing it proactively as I described above, or by catching yourself in the moment when you notice yourself slipping down a negative spiral, ultimately reclaiming your day.
Watch the impromptu video I made which inspired this blog post:
When you try these questions out, I'd love to hear how it goes - let me know HERE or in the comments below!
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