Just last weekend I delivered two workshops, sharing strategies and empowering participants to design and live lives they love living. It’s a power we all have, to create outcomes we love. It’s also true that we have the power to be happy now, we don’t need to wait for new outcomes and different results to be happy. In many respects, creating or manifesting outcomes we love has it roots in being happy with and appreciative of all we have already.
We spend so much of our precious time, thoughts and feelings on playing the When/Then game. When I get the job, the relationship, the house, the car, the result I want, then I’ll be happy, successful, loved, alive. And we waste days, months, years, waiting for that, all the time missing the opportunities we have to be happy now, successful now, loved and loving now.
Einstein said we have two ways to live, either as if everything’s a miracle, or as if nothing’s a miracle. We get to choose that for ourselves! We get to choose it through the thoughts we select and the energetic states we create.
So if you and I each have this creative power to choose our thoughts and feelings, why are we not doing that more of the time?
Some of it relates to how we’re designed, it is true we have a negativity bias, a kind of internal programming that tunes us into threats and danger in our environment.
And we live in a culture that Claire Zammit describes as one that promotes control, analysis, and logical, linear thinking, all of which is fine if you want to achieve an outcome that is suitable for such a process, like building a house or a car or even a business, but not so helpful when you want to create new states of being, like happiness, success, fulfilment.
So what can you do, today, to make a difference, be happier and create outcomes you love? Here are three strategies you can begin to work with immediately:
- Start with becoming familiar with your own thinking. Identify the negative self-talk and limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck in patterns that are unfulfilling. Notice the times you say ‘I can’t’, I never’, ‘it’s impossible’. Know that you are more than those thoughts and that you can change them to more empowering options, ‘I can’, ‘I am’, ‘I choose’… If you’re the one doing the thinking, you’re the one who can think different thoughts. This takes effort and rigour but it’s worth it and it’s a game changer.
- Stay curious and ask higher quality questions, ‘what would I do if I was guaranteed success? What would I do if I didn’t believe it was impossible?’ ‘How would my best self show up here? – these questions will take you to a place of higher order thinking that offers better solutions and options for healthier perspectives you can adopt or more effective actions you can take to progress towards outcomes you’d love.
- Tune into all that you have to be grateful for already: the food in your cupboards, safe drinkable running water at the turn of the tap, the salary or supports you receive, the fact that vaccines are available. When we are coming from an appreciation of all that is already good in our lives, the good we have appreciates.
Soon you’ll notice that when you are thinking happier thoughts, you feel happier. Life acquires a quality it didn’t have before, at least not since you were a child. The everyday miracle, life, starts to feel miraculous again.
The things we want to achieve are still there, we still have goals and ambitions, but we don’t need them to be happy. And being happy now gives us the energy, inspiration and motivation to keep growing into our best version of ourselves, truly living into a life we love.
My two coaching programmes, Dream Builder and Life Mastery are commencing again in early May. If you’d love to put yourself in a structure of support to create and live a life you love, why not join me for a complimentary strategy session to clarify your vision and determine the best coaching option for you.
Image Credits: Jonathan Borba / Ray Hennessy – Unsplash