How to Transform Your Life...!

To change everything, you only have to change one thing.

If you’re struggling with something that you’d like to change in your life, rest assured – transformation might be closer than you think. When we look at the big picture, it’s often tempting to think that we have to change...the big picture. In reality, you can change one little thing, and the entire picture will shift.

When you feel most powerful, most able to take on challenges, what tends to be your emotional state? Are you feeling good, or feeling bad? My guess is that you’re probably feeling most capable, most on your game, when you’re feeling good. And when you're feeling bad - well, even the smallest hurdles can seem insurmountable - nevermind the major obstacles. However, the temptation is to think that you’re at the mercy of “how you feel” when it comes to making shifts in your life.

The Big Three

Take anything in your life at all, and the way that you experience that situation, the emotional state that it puts you in, can be broken down into three components:

Your physiology – what you’re doing with your body
Your focus – where you’re choosing to place your attention
Your language – the words that you use to describe the situation
These three elements are your keys to unlocking the secret of speedy transformation.

A simple experiment to make it real for you

As an experiment, think back on your life, to something that made you really sad, or depressed. See if you can get back into that feeling state again. Once you’re there, examine what you’re doing with the “big three”.

What are you doing with your body? How’s your posture? Your breathing? Do you feel relaxed, or constricted? Do you feel tension in any part of your body? Is there a movement that you associate with that feeling (and what is it)?

What are you thinking about? What thoughts do you repeat to yourself, like incantations, to get you into that emotional state? What pictures do you have in your mind?

What are the words that you use to describe the situation? Are there particular metaphors that you’ve chosen?

Now move on to a happier time

Having done that with something that made you sad – now switch to something that made you joyful. Think back to a time where you were feeling really, really, good. Make that really, really, really good. Take a moment to really get yourself into that state. Now think about the big three again.

What are you doing with your body?

What are you thinking about/focusing on?

How would you describe this situation to someone else?

Changing Your Emotions in an Instant

First of all, did you notice that you were able to experience quite an enormous emotional shift in a relatively short span of time, from feeling sad/depressed to feeling great/ecstatic? And how did you do that?

By changing your physiology, your focus, and your language.

These tools are available to you at any moment to shift the way you feel, to completely change your experience in any situation.

Try it, you’ll like it

The next time you find yourself faced with a “problem”, take a moment to assess the Big Three. What are you doing with your body? What are you paying attention to? What words are you using to describe the situation. Then, as an experiment, try changing each of them.

Start with the body. Change your posture. Smile. Straighten your spine. Hold your head up high. Imagine that some celestial being is looking down upon you, only you, and in that moment the two of you are connecting. You are embodying the physical manifestation of that celestial being here on the planet. Feel different?
Don’t stop there. Move on to your focus. You were thinking about the problem. As an experiment, shift your focus to gratitude. Is there something in this situation that’s actually a gift to you? Has life given you a chance to grow into the person you’re meant to become? Instead of thinking about a person's frown, how about focusing on their earlobes, or the glistening spot on their forehead?
Finally, your language. What metaphors might you pick to describe your problem, and how can you turn them on their head? For instance, let’s say that you’re feeling confused – not sure what to do next – like you’re in a maze. OK, so you’re in a maze! Now, what would happen if you were lifted above that maze – wouldn’t that be a helpful perspective? What if you could start at the exit of the maze, your goal, and could see the path working backwards to where you are now – wouldn’t that help you reach your solution? What if you looked down at the ground there in the maze, and found that there was a thread that someone else had left behind, leading you the way out? Can you follow it?
As you see, within each problem are the seeds of its resolution. If you take a moment to “do” the Big Three, you’ll see how easy it can be to make the shift. And you’ll probably even find that simply ONE of the steps is all it takes to shift the landscape. All it takes is one. But all three – well, that’s just icing on the cake.