There are certainly multiple components that are relevant for more energy, flow and joy of life. 3 essential questions in this context are however the following:
1. Where is your attention?
2. How big is your NOW?
3. What is coherent for you?
Let’s take a closer look at these 3 questions.
1. Where is your attention?
We oftentimes waste a lot of time with thinking or worrying about things that have not yet happened or that suck our energy. Here are some examples:
- You think or worry about what might happen if something specific occurred e. g.
- You get fired from your job
- A beloved person might die
- Your kids will go to school
- You miss an important appointment
- Your partner leaves you
- You not earn enough money for your living anymore
- You will not find a job that fulfills you
- etc.
- You think or worry about what others might think if you e. g.
- Said certain things
- Took a stand for yourself
- Set boundaries that upset the other person
- You go your own way
- You probably wear extraordinary clothes
- You questioned social rules and norms
- You did not invite certain people for your birthday or the family party
- etc.
- You are mired in judgments and stories regarding situations or people in your environment, e. g. that
- your neighbor is neurotic, because he checks the hedge with a ruler after cutting it
- your colleague is egoistic, because they didn’t forward certain information to you
- your boss is an idiot
- your job is annoying in general, because you have to work so hard and don’t have fun at work.
- Your partner is a sissy, because they keep complaining all the time, etc.
Our mind is programmed to continuously produce thoughts. That is just how our intellectual body works. You can however influence the kind of thoughts you produce or rather where you put your attention.
If a thought from the above mentioned categories keep you busy then you automatically put your attention on what you DON’T want or what sucks your energy. Since your energy follows your attention you thus give energy to the scenarios that you would actually like to avoid and keep producing more sorrows, unease and scarcity. The energy follows the attention. The more energy you give to certain thoughts the more likely it is that they manifest.
In former times there were these figuline pictures made of nails. The nails were put easily through holes on a wooden board and could move forward and backward in this hole without dropping out. Then the picture was turned in a way that all nails moved with the long part to one side. After that you pushed e. g. your fist or hand against the nails so that on the other side of the wooden panel you had a perfect shape of your fist or hand. It works somewhat similar with the manifestation of thoughts. If you keep thinking a thought and connect it with a feeling (e. g. fear) then it becomes a felt inner reality and an inner imprint (just like the nail picture).
The essential question therefore is: Where do you put your attention? This is not about positive thinking. It is not about telling yourself a seemingly positive sentence as soon as you realize that you have a destructive thought. It is about becoming attentive what you do with your attention. Do you put your attention on what worries you, what creates scarcity or what annoys you? Or do you put your attention on what nourishes you?
2. How big is your NOW?
The second question is about how big your NOW is, i. e. the time span you live in. while kids still have a very small now and get sucked into playing from moment to moment, most of the adults have a rather big now. How does a big now show? It shows for example in the way that:
- you wake up in the morning and already think about all the things you have to do until the end of the day
- you already think about what the encounter with your friend next week might be like
- you live in the past and are with your thoughts e. g. still in the meeting with your boss last week or on the beautiful weekend tour 3 days ago
- You dream about your holiday that is up in 3 months from now
- etc.
The now of many people is very big so that they think in days, months or even years.
The thing is this: you cannot change what happened in the past, because it is already over. You can’t change what will happen in the future either, because it is not yet there. If you are in your mind thinking about the past or the future, you are not present here and now. Instead you are giving your power to the past or the future that you cannot control. The only moment where you really have power is HERE and NOW.
As a reminding factor you can put a little stone in your pocket. Press against the stone several times a day. The moment you touch the stone and feel the pressure at your finger, that’s where now is. Minimize your now to this moment. Start being awake in this very moment. That’s where you have power. Life happens now, neither tomorrow or after tomorrow, nor last week. Only the here and now counts. You can then use this presence and alertness to bring about changes here and now. As soon as you are present in this moment and find a situation that does not work for you, you can declare that something completely different than that is possible. It is your choice.
This actually leads to the third question.
3. What is really coherent for your?
If you are present here and now and are thus in your power, the next question is what is really coherent for your right now. What works for you?
- Is it coherent to do what you are currently doing?
- Does it nourish you what is happening right now?
- In this very moment do you follow your joy or a seeming duty that doesn’t nourish you?
- What inspires you right now?
- What is the necessity right now? (What is needed in this very moment either by you or others)?
In order to follow what is really coherent for you, it might be necessary to first of all clear some stuff out that are no longer coherent for you. Have you committed to certain things or tasks you do actually not take a stand for and that don’t bring any joy (e. g. are you member of some kind of association, do you live in an apartment you don’t like, did you take over tasks that actually annoy you, etc.)?
To which things in your life do you cling to although they are no longer part of you, don’t do you good and are everything else than coherent for you? How much unnecessary baggage do you carry?
Start feeling into it what feels coherent, what is yours and what nourishes you. Then start making space for that by stopping the things that no longer nourish you.
You might now say: “It’s easier to say than to do.“ Well, nobody said it’s going to be easy. At the same time take into consideration that it might be easier than you think and that you just think too much about how it should go. Just start experimenting with little things. The only question is whether you would like to have more energy, flow and joy of life in your overall life or not.
Frederic Dodson gave a great example in his book Reality Creation Coaching. He sat with a client on a park bench and asked him: “What would you like to do right now?” The client, who was self-employed, said: “Well, I should actually go home now and do some new client acquisition by phone.” Frederic Dodson said: „This was not the question. The question was what you would like to do right now. What is coherent for you right NOW?“ The client looked around in the park and said: „Well what I would like to do most right now is feeding the squirrels over there at the tree, but this is not very profitable.“ Dodson just said: „Well, tell this to the squirrels“. So the client went over to the tree and started feeding the squirrels. A woman came along and started a conversation with him about feeding the squirrels. It turned out that she was the CEO of a company with several thousand employees and needed exactly the services het client was offering. So this company became the new customer of Dodson’s client.
Where do you put your attention right here and now and what is coherent for you right now?
Best wishes,
Nicola Nagel