Do you wish you were more…SOMETHING?
More confident? More generous? More loving? More calm? More determined? More joyful? More courageous? More thoughtful?
Here’s a powerful truth I’ve found again and again in my own life and with my clients:
You can begin to develop a quality or trait just by asking yourself what you would do if you were “coming from” or embodying that quality or trait.
Want to try this? Here’s a quick experiment for you to conduct over the next week.
First, choose a quality you’d like to “be” more.
Now, and then each morning for the next week, set this intention:
Today, I will choose _____. I will embody ______. I will be ______.
For example, if you wish you were more generous, you’d say: Today, I will choose generosity. I will embody generosity. In each moment, I will be generous.
Then, when challenges or decision points come up throughout the day, ask yourself one or more of these questions, filling in the trait you’re focusing on:
- What would _____ look like in this situation?
- What would _____ do?
- If I were being _____, how would I handle this?
- What would be the most _____ way to handle this situation?
- What would someone really _____ do in this situation?
- If I was coming purely from _____, what would I do?
You are a naturally creative being, and you are wired to see what you’re looking for. So just asking these questions gets your brain to think creatively about how to handle any situation—to invent options that are different from the options you might normally consider.
What’s really cool is that even if you don’t feel able to put the answer into practice, sometimes just identifying an answer to these questions can create a small shift for you—because instead of automatically taking your default view of a situation, you’ve created another possibility for yourself—an alternative to your default response. You have expanded your menu of choices.
Over time, it will be easier and easier for you to see those additional (i.e. more generous, loving, confident, etc.) options—and it may even become automatic.
Feel resistance even asking the question? (But I don’t FEEL like being generous!!!) Then say to yourself, “I’m not asking you to DO it—I’m just asking you what it would LOOK like.”
Act on the answers to the questions, or don’t. Just by asking, you’ll begin to train your brain to see more _____ (generous, confident, loving, calm, determined, joyful, courageous, thoughtful, etc.) approaches to anything in life.
And what we see, we can choose.
What we choose again and again becomes a habit.
And then we really are becoming “more…SOMETHING.”