“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” – Benjamin Disraeli
I’m sorry my Lord Disraeli; I have to disagree. This quote from an eminent and honored former British Prime Minister shows one of the most common mistakes we can make about happiness, joy, satisfaction, or any other emotional state.
We confuse emotional states with time-driven goals that require action.
We tie our happiness to things outside ourselves that have to happen. Have you ever heard someone say, “I’ll be happy when my kid gets into college.” Or, when I get this report done… or when we get through this election year. (Glory, I know I’m ready to have this political drama over here in the US…)
The problem is that often we’re forcing ourselves to wait, and we tie our experience of happiness to an outside event. What if I told you that this type of thinking is stealing your happiness from the current moment? What if I could give you a technique to evoke happiness or any other emotion at will whenever you wanted them?
How might your life be different if you could turn on happiness, peace, excitement, or confidence in a moment? The next time you’re feeling anxious about a project you could bring in a greater sense of peace to the moment. The next time you had to give a presentation or deliver a webinar you could evoke a feeling of confidence and unstoppability.
How do you think that might change both how you feel and potentiality the results of the experiences that follow? Could be pretty powerful, huh? Then, let’s explore this possibility a bit further.
Clarifying: States vs. Goals
Let’s start by making sure that we’re on the same page about the difference between a state vs. a goal.
A goal requires time and involves action or steps to achieve it. In other words, there are tasks that must be completed in order to accomplish the goal. Remember the examples I mentioned before? In order for your kid to get into college, there are steps that must be taken by many different people. In order to get your report done, you will need to invest time and take action. Both of these are, in this context, goals or projects involving a component of time and action required.
On the other hand, a state requires no steps, no time, and can be accessed immediately and infinitely. Happiness, peace, excitement, and confidence are just a few examples, but you could also include love, presence, groundedness, joy, or unstoppability. Of course, all of these are empowering states that we might desire to feel more often. However, states also would include anger, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, and other disempowering emotions.
What if I told you that the quality of our results directly reflects the quality of the states in which we spend the most time? If we spend most of our days feeling disempowered and depressed, isn’t it possible that that would impact our ability to be effective and get things done? Of course it would! I don’t know many depressed and highly productive people, do you?
Becoming aware of and learning to manage our states is one of the essential strategies for improving your emotional energy management and thus both our results and our ability to experience greater joy, happiness, and satisfaction in our lives.
Managing your state is the ultimate mindset technique, and it starts so simply.
Evoking a Desired State
While accessing a particular state, in reality, happens in a moment and requires no steps, when you’ve never tried to do it intentionally before it helps to slow it down a bit and really let it sink in. So, let me walk you though it with just a few instructions.
Pick an empowering state that you’d like to experience right now. Maybe greater confidence? You can pick whatever feels right for you, but for the sake of this example I’ll use confidence.
Start by taking a deep breath, and you might choose to close your eyes. Then, notice how easily you can remember a time in the past when you felt complete confidence. It can be in any context or area of your life: at home, with your kids, while playing sports, at work with colleagues. Pick a specific time when you remember feeling complete confidence.
Now, drop into that moment as if it were happening right now. Imagine and remember… what were you seeing, hearing, and feeling in that moment? How were you standing? How were you breathing when you felt complete confidence? Stand that way right now. Breathe that way right now. Drop fully into the experience in your mind and body as if it were happening again right now. Feel the confidence infusing your whole body.
Once you feel that emotion clearly, then amplify it! Make it bigger and brighter. Turn up the volume. Feel it soaking deeply into your bones and every cell. Infuse your body with the feeling of complete confidence.
Now, take a breath, open your eyes, and pause for a moment to notice what’s different.
Do you feel differently from before you started? You just evoked and shifted your emotional state. Nice job!
How States Can Change Your Life
There are many ways to use this technique in your day-to-day life:
When you’ve got something important that you want to get done you can evoke confidence and unstoppability.
When you’re feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, you can evoke calm, peace, and focus.
When you need a boost of energy, you can evoke joy and excitement.
There are so many ways to leverage empowering states to improve your daily life.
In fact, at times I have used this technique as a daily morning practice to evoke the states to help me during the day. I even turned on a specific song and made a dance out of it by creating hand gestures and body movements that represented my chosen states. Be playful! Allow yourself to soak into the states that you evoke and enjoy them.
As you get used to shifting your emotional state at will dropping into a specific state will become even easier, more natural, and immediate. You become used to accessing it and can step into it in seconds.
Thus, you will never again have to wait to feel happy, and there’s no action required. Just evoke your happiest memory, and it’s here!
Next Actions
Come on, Be Happy! Practice and remember to play! I will be talking more about States vs. Goals and other topics on my Behind-the-Blog series on FaceBook Live. Head over to the Chosen Course FaceBook page and join us.
Image used under License Agreement: ©Erik Reis (Iko) /Stockfresh
