Think of a quick snapshot memory. Something energizing – when life was abundantly overflowing with fulfilling friendships, truly cascading with love or rapidly moving toward your goals. One of those moments when you tilted your head back in laughter, enveloped someone with your love or shared a success with unabashed glee.
What was within you to cause such elation? Those were not external forces at work. Those scenarios were self-created. You extended the invitation to receive such joyous feelings. I’d be bold enough to say that everyone has experienced such a moment of excitement. Ever wonder what internal process creates those experiences? How do we make more of them? My hope is that this month’s newsletter will bring as much heat to your energy levels as we’re about to encounter in our summer days!
Achieving Daily Inspiration:
Open up!
Even as I write this, I am a student of each of these steps. How’s this for a story: I’m sitting in a friend’s backyard and these words are flowing forth. I stopped writing to take a brief moment to enjoy the breeze and reflect on how to illustrate opening oneself up. Suddenly the breeze kicked up and the pages of my notebook surrendered to the wind. Before long, my friend’s white cat had followed the wind across the backyard and into my lap. Not bad for only having written the two words: “open up.” I suppose it can be described in another pair of words: loosen up!
In order to do this, practice finding your breathing pattern, using a touchstone or simply closing your eyes for a moment with a deep breath. Whatever it takes to ground you back in your body during a stressful day or a distracting moment. When you can master opening up and loosening up on a daily basis, you may move on to #2, which is keen awareness.
Keen Awareness
In addition to practicing the act of being open, also begin to practice awareness. What is happening in those energizing moments and how do you feel about it? If I had been anyone else, I might not have noticed the symphony being created between the breeze, the pages of my journal and the white cat. Pay attention to the energy in your open moments. Take your time to form thoughts around the delight that you sensed and what created it. For me, it was the feeling of surrendering the focus I had on this article to a soft breeze blowing my hair and teasing me into enjoying the moment of sunshine and nature. For you, it will be something completely different. When you’ve started to pinpoint the commonality in your happiest moments, your next challenge is to practice personal acceptance.
Personal Acceptance
This step is one of the most difficult since it involves changing your own self-limiting beliefs. Most of us shush our thoughts when something intrigues or moves us. We turn instead to memories of someone who once looked at us funny or felt we were childish for being captured by something so small. Personal acceptance is about realizing when those small moments occur, understanding why you find energy in them and truly believing that you are a more complete person for noticing the world in such an intimate way. When you honestly say to yourself, “I love that I choose to surrender my valuable seconds to study what the wind feels like against my skin,” [insert your own energizing moment here] then you have begun to fully accept the daily gifts that life has to offer.
Let me put it another way. How does it feel when someone brings you a gift unexpectedly, or delivers a compliment out of the blue? Pretty good, right? Now, how many times do you try to give those gifts back or make excuses for why that compliment isn’t necessary? How often do you just say ‘thank you’ and leave it at that? Think of every moment you are energized and work to accept that moment as your own gift from the Universe (or God, or however you choose to name it).
Each moment is yours to find the inspiration in, or to blow past without awareness. Begin to regularly and deliberately energize each one of your moments. You’ll find that as you crack open the door to awareness, it just might fly wide open and expose a new viewpoint on the world that you didn’t have before. Listen to yourself and accept the daily inspiration that life has to offer. Energize the moment you're in.
Momentum Coaching's mission is for each of us to energize the moment we're in. As owner and professional coach, Katie Mattson energizes her clients to stretch their boundaries, deepen their awareness and indulge in life. She coaches individuals and small groups around topics such as: building confidence, career and life transitions, shifting perspective and stepping into new experiences. To read more about Katie and Momentum Coaching, visit www.EnergizeYourMoment.com.