The #1 superpower is CHOICE. The power of CHOICE is the single most powerful force you can use to control your life. Your choices determine everything about your life, from micro-moments up to the macro quality of your life. Try not to get distracted here. (Do I know you or what? 😉) There is no room for blame or judgment in that statement. 🛑
CHOICE is a concept we are visiting together to next level your life.
In EVERY moment, in EVERY situation you have exactly three choices. Your choices not only determine the next moment or the outcome of a situation, but choices determine the quality of your life.
These three choices are :
My Story
(If you aren't interested in my life altering allegory revealing secrets of the universe feel free to skip to the end where action steps await.) Click here
This was the first self development concept that I discovered when I stumbled upon a presentation by Tony Robbins, my ultimate role model in the motivational space. The sacred stillness I was able to access through my yoga & meditation practice was a magical place for me to visit. But it had reached the limit of what it could do for me without having a place to go from there. Enter the world of personal development, I had found the next level Jedi mind control that laid out the mind map to any destination I sought; internal or otherwise. My brain shifted in to high gear and I took a flying leap in to the world of personal development.
Driving in a fog on my way to teach a yoga class for one of my corporate clients during an unusually difficult period in my life I was fighting myself daily just to pull it together. My yoga & meditation practice helped to clear some of the constant haze of depressive exhaustion, but still something was missing.
Yoga and I began our love affair years earlier when I found myself all tangled up, leg over leg, and fully exposed in the throws of my practice. It was a feeling I can only describe as being totally naked in a room full of patchouli loving strangers and soccer moms. Yet I was unabashedly comfortable. I had never before felt the fullest expression of who I truly was and all the possibility of my full, NO, limitless potential the way I did and still do within my practice. Like a toddler who is positively giddy over the freedom to run around naked I wanted all my friends who were still stuck behind the bars of the playpen to see what I could actually get away with. I needed to share my new truth with the rest of the world. So, naturally I became a yoga instructor. An instructor of self actualization from all different angles, practicing in the trade of peace, love and light. My personal practice and professional reach continues to serve it's purpose many fold but as I described earlier I reached a point where I felt a key component missing. Some serious adulting kept interfering with the blissed out toddler in my brain fervently streaking the world. The naked thrill was gone and I found myself going from blissed & blessed in the studio to a complete mess once I was off the mat. In addition to the pity party of one I was attending daily I was getting frequent visits from a brand of imposter syndrome specially reserved for the spirit children of the universe making their way in the world selling unicorn dust. How could I be teaching all these kids and women that the secret to their ultimate fulfillment & success in life was their Yoga, that oneness of mind, body & spirit; THE foremost connection to self and universe , when it now seemed to leave me just short of complete utopia. Was I a fraud?!?!?
Through my MLM company, Juice Plus, I had been introduced to the genre of motivational speeches and personal development. On that dreary drive I knew I needed a voice in my head other than my own because my self talk wasn't doing me any favors. I I decided to listen to Inky Johnson tell his story again in a video we viewed in a team meeting just the week before. This is it if you want to listen later. Queue'd up after Inky on you tube was the guy from Shallow Hal who showed up to offer me what I didn't know in that fateful car ride would become a defining moment in my life. I was energized by the words that came out of his mouth in a way that made me believe in myself again. Listening to Tony Robboin's simple definition of how our choices impact our life I was immediately empowered by shifting everything with new choices. The possibility of everything being ok, even in that very moment when nothing felt ok struck me like a bolt of lighting. I recognized something I had lost sight of. I had choices and I could control my entire life by making the right ones. The heaviness lifted and I could breath again, I could smile, and I could effortlessly continue being myself.
As I became entrenched in the next steps of my learning journey these seemingly new mental disciplines and philosophies were all familiar. In studying motivational psychology, NLP (neurolinguistic programming), ancient spiritual texts and a litany of other human development tools I was struck by the common threads. Each individual spiritual tradition and the axioms from varying intellectual schools of thought bore many of the same gifts to humanity only wrapped in different packaging. The most profound & meaningful teachings, weather old or new to me and subsequently my students, were consistent across every ancient, new age, academic, religious, and spiritual tradition and school of thought.
Furthermore the MOST notable and successful people in their fields across every single genre; from purely ascetic spiritual leaders to the most materialistically successful industry tycoons all employed the same systems. When interviewed and questioned about their guiding principles, philosophies and ensuing methods, ALL without exception employed the same IDEAS and deployed the same ACTION strategies to breathe life in to those ideas.
(Further study reveals the fundamental differences between rabbis, gurus priests, imams, professors and millionaires besides their clothing. That's for a different blog.... )
Mind Magic in Motion
The packaging differs slightly with each emergent self help guru who wants to coin their own language. In the end every explanation of where our choices emanate from and how to make them most effective is exactly the same. The universal truth across every tradition is as follows:
You can examine the difference between thoughts and emotions here
Thoughts
-You are not your thoughts
-You control your thoughts
-All thoughts begin as facts
-Facts become emotionally charged when you add emotions to them
-Thoughts begin in your mind and travel to your body to become feelings
-You can choose any thought you want to
-The fastest and easiest way to change a thought is to choose a new one or take immediate action
-The most effective and long lasting way to change a thought is to create new beliefs and keep
taking consistent action
Emotions
Making Effective Choices
You are always making choices weather they are intentional or not. No choice is also a choice and a poor choice speaks for itself. Why not intentionally make the best choices possible starting with the thougths you choose. But a thought is not enough if you want great results. You have to choose the actions you'll take and actually TAKE ACTION to be fully in control. Your choices boil down to a simple equation. The most basic element of choice in your life can only be utitlized effectively when you employ both the neccessary parts of the equation to achieve the best possible results.
Ideas, being footloose and fancy free, are fun for everyone. It isn't until ideas are followed through with action that they can bring about real results in your life. With such a simple equation why does it so often not add up?
- For some it's the ideas they ascribe to that make it impossible for them to choose a productive action step.
- And for so many others great ideas taunt them with moose ears just daring them to take action but still that all important action step never happens.
How to break the cycle:
This is more than magical unicorn dust you can sprinkle over everything (though you can do that too.) This is a strategy to turn to any time you are stuck. When applied as an overarching principle this formula will turn in to actionable choices from moment to moment. Just like building any other valuable skill, making new and better choices requires practice.
So simple right? Seems like total common sense. If you have a giant cartoon "DUUHHH" in your head right now I have a question for you. If we all know so well what to do, then why is it so hard for us to do what we know? There in lies the work .
Action Steps : Thought Work Journal Exercise
This is an excerpt from the Goal Getters Journal, a tool used with clients of The Yoga-Reverse Method ™
Step 1:
The simplest iteration of the concept of choice that can change every thing for you is as follows. Write it down and commit this to memory:
- What you focus on is what you feel
-What you feel determines what you do
-What you do determines your results
Step 2:
New Choices create new results
1) -What is one result you would like to see in your life that has been difficult for you up to now?
-Name one or two reasons why it is difficult for you to achieve this.
-When you think of these difficulties what emotion do you feel?
-How does that literally feel in your body?
- What action (or in-action) does that feeling compel you to take?
2) -Working with the same result you named in #1 write it down as a specific goal.
( How will you know when it's achieved? What time frame would you like to achieve it in?)
-What emotion will you feel when you achieve this goal?
-Describe how this literally feels in your body.
- Remain in the state of that emotion- Feel it, breathe it, be it,
- Name one or two steps you need to take in order to achieve your goal
- What is 1 action step you are willing to take immediately to get closer to your goal?
- Identify the specific thought that is fueling you to want to take that action step
