Personal Power II: The Driving Force (Success Journal 5)

Day 5 - 7

In this session, you learned what people really want in life is to change one of
two things: either the way they feel about something (e.g., to move from being
frustrated to confident, from sad to happy, from depressed to emotionally
strong) or they want to change a behavior (e.g., to stop smoking or drinking, to
start taking massive action, to exercise and enjoy it, to follow through on their
commitments).

But the only reason we want to change our behaviors is we’re
hoping that if we lose that weight, stop procrastinating, take that action, we’ll
feel good. Everything human beings do is merely an attempt to change the
way they feel, to “change state.”


Moment to moment, what we do is powerfully shaped by the state we re in.
When we’re in a frustrated state, we tend to behave very differently than when
we’re feeling confident or excited or determined. One of the most important
things we can do to create the power, joy, and passion we really want in our
lives is to learn to manage our states of mind.



You can do this immediately through two primary vehicles, the first of which is
physiology.*

1. You can change how you feel instantly by changing the way you move,

breathe, use your facial expressions, or make any new demand on your
body.

2. The state you’re in determines your behavior and also your
performance. If you want to change your performance in anything—
business, sports, relationships, etc.—the first thing to do is to change
your state. In any situation, if you put yourself in a peak state you will
be able to utilize more of your true capabilities in life.

3. Remember, you’re always responsible for your own states. After the
next few days of learning, you won’t just be responsible; you’ll know
how to quickly and easily change how you feel about virtually anything
and move yourself into peak performance at will.



Here’s how to use your physiology to manage your state.

1. Move your body differently, and develop some “power moves”:
deliberate, strong, unhesitating movements that give you an immediate
sense of certainty. You can also use your voice to put yourself in a peak
state. Speak stronger, more rapidly, with a bit more volume from
deeper in your chest than you usually do.

2. Changing your breathing can immediately change your state. Deep,
diaphragmatic breaths create radically different emotional states than
shallow breathing that begins in the upper chest.

3. Radical changes in facial expressions will immediately change the way
you feel.

4. Changing elements of your diet can maximize your health and energy.

5. All of these put together can make significant changes in the patterns of
the emotional states you experience day to day.



YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Here’s how to develop the ability to put yourself in a passionate state instantly.
1. Invite a friend or business associate to participate in an “experiment.”
Sit down together, and ask your partner to notice what you do with
your physiology-face, voice, body, gestures, posture, etc.-throughout
the experiment.


2. Begin to talk about a subject you’re normally passionate about in an
exaggeratedly dispassionate way, as if you don’t really believe in it,
you don’t feel strongly about it. Pick something that normally does
inspire you, but talk about it in an uninspiring way, and have your
partner notice what you do with your face, your voice, your body, and
your gestures.


3. Change your state radically. Get up, if necessary, and move around for
a moment.


4. Now talk to your partner about the same subject with all the passion,
joy, energy, and conviction you can muster.


5. Ask your partner to share with you some of the specific differences in
how you moved, breathed, used your face, and used your voice, and
record this in your journal. These are your biomarkers, the “triggers”
that can cause you to feel passionate in the future.


6. Experiment today: At some moment when you’re calm or feeling
negative, snap yourself immediately into a passionate state using what
you learned from Step 5 above.



The differences my partner noticed between my dispassionate versus passionate
state:

“There is no greatness without a passion to be great,

whether it’s the aspiration of an athlete or an artist, a scientist, a parent, or a businessperson.”