The Secret to Understanding What Makes You Do That Thang You Do

Interpreting your experience is the way to circumvent feeling tossed around by life taking whatever comes along and just dealing with it. In creating successful life strategies one must be aware of one’s dreams and the role they play in the experience of everyday life. By integrating the dream with the business of life personal power is restored while the realization of dreams and goals flows into the practical experience of living increasing happiness and joy.

The premise for living big is to believe in our dreams and trust that we have the power as creators to bring those dreams down to earth and accomplish great things. We have a nature that lends it’s self to discovery through curiosity to know our purpose in life. As we act upon our dreams we discover clues to the answers of this question. The experiences we gain through our discovery shape the way we function in our lives. The nature of discovery is to uncover the unknown and causes us to experience fear or excitement, the basis for all ancillary feelings, which triggers thought and action.

Our society is filled with so much information from so many sources that unless we are actively thinking about the true risk of any given situation our mind filters that information through our fight or flight mind where our actions are based upon survival. Living big is living beyond survival through thoughtful action to reach goals successfully. Understanding the communication between ourselves and our world i the shortest distance to knowing how to modify our reality to align to our dreams, wishes, wants and desires. The four modes of functioning model is a powerful tool for interpreting and analyzing the feedback received throughout our experience.  Conscious use of the model increases understanding, personal power, and successful results.  The four modes of functioning are sensing, feeling, thinking and acting. Each mode of function operates in a constructive or destructive way.

To create SMASHing Life Strategies for 2012, use the Four Modes of Functioning model to interpret your experience.  Set a timer for three minutes, respond quickly, let answers sit for a few days and repeat, notice what changed, add images to your writing. Remember this is about the process not the product. Using the conscious and subconscious parts of your mind allows you to gain insight and enhance your experience. Allow each mind to express its self on the page without expectation to maximize your experience.

Observe through Sensing. Take a look at the nine areas of balance and for each one, ask;

1. What am I experiencing?
2. What do I Sense? See? Feel? Think/Hear? Taste? Smell?
3. Have I experienced this or something similar to this before?

Thinking Mode. Interpret the data.

1. What do I believe about this experience?
2. What do I judge about this experience?
3. What do I believe about myself?
4. What do I judge about myself?
5. What do I hold back from doing because I believe this?
6. Is what I believe true for all humankind?
7. What would happen if I did not believe this about myself?
8. What would be different if I didn’t believed this to be true?

Feeling Mode. Analyzing Cause of Action.

1. How does it feel to believe this?
2. What is the strongest emotion that I connect to this experience?
3. What would I feel if this thought never existed? Have I ever felt that way in the past? If not, what do I imagine that feeling to feel like?
4. Who would I be without_____?
5. What does my response to this even tell me about my true nature, or purpose?

Acting Mode. Applying What You Have Learned.

1. What have I learned?
2. How will I apply what I have learned?
3. What am I currently doing in this area?
4. What is working and not working?
5. What would be ideal? Have I experienced these results in the past? If not, what do I imagine ideal would be like?
6. What would I get out of living this ideal? What would it do for me?
7. What would it take to get a step closer to this ideal from where I am now?
8. What resources do I have to help me reach the ideal?

Joy Rising

If man was created to have joy then where is it and how can I get some? When life is life-ing joy often gets lost between the cracks of the everyday. When joy and passion are not present in our everyday lives, feelings like doubt, despair, frustration, anger and disappointment can creep in and steal happiness right out from underneath us. Then, before we know it, we are asking ourselves why we are here, wondering what the purpose of this whole thing we call “life” is, and our identity becomes confused with daily routines, work, children, friends and possessions which leave us wanting for more.

Esther Hicks says, “The most important thing is that you feel good.” When we “feel good”, we are sending out a vibrational beacon to all things that match the frequency of our vibration, much like a radio signal being picked up by a car stereo. When the stereo is tuned just right, we are delighted by the sound of beautiful music through the speakers. When we are out of alignment with the signal that matches our favorite radio station, we get static or overlapping waves that are confused and garbled.

Untangling our identity, or coming into alignment with the frequency of our favorite radio station, object, feeling, circumstance or situation is possible by retraining the way we think or process external input. Our minds are continually taking in input that we are categorizing and connecting to events, feelings, situation, and circumstances, which is how we make decisions about what to do; we call this judgment, frame of reference, experience, or conditioning. Our bodies are complex and beautiful energy systems tuned into different vibrational frequencies. Anyone who has ever experienced tension in a room so thick you could cut it with a knife has experienced the frequency of “tension” through the emotional energy system. What we do with that information happens quickly based upon “experience.” We connect the information about the tension with the images, words, actions, smells, sounds, textures, and temperatures of the event we walked into, store it in the brain and resource it as a whole or in parts when making judgments and choices in similar circumstances.


At times, we feel things that we do not like and wish we could change but feel helpless or held hostage by our emotions. Knowing how your body is receiving, storing and recalling information is the key to change. Our minds are pliable, teachable and trainable, seemingly automatic responses to input can be retrained to give us new results simply and with a little practice. I remember when my granddad taught me how to drive a stick shift. He took me out to a seldom driven dirt road in his little white truck. His instructions to me were simple, to go I needed to push on the brake, push in the clutch, put the car into first gear then slowly let out the clutch while gradually accelerating. To stop the instructions were easier. I was to take my foot off the accelerator, push in the clutch, and pull the truck out of gear then push on the brake gradually until I came to a stop. He had me begin the stopping process well before the stop sign and in my mind’s eye; the image I see is one of a stop sign about the distance of a semi-truck and trailer away from my location in the truck. Now that I am practice in the skill of manual driving this process is smooth, effortless, and automatic. I have a similar experience with my route home. I moved recently and one afternoon after completing some errands, I began the trek home. My new place is not far from my old one and the shops I frequent are the same. I was busy checking phone messages and returning calls when I came to a stop right in front of my old place. I got a good laugh as you might imagine. I had taken this route from the shops so many times in the past that it was deeply conditioned in my mind. I am almost embarrassed to tell you that this was not the last time this happened. I recognize that due to the distractions I was allowing as I was driving that I set myself on auto-pilot to get home. I needed to be more aware or conscious about my choices to get myself to my new place and retrain my brain to get there on auto-pilot. Our emotional navigation system can also be trained to get us to our desired destination as we are willing to recondition its auto-pilot.



Here are some simple manual driving instructions for you to practice. First, consider what you would like to be feeling most of the time. Next, connect with how you are currently feeling. Notice everything about it, Use all of your senses to identify it and locate it in your body. Remember a time when you felt the way you would like to feel. Notice everything about it and fill your body and mind with this feeling. What color is it? Now imagine getting out of bed tomorrow morning and feeling everything about this new feeling and notice how there is a tint of color to your world. As you move through the next weeks, months, and years you notice that the world seems more joyful, vibrant and effortless. Gently open your eyes and notice what you feel in your body. Anytime you wish to recall this feeling simply imagine being drench with the beautiful color you chose to represent this feeling and it will come back to you as a flood.


Live BiG to Give BiG,

Elle

Excerpt from the BiG LYFE Design workshop series by Elle Eyre, Emotional Intelligence. elle@mybigskinnylyfe.com. www.mybigskinnylyfe.com.