Where's your power directed right now? What are you focusing on? Because what you're focusing on is what you're creating. Is your mind filled with intriguing questions that build strength, connections, ability? That explore the provocative problems of your day or your vision, the solving of which can lead you to the next level? Exciting stuff, or maybe difficult and challenging, but rewarding?
Or are you stuck in turmoil, churning, the low-level repetition of a troublesome issue that simply won't leave you and that won't resolve? Feeling powerless as it repeats and repeats in your head, or you repeatedly play out a scene of weakness. No fingers pointed... it happens, to me too, but it's not a good feeling nor one that produces what you want out of life and work.
As a data analyst, I always appreciate how visualizations summarize complex issues quickly. As a coach, I teach how to use these as easy check-ins with what's going on in your head, so that you can change the balance of what you're focusing on.
You're the boss of the Team of You, so let's see your team's performance in pie charts...
Pie Chart: Worry Pie vs. Strength Pie
Take a breath and close your eyes. Visualize a pie chart out in the space front of you. See that it shows what percent of your thoughts is devoted right now. What's the biggest section on the chart, the one that dominates all the rest?
Now, see how that's affecting you. Check in with your inner state. What's your corresponding emotional state? How's your power level? Do you feel strong, competent, capable? Do you feel weak, reactive, frustrated, struggling? Until you saw the pie chart, did you realize the extent to which this worry or problem had taken over your life by taking over your thoughts?
Often, thoughts that run in the background automatically take over nearly the entire "pie" without you realizing it. Churning thoughts that cycle through frustrating incidents, aching, fearful future images, or hopelessness are particularly troublesome. They grab your attention, energy, energetic vibration, and drag you into their drama. Then they become the thoughts you live, taking up room you could be using for better, power-generating thoughts.
By changing the pie chart in your mind, you can actually change your mental flow to something better. Here's how. Take the worry pie chart like the one on the left, and imagine you can slide the segments around manually to be any size you want. Slide the red worry slice around to be small, maybe 1%. Slide any other negatives around as well - fears, for instance.
Then, slide to make a really BIG pie segment like the blue one on the right. Label that in mind as what you want to be focusing on. You could make it action-oriented, like "Finding the perfect strategy to solve this valuable work problem." You could make it future-focused, like "Me speaking at the next professional conference and loving it." Play and see what works for you. Give it a little extra thought energy, and just let it hang up there in your mind's eye. Stay there and contemplate. The more you look at the revised pie chart and let it soak in, the more your thoughts will align around the new focus. Let this new pie chart be the driver of your day, rather than that red worry slice, which has become a mere sliver.
I created this while I was on a long walk, wondering why I couldn't shake some churning thoughts that kept bothering me and dragging me into a low-level state of powerlessness no matter how I tried to refocus. I thought, "I'm better than this, and there has to be a method to effectively get OUT of this thought flow." The image of the pie chart came to me as showing the percent of my thoughts engaged with this wretched issue - ugh, it was most of the pie! Not acceptable! I replaced it with the second pie chart with the big Strength slice, and this helped me refocus into a much better frame of creative, productive thought. I believe the mind responds so well to the image of the pie chart because it can process the visualization at a pre-verbal level.
When you feel frustrated or powerless, tune in to your pie chart and check in. What's grabbed hold of your focus? If it's low-level, negative, or grabbing attention without promising a productive endpoint, push it to be the smallest slice, get your strength focus into the largest slice, and let this change your state.
Variation: How's Your Thought Stock Value?
A variation on this type of visualization is to visualize a left to right graph in a stock-ticker style. If you get into a powerless state, visualize the value of your state as the value of your "stock" on the ticker. What are you churning about? Old pains, fears, low-level things, worries? How "valuable" are the issues you're churning about, in terms of what you're focusing on?
Close your eyes and take a breath. (If you practice, you can actually do this with your eyes open.) As you watch the ticker in mind, begin to find thoughts that push the value of your thought stock upward. What are a few better things to focus on? Let these trickle in. Watch the stock go up as you leave the low-level stuff behind. As your thought stock rises, keep visualizing until you get it into a good higher-valued trend and then, get back to what you were working on.
The interesting thing with this visualization is the degree to which your subconscious will respond, and begin to fill in a better quality of thoughts as you ask it to increase the valuation of your stock.
The more you can trend your thoughts away from low-level churning or low-valued focus, and into higher levels of problem-solving and query, the more you'll be able to cultivate your inner power. The thoughts you think decide where your life-energy is focused, so use them toward your vision, not your fears.
The thoughts you think decide where your life-energy is focused, so use them toward your vision, not your fears. Click to tweet.
Extra Credit: How can you use either or both of these visualizations today to get into a more powerful state of mind? (Super Extra Credit: Can you visualize these with your eyes open? Set them upward and a little to the right of what you're looking at or working on.)
Play and have fun with these visual tools. How can you apply them to go farther in life and work?
Keep Growing,
