Next Level You?

How often do we think about our vision of our life and think about us? Do we actually think about the person or are we all too often focused on the goals? When we paint that picture of the next year, are we focused on how we want to feel or who we want to be or more-so focused on what we want, where we want to live, the things we want to do, to accumulate?

There have been multiple visions written by me, for me over the years. Most of them were focused on what I wanted to be doing, where I wanted to be living, places I wanted to visit. Very little of each vision focused on my essence, who I wanted to grow into, to become. When I ask my clients to go down the path of creating their vision, very often it begins with what job they want, what career. Then they move to the love they want surrounding them, where they see themselves living and what they see themselves engaged in for fun or creativity. It takes prodding and discussion to have them focus on their own growth, who they want to be.

My belief is this happens for a few reasons. First, we are such a materialistic society, we tend to measure our success and our growth on what we attain, what we are able to do, etc. Those physical things that say we grew, we had a goal and we achieved it are the root of our performance and competitive culture. Second, most of us stay away from feelings. We suppress them, repress them, eat our way through them, bypass them, etc so we don’t feel them. Especially the negative feelings but sometimes even the positive. Some people believe that there really is only 3 minutes of happiness a day therefore, I need to focus elsewhere. Some of us don’t believe we are worthy of those feelings, who are we to feel good when there are others suffering. Third, many of us don’t really know who we are at our core. We have spent so many years being what everyone said we were, a leader, a sales person, a savvy executive, a parent, that we don’t know who we are without the labels. And labels limit us, so we only see us from that perspective. Lastly, many of us are so busy allowing the itty bitty shitty committee in our head tell us that we are wrong, not worthy, not deserving and need to work harder that we are numb to figuring out who we are, what we believe and who we want to be.

So, who do we want to be a year from now is so daunting because of all of these conflicting issues that we stay away from dreaming. We stay away from creating. We stay who we are, the labels that have been a part of us for a long time.

But what if? What if we removed the labels and just were? What if we allowed ourselves to dream about how we want to feel? I was with a friend yesterday who has always been an incredible person. She is someone who knows who she was during her entire career and now retired, has created some new ways of being. One of the things she has done based on some of the workshops she has attended is focus on how she wants to feel at the end of the year versus what she wants to accomplish. By focusing on feeling good, on feeling peace and calm, on feeling as if she is enough for this world, she is able to handle all that flows to her. There is no resistance any longer, it flows and unfolds the way it is supposed to unfold. She controls only what is hers. She feels peace and calm through it all and isn’t limiting herself to the old view of her.

What if we all stopped focusing on what material things we want or want to do and focused on how we wanted to feel? That would change our thoughts, since they inform our feelings. That would change our outcomes because we would want to feel good emotions and therefore attract good. That would change our beliefs because we would now see that we are worthy and deserving without a condition attached.

Taking the time to really focus on who your next level YOU is by keying in on how you want to feel allows you to gain an entirely new perspective on all that is around you. Life doesn’t have to be difficult, a drudgery. Life can be fantastic without you bypassing your feelings. Always focusing on getting back to how you want to feel allows you to feel the negative emotion and then create a new thought process to create the positive emotion you may want.

I want to be guided by 3 feelings; joy, gratitude and flow. I chose these based on a lot of work I have done on what inspires me, what allows me to move toward my goals in a way that feels with ease and live a life that I desire. My next level me experiences life through the lens of joy, gratitude and flow.

What does your next level YOU want to feel? How does your YOU want to experience life?