How well is your emotional GPS working?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the newfangled gadget called a Global Positioning System is actually magic. You tell it your destination and start the car, and it tells you where to go (in very polite terms) so you get where you want.

See? Magic.

What’s really cool is that you—even if you rarely or never drive—have an emotional GPS available to you. It’s free, it’s powerful, and it’s ready to direct you to your big goals and dreams.

The question is this: Do you choose to take full advantage of your personal navigation device, or do you leave your results to chance?

The first step to getting the most out of your emotional GPS is to be clear on how it works to your benefit. Here are the basics:

• Emotions don’t happen to you, nor are they caused by other people. Emotions are always and only the result of your personal beliefs, your perceptions, and the choices you make about responding to external events.

• Uncomfortable emotions are clues to underlying beliefs that do more to sabotage your success than to support it.

• Your emotions tend to perpetuate themselves. Angry people tend to get angrier, and happy people tend to get happier.

• You are NOT at the mercy of your emotions! You can choose to alter your perceptions and beliefs about events, which will in turn alter your emotional response to them.

• “When you get to the root of your feelings, you also get to the root of your power.” (Thanks to Mike Dooley for this amazing sound bite.)

• Be willing to “follow the fun.” When you’re in the groove of doing activities you love, your emotions will be strong and positive and will provide support for the belief that life is good. Your energizing emotions and upbeat thoughts will begin creating a positive feedback loop, resulting in more positive thoughts and emotions, then more positive experiences, and then more empowering beliefs.

Great! Now here’s how you can use your understanding of the power of your emotional GPS to upgrade your business results.

Do you choose to create results by design, or experience them by default?

Use your uncomfortable emotions to deduce your limiting beliefs.

Whenever you get angry, resentful, scared, sad, or guilty—in short, whenever you experience any negative or uncomfortable emotion—step back from the situation, breathe, and see if you can deduce the underlying limiting belief that prompted the emotion. Chances are excellent that, with a bit of effort, you’ll uncover beliefs that hold you back from taking the action steps needed to achieve your big dreams. And once you can bring those beliefs out of your subconscious, you can start consciously replacing them with new, more empowering beliefs.

Make yabbuts work for you.

Normally I jump all over clients (in a calm and respectful manner) if I hear them say, “Yeah, but…”, since this phrase is so often used as an excuse (for lack of performance, unwillingness to take a risk, and so forth). However, this same phrase can work for you instead of against you when you use it to shift your emotional state.

Say a potential speaking gig fell through. Is it reasonable for you to be disappointed? Absolutely. Is it productive for you to feel angry or insecure? No way. Remember, emotions perpetuate themselves; do you really want to start spiraling down into a dark hole of anger and insecurity, powerlessness and self-doubt?

Instead, choose to challenge your downer emotion with a well-thought-out yabbut: “Yeah, this one fell through, but there are a whole lot of other opportunities out there for me; some of them are probably even better than this one would have been.” This simple re-framing puts you in charge of your emotions—and your willingness to pick yourself up after disappointment and take the next action step.

Use positive emotions to turbo-charge your actions and your results.

I suspect most entrepreneurs have tried to accomplish some goal which sounded impressive but which failed to really engage their emotions. (Sometimes these are referred to as “head” goals, as opposed to the “heart” goals that you’re really passionate about.) Some of these entrepreneurs may have been successful in achieving their uninspiring goal, but I’d bet money that the majority of us weren’t.

Why is that? Because positive emotions are like rocket fuel for your actions. When you’re passionately excited about achieving a goal, it’s far easier for you to feel and act confident when the inevitable bumps in the road appear. The challenges are so much less important than the end result that they don’t stand a chance against your determination to succeed.

So when you’re faced with a choice between following your head to build your business or following your heart, choose what kindles the strongest emotions. And do so knowing that the energy your heart provides will do more to help you achieve your business goals than all the To Do lists you “should” address to pursue an uninspiring goal.

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What sort of experiences have you had in tapping the power of your own emotional GPS? How has tuning in to your heart and soul created business success for you?

Or are you still at the stage where you’re so overwhelmed by all the possibilities facing you that figuring out what makes your heart sing isn’t even a blip on your radar yet? If that feels uncomfortably accurate, here’s an option you might consider.

In my consulting practice, I show my clients how to discard actions that don’t propel them forward AND how to effectively challenge any of their thoughts and beliefs that sabotage their success. We figure out not only your common stumbling blocks, but also how to tap your personal power so you can more easily overcome them.

Would you and I make a good team in this type of work? Neither one of us can have a clue at this point. But an easy and no-risk way to get a clue is to spend some time on the phone with each other. At the end of a 30- to 40-minute get-acquainted call, we’d both be confident in our mutual decision, whether it’s go, no go, or go later.

To arrange that call, you can contact me at 319-270-1214. Or if you prefer, just send me an email with “Would I feel good about this?” in the subject line. We’ll explore the possibility of working together and—since we’ll both choose to believe that our final decision will be in everyone’s best interests—we’ll be thrilled with whatever we conclude.

(Thanks to Delby and Marina del Castell for posting the anger and joy images, respectively, in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)

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