If it works for a bird-brain…
Warning! Warning!!
If you’re 100% committed to using only tangible, nuts-and-bolts tools to build your business, you’d best bail out now.
However, if you’re 100% committed to using the best tangible tools and the best mindset tools available, you’ll love this.
I’ve been flooded lately with examples of the power behind simultaneously focusing on my desired outcome and acting from a place of belief, as if that outcome has already come to pass. I hope these stories encourage you to give this double-whammy a try in your own life.
Story #1: The Bird-Brain
My Golden tore off the flap on the dog-door leading from my screened porch to the outdoors. Before I got the replacement hardware installed, a hummingbird managed to fly onto the porch and then managed to completely ignore the hole she’d flown through to get stuck. (The very definition of “bird-brain.”)
I opened the outside door fully, so she’d have a bigger exit; no good. I tried to encourage her to leave by invading her space as I washed my porch furniture; no good. I tried gentle bird herding with a broom; no good.
After a couple hours of this, I got an inspiration. I chose to focus on my desired outcome – the bird safely getting back into the great wide open – without getting hung up on how or when it was going to happen. I reinforced this focus by repeating one of my favorite morning mantras:
With eager expectation, I stand on the brink of what is coming –
untroubled by doubt or impatience.
I chose to believe all would be well; to stay calm and not insist it happen right now; and to just step back and allow it happen.
When I looked out about half an hour later, she was safely gone.
Story #2: No time to chat
This week has been very busy for me. I knew I wanted to wish a good friend “Happy Birthday,” and I also knew I would get antsy if we had one of our usual long, leisurely conversations. Instead of saying I “didn’t have time” for friendship, I chose to believe the timing and connection would somehow work out well for everyone.
As it turns out, I didn’t have to manage the experience; the Universe and Cindy herself stepped in to take care of that for me. Turns out that she was very pressed for time that day, too. So we had an short but gratifying catch-up, with plans for a more relaxed future call when we could go into more detail about the highlights we’d shared.
Story #3: Body parts
As you may know, I’ve decided I’m just not doing this aging crap. And, despite the skunk stripe running down my head as the result of COVID-induced salon closings, I remain committed to keeping my self-perceived age lagging my biological age by a couple of decades.
Too bad I forgot to tell my shoulder that.
A few weeks ago, my dominant-side shoulder began really hurting, and my range of motion was pretty severely restricted. I got regular chiropractic treatments and, although they definitely helped, they didn’t fully fix things.
Then I realized I was coming from a place of negative expectations. Every time I reached up or out with my right hand, I worried about whether I was over-extending my shoulder, if it would hurt, if I would make the situation worse. Then, when I experienced some pain, I really focused on that and felt totally sorry for myself.
Enough, already!
So I started acting as if the healing were already a done deal. While I didn’t flail around all over the place, I did start moving my arm and shoulder smoothly and confidently, rather than gingerly. If that happened to produce a twinge, I briefly noticed it and then left it behind.
The breakthrough came when I reached behind me to remove a dog hair from the back of my shirt — a serious stretch I hadn’t been able to comfortably do for weeks. It wasn’t until I was triumphantly brandishing the hair that I realized I’d moved my arm with no pain at all.
The bottom line? Your focus, faith, and actions can all combine to create results that more mundane tools often can’t. What’s it worth to you to experiment with this in your own challenging situations?
(BTW, thanks to David Danicolò for posting the hummingbird image in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)
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