Your Keys to Freedom...

Think about your typical day. Do you have the same things for breakfast each morning? Do you buy a cup of coffee every morning on the way to work? Do you watch the same television programs, meet the same friends and have the same sorts of conversations? When was the last time you you made a conscious effort to do something different, to shake up your routine and invite a different energy into your life?

Most of us are slaves to our habits and routines without even realizing it. As much as we like to think of ourselves as free agents embracing flexibility and spontaneity, we spend most of our time playing out the same repetitive patterns. We are creatures of habit which means that our behaviors and our energy can get stuck in familiar ways of being and it becomes alarmingly easy to allow mindless behavior to take over. This is true within our businesses as much as within our personal lives.

Of course, our habitual activities play an important part in our daily lives. It is helpful for us to be able to complete complex tasks without really thinking about them e.g. remember when you first learned to drive, how much conscious effort it took for you to develop your driving skills? Today you probably get into your car and drive without thinking, which is a highly efficient process, as it frees up your mental energy to be used elsewhere. If we had to spend time consciously engaging with our mundane activities we would have little time or energy left for anything else. But when do we become conscious again? At what point do we re-engage our minds and become consciously aware of what we are doing and whether that suits our sense of purpose? We become so used to routine that we rarely stop to question what we are doing because it is what we are used to or we may believe it is the best way to do something, however as a result, we limit our options.

While there is comfort in familiarity, if we never stop to consider our choices, we risk living our lives in an automated fashion and trapping ourselves within a life which becomes boring and predictable. Usually as a result our energy suffers and we begin to tolerate discomfort in our physical, emotional and mental energy which then becomes our new “normal”. Relying too much on our unconscious behaviors not only prevents us from seeing all the choices available to us, from truly considering why we behave the way we do and from designing the lives we would want to live but it also enables us to tolerate things which don’t work for us as we begin to accept them as part of our “normal” daily lives. Tolerating anything usually highlights a place where our energy has become blocked, where we are not living our true potential and can ultimately lead to changes in our physical energy and illness. Energy blockages have a real and negative impact on our physical, emotional and mental health thus it is in our interests to become more aware of our energy and learn techniques to clear blocks moving back into balance, alignment and flow.

Small Steps
Understanding how we can liberate our energy begins with the small step of noticing what we do on a daily basis. We have to recognize our habits before we can decide if they bring positive energy to our lives. Some habits will energize us, leaving us free to concentrate on other more important matters whilst there will be others which drain our energy, making us feel tired, exhausted and even bored. It is these more negative habits which trap our energy, diminishing our personal power including our passion for life and business. It is these habits which we need to break free from, to liberate our energy and regain our freedom.

The key to liberating our energy lies in living more consciously and mindfully. The first step is raising your level of awareness about what you are doing each day, to really notice what you do and also how that makes you feel. Once we begin to become aware of what we do, we then naturally put ourselves into a position of choice. We can simply decide if our behaviors are working for us or not. If not, then we can decide to change. Simple really. As one of my first coaches ever told me “If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always got” Changes don’t have to be big to make a drastic alteration in your life, even small steps can have a meaningful impact and really shift your experience.

Although small actions like reading a different magazine or taking a different route to work in the morning may not seem like profound choices, the effect of altering your routine can be dramatic. You see, trying something different enables you to perceive the world in an entirely new way, your energy shifts and when that happens everything changes. One client Jill, couldn’t believe how long she spent each evening watching television “I tried not watching television for a night, thinking that it wouldn’t be at all hard and I couldn’t believe how long the evening was without it! When I stopped to think about it, I couldn’t remember the last time we had spent an evening at home without the television. Then I began to wonder about all the time we had wasted just sitting there watching whatever came on - no wonder I was bored! Now I knew I had a choice, it was great to realize I didn’t have to do that anymore.” Often the simplest changes have the most profound impacts. Once you realise that this is your life, and you can make a conscious effort to change even the smallest of things, you gain confidence to know that anything is possible.

When you decide to make even small changes it is important that you notice how you feel as a consequence. In this way you can try on different behaviors and activities and consciously choose those which have the most positive impact for you. Why not choose to empower yourself with things that energize your day? If you make noticing, one of your habits you will find that your behaviors will naturally evolve. You will develop a broad repertoire of different behaviors which you will be able to use flexibly to choose the best behavior for different situations.

Flexibility is the key. Despite what most of us think, changing our behavior can actually leverage a change in our thinking rather than the other way around. Changing what we do alters our energy and it is the quality of our energy which determines the quality of our day, of our business and of our life. So why not liberate your energy, choose freedom from your unconscious habits by realizing that you are in charge of your life and you can get more from life than you did before.