How can you change your state quickly?

Ever had those moments when you’re in a mood or you’re feeling tired but you know you need to change your state of mind and get stuff done? 

You have a client call or have to do a live and you’re just not feeling it! Or you just want to find your mojo and ‘snap’ out of it so you can get on with your day? I thought so, it happens to all of us at some point right?

The trouble is, most of us aren’t aware of how much control we actually have over our own emotions and our own states so it’s easy to see how people can get a bit stuck.

One of the presuppositions of NLP is ‘There is no such thing as an unresourceful person, just unresourceful states!’ You have all the resources you could need, you just need to learn to access them and use them and not simply just accept things for ‘the way it is.’

When you’re in a negative place, or feeling tired and low energy, or just like you’ve lost your mojo…how does it affect your ability to do things?

How productive are you? How hard does it feel to get fairly simple things done? Wouldn’t it be great if you knew how you could quickly change your state so you can just get on?

Wouldn’t it be delightful to know you have that level of control over the way you feel? To be more productive. Happier. In flow. Have more energy.

And know you can be proactive about it! Ohhhh yes, it’s possible! There are resourceful states and unresourceful states.

When you have a task to tackle think about what state you’d actually want or need to be in to be able to do it. Do you need to be calm? Positive? Full of energy?

So, to start with there are 3 key states of being. Physical, Mental and Emotional. (There are technically 4, the 4th is spiritual but that’s a post all in itself, so for now I’m going to focus on the core 3)

The great thing is…If you change one, you change all of them. So for example, if you change your physical state it will affect your emotional and mental state too. Cool right?

Changing your physical state is the quickest and easiest way to create change. Another of the presuppositions of NLP to be aware of is ‘The mind and body are a linked system’.

So if you’re physically feeling a certain way it will affect your state of mind and vice versa. Posture is a really good way to show this. When you’re feeling down and a bit low what does your posture do and how does it make you feel?

When you’re happy or having fun what does your posture do and how does it make you feel? The thing is, all these things aren’t just internal. It’s what the world sees of you and what you put out there so it can affect how you are with other people and how they are with you!

What kind of people are you drawn to and away from based on their body language? Do you instinctively know how their day is going just by looking at them? Noticing these simple physiological changes you can make are a nice little way to learn to ‘trick’ your mind into believing you feel a different way so it then follows suit. While I was starting my ‘transformation’ from Eeyore on a bad day if I found myself feeling negative and down and stuck in a spiral of negative thoughts I would just smile.

That sends all the signals to my brain that you’re happy and you feel an instant change. In the same way when something emotional is going on for you it often manifests in physical symptoms.

Think stomach upsets when you’re nervous! As I’m always saying, awareness is the first key to change. So catch yourself in those moments where you’re not feeling at your best and make the decision to do something about it, KNOW you can change it if you choose to.

So what could you do to create a state change in practical terms? There are a TONNE of different ways depending on the state you want to create. Do you want to have more energy? Feel calm? Feel happier?

Here’s a few SUPER freaking easy ways you can do it (So easy you’ve probably heard them a million times and STILL don’t do them!), take pen to paper and come up with some of your own too!

Move

Any movement will have a massive effect in the shortest time. So go for a walk, yoga, do a Power pose, change your posture, get up and do some jumping jacks, dance, physically shake it off like you see animals do! What can you do to just get yourself moving?

Laugh

Do the smile trick I mentioned, speak to a friend who never fails to make you laugh, Look at a social media account that makes you smile (for me it’s autocorrect fails and The Dodo…every time!)

Get in nature

This you can combine with the walking if you like but I like to combine it with meditation, whether that’s walking or sitting in nature. What you don’t want to do is start walking and playing the same negative thought patterns over and over. Change the focus of your thoughts and you’re onto a double whammy winner!

Gratitude

This is a POWERFUL emotional state change and one I use regularly. I start my day and end my day with Gratitude and if anything throws me out of whack during the day I ask myself what I’m grateful for. There’s something to be grateful for even in negative situations.

Use anchors and visualise

Take yourself back to a place where you felt the state you want to be in really strongly and take a moment to vividly remember it, remember what you smelled, saw, heard really visualise it as if you’re there. You can also get an NLP practitioner to set an anchor up for you where you have a physical way to access that state whenever you want!

Music

Music is a GREAT way to change your state. I have a different playlists for different moods and it works a treat. On the subject of music, belt out a song yourself.

Random acts of kindness

I do this every day as I talk about a lot in my style of journaling for the non dear diary type But doing something nice for someone else is a sure fire way to make yourself (and them!) feel good, no matter what mood you were in before. Even something as simple as a hug can change your state quickly!

Pay attention to what you’re eating and drinking

This is a big one that’s often overlooked. Your mood is SO linked to what you eat and drink…or don’t! Have you had enough water?

Do certain foods make you feel a certain way or zap your energy?

Really have a look at that and start to be aware of what helps and what hinders. There are a TONNE of other ways Meditation, go for a massage, use breathing techniques and so many more.

See what I mean by easy?

It’s so bloomin easy we forget to do it! It was really highlighted for me at the training I was in in Frankfurt. I’m amazed at how energised I was considering the lack of sleep and immense brain power I was having to use every day.

A few of these techniques were used throughout and the energy in the room was ALWAYS up there. It was so interesting to observe other people and myself.

Trust me, as someone who’s 8 hours per night are non negotiable I thought I’d be on the floor after 5 days of 7am-1am! Yeesh!

I hope this has made you think slightly differently about these kind of easy things that instinctively we do know will help us feel better and I hope it makes you want to use them but use them with AWARENESS of the difference they make in the moment.

If you want to feel confident, powerful, full of energy, calm, any state! How could you use some of these to achieve that? We forget that we have these incredible tools right at our fingertips to change how we feel at any moment. It’s pretty magical!

If you got value from this and you know in your gut that now is the time to step up and start rewiring your thinking and changing things for yourself then book in a free discovery call so we can work out what needs to happen to get you from where you’re at right now, to the action taking success you know you can be!! If you want my eyes and ears on YOUR problems I work with people 1:1, through the Proactive Pants Programme and 1:1 full day intensives, stop waiting for if and when and decide to change things now!

Fx

Fran Excell, Subconscious Success Mentor – Helping Business Owners Overcome Self Sabotage & Get More Done In Less Time at www.franexcell.com

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