Feeling Good Practice

How much airtime are you giving your dreams?

I mean the time in your brain. You may spend most of it thinking about your past, what isn't working in the present, and everything you still don't have. But how much time do you spend experiencing the future you want?

If most of your thoughts come from the programming of your past, you will be very good at recreating it. Creating a different future requires becoming conscious of what you want and practicing the thoughts and feelings of that future now.

Wanting and having feel different

I was talking with a friend about my hundred-million-dollar goal. I was enjoying the goal and the feeling of abundance. She was talking about her hundred-thousand-dollar goal and telling me she believed in it.

But I could see a separation between her and the result. She wanted it. She wasn't experiencing the feeling of having it.

Those are two very different things. When you imagine already having the result, you can think thoughts of abundance, completion, satisfaction, and pride. You're experiencing being the person who has it.

You can't actually feel in the future. You can only feel right now. Thinking about your future is a way to create the emotion in this present moment.

That emotion becomes the energy from which you take action. The Model is the vehicle: thoughts create feelings, feelings drive actions, and actions create results.

Get specific about what you want

Start by deciding exactly what you want. The word exactly helps me with this.

If you want to make money, choose a number consciously. It doesn't have to be a big number if that isn't what you want. But decide instead of leaving the goal vague.

Think about how you want your work life to be, what you want in your bank account, or what it would feel like to see your mortgage paid in full.

The same applies to relationships. Wanting a companion creates one kind of picture. Describing someone ambitious who has a business, loves travel, has good relationships with family and friends, and has done work on themselves creates a more specific picture.

The details help you visualize the experience and generate emotion. They aren't a requirement that reality match every item perfectly. If you imagined someone six feet five and met someone six feet three, that isn't the point.

Take time to journal and ponder. Write the ideal result for yourself, rather than letting the demand to be realistic stop you before you have imagined it.

Ask how you would be

Now imagine that you already have what you wrote down. Ask how you would be.

Don't jump immediately to a list of tasks. Pay attention to your internal experience: what you would think and feel when you woke up, worked, talked with friends, traveled, or went out to dinner.

If the goal is a relationship, could you experience love now, before the person arrives? Could you live in the feeling of connection and completion instead of continually feeling the lack of a partner?

If the goal is money, could you experience the feeling of abundance and having it, rather than the separation of wanting it?

You're imagining the future in your brain, but the emotional experience in your body is real. Spend time there and practice making that feeling available now.

Rehearse the feeling throughout your day

This is a practice. It's like mentally rehearsing a putt or a basketball shot before doing it. You become familiar with an experience by rehearsing it.

Return to your list and practice having those circumstances in your mind. Notice the emotion.

Then, as you move through your day, notice when you are identifying with what is missing in the present. Redirect your thoughts toward being the person who has the future you want.

The more you practice feeling good on purpose, the better you get at it. The positive energy wants to be used. You can take action in a calm, directed way rather than a frantic effort to overcome scarcity.

Look at how much of your conversation is about the past, the present, and the future. People who keep growing spend time talking about where they want to go and what they want to create.

Your future is still fifty-fifty

I've said many times that it isn't better there than here. Achieving the goal doesn't mean your life becomes free of negative emotion.

When you make the money or meet the partner, your life will be different. Your thoughts may have changed. But it will still be fifty-fifty.

The circumstance isn't what creates the emotion, either now or then. Your thinking does.

I coached a woman who had made a million dollars for the first time and was already stressed about her margins and making ten million. There was no celebration of the million. Thinking ahead can be useful, but notice whether it is generating the emotion you want.

We want to process negative emotions and practice creating positive ones. This work doesn't replace the willingness to feel the other half of life.

Return to your future when you fail

Wanting to believe in a dream isn't the same as experiencing belief. One way to notice the difference is to look at how you feel and what you do when you fail.

When you're aligned with the future you've practiced, failure can be a stepping stone. You can return to the feeling of having the end result, try again, and continue.

If instead you keep rehearsing the failure and looking for evidence against yourself, that experience takes airtime away from your future.

Ask yourself how much time today you spent feeling your future, loving it, and creating it in your mind. Decide exactly what you want. Practice having it. Then take action from the emotion you generate.

You get to enjoy that emotional experience now, while you do the work of creating the result.