Do you know the math equation for personal transformation?
A key part of being human is our capacity to feel and express emotions. What can totally trip us up is identifying our emotions, recognizing how we handle emotions, and mindfully exploring how they guide our behaviors.
After that, the hard work really begins.
Because once we become more aware of our emotions and our responses to them, then begins the work of not only letting go of negative emotions but learning healthy self-expression and the maintenance of mental well-being, too.
Take my client Karrie, for example.
When I started coaching Karrie, she had no idea what she had gotten herself into. She became my client at the request of her CEO, who was preparing her to be the next CEO of their company.
Karrie works in an industry dominated by male leaders. She first started her career as a clerk, working her way up the corporate ladder, year after year. Still, she doubted that she could be a CEO in her industry.
But Karrie did the work—not just to become the next CEO but also to become her best and highest self.
Today, she is a leader of compassion and intelligence.
With mindfulness as her secret weapon, the title of CEO will be one of many stepping-stones to-come in her career.
“It’s kind of magical to be able to sit in silence and bring myself back into alignment with who I am and what I’m about. Sometimes I wonder what it would take to go back to those previous feelings of anxiety and fear, as if this has all been a dream. But it’s been important for me to make drastic changes in my life, so that I don’t. Meditation is one of those drastic changes,” Karrie says.
As Karrie learned, mindfulness is an invitation to wake up and become aware of the intentions you’re setting for yourself: For your day, for your health, for your career, for your life. It’s in that intention-setting that you get to decide if you want your emotions to dictate you, or if you want to dictate your emotions. (Hint: You want to dictate your emotions.)
The good news is, there’s an equation for that:
Intention + Attention = Manifestation
In other words…
The intention is: What is the thought that I’m creating?
The attention is: What emotion am I putting my focus on?
The manifestation is: What energy and behavior am I putting out into the world?
It’s a pretty simple equation, but it can totally change your life.
What is the intention that you’re setting? Are you setting the intention for love? For inclusion? For vulnerability and connection? Or are you setting the intention for rejection? For exclusion? You might even be setting intentions subconsciously, due to patterning you’re not consciously aware of.
To what are you giving your attention? Where are you directing your energy, your emotions, your words, your activities? What do you watch and read; what media do you consume? How often are you scrolling?
All of those things make up your life.
Whatever it is you’re manifesting, it’s coming from the intentions you’re setting and the attention you’re giving those intentions. Once you’re are conscious of that, it’s your responsibility to choose intentions that serve you, and give your attention to those.
Remember: You are not a victim of your emotions.
I’ll leave you with some final words of wisdom from Karrie:
“Change takes time. Just like diet and exercise, mindfulness is like working a muscle. It’s a slow, steady, and continuous process. You have to keep doing it, you have to do it little by little, and you have to commit the time. It’s just a matter of believing in yourself and who you are, and if there’s any doubt in your mind that you can’t do it, just remember that you can.”
“You’ve made it this far, and you can make it further.”
