What if…?
Empowering or disempowering?
Picture this! You are waiting to go on stage for an audition, OR you have been selected from a team of worthy colleagues to make a critical presentation OR you are on the cusp of starting a new business.
What are the feelings that are floating around inside you?
What are the thought that whisper doubts in your mind?
If you are like most people you have a lot of “What if” scenarios playing around.
· What if I fail?
· What if they are bored?
· What if I forget my material?
These are disempowering questions that will trigger limiting beliefs. They will unbiddenly brew up to the surface and leave you in a state of anxiety and panic.
“WHAT IF” is not a bad beginning to a sentence. If you end them on a positive note.
· What if I make a great presentation?
· What if I succeed?
· What if I am good at this?
See how those questions feel to you.
What are the feelings and thoughts that come up when you think like this?
When you ask positive questions, your mind focusses on previous events where you were in that resourceful state and brings it to the surface. This equips you to work at your full potential instead of being bogged down by negative thoughts that are self-destructive.
Let me explain this further. If you were to think of a yellow car right now and went out onto the street, you will suddenly see them everywhere. Did someone know what you were thinking and send out a mass-produced line up of them? Not really. You may not have previously noticed that there are so many yellow cars around and might be a little surprised. There is nothing unusual about this.
When you put your focus on something, your reticular activating system tunes itself accordingly and looks out for it everywhere in your external and interval environment. Similarly if you ask empowering questions your mind tunes itself into your past experiences and gives you examples of the many times that you did succeed or when you were really good at something and so on.
When you are focused on what you do want rather than what you do not want you are able to take better decisions, rationalize and be in a more logical frame of mind. This will then translate into a calmer state and equip you to take actions leading to the desired results you seek.
A positive spin on a “WHAT IF” will also make you prepare better to put in the work needed to give you the outcome that you desire. It isn’t all about just a relaxed state. It’s also about sharpening your skills and capabilities so that they work in your favor when they are called forth.
I asked myself an empowering WHAT IF question a year ago.
“WHAT IF my content writing skills can be a source of income?”
Before I knew it, I started noticing websites, Facebook posts, magazine articles on how I can go about doing this. It’s been a year of applying to projects, sending in samples, doing extensive research for blog articles and e-books and writing. But I did finally get an answer to my question. Currently, I work as a freelance content writer for clients in the US, the UK and Australia. I get paid for the work I submit and I get to do what I love .
Thanks to technology the world has shrunk, so even though I am based in India, the world is my oyster and it became so with just a simple “WHAT IF”.
