Imagine if programming our moods & states were as simple as food recipes. Every morning you could use the same mental ingredients to achieve the exact mood you want for the day. It really isn’t that far fetched, most of us are already making our daily moods, except we don’t pay much attention to the ingredients, order, or cook time. In return we end up making a mood/state that would taste disgusting if consumed. Here is some great info showing you how to find and master your peak state recipe.
First of all, a peak state is a mental state where you are absolutely firing on all cylinders. It’s referred to as “the zone” or “in flow”. It is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow or the zone, is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time. Now of course someone who is a sitcom writer will have a very different zone and recipe than someone who is a 100 meter sprinter, but they will use the same techniques to achieve it. As a Toronto Life Coach i’ll have a different recipe dependent on what type of coaching is necessary.
We as humans have five senses. Audio (hearing), Visual (seeing), Kinesthetic (feeling), Olfactory (Smelling), and Gustatory (tasting). For the purpose of this article, think of these as the ingredients. These ingredients also have another level to them. They have a more accurate measuring style where they’re broken down into two parts, the internal part, and the external.
If you’re motivated by someone telling you that you can’t do something (audio external), you have a different recipe than someone who’s motivation comes from a dialogue in their own head (audio internal). Or the same as a woman who is motivated by looking at pictures of her old self (visual external) compared to a man who pictures in his head (visual internal) what he will look like when he achieves his ideal body.
Knowing the types of ingredients, the next step is the order. An incredibly high percentage of us will generate emotions in the exact same way. First, we have an internal visual image, followed quickly by an internal kinesthetic feeling. Meaning we picture something in our head, then experience a feeling to it. Nothing external has happened, but internally, everything has changed.
This is the key to perfecting your desired state. Knowing what mental ingredients go where, and knowing where they will lead you. If I want to achieve a care-free, joyful, child-like mood/state, then a typical recipe for me might look like this:
Step 1. Looking at pictures on my phone from the Bali trip back in March 2018. (Visual External)
Step 2. Remembering and picturing a time when I was playing in the ocean/waves in Bali. (Visual Internal)
Step 3. Feeling what it was like in that exact moment. (Kinesthetic Internal)
Step 4. Anchoring this feeling by using some basic NLP techniques.
As a Life Coach in Toronto it is so important to be aware of my state and to be able to make shifts in not only the client, but myself as well. Our resolve is in direct relation to our state of mind.
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