LIT Podcast
Episode #6 The 3 pillars that will transform your life
Full Transcript
Welcome to episode 6 of LIT. First and foremost, Happy New Year! I am so stoked to be a part of your 2019 and I’m just LIT up to create a more meaningful impact in our lives this year! If you’re a returning listener, welcome back! You’re up for another powerful episode. If you’re new to LIT, welcome to my show. My name is Ravi Toor and I am your host. Like every other episode, I encourage listeners to go back and listen to older episodes in order so you can stay on track and develop your personal growth strategically because let’s face it, I’m not just putting out episodes as I go. Instead, there’s a particular order to them so you can seriously start to create transformation in a strategic way.
Over the last 5 episodes, I’ve targeted specific topics. In both episode 4 and 5, I went deeper into theory and human needs. Why? Mostly because I believe these are the fundamentals to your motivation, behaviour and outcome. Today, I’m going to narrow down, even more, using the 3 pillars you need to deploy to successfully transform your life.
Last week, I talked about the real-life application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I used my chaotic housing experience from 2018 to highlight a few things: Unmet needs equals internal and external chaos and stolen focus. To shift the chaos and focus, I talked about becoming objectively aware of your unmet needs then creating a plan to have those needs met. So, for many of you, this episode was a good one. It gave you the motivation you needed to act. You got information that gave you permission to recognize that maybe, just maybe there’s been something impeding your motivation and progress. And last but not least, you received a plan. I got very specific with a relatable experience then I explained how to chart out your current needs status to objectively become aware of what needs are being unmet and negatively impacting your success. Did you hear it? I mean, did you hear the queues for today’s episode?
Last week, I was getting you unconsciously primed to talk about your state of being, awareness and focus. These 3 bad boys are the 3 pillars that will radically transform your life if you choose to work on them. So, let’s get into it.
The first place we’re going to start is with focus. To begin, you need to know what focus is. Focus simply means the centre of interest or activity. When it comes to mental focus that means directing all of your attention, concentration and energies to one specific thing. Taking episode 5 into consideration, in 2018, I focused on voids within my Deficiency Needs specifically related to my chaotic housing situations. So, as I listed all the issues out, what became really apparent was I was focused daily on the shit storm I called home. So, from the moment I was woken up to the moment I fell asleep, all I could think about and all I could bitch about was my housing issues. Now, I know the issues weren’t brought on by me, however, I was hyper-focused to the point where things became severely negative in my life. Let’s take it a step further. Remember, all the thoughts I had especially surrounding Stage 4, my Self-Esteem Needs? Do you remember me explaining how negative my thought processes were? I was judging myself. I thought everyone in my life judged me. I even went as far as to wonder why the fuck this was happening to me. During those long and gruelling 9 months, I focused on the negative. Sometimes, the focus was unintentional, but most times, I was intentionally focusing on the issues and not in a good way. I legit let the negativity devour my life. How’s that possible? To answer that, I need to move on to the 2nd pillar known as the state of being.
State of Being is the physiological condition of a person. That means it’s the physical state your body is in. Using my example from episode 5, it’s easy to tell how depleted my physiological state was. I was often being woken up way too early for my liking which automatically pissed me off and put in me in a bad mood. When I was being woken up, it was always by surprise. There would be some intrusive noise that would jolt me out of bed. That one moment alone shifted my physiological state and my biochemistry that produced an emotional response. Being sleep deprived on a daily basis meant I was exhausted, my body wasn’t being replenished regularly, therefore, my mood was being negatively impacted even without me knowing it. I found myself often psychologically tense, unconsciously clenching my teeth, breathing from my chest vs my belly and very often finding my physical self slumped over vs standing tall and strong. All of those things obviously impacted how I emotionally felt or what my emotional state was. Throw in all the other things, I found myself constantly, like clockwork or automatically, being negative all the time. This is because I wore a negative physiological state daily that directly impacted my emotional response. That means I couldn’t help but focus on the negative shit because that’s how I was carrying myself in the first place even if the things impacting me weren’t my fault. And, when I showed up in a negative physiological state or being, my emotional response was equal. There was no way I could reasonably expect my emotions to react positively when physiologically I was in a negative state day in and day out. The only way I could change my emotional response was to change my state of being which brings me to the 3rd pillar.
The 3rd pillar is awareness. It wasn’t until I became objectively aware of the reality of the situation that I changed my state of being and my focus. Change begins with awareness. You have to be aware there’s even a problem in order to correct the issues. In my case, most of 2018, although I was aware there was a problem, I wasn’t dedicating my objective awareness to anything, instead, I was caught up in the day to day bullshit which meant, I wasn’t being aware at all. The moment I chose to change my awareness or to become aware of the full issue in the first place, was the moment I created massive change. Now, before you get all smartass on me about telling you the obvious, I want to challenge you to listen with some objectivity. The key to what I’m saying is objective awareness. I was aware of the shit storm I was in the middle of. Life sucked, shit was bad and I was getting dealt a really bad hand. However, what I wasn’t aware of was my reactions, my stolen focus and the implications of both of them. Here I was looking like the crazy mutherfucker who was trying desperately to correct some serious wrongs. But when I was working to correct things, I was working from a negative state of being. Remember, slumped posture, clenched teeth, and breathing from my chest to name a few. All of those things meant I was already in anticipation of something negative. Through my physiological state, I was signalling danger to my body and emotions. What did the body do? Well, it responded. What does danger mean? Protection! So my body and my emotions continued to perpetuate my current physiological and emotional state because it didn’t have any new information to act on. So, when I tried to make changes, they fell flat. I had to really understand what was going on for me, that is, how I was acting, how I was responding, what was going on for me vs what was happening to me. I had to become fully aware of all of the things going on to figure out what I needed to do next. So, although I knew my housing needs weren’t being met when I become more aware of my physiological responses I was able to start with correcting those. That obviously changed my biochemistry. That means, I changed my emotional state. When I changed my biochemistry, my emotional response, I changed my focus. I wasn’t focused on the assholes anymore instead, I was focused on what I needed and how I could maintain my physiology and biochemistry responses. And that’s when shit really changed.
By becoming objectively aware of the full situation, that means, getting real with myself, my situation and what I was after, I was able to shift my physiological state. I intentionally worked on unclenching my teeth, taking deeper and fuller breaths especially when I was gifted with an early wake-up. I then played upbeat music to shift any negativity I was in and to put me in a higher state of being. From there, I dialled down using the core of my focus on… ready for it? Solutions! I was better equipped to work from this state of being to find solutions vs working from a negative state of being.
Are you catching what I’m throwing down?
Using these 3 pillars: awareness, state of being and focus, you can massively transform your life. When you start to actively engage awareness, state of being and focus, you’ll start to see real changes take place on a physiological level all the way down to an environmental level. But, I get that some of you are sceptics, so let’s do some work to get you to believe. Before I go, I want to give you an exercise to get you to really understand how this works. It’s a super simple exercise but hard as fuck to do, so be patient and give yourself some love for even trying this.
Ok, so first, I need you to find a quiet and comfortable spot. Have a piece of paper and pen ready. Get yourself a chair and plop yourself onto it. Ok, now that you’re sitting, I want you to do a simple 1-minute breathing exercise to really give you an idea of awareness, state of being and focus and how all 3 of them correlate to one another.
Step 1) Write down the following:
- What do you notice about your physiology: are you furrowing your brows, are you clenching your teeth, are you breathing from your chest, are your shoulders closer to your ears or your heart?
- What do you notice about your emotions: are you sad, are you excited, or are you blase?
- What are you thinking about?
- Write down the time.
Alright, Step 2) Sitting in the chair, close your eyes and bring your focus to your breath for 1 full minute. Do not put a timer on anywhere, just use your body’s clock.
Notice when your mind wanders off. When you’re brain starts thinking or taking you in a different direction, I want you to disengage from that thought, bringing your focus right back to your breath.
Step 3) When you feel like the 1 minute is up, open your eyes and write down the following:
- Write down the time.
- What do you notice about your physiology: did anything change?
- What do you notice about your emotions: did anything change?
- What are you thinking about: did anything change?
Now I want you to compare your answers so really see what’s going on for you and if anything did change. I can tell you now that you can expect to see and feel some changes. How drastic are the changes? Well, that totally depends on you. I’m curious to know what your experience was so, when you have a moment this week, shoot me an email at ravi@rootbusinesssolutions.com and tell me what about your findings in Step 3.
Over the next 3 episodes, I am going to go more