Have you ever experienced the feeling that for the first time in a long time, everything is really clear? You really ‘get’ what is going on, and everything you do just hums?
You are in a resourceful state when that happens.
Being resourceful means having a state of mind that is useful for the interaction you are having and includes thoughts, emotions, and physiology (including breathing and posture), all expressed in the moment. You feel in control, calm, and in flow*; you have a heightened awareness of what is going on around you and others; and your mind can create options or make clear decisions. You feel resourceful at all levels – physical, emotional, and mental.
An implicit assumption I have in coaching and when training others is that we all have the resources required to achieve our outcomes. We have brilliant brains, bodies that perform amazing functions in every moment, and an incredible ability to see, hear, taste, feel, smell, and communicate.
We have everything we need to live highly successful lives.
Often, though, we haven’t tuned into our resources, or we may have a set of limiting beliefs that prevent us from gaining full access. This means that in a lot of ways we exist in unresourceful states, and this is why we sometimes struggle to achieve the life or outcomes we want.
Any state that is perceived as negative can be considered unresourceful, including worry (about what’s going to happen tomorrow, or what happened yesterday), anger (at yourself or at others), fear, tiredness, blame, and many more. These can present in very obvious ways, such as a panic attack, or more subtle ways, such as worrying.
And as a result, we struggle and can’t seem to create the outcomes we desire. Even if we battle to where we think we want to go, we do so at a cost to our health or our relationships. We don’t enjoy the journey, and it just seems hard!
As my approach with anyone I work with is to presuppose that the resources are already in place to achieve whatever it is that person wants to achieve, I help them identify and tap into these resources.
By building and storing a ‘state of resourcefulness’, we can choose to operate from this state.
When you are being unresourceful, find ways to pause and move away from this state. Create an awareness of how you are being and what is happening around you. Switch to a state of resourcefulness. We can often remember a time when we may have faced something similar and been resourceful - lock into this feeling and anchor it to the current moment.
One way of achieving this is to use an NLP technique called ‘Circle of Excellence’ which anchors desirable patterns of behaviour into our physiology, and can then be used in all aspects of our lives. This technique provides a useful resource for becoming more centred and balanced as a human being.
I’m curious to hear your stories of your awareness of being in resourceful and unresourceful states and how that has helped you.
* In positive psychology, flow, 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. Named by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. Achieving flow is often colloquially referred to as being in the zone. Reference: Wikipedia