‘I feel sad’ said my eldest daughter one evening last week. It had been a long day, she was tired and full of emotion about the school year being near the end and having to say goodbye to her teacher.
‘She needs to spin the wheel’ remarked my 6 year old!
You may, quite understandably, be wondering, what on earth she meant by this. But I was delighted at this comment.
Shift Your State of Mind
As a coaching tool, I have a large multicoloured spinning wheel in the corner of my office. It is not to spin to win your fortune (though perhaps a mindset shift could lead you there…).
My wheel allows you to discover ways in which you can use the power of your mind to shift your mood. You can change how you’re thinking and feeling and transform your state of mind.
My 6 year old had realised that with her sister feeling sad, her sister had a state of mind, that whilst of course natural and valid, was perhaps not the most useful for her right now. She needed to spin the wheel to find a way to transform how she was feeling.
Take Yourself Back To a Moment of Joy
And so that was what we did. We span the wheel and it landed on ‘joy’.
I asked her to think of something that filled her with joy, that made her smile deep down inside. We used her mind to build a mental movie of that time. We used all of her senses to bring it alive for her, as if she were there doing that thing now.
We then talked about all the happy moments from the past school year and all things she was looking forward to in her new class.
We acknowledged that it was natural to feel sad with something ending. But if she didn’t like feeling that way, she had the power to change that for herself, using the power of her mind.
Shrink It!
Another simple, yet deeply effective, way to shift your state of mind is to shrink whatever is bothering you to the size of a peanut.
If you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed about something, allow your mind to see it – whatever the thing is that’s causing you stress / overwhelm. It could be a situation, an event, a person or object. See it in front of you, up close and big.
Then, shrink that image down, all the way down to the size of a tiny peanut. So small you can hardly see it.
You can take that peanut and throw it as far as your eye can see so it is now just a tiny speck of dust on the horizon, barely visible to the naked eye.
And then choose to fill the amazing space you’ve created in your mind with something you love. You have a blank canvas, the choice is yours.
Mirror With Actions
It is extra powerful to mirror all of these steps with actual hand gestures. So take your hand, grab that big thing that’s bothering you, and move it further away, squeezing it down with your fingers to the size of that tiny peanut. Then use your arm and throw it to the horizon, as far as you can! The physical action reinforces the pathways in your brain.
So the next time you find yourself feeling in a less than useful frame of mind, spin the wheel, shift your state of mind, lift your mood and transform how you’re feeling using the power of your mind.
This post is just a short introduction to how you can use your mind to transform how you’re thinking and feeling. If you’d like to know more, please get in touch.