Hi, I’m Kristen Myers, and I’m the founder of Next Level Coach Co, where we help people lead happier lives and get to their next level of success.

Back to the grinding of the gears. Well, let me tell you a bit of a story. It’s a bit embarrassing but I’ll share it with you anyway. My story is that over the past decade I’ve been working in the corporate world here in Australia, at one of the largest, biggest, most prestigious companies that you could potentially work for in the country. And over that time I’ve been working my way up the ladder, climbing the ladder. And I was a high achiever, a striver-driver, working my way up to the top, doing really well each year, getting new promotion fairly regularly, bigger teams, more exposure, more experience, la-de-da-de-da, it was great. But eating me up on the inside, and perhaps none of my colleagues or friends would notice, but eating my up on the inside was a little thing around status of the carpark. Now, it sounds completely silly, like the carpark, so what?

There was a carpark in the building underneath the corporate office where I was working, and it was a huge status symbol as to who had access and who didn’t have access. And guess what, I’ve been there for a long time and I was in the middle management position, other people in similar positions had carparks, but I didn’t. And that was eating up every day. I’d get to work and be so angry. Argh! Maybe not quite that angry, but it did eat me up inside, and it would ruin my day, like it would put me in a bad mood for the day. Or I’d have a great day at work and achieve all the things that I wanted to achieve, or just have a great day at work, and then, and then I’d be walking all the way out to the carpark out in the rain, while my colleagues and friends would be driving out there all nice and dry. Now, it’s completely silly but the point that I wanted to illustrate there was is that what you focus on is what you feel, and I was focusing on what I didn’t have and what I couldn’t control versus if I had been focusing on what I did have, which was a great job, great relationships, great friends, happy life, good salary, good everything, what’s it to complain about really in the perspective of overall life?

So that leads me into today’s topic of what you focus on is what you feel. What do you think it is that drives people’s happiness in terms of their life? Do you think it’s money, or relationships, or career, or achievements? Well, let me ask you a different question. Do you know think it’s possible that someone has all of the money in the world, yet they’re unhappy? Or that they’ve achieved everything they could have ever wanted to achieve, yet they’re still unhappy? Or conversely, perhaps could a person have no money at all, yet be the most fulfilled, joyful, happy person to be around?

Well, I want to talk to you today about the quality of your life is directly equivalent to the quality of your emotions. The emotions that you live in every day dictate your life. I mean that sounds pretty simple and obvious and it makes sense when you think about it. If you’re living in a beautiful state, a happy place of mind, are happy, courageous, excited, fun, joyful, any kind of positive emotion, imagine what kind of day you’re going to have. Versus if you’re living in a state where you’re negative, depressed, sad, angry, hurt, guilty, any of these kind of negative emotions. Imagine what kind of day you’re gonna have. You can see the huge difference, right?

So, the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions. What you focus on is what you feel. And if I just go back to that little example in the carpark, if I was focusing on what I don’t have, which is not having the carpark, and focusing on why all these other people have access and I don’t and we seem to have the same job, well, the focus there is on what I don’t have and what I can’t control, and that’s never going to lead to a happy place. Versus if you focus on what you can control, what you can influence, and what you do have, and perhaps focusing on the future instead of focusing on the past, it’s going to lead to quite a different head space, and I’m going to suggest to you a much happier head space.

There’s more to it than just the feeling though. So, the feeling that you get comes from the meaning that you give it. So that carpark example, how important is it? I mean, I was interpreting the meaning that well, I’m not as good as those people because they’ve got the carpark and I don’t. Versus if I have had the meaning that oh well, there’s not enough spaces, and I’m doing a great job, and I’ll get the next one that comes up. Do you see how the meaning changes the feeling, the meaning changes the emotion?

That leads to the next point, is that the emotion creates the meaning, or the meaning comes from the emotion. Another example I’d like to talk to you about, if an event happens, let’s say Johnny falls in the swimming pool when he’s three years old, and his mom comes over screaming and kicking, “Johnny, what are you doing in the pool?” And grabs his out, and pulls him out, and puts him in the thing and shouts at him, “Never do that again!” You can imagine that Johnny could take on that event, take that event on, subconsciously and consciously, either an empowering meaning or a disempowering meaning. The empowering meaning might be wow, I’m so lucky to be alive, and my mother just saved me, and I’m gonna make sure I live life to its fullest every single day, because we never know when our last day is going to be. Versus taking a disempowering meaning of oh my god, I’m a failure, I fell in the pool, I’m so silly, should never take any risk, I’m always gonna be super careful and not take any risks at all, and life’s not safe, and I can’t be around any kind of dangerous situation.

Can you imagine or can you see how the meaning that you take on there from that event is gonna drive different emotions, different meanings, and ultimately, a different life? I hope that you can. The other point that I wanted to illustrate around this is that the meaning that you take on kind of puts you into a state of are you at cause for the things that happen in your life, or are you at effect. And another way of saying that is, are you getting the results that you want in your life, or do you have reasons and excuses why you don’t have them. Now, this might be a little bit controversial because I’m not saying that you’re at cause for all of the problems and tragedies that happen in your life. But what I am saying is that can you take an empowering meaning out of it that creates something that’s going to be empowering and fulfilling for your life, that you can use to move forward. I mean, if you think of problems as being opportunities for growth, that’s going to lead to a much more empowering and fulfilling life than if you see your problems as things that are there to destroy your life and give you all the reasons and excuses why you can’t have the things that you want to have. All of this combined kind of leads to the philosophy of that life happens for us and not to us, and this, again, goes with cause and effect or result and reason. So if we believe that life happens for us, it means that we’re going to be looking for the empowering meanings in every event.

Now, I understand that there’s plenty of pain, trauma, tragedy, all kinds of problems in the world that are happening, and I’m not saying that everything that’s going to happen directly for us is a good thing, but what I am suggesting is in this belief and philosophy of life happening for us is that if we’re able to take a different perspective and look at it from a higher perspective, and look for the empowering meaning, often from those events that happen, from the problems that we find opportunities, that’s where we get growth and that’s where we’re going to be able to move forward with our lives in a more fulfilling and satisfying way. So just to clarify, I’m not saying that everything that happens is going to be good, but what I am saying is that if we can find the empowering meaning in every event, in fact, if we find events that don’t have any meaning, or have a disempowering meaning or no meaning at all, they’re going to be the most painful ones. So the goal here is to find in all problems what is the opportunity out of that problem and what is the empowering meaning that we can use to propel our lives forward in a positive direction so that we’re not at the effect of everything that’s happening to us and in fact we’re more in control of our state and our state of minds and our life and we’re taking charge with it, because we are at cause and we’re driving the results that we want. So, that’s focus equals feeling.

Let me ask you a question. Lately in your life what have you been focusing on? Have you been focusing on the things that you can’t control or you can control? Have you been focusing on the things that happened in the past or you’re more focused on the future? Have you been more focused on what you don’t have or what you do have? If you think about that that can greatly change your state of mind and your emotions for the day. So on that thought I’d love to hear your feedback, what have you been focusing on in the past and what are you focusing on now. I’d love to hear your feedback. Please comment below. Until next time. Talk to you soon. Cheers!