Joy by Design: Architecting Your Mind for Happiness and Resilience.

The quality of your life is the quality of your thinking.

Imagine dreading a Tuesday presentation so much it ruins your entire weekend. One coaching client experienced exactly that. From Friday to Sunday, she'd obsess over worst-case scenarios - career setbacks, harsh judgments, and spectacular failures. All this worry, despite nothing actually changing in reality. Her mind alone created this storm of anxiety, robbing her of weekend joy.

How does this type of thinking start to derail our happiness? It's understanding that your thoughts create your emotions.

The image below is based on David Hawkin's scales of consciousness, which I like to call The Ladder of Leadership (which I borrowed from author Jason Goldberg).

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The Ladder of Leadership.

Some important things to know about the ladder:

We do not do our best work at the bottom of the ladder because we fail to see possibilities or opportunities.

The top of the ladder is our natural state; this is where we thrive.

It's not possible to be at the top of the ladder all the time, and no one expects us to be, but what's important is to recognise when you are at the bottom and how long you are staying there.

Why do we move up and down the ladder?

Consider when you start the day happy and grateful but, by lunchtime, are down the ladder in anxiety or irritation. The reason is whether or not you believe your thoughts.

Let's say your boss emails you at 8 a.m. and says that they need to see you at 3 p.m. Your first natural reaction is that you have done something wrong or that you will receive bad news. Because you believe your own story, you have plummeted down the ladder and are anxious and worried for the whole day, even though the meeting is at 3 p.m.

You meet your boss, and they have just awarded you a big project with a performance bonus. Magically, you are back up the ladder.

This is what happens all day unless you are aware of your thoughts and where they direct your attention and emotions.

There is nothing wrong with being at the bottom of the ladder; life will happen, and of course, you're allowed to feel sad, angry and frustrated. But…you get to decide how long you want to stay there before you start moving up the ladder.

Some people stay angry because of an argument that happened three weeks ago or even two years ago. The problem with staying longer than is necessary is that it affects your state, your decision-making and, of course, the energy you bring to everyone around you.

Resilience is very difficult to cultivate when facing setbacks or challenges when one is at the bottom of the ladder in apathy.

It's not denying your reality but understanding that you cannot overcome your situation if you stay stuck there. The bottom of the ladder is a place to rest, but not to live there.

Becoming the architect of your happiness lies in being self-aware of where you are on the ladder and how long you intend to stay there.

Become the architect of your thoughts.

What is thinking? It's the process of asking and answering questions all day long.

We all have certain questions we habitually ask ourselves—often unconsciously—that affect what we focus on, how we evaluate events and situations, and how we make decisions.

Author Tony Robbins says that out of all the questions you ask, one singular question controls your life, and that is known as your primary question.

Once you understand the Primary Question driving your focus, beliefs and actions, you can create a new empowering question that fulfils your needs and leads your life in the direction you desire. In other words, this primary question is the rudder driving you up and down the ladder.

Examples of disempowering primary questions that will keep you constantly at the bottom of the ladder are:

? Am I good enough?

? How can I protect myself?

? What if I disappoint the team?

? What if I fail or I'm judged?

? How do I make everyone happy?

When you feel yourself at the bottom of the ladder, ask an empowering primary question to help you climb back up.

It doesn't mean you need to move from sadness to joy; this isn't realistic. But what if you could move into neutrality, courage, or acceptance? From this place, you can face any situation with more grace and strength.

How about shifting from judgment to curiosity? How would that affect your relationships positively?

Here are some examples of empowering primary questions to become the true architect of your mind:

? How can I be even more grateful and present today?

? How can I be kind to myself today?

? How can I grow from this?

? What is this here to teach me?

? How can I be a contribution to my team this week?

? How can I connect to my family today?

? How can I achieve my goal and enjoy the process?

? How can I make this more successful than I dreamed and have fun doing it?

The real art is self-awareness.

The starting point for change is developing self-awareness of one's thoughts. Spiritual teacher Jon Kabat-Zin says that thoughts are like soap bubbles in the mind.

You can see the thoughts, but you can also pop them like a soap bubble. You don't have to go down the rabbit hole of the thought and spin yourself a story like my client did with the presentation.

Her primary question was, "What if I fail?" A more empowering question would be, "How can I contribute to my team? How can I add value to the team today?"

We also acknowledged all her past wins and successes of previous presentations to remind her that all her fears and anxiety are generated in her mind and are not based in reality.

Another disempowering question we discovered is, 'How can I prove myself?'. She had been with the company for eight years yet still made every presentation a form of having to validate her worth.

The next time you find yourself at the bottom of the ladder, pause and ask yourself: what's the thought that preceded my emotion? In other words, when you find yourself anxious, what are you focusing on? It's probably trying to control your external world or trying to predict the future.

The meta habit is self-awareness, which can be developed through mindfulness and meditation. When you make time to sit, be quiet, and focus on your breathing, your mind will not go quiet. In fact, it will be flooded with many thoughts. The art of meditation is about noticing your thinking wandering and bringing it back to your breath without judgment.

As you get better at meditation, you can take the practice into your day and start to insert a mental pause button between reacting to your thinking and questioning it.

Final thoughts.

Meditation and mindfulness are called practices for a reason; they are ongoing, and even when you know what to do, you still have days when you get it completely wrong.

On these days, have compassion for yourself and notice what triggered you.

If you don't want to meditate, that's also fine. Consider how you can build in more quiet time in the day even if it's driving in silence for one route of the commute.

The point is to have the self-awareness to know when you're at the bottom of the ladder and have the intention, through the art of skillful questions, to move back up.

Here's to being the architect of your thoughts,

Warm wishes,

Lori

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