I was thinking about my internal world, my internal dialogue, and my relationship with myself, and I came up with a great name for all of that: my INNERVERSE!
To me, that term encapsulates all the elements of one’s inner state of being, including our headspace and the way we feel about ourselves.
So, how would you rate the current state of your INNERVERSE?
Are you in a good place? Do you feel a sense of calm, achievement, and fulfillment? Or do you live in a perpetual state of self-criticism, angst and discontent?
I started this week in positive territory, but after a couple of disconcerting encounters and a double slice of chocolate mousse cake I found myself descending into negativity.
Do you relate?
What do we do when our conversations with ourselves become negative and for whatever reason we start to feel a sense of unhappiness and discontent?
The first step is recognizing the universal truth that so much of our state of being is totally in our head. It is our perception and interpretation of what has happened, not always the event itself that we are reacting to.
The next step is to examine what is really going on, to understand what happened, what it triggered for you and then reframe it.
One way to rewrite the words of your INNERVERSE is to go back to positive past experiences, in what I famously refer to as your Positive Emotional Memory Database. It is critical to remind yourself that you are a culmination of all your successes and not a reflection of your current experience.
As William Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously said his inimitable Elizabethan verse: “ There is nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”
That is why it is so important to pay very close attention to your INNERVERSE. It is the most important factor in your ultimate happiness and to exuding a level of ease and confidence that is so critical to your personal and professional success.