What's going well in your week?

Humans have a negativity bias. We are biologically programmed to watch out for danger and threat, and that affects what we notice, with us having a greater propensity to notice what’s not going so well rather than what is. Trouble is, as we move towards what we think about, if we leave this bias be, we run the risk of creating self-fulfilling prophecies, and more of what we don’t want in our lives.

One simple way of working with ourselves on this is to use appreciative enquiry. To simply take time to notice what is going well, and to get really, really curious about this. What’s happened? How did that happen? What was your role in it? What does it make possible? How will that impact the coming days, weeks and months?

This is not an intellectual exercise. If you want to really embed a sense of your own capacity and ability to make things happen, then it’s important to really engage all your senses as you notice the high-points of your day or week.

Notice how your body feels as you savour these things. What do you feel? Where do you feel it? As you bring it to mind are there any sensations associated with it? Smells? Tastes? How does your energy feel as you recall it?

And as you move it into the future and think about what is now possible, how does that feel? Do you get visual imagery in your head? Body sensations? Do you hear the sounds of whatever comes to mind?

Any time you want to connect strongly to something, engage both your brain and your thinking, and also your body and your sensing. The two together are a really potent combination.