States
Lately I’ve noticed that what we do is not nearly as important as our state while we’re doing it. And what we say is not nearly as important as our state while we’re saying it. Your state is your position, your situation, your status, your circumstances. Consider someone saying something when it’s decidedly not what they mean-difficult to watch. Our task as those who practice paying attention is to make sure that what we want to receive from others is the state we are cultivating within ourselves. Take the next 3 minutes to practice cultivating your state. Smile softly to yourself. Breathe from your belly up into your heart, all the way up to your head and exhale it back down. Notice if you have a thought, greet it, and return to your breathing. Repeat these few steps three or four times. Check out your state now. With this practice, we choose our state, and teach people how to treat us from there. If you’re in a state of doubt, folks will doubt you. If you’re in a state of calm, you’ll be met with relative ease. Try this attention-building exercise once a day – you’ll see results in every interaction.
