Posted on 20 June 2020 by Nikki J Owen
As a little girl, my favourite toy was a snow globe. The miniature village inside was continually changing because every time I picked it up and shook it, the swirling snow would settle in a different way. In the past few months, the globe we are living on has been shaken up dramatically by an omnipotent invisible force, causing an immediate change in the way we think, the way we work, live and operate as a human being. Some people are still in mourning, grieving for the loss of a life they used to live. Others are in survival mode, panicking about paying the bills, terrified of the uncertainty about their future. Yet in the midst of this chaos there are individuals and leaders who are able to remain grounded in who they are, because they can access an inner knowing that, whatever happens to them, everything will work out as it should, because it always has.
The fear you are experiencing right now is based on the type of thoughts that you are thinking. If I have just experienced the downfall of my business overnight then is it appropriate for me to feel scared about my future security, anxious about the lives of my employees, worried about what I’m going to do to fix the unfixable? If you believe that these feelings of fear and uncertainty are justifiable then you are activating your inner ‘Nocebo Effect’. You might not have heard about this before but you’ve heard about the ‘Placebo Effect’, which pharmaceutical companies identify and factor into their clinical trials. In 2010 I introduced The Big Apple Experiment that demonstrates how your focused intent affects the rate of decay in an apple. It’s based on the premise that if you believe that something will have a positive impact on you then it usually does. The Nocebo Effect is when you believe that something will have a negative impact then it usually will. Fear becomes a driving force based on a need to survive rather than to thrive. Negative perceptions depress your immune system and cause the 50 trillion cells in your body to close down. Your emotional and physical self is intertwined to such an extent that the way you choose to view your external world affects your mental and emotional health. Additionally, your perception impacts upon your economic health because fear poisons behaviour and your performance capability.
Nobel Prize winning physicists have proven that the physical world is a mass of pulsating particles of energy that flash into and out of being, millisecond after millisecond. Nothing is solid – this is the world of quantum mechanics. Your thoughts are changing the universe on a particle by particle basis and shape your perceptions. This causes you to transmit and receive information about everything outside of you on your own unique frequency. Fear has its own unique frequency. Happiness has its own frequency. You have a choice about which direction your frequency aligns with, fear or happiness. Regardless of the evidence and the so called ‘facts’ and statistics surrounding Covid-19, you will bring into your awareness, that which you are actively seeking. In the relentless deluge of social media that streams into your consciousness, if you are looking for the number of fatalities then you’ll find them. If you look for the number of people who have recovered from Covid-19 then you’ll find that figure too. What’s important is where you choose to focus your attention. If what you are focusing on feels scary then your unconscious mind is telling you that your current perspective is out of alignment with the best aspect of you. Your unconscious mind’s prime directive is to protect you and to keep you safe. Your unconscious mind loves you and is one of the most powerful life coaches you can appoint. When you feel any emotion this is the way that your unconscious mind is giving you feedback. Emotions that feel good is a big ‘thumbs up’ from your unconscious mind. Emotions that don’t feel good is your unconscious mind urging you to change your perception. When you change the way you look at things, those things you look at change.
Leaders who accept what has happened find they can surrender their resistance to holding onto their ‘life before Covid-19’. Leaders who focus on what can be done rather than what can’t be done, become pioneers at the frontiers of new leadership thinking. Leaders who recognise that the one thing they can control is how they feel and create space in their lives to feel good regardless of the external conditions. They do this because they want to be transmitting from a frequency of inspiration not desperation.
I invite you now to step into this space where you can choose to feel better than you are feeling right now. Take a deep breath in and as you exhale, notice the feeling of infinite potential that exists within you. This is your moment – step up and allow the dawning realisation of opportunity to grow and flourish.