FEEL the Change You Want to Be

I’ve been working with a foundation leader for a few months. She started at the foundation 13 years ago and worked her way up to senior leadership.

She’s in a newly created position that at first felt a bit ambiguous. We have worked on ways to think and talk about her new role, gain greater clarity from her boss about it and enhance her confidence interacting with other leaders.

The foundation is in the early stages of launching a new venture that my client is excited to be part of. I recently led her through an exercise during which she recalled a peak moment from her career and how it felt in her body. I then guided her to envision the key leadership role she aspires to in the new venture. 

I invited her to get very familiar with the sensations in her gut, chest, legs and arms as she thought and spoke about the positive memory and hoped-for role. When we met the next time, she reported that that exercise had inspired tremendous confidence and a sense of real agency. She has showed up in recent team meetings, 1:1s with her boss and casual conversations with co-workers in a new way, already embodying the future role she seeks.

Body-focused visualization and other somatic exercises are a powerful way to move toward a goal, not only with a mental picture of what we want, but also with a deep, felt sense of assurance.

They enable us to fully experience our feelings about a situation or aspiration. This awareness of what our body and mind both want (and what we don’t want) gives us extra capacity to take new risks, make decisions more confidently and stay true to our commitments. And, like my client, we begin to behave in new ways that reinforce our conviction and live into what we truly want.