A Two Degree Shift Is Much Bigger Than You Think

Here’s a fun Six Minute Activity to open up doors to greater leadership, abundance, joy and success

Stand up. Yes stand up. Take a deep breath and move your shoulders back. Now pretend like you’re standing on a snowboard with your feet about 18 inches apart and a little bit bent. You are in a squat.

Close your eyes and really feel your balance and the weight of your body on top of your feet. Now gently focus on moving your weight just one or two degrees more onto one foot (say your left foot). Put 10 percent more weight into that foot and imagine you are looking downhill. Become aware of how that feels in your body. Visualize pointing your snowboard down the mountain into that weighted leg. Notice how the weight shift changed almost everything else in your body from your ankles, to your knees, to your core, to your shoulders, to your head.

If you had been snowboarding with your weight held differently for a long time, it might feel really uncomfortable. But, as you practice it, it allows everything else to flow more gracefully. It gives you better balance and control, and allows you to take on more challenging and difficult terrain. Although your whole being may want to lean back up the mountain, the only way to improve is to lean forward and head down the fall line of the mountain. The fall line is where a snowball falls if you throw it downhill.

The same is true in our own growing awareness of our leadership ability. When we take just 30 seconds to breathe before we focus on listening to someone, before we start a conversation or if we give ourselves a minute to think through what our desired outcome might be, before we react to any situation, we begin to feel how just the slightest movement, pause and breath allows us to remember the values we want to embody or the longer-term goal, vision or deeper purpose we have. We quietly learn to create and act, not just react with old patterns and muscle memory.

This work can feel uncomfortable and bring up fears. The key is just to shift that one to two degrees and practice and practice again. The doors of your own ability to shift into your deepest leadership, success, joy and abundance begin to open up.

Wishing you a great day from the Mountains. Now go shred some pow 🙂