Building Your Perfect Dream Teams
Building the Perfect Dream-Team
All of us are involved in working with various teams. Our family is a team. Many of us have work groups or associates that we hope are team members, accomplishing things that we want. Hopefully these members share the same vision and values as we have. This article is designed to provide a tool to help you get the most out of the teams in your life. You can also use this tool to fortify your own connections to resources that are available to you. These resources are available to you and the more you use this tool, the more these resources will make themselves known to you.
Guided Imagery, the tool: This article contains a tool for you to use. This tool is a guided imagery. Guided imagery is a “pre-paving” tool. You wouldn’t drive your Honda Civic through the forest. You wouldn’t get very far. But if you bulldozed and built a road, you could drive through the forest. We use guided imagery to pre-pave the pathways in our brain. Guided imagery is a time of focused concentration on something that you imagine. The purpose of the guided imagery is to create the feeling of being in a specific circumstance.
Why would we want to do this? Studies have shown guided imagery to be very effective in many circumstances. For instance, sports teams and athletes have had greater success when they “pre-paved” their sports-event by visualizing themselves winning, hitting the ball, making the baskets, working as a team, etc. Other studies have shown that guided imagery influences pain levels, blood pressure levels and other bodily functions. Why? Remember I told you the purpose of the guided imagery is to work your way into the feeling state of the imagery. During the guided imagery, we try to imagine how we would feel in this situation. When you can create the true feeling of complete satisfaction you would have as you sink that basket, or cross that finish line as the victor, your body does not know that it ia an imagery. Your body thinks it is real. Now your body will expect repeat performances of this good feeling. You are teaching your body the kind of body memories you want it to repeat. Much of the imagery I use in classes is geared toward feeling physically better, relaxation, and increased flexibility and function of the body. This guided imagery is not intended to visualize anything being done differently by anyone but you. You should expect a feeling of being a well-supported member of your team.
How to use the guided imagery: There are a couple of ways you can use the guided imagery. 1) You can just read it, and visualize it as you read it. 2) You can read it through completely, and then go back and read it through again and close your eyes at points to visualize what has been read. 3) You can record it while you read it out loud, and listen to the recording. 4) You could also order the companion CD in which I provide the voice for you to relax and follow. See * below.
When you repeatedly use this tool, you will be doing a lot of inner work. The inner work will help you to identify the resistance you have had to being successful and will help you to find new levels of success. You will do this to develop your inner dream-team. I suggest you do the Guided imagery once per day at first. Before you do the imagery, set an intention that you would like to have some inspiration, some guidance about how you can build this specific team, and just say the name of your dream-team that you are thinking about. Or you can do this to strengthen your own MindBodySpirit system. By this I mean that you may want to use the CD to feel more support, both in an inner way (more self- confidence, greater clarity of mind or inner peace), or an outer way (“team” members show up to offer support).
After spending 5-15 minutes imagining, take some time to write in a journal. Write your impressions. Your responses are important. You are asking for guidance from your inner self. Once you begin to build your dream-team, your life is going to change. People will be more cooperative, you will find things happening more easily in your life, you will find that more and more, good happens in your life. Through guided imagery you are building more positive thought processes that will help to attract the energetic components of your vision through the law of attraction.
What the exercise does: This exercise is designed to create a perfect team within yourself. It all takes place within yourself, where you have total control. The caveat here is that you have to agree to do some inner work. Once it is started, you will begin to feel a greater sense of your own confidence in your ability to be all that you need to be and to bring into your life all that you need, over and above what you are. In other words, you begin to believe that you are all you need to be and whatever you need more than what you are will be provided for you. In this way, your every desire can be satisfied and these can be desires for your business, for your family, any team. You may not be able to create the business of your dreams single-handedly, but with the appropriate team members, you will.
Objective: At the end of this exercise, you will have an increased sense of a team working with you, and an increased sense of support in your business. You will also gain an understanding of why team work is beneficial to doing it all yourself. If the team concept is new to you, you will begin to realize the value of being on a team.
Guided Imagery, the Exercise:
First, find a place to sit that is away from distractions. Sit comfortably in a way that allows you to let go and relax. Take some deep breaths. Focus on your breathing for a moment, exhaling the problems and activities of the day, and inhaling peace and stillness. Allow yourself to be in the present moment. Make sure your shoulders are dropped, your feet are snug against the floor.
Take a vacation in your mind for a moment and imagine if you had a perfect team to help you in your job. Visualize yourself as a member of the team. Because of the close support and association of your team members, you are completely at ease and able to plot the course of your day, doing the things you love doing. You are a perfect member of this perfect team, because everyone on the team is doing what they are most called to do. Of course, a very important member of the team would be the manager. Imagine you had the most perfect manager. The manager has all the fiscal responsibilities so that all you have to do is that which you do so well, and that you love doing. Imagine that your manager is so competent you can delegate anything to him or her. Imagine you have absolute trust in your manager to know exactly what is needed in every situation and that you have absolute satisfaction about everything the manager does. Imagine you have so much trust in the manager that you simply write down what you want and place it on the manager’s desk and trust that it will be done. Imagine your having the utmost confidence in your manager to get things done in a perfectly timely way. Feel how that feels. Imagine feeling as if everything is working out perfectly in your life and acknowledge that an important factor in this success is this fabulous manager. Now imagine that you have a perfect team, as well. Team members seem to appear and make themselves available when needed. Imagine these team members are experts in their field and know exactly how to contribute to the team to execute the perfect systems that are needed. Imagine that if you have a need for something, almost immediately a team member will materialize who will know how to accomplish the task. This frees you up to do the things you really enjoy doing in your business. Imagine these are people who want to make your life better and better. They also are in alignment with your vision. They seem to “get” you. You work in sync with one another. Imagine the feeling of perfect collaboration and agreement in this team. Now visualize that your manager prompts, inspires, and motivates you and other team members to do exactly what is needed to further your dreams and desires, and that you, in partnership with your manager are able to move forward with all that you are inspired to do. Everything is working perfectly. This team is made up of people you can really trust. These are people who show up to meetings. They are people you can laugh with and have fun with. These are people who listen to you. Now, for a few moments, acknowledge this powerful team. Acknowledge the manager. Feel the strength of this powerful team. Now, take all these aspects of team into yourself and integrate them. Allow them to soak into each cell of your body. Know that your body, mind, and spirit are a team. Acknowledge your MindBodySpirit completeness. State your intention to allow your spirit a few more of the managerial duties. State your intention to listen when the spirit prompts you toward certain decisions. State your intention to allow other members of the team to pick up some of the things you don’t like doing so well, to free you to do what you love doing. Acknowledge that as you begin to take better care of your body, your mind will become less cluttered, and your life and your business will move forward with ease. See yourself being drawn to people who will be able to pick up parts of your life that are burdensome. See yourself moving with ease as your peace of mind deepens. As you come back to your awareness of your life, feel for a moment, the support of living in your own MindBodySpirit. Feel balanced in all these aspects of your precious life. Balance feels good. Feeling good leverages the greatest energy for growth and feeds itself to get better and better and better.
Now take some time with your journal and answer a few questions. First, were you able to suspend your disbelief and muster up the feeling of being supported by a team? If not, see ** below. If so, write what you liked about that feeling. Write about how you could imagine it working even better than you visualized it. Elucidate about all the positive aspects of this fine team. Write about the completed projects that this team will accomplish and ask yourself if there are any obvious next steps. If the answer is no, go on with your day as planned. The whole exercise should take about 20-30 minutes.
Suggestions: Get a notebook. A spiral notebook is fine. You can use this as your journal. On the front flap of the notebook write: “Manager’s Desk” “Everything delegated to the manager is done.” Use this notebook to write down ideas you have for your business, or ideas you have about your life. Write all your desires into this notebook. Then give it up. Let the manager take care of it in the manager’s own timing. It will be taken care of. Remember: You don’t have to do anything else about it until the manager brings it to your attention.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article and do the visualization. I would love to hear from you to let me know what you think of the process. Please e-mail me at mindbodyspa@gmail.com.
*To order a copy of the upcoming CD “Time for Myself” to be sent as soon as it comes out, please call 503-866-3192 to reserve your copy. The CD will be out October 1, 2010.
** Sometimes people have a hard time with visualization. Some find it difficult to relax and slow their breathing. For these people, I say, “keep trying.” Move as close to the “feeling place” and don’t be so concerned about “seeing” details. Sometimes, when people are overwhelmed with life, they will have a hard time with visualization. This is usually caused by a high degree of stress hormones in the blood stream and they cannot relax. If this sounds like you, please to give me a call. I am available for personal consultations by phone and by personal visits to assist you with this. Mention this article and receive $25.00 off the initial appointment fee. For more details about the individual appointments see www.mindbodyspa.org/services/.
Carole uses this technique. Read what she says about it: “Simply assigning my ‘needs’ to the team has allowed me to become much more vocal in requesting assistance from others. Normally I don’t ask for help unless desperate. Now that I rely on my team, I am led to ask people to help me accomplish things for which they may have specific skills or knowledge. People are happy to help!”
