What Triggers You?

When you unconsciously act in a certain way in the same situation—every time—a mental triggers most likely controls that behavior. However, you have negative and positive mental triggers. Do you know what triggers you? To improve the results you receive each day personally and professionally, become conscious of your current triggers, and deliberately create positive mental triggers to replace negative ones that hinder rather than help you.

Mental triggers cause you to do “X” every time you do “Y.” For instance, putting on my cycling clothes triggers me to feel energized and excited to go for a bike ride. Placing my headset on my head prior to getting on a call with a client triggers me to get into coaching mode. When I light a candle in my office, I am triggered to feel more meditative, creative and tapped into my Higher Self and intuition.

On the other hand, my husband’s anger triggers me to either get angry back or to become calm to counterbalance his negative emotion. Stressful situations trigger my desire to eat—especially candy! Doing taxes triggers my fear of not earning enough and feelings of not being good enough in a variety of ways.

What are your Triggers?

You have your own positive and negative triggers, whether you realize it or not. If you want to fulfill your potential and achieve your personal and professional goals, it’s time to become conscious of your triggers and to deliberately create some new ones.

Keep a notebook with you for the next few weeks. Notice the situations, experiences and emotions that trigger a response (good or bad). Write them down.

Maybe every time you:

• enter a hotel room you order room service.
• get in an argument with your children, you spend an hour on Facebook.
• go to the gym, you pick up a salad for lunch.
• clean the house, you get motivated to write your book.

The process of writing down your triggers helps you develop an awareness of what causes you to act or feel a certain way. After you have done this, ask yourself “why” these triggers cause the specific response. Understand the underlying reason for your response can help you break down negative triggers. Knowing why you respond positively to a trigger also help you create more of the behaviors or feelings you desire.

Sometimes, however, you don’t need to understand the reason behind why a trigger works. You can decide not to be negatively triggered any longer or to increase the times you take advantage of a positive trigger.

Create Positive Mental Triggers

Just choose a trigger. And then “act as if” until the trigger activates the feeling, thought, or action within you automatically.

For example, if you want to feel excited and energetic every time you enter your office, decide to have the opening of the door to the office building serve as your trigger. For the next 3o or 40 days, remind yourself every time you walk through that door that that action—walking over that threshold—is supposed to trigger feelings of excitement and energy. Then, generate excitement and energy!

Generate Your Trigger Response

That’s right; don’t wait to feel excited and energetic. Generate those feelings or sensations. As bestselling author and High Performance Coach Brendon Burchard says, “The power plant doesn’t have energy, it generates it.” Think of yourself as a power plant and generate the emotional and physical feelings you desire each time you encounter your trigger.

After a month or more, you will have created the habit of feeling energetic and excited when you walk through the door to your office. Why? Because you consciously made that action—opening the door, walking through it, and entering your office—a positive trigger.

You could create a trigger for almost anything. Here are a few examples of potential triggers:

• Every time you return home, walk into the house and say: I’m home. I’m here! Allow the words to serve as a trigger to let the day go and become present when you are with your family.
• Before you go out to run (or do any exercise), stop for a moment. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, and then bounce in place three times, each time telling yourself, “I am fit, strong and healthy.” Use this “ritual” to trigger a feeling of being ready and able to complete your workout.
• Before you go to sleep at night, place an empty glass by the alarm clock. Seeing the glass first thing in the morning serves as a trigger to remind you to drink a glass of water before you do anything else.
• Place a journal on your nightstand. Have this trigger 10 minutes before you go to sleep spent recording the things for which you feel grateful.

Can you think of two or three triggers you could consciously create that would serve you right now? Tell me in a comment below.

If you want to develop high-performance skills and characteristics and Achieve More Inspired Results in all areas of your life, get together with Nina Amir and discuss how Certified High Performance Coaching might help you fulfill your potential and live your life with more clarity, courage, energy, productivity, and influence—and success. To set up a 1-hour FREE High Performance Coaching session, click here. Then download the free session application, and submit it. Nina will contact you to schedule your session. (During the session, you also can discover how to receive a FREE ticket to Brendon Burchard’s next High Performance Academy – valued at $997.)