Let’s illuminate our innate superpowers, as evidenced by the seemingly innocuous question: how was your day?

The question points to how we create experience through our perception and the metrics we choose to evaluate it.

The day was the day.

How we experienced it is where the meaning-making happens. And this is the place of power, where the opportunity lies to create change…

At the start of a session, I asked client about his day and he replied ‘not bad’. After inviting him to consider the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘not bad’ we had the following conversation, he confessed:

“Well, I want to be truthful. The last thing I said before I left my office was ‘well, that was a shit day’.”

“Tell me about that then; what specifically was shit about it?” I inquired.

As we explored, we uncovered that he was using a sole metric (billable hours) to measure the experience of his whole day. When he took a broader perspective, he was able to see his day in a completely different light.

I reflected on my own experience and asked him, “How might you feel about your children if if you thought about the Return on Investment (ROI) you got from them?” He chuckled at the inanity of the question and stated that it wouldn’t be an appropriate metric.

And so I shared with him that was the metric I once used when considering parenting. It’s no wonder I felt resentment rise up during the first year of being with my partner who has a son from a previous relationship. Eventually I realised that creating a more enjoyable experience depended upon me re-evaluating my metric.

Questioning ‘what are the metrics we can use to create the experience we want to have?’ helps us bridge the gap between real and ideal. As my client discovered, using one metric to measure anything is like capturing a 3D experience with a single point.

If you’d like to learn the metrics you can use to create the experience you want to have, I encourage you to join Your Success Code. Your Success Code is a weekly mindset training program that equips and guides you to being more successful in many areas of life.