Remember the peak moments of your life – where you felt fearless and in bliss. Here’s a how-to guide to lift your spirits

“A peak moment is a time when you felt you were at the top of your game. A moment of insight where you say: yes this is something to remember, this is a moment of me at my most essential, me at my most authentic and best.” Michael Bungay Stanier in Find Your Great Work.

Recognise the Need

Listen to the words you are reading right now: stop the busy work and start the work that matters. Think. Take a chance for change. Stop voluntarily wasting your life. Stop complaining and saying you’re unhappy. It’s your life after all. Take the onus onto yourself. Do something about the irritable mood you’re in. The boredom that has set into your daily routine. The memory that has forgotten what you had once experienced. What you are really capable of.

Re-ignite Your Potential

The next time you are upset or de-motivated, which we are quite often considering the trap of expectations and conditioning, here’s a quick fix. Remember, recall and resonate with your own life experiences. Those special moments that have left you spellbound – when you have felt most present, most fulfilled and most contented. It could have been a spiritual or social encounter externally, but it must have happened inside of you – something deeply personal. Where joy had broken its own boundaries and fear had no space – a zone of sheer bliss and peace – your true zone.

Revive the Elevation

Bring to your mind’s eye, fresh and alive – one such occasion, where through a blending of many factors you experienced peaking delight. You felt yourself in an unbounded space of ecstasy and harmony. Your ‘this is it’ moment or chain of moments.

Evoke that occasion – call to your mind every detail of how it unfolded: the day it was, weather outside, what you wore, where you went or were, the background, people involved, time of the day, colours and sounds around you, the emotional trigger just before, and the peaking glory. Go through it again – the transition of your state of being to the elevation of your spirit. Become fully present in the bliss – as if it were happening now. Dwell in this feeling for some time.

Restore the Magic

One way to lift your spirits is through the art of self-inspiration. You have enough inside of you to get you going. Inspire, extend and provoke yourself. Look back into the 20, 30, 40, 60 years that you have lived – it’s there. Connect with your highs often and it will give you the strength to repeat the elevation; to multiply the elevation and create the magic again and again. By making your life a graph of peak experiences, you will fuel in yourself the desire for even higher. Xerox the highs in your life because soon that is what you will become.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit” Aristotle.