The Power of Micro Moments | Making Intentional Decisions

Welcome to mindset, mood and movement. A systemic approach to human behaviour, performance and well being.

Being intentional, it's a really important and vital act. Now, in today's short episode, I'm going to invite you to think about micro moments of intention.

Now, being intentional, well, it does what it says, right? It's being really clear on the intention of what you're doing.

But there are so many reasons that we want to look at this in a small scale, because we often react. Now, our nervous system works on reactions. It's how we function. You might have heard of fast and slow thinking, the ways we operate. Very natural.

There is a very big distinction though, between reaction reacting and responding.

So if you want to be intentional and create really powerful outcomes in your decision making, in your business, perhaps in your own personal choices, then being intentional at a micro level is going to be a great way to build this out. So how do we do it?

Well, we stop and slow it down the minute we get into any place where there are decisions or opportunities to step in with these micro moments of awareness of intention. So, for example, I was working with a client only a few days ago, and he was building a new process.

He's pivoting his organization, building a new process to create a network. And it's a really wonderful system.

Now, the intentionality is to grow this organization over the next five to ten years, and to have a really big impact, both in the technical sector and a positive impact in climate problems and so forth. So, really wonderful work. The intention is there.

But interestingly, when I challenged him on how we were setting up this process, in the micro moments, there was reaction and there was firefighting and there was immediacy, and the pace was a little too quick for the intention of the big goal, the big outcomes to be met congruently. So my invitation for my client was, let's slow down how you do decisions in the micro moments.

So before you make any decision, we had what I call the one breath rule. If you breathe in for around 4 seconds, breathe out about the same. You have 8 seconds to come online into your, what we call the prefrontal cortex.

You can make much more elegant and executive function decisions when we have slowed things down from the reactionary centers to the response centers. So this idea of micro moments, by using one breath before each decision, became such a significant practice.

Okay, it starts at skill, and then it goes to practice and then it embeds. So it takes repetition to become a way of being. But what we found was, is that over a 48 hours process which was his task.

Every decision was starting to become more intentional and aligned with the big goal and the big outcome compared to a behavior of reaction. So my invitation for you today is to model the same think about your big intention.

What are you doing with your business, with your life, with your impact? What are you doing on a micro level?

How are you operating on that sort of fractal level, the small scale level that's repeating at and then building this micro moment of building an intention. The one breath rule is a super easy way before any decision. Breathe in, breathe out.

Know that the front line of your PFC, we call it the prefrontal cortex, has come online and you have a little space to dial into that intention and make a very different way of lining up acting and deciding that is intentional rather than reactional. So it's it sounds easy, doesn't it? But practice makes permanent. So I invite you to try it on and let me know how you go.

Does this help your decision making process become more intentional? Are you aligned to a bigger vision or are you in a state of reaction? I'd love to know. Till the next time, take care.

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If you would like to get in touch yourself then you can go to my website which is saljefferies.com spelt salje double f e r I e s saljefferies.com. hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message.

If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching could help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care of.