The I-Code: Self-discovery guide
Discover your "I-Code"! Because he is the key to inner balance and a fulfilled life.
Photo: Thinkstock
- Luck in seven steps
- Decrypt your first-person code
- Immediate program for everyday life
- Help against mood lows
- Positive head cinema
- Strengthen your personality
- Focus on the personal benefits
- Charge your emotional reserves
- Creativity against everyday worries
- Forgive mistakes
- Solve internal conflicts
- Accept limits
- Exchange negative emotions
- Think positive
- Unleash your full potential
- Step by step towards serenity
- Qigong against fears
Luck in seven steps
"Be yourself. All other options are already taken, " said writer Oscar Wilde. Sounds great. But too often we hide our true self - even from ourselves. We often have a rather vague picture of how we want to live, love and be seen. One who explores precisely this issue is the renowned US psychologist and author Woody Woodward ("The I-Code", Fischer Verlag).
The I-code explains the gallery in seven steps (9 pictures):
His solution: Discover and use your very personal, emotional fingerprint, your self-code. "He is something like the blueprint of your deepest desires and strongest feelings, " he says. As you get closer and closer to becoming aware of what makes you happy and happy, you can become more sustainably satisfied and reach your full potential. The following seven steps show how this can succeed.
Decrypt your first-person code
When were you really happy last? When you recently organized this great party? On a three-hour call with your best friend? Or after receiving praise for an important presentation? Such events are the key to a fulfilled and contented life! Woody Woodward has found that out in more than ten years of daily practice experience as a psychologist.
His realization: "Man's strongest instinct is to feel meaningful." From the testimony of thousands of his clients when they felt significant, Woodward developed a matrix of 35 possible answers, divided into seven chapters. "Answering this questionnaire will decrypt your personal self-code, which will bring you and your ego closer."
Immediate program for everyday life
You now know your first-person code, your seven maxims that will make you happier. This knowledge will help you to be more attentive to your life. Do you internalize your personal answers and meet these needs with very simple everyday routines: Do you like to feel attractive? Slip into your favorite dress more often, for which you regularly receive compliments! Treat yourself to a manicure. Stand in front of the mirror and devote yourself exclusively to your chocolate sides.
Do you like living in the here and now? Breathe deeply in the upright posture for three minutes several times a day, the easiest way to get in touch with your true self and ground yourself. Or think intensively and in detail about a beautiful situation. Touch or press (on the ring finger, on the tip of the nose, on the earlobe) and release after a few seconds. Repeat this and feel how this contact will bring back the feeling of peace and contentment.
Help against mood lows
Even from low moods, you can quickly get rid of yourself with your first person's code. Are you annoyed because a colleague was suddenly put on your favorite project? Go through your seven ego aspects. Which one is injured by the situation? Your desire for control? The desire for freedom and independence? The quest for power and influence?
Reflect on your emotions and circumstances and then consciously focus your feelings on the possible benefits for you ("What's in it for me?"). Draw it in detail and in iridescent colors ("I can finish work earlier, cook with my sweetheart and then lie relaxed on the couch", "I'll make fewer mistakes, because four eyes always see more than two").
Positive head cinema
"Imagining this positive result is already causing a change of mood, although the reality has not yet occurred, " says the coach. Because through your head cinema, the mind internalizes the positive aspects all by itself! Avoid imagining defeat or disasters ("And what if he saws on my chair?", "Maybe he's just a block on his leg!").
Say, as soon as such thoughts arise, according to "Stop!", To interrupt these murky scenarios. Because our brain can not differentiate between actual life experiences and detailed, imagined experiences. The stress on the head and body is the same, even if our fears never materialize.
Strengthen your personality
If you master your very personal everyday rituals, consolidate your self from the inside out in the next step. No longer relying solely on external acknowledgment, it has an incredibly liberating effect and also helps you to implement your needs identified by the I-Code. Try to compare yourself as little as possible with others.
Because if we align our goals with what others have achieved or even seemingly accomplished, that often does not have much to do with ourselves - and is the surest way to dissatisfaction. So, deal with yourself. To do so, go through each of your seven I-code facets and think about how to individually support each of them.
Focus on the personal benefits
Do you like being free and independent? Analyze unpleasant situations and be aware of which aspects of the job you can decide on your own (eg when do you do something in the job?). Do you like being praised? Then pat yourself imaginarily on your shoulder regularly - for what you can and do as well as for little things that make you adorable.
Is your relationship particularly important to you? Focus on your ability to love, be a supportive friend and empathetic life partner. Repeat your virtues every morning for five minutes like a mantra. The more often you do that, the more deeply you dig into your consciousness - and the more easily you can retrieve it in stressful situations.
Charge your emotional reserves
Sometimes, when things get a bit tumultuous in your life, it will be difficult for you to focus on yourself and to reflect on your strengths, as you have already practiced. Therefore, be sure to do so in calmer times by strengthening your inner sources of power as follows. Be thankful! This is balm for the soul, makes you more relaxed, healthier, more powerful and happier. Be aware of how much good is coming back to you every day.
"I always recommend my clients to list ten such things daily for a week, " says Coach Woodward. Sadly, our short-term memory tends to be more reminiscent of unpleasant experiences than of positive ones - a survival relic from the Stone Age, which today, however, since we no longer have to fight for survival on a daily basis, can make us unhappy. Forgive! Do not keep warming anger, resentment, and hostility.
Creativity against everyday worries
Forgiving is a long process, but it makes you strong. Try to make it clear: What have you yourself contributed to a dispute? What the other? Write a letter to the person who hurt you (you do not have to send it!) And keep telling her in her head, "I forgive you." The chance is great that you will eventually be able to do it to do.
Be creative! This strengthens the feeling of determining your own life, and everyday worries fade into the background. Creativity can simultaneously open up undiscovered potentials and perspectives. For example, start a photo project, learn an instrument, or sew the skirt you've always been missing. Give yourself time!
Being only for yourself for a quarter of an hour a day and only doing what you feel like is balm for the soul. Turn off all sorts of interfering factors such as a cell phone, computer or TV. It's best to send your mind to idleness with this ritual: Every morning, take a quarter of an hour out of the window of your apartment with the most beautiful view. Try to see everything intensively and let go of all thoughts of the upcoming day, enjoy the rest.
Forgive mistakes
In the beginning, time goes by and by, infinitely slow, it can even be tiring to think of nothing. Be patient! Gradually you will enjoy this morning meditation more and more and learn to use you as a source of power for yourself. Be nice to yourself! Do not look at your life too much from an external perspective, but from the inside out.
Forgive yourself when making mistakes, do not quarrel with peculiarities, but accept them as part of your ego - and laugh about it. Maintain new hobbies! If you learn something, you realize that your own resources are far from exhausted - that we can do much more than we generally assume. Did not you want to visit a Zumba lesson for a long time? Do a diving course? Then go ahead!
Solve internal conflicts
Sometimes it's tricky: you know which seven things are good for you and are important - but if two or more of them collide, you're in a dead end. To take more time and at the same time make a career about. Or to be creative and still take family responsibilities.
"The challenge in this next step to your goal is to learn how to creatively deal with the contradictions and conflicts that every single I-Code entails, and find satisfactory solutions for you, " says Woodward, and recommends this as a solution three steps: Admit the conflict! Explore which aspects of your ego code are biting right now, and find out which of the two needs is stronger.
"Our gut feeling never deceives us when we learn to admit it, " says Woodward. An example: Your sister spontaneously asked you to look after her children, even though you actually wanted to edit your holiday video. Here, the aspects of "being creative" and "maintaining my family ties" collide.
Accept limits
Accept your limits! You can not do justice to everyone and everything at the same time. That's why you just have to sort things out. Especially if you can not control them or are not responsible. Otherwise, we often do what only others, or ourselves, demand of ourselves - without paying attention to our needs (to be creative, to settle down and become happier).
Find compromises! You have given your sister a basket because you feel that you simply need time for yourself this evening? Then you offer her as an alternative to take over the children instead on one of the next weekends. This way, you can fulfill your desire for creativity without overdoing your sister.
Exchange negative emotions
In the penultimate step, learn to be permanently overwhelmed by negative feelings and instead take your destiny into your own hands. "Change your associations, " advises expert Woodward. Unpleasant situations can often be turned into positive insights.
What does that bring to your ego code? He is injured far less often than you have previously assumed! "Instead of scolding, 'Another bill!', You could say to yourself: 'Paying bills means that I'm an adult, can decide freely, have a job, and earn money, '" the coach explains. Other examples: The separation from your partner was bad. But it can also open up new possibilities for you. "He who lets go has his hands free, " is a Chinese proverb.
Think positive
Despite the pain of separation, therefore, you should also be aware of the positive aspects: "Now I can only be there for myself, decide freely what I want and no longer have to compromise!" Or: "The new job is on paper not rewarded better, but it will pay off to be less annoyed, have nicer colleagues, a shorter commute and more exciting tasks. "
Is not there a positive side to the medal? Then swap your fears instead of trying to conquer them. Distract yourself by replacing old, negative ones with new, positive emotions: Go for a walk, call a friend and talk about something else, look after your plants, take a shower or cook something.
Unleash your full potential
In the long term, however, you should not only divert persistent fears and doubts, but deal with them. "Overcoming these fears is the final step to a whole new life, " says Woodward. "We feel these fears because we fear that in the future certain adverse events could occur, " said the expert.
Unfortunately, our brains play a trick on these senseless musings: it reflexively sounds an alarm without categorizing how realistic the danger really is. In many cases, fears bring us nothing - except to block us. To curb concerns, first check how your I-code is affected.
Step by step towards serenity
Example: You are afraid of losing your job. Then perhaps the points of view trust, respect and recognition are endangered. Remember your strengths accordingly: you are a reliable employee, your colleagues appreciate you and your friends will also like you without (this) job. Think about the crises you have already mastered in your life and what the benefits have come from.
Recognize that change is generally a chance to broaden your horizons, to experience new things, and to emerge from often stale patterns. Use the adrenaline pumped out by the supposedly imminent danger - for small steps towards serenity. Think about career alternatives or training and activate contacts that might help you.
Qigong against fears
According to Woodward, the following Qigong exercise has been well-proven to reduce fears in the long term: Stand upright, legs hip-wide, knees relaxed. As you inhale, slowly raise your arms upwards, forming a large semi-circular shape around you. As you breathe out, close the circle, lower your arms and push away all ballast with your palms facing down.
Do this exercise as often as possible, preferably daily, and work a little bit each day to deal with your fears. That's how you unleash the full potential of your I-Code - and can lead a life that's a lot closer to your dreams.
expert
Expert Woody Woodward is a psychologist and in the USA a sought-after personality coach, author and lecturer. His concept of the ego code was honored by the United Nations, as was his documentary.
Psychotest: Learn more about yourself on JOY Online >>
Women: How women judge other women on COSMOPOLITAN Online >>
