Gateway States

Self-kindness

This second Gateway State of being kind to yourself is essential to our health, happiness and success.  It is often used to mean the same as self-compassion, although technically self-kindness is defined as one of the three elements of self-compassion (the other two being, first, a recognition of the shared human experience – realising that this is not just happening to me, that we all go through difficult times; and second, mindfulness – being able to observe our emotions in an accepting way yet not being swept away by them).  Developing self-kindness has been found to be linked to reducing our response to stress(1).  Doing this has many health consequences, positively affecting brain function, heart, digestive and immune system health and reducing addictions, habits and substance use (2–5).

Yet being kind to ourselves is a skill that is deeply unfamiliar to many people.  There is a question I’ve used for many years that I think identifies this issue well.  It is, “If you treated your friends as you treat yourself, would you have any?”  For many people, the answer is no.  If they spoke to other people in the same way they speak to themselves, their friends would run a mile and they would probably be sacked from their jobs for being unpleasant towards their colleagues.  So, if a client is being hard on themselves, or if you’ve been treating yourself with less kindness than you would show to somebody you care about, then this Gateway State will be invaluable.

We’ve all seen practitioners who are incredible when working with their clients but don’t find the time to apply the same amazing skillsets to themselves, putting themselves at the bottom of the kindness pile, having no me time etc.  Imagine how much easier changing things would be if we could bring a deep sense of self-kindness to any errors, mistakes or missteps we made as we work through the stuff of life.  If we can bring kindness to old unhelpful patterns we see in ourselves and in the reactions of others, how would that help smooth our path on that journey?

Curiosity

Curiosity is one of my favourite Gateway States.  It describes that state of mind we get into when we’re intrigued by something new.  We’ve suspended our judgement about what we think we’ll find, and we’re open to whatever we discover.  It’s the opposite of having a fixed mindset, where we feel we already know how everything is or where we have prejudged how something will be.

Curiosity is particularly valuable when we find ourselves dealing with something unexpected that gets in the way of our plans.  Quite often, we will respond to these unexpected events as failures, or something being wrong. We may feel stuck, blocked, criticised or that we’ve been made to look bad. This

is where getting into the Gateway State of curiosity provides such a powerful shift in perspective.  It allows us to step away from the trap of expecting things to be a certain way and being annoyed that they are not.  Instead, curiosity makes us intrigued about what new pieces of information may appear that show up a portion of the world that is unfamiliar to us, that is filled with innovative perspectives and unexpected opportunities.

It’s something that Adam Grant, Wharton Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says that some experts may need to embrace more.  He argues that the more familiar we become with our field, the less we might see new and unexpected things.  He considers that two of the most important skills we can have are those cornerstones of curiosity: the ability to rethink and unlearn.

Shift

The Gateway State of Shift is a simple one to understand and incredibly powerful to use.  It describes that moment when suddenly everything changes.  Where you have a sense of a door opening to a whole new future or that a switch has been flicked on.  Suddenly, the world feels radically different, and everything that was stuck is now in flow.  It’s that vibrant experience of everything being possible.