If you’re feeling restless or you simply need to step back and take stock, it might be time for an alignment check. This is a practice I use regularly for both myself and my clients. It can be empowering, clarifying, and even energizing! If you don’t need this right now, pin it for a time when you might!
An alignment check is a process of inquiry in which you listen to your three brains – mind, heart, and gut – to see whether you are aligned with where you want to be, need to be, and can be right now. Are you taking advantage of the potential available to you right now? Are you doing what’s true for you now?
An alignment check creates a container for self-reflection and honesty. Without judgment, you can reflect on decisions, habits, or relationship patterns that you created in the past that might not fit who you are today. Then you have an opportunity to upgrade and make changes. Ultimately, you can open possibilities for the desires or dreams that have been dancing in your periphery.
Why do we need this?
Habit is a powerful thing, as are momentum and inertia. Busy adults, especially with decision fatigue, will keep rolling with decisions made a while ago, but those past decisions may not be true anymore. If you are invested in personal, psychological, and/or spiritual growth, then you are changing. That’s a wonderful thing. It makes your coach extremely happy. And that means that we need to periodically clean house and make sure everything in our lives is where we want it to be.
I had a Buddhist spiritual teacher who would ask us to be ruthless in the inquiry of truth. We would sit in meditation for hours, and in between, he would ask, “If I could cut off your head if you told me the slightest lie, what would you say is the truth?” That practice taught me how easily we slide into misalignment and a tiny (or a lot) of self-deception. I can’t count how many times I was surprised by the truths I discovered during those retreats.
You don’t need to go on Buddhist meditation retreats to do an alignment check. This is a process that can take as little as 30 minutes or might take a couple of hours of journaling and reflection, if that sounds nourishing to you.
It Starts With A Question… and Then Another Question…
Hopefully, you’ve learned from me by now that there’s an art to asking just the right questions. The key to the alignment check is asking the right questions that activate clarity. Please add to and/or adjust these questions, but here are some of my standbys that you can start with:
- Is my work feeling in alignment? Does anything feel out of alignment?
- Is my relationship with my team in the highest alignment or radiance it could be?
- Am I living in alignment with the potential I have right now?
- Am I in alignment with my body and self-care?
- Am I in alignment with my values around [fill in the blank]?
- What does my heart say yes to? Am I in alignment with that yes?
Your Body Will Help You Find the Answers
Biologically, we have three brains: head, heart, and gut. We think we need to rely on the intellect for everything, but the intellect simply can’t do it all. That’s why we have two other brains. Let your heart brain and gut brain help you find the answers. To help direct your attention, put your hand on either your heart or gut and ask:
- Is my heart brain in alignment with [fill in the blank]?
- Is my gut brain in alignment with [fill in the blank]?
- What does my heart brain know about [fill in the blank]?
- What does my gut brain know?
You can also use the feeling of alignment with your body. If you do yoga or tai chi, you are familiar with the feeling of spinal alignment and standing straight and tall, grounded between the earth and sky. Some of my clients can feel when something they are doing in their lives pulls a part of their body out of alignment. See if that works for you.
Write It Down and Let It Percolate
Whatever you discover in this exercise will continue to evolve and change in your awareness. Write it down, let it sit, and revisit it. How do you feel the next day, a few days later, a week later?
Get Support and Reflection as Needed
If something comes up that really rocks your world, lean on those who know you and can reflect back to you. Part of my job as a coach is to read alignment and resonance in your body when you share with me. I also benefit from mirroring from my friends and loved ones. Sometimes others can clearly see either potential or misalignment that we can’t on our own.
Make Small and Large Adjustments
Taken as an opportunity for upgrades, the alignment check invites adjustments that ultimately improve your experience of work and life. It allows you to fulfill the new potential in you, your life, or your work that’s available to you now. Even small adjustments can create a big impact over time! I hope you enjoy this process and find it empowering. Let me know what you discover!
As always, if you know someone who could benefit, please forward this to them!
And finally, if you need more attuned 1:1 support, schedule a session. New clients can start with a 30-min free intro session. I look forward to connecting with you.
Such a helpful tool/practice! Thank you!