The Receiving Practice for Discovering Your Calling
You’ve done the reading. Maybe you’ve sat with the question of discovering your calling more times than you can count. And something is still a little stuck — not dramatically, just quietly, persistently.
That’s often not a knowledge problem. It’s an integration problem. You have the insight. The lived experience hasn’t caught up yet.
This is where applied practice — real, grounded, specific — tends to do what reading can’t.
The Practice: Circle Of Excellence
A neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique that creates an instant confidence anchor through spatial visualization and physical gesture association. By stepping into an imagined circle filled with positive energy and connecting it to a unique physical gesture, you create a neurological trigger t…
The reason this works for people who’ve done significant inner work is that it doesn’t ask you to think your way through anything. It creates conditions for something to shift that analysis alone can’t shift.
If you’re someone who carries ACE-related patterns — perfectionism, over-functioning, difficulty receiving, chronic vigilance — you may notice this practice brushing up against those. That’s useful information, not a sign to stop.
When This Is the Right Practice
- Before high-stakes presentations or important meetings
- When facing situations that typically trigger anxiety or self-doubt
- To access confidence before difficult conversations
- When you need to shift from a depleted state to an empowered one quickly
- Before performance situations (interviews, pitches, negotiations)
- When entering environments where you’ve historically felt intimidated
- To prepare for confronting fears or stepping outside comfort zones
The Core Principles
STATE ACCESS IS A SKILL
What it means: Emotional states aren’t random—they can be deliberately accessed and anchored
Evidence: NLP research shows physical anchors create reliable state access through conditioning
Implication: You don’t have to wait for confidence; you can create it on demand
SPACE + GESTURE = ANCHOR
What it means: Combining spatial visualization with physical movement creates stronger neural pathways
Key insight: The body remembers what the mind might forget
Result: A reliable trigger that bypasses conscious processing
REPETITION STRENGTHENS PATHWAYS
What it means: Each practice session deepens the neurological connection
Evidence: Neuroplasticity research confirms repeated associations become automatic
Timeline: 2 weeks of daily practice typically creates reliable automatic triggering
The Circle of Excellence Process
Phase 1: Create Your Circle (5-10 minutes)
Step 1: Recall Peak States
– Close your eyes and recall 3-5 moments when you felt completely confident, powerful, or capable
– These can be from any area of life—work, sports, relationships, achievements
– Focus on the most vivid, strongest memories
Step 2: Build the Visualization
– Imagine a circle on the floor in front of you (about 3 feet in diameter)
– Give it a color that represents power and confidence to you
– See it glowing with energy—perhaps pulsing with light
– Some people add sounds, symbols, or textures
Step 3: Amplify the Positive States
– One by one, step into each peak memory
– Feel what you felt—fully embody the confident state
– Notice the posture, breathing, facial expression
– Amplify each sensation to its maximum intensity
Phase 2: Anchor the State (5 minutes)
Step 4: Step Into the Circle
– When your positive states are fully activated and intensified
– Physically step forward into your imagined circle
– Feel all that confident energy surrounding you
Step 5: Create Your Unique Anchor
– At the peak of the feeling, create a unique physical gesture
– Options: Press thumb and forefinger together, make a fist, touch your chest
– The gesture must be unique (not something you do unconsciously)
– Hold the gesture for 5-10 seconds while fully experiencing the state
Step 6: Step Out and Break State
– Step back out of the circle
– Shake your body, think of something neutral
– This “breaks” the state so you can test the anchor
Phase 3: Test and Strengthen
Step 7: Test Your Anchor
– After breaking state, fire your anchor (make your gesture)
– Notice what happens—you should feel the confident state returning
– If weak, repeat the anchoring process with more intensity
Step 8: Stack Additional Resources
– Each day, add more positive memories to the circle
– Stack different types of confidence: physical, intellectual, social
– The more resources, the stronger the anchor
Daily Practice Protocol
Week 1: Establishment
- Day 1-3: Create and anchor your circle (full process)
- Day 4-7: Test anchor in low-stakes situations
- Duration: 10-15 minutes daily
Week 2: Strengthening
- Fire the anchor multiple times daily
- Use in progressively more challenging situations
- Add new peak experiences to stack
- Duration: 5 minutes formal practice + situational use
Ongoing Maintenance
- Fire anchor before any challenging situation
- Refresh by re-stacking when feeling depleted
- The anchor strengthens with successful use
You’ll know it’s time for this when:
– You find yourself cycling through the same insights without them landing
– You feel clear in your head but foggy in your body
– The gap between who you know you could be and how your days feel is widening
Soul work vs survival work often shows up here — when the practices you’re doing are coming from a survival-mode mindset rather than a soul-aligned one. This practice can help you notice which mode is running.
How to Work Through It
Take this slowly. You don’t need to complete all steps in one sitting. Some people find it useful to do one section per day and let it settle before moving forward.
Work through this in small, unhurried steps. Notice what arises without pushing for resolution.
As you move through this:
– Notice what feels true in your body, not just your mind
– If something brings up grief or resistance, slow down rather than push through
– You might want to journal what arises — not to analyse it, but to give it somewhere to land
What to Expect
Regular practice transforms the relationship with challenging situations. Instead of hoping confidence will show up, you have a reliable method to access it. Anxiety decreases because you have a tool. The anchor becomes so conditioned that simply thinking about making the gesture begins shifting state. Over time, the overall baseline confidence increases because each successful anchor-firing reinforces the neural pathway. Many practitioners report that after months of use, they need the anchor less because confidence has become more naturally accessible.
Source: Insights-Our Skool Courses.csv – Row 62
Tags: NLP, anchoring, confidence, state-management, visualization, performance
This isn’t a one-time fix. Living on-purpose is built through repeated, small acts of alignment — and practices like this are part of what makes that possible.
One Honest Note
If this practice brings up something that feels bigger than a technique can hold — something that touches early loss, deep grief, or long-held survival patterns — that’s important information. An article can point; it can’t accompany you. Working with a therapist or somatic practitioner who understands trauma and identity may serve you better in those moments.
You are not behind for needing that. You’re being honest about what the moment actually requires.
Discovering your calling often accelerates not when we push harder, but when we get the right support structure in place.
Continuing From Here
If this opened something up, legacy and impact is a natural next exploration — because how you show up in this practice directly shapes what you leave behind.
And if you want to work through practices like this alongside others who are also integrating, not just accumulating knowledge, the community below is worth a look.
If any of this landed — if you found yourself nodding along, or if one sentence made you stop and sit with something — there’s a space where that recognition goes deeper.
The Abundance GPS community on Skool is a free trial away. Inside, you’ll find people who’ve done the reading, the certifications, the inner work — and who are still piecing it together, just like you. David Cameron Gikandi (author of A Happy Pocket Full of Money and Creative Consultant on The Secret) guides the community through the GPS+I framework: Goal, Problem, Solutions, Integration — one month at a time.
You don’t have to have it figured out to show up.
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