A couple weeks ago, I joined Good Vibe University (GVU).  Some of you I know are already members.  If you aren’t, you’ll want to watch the video below to learn more about this great resource.

Fast Tube by Casper

Take advantage of the $1 three-week trial membership to Good Vibe University.

My $1 has already gotten me a couple hundred times that in value.

As part of what Jeannette calls The Money Party, GVU member Kim Falconer gave free astrological chart readings focusing on the vibe of money to interested members.  Kim did my chart, and although astrology isn’t my thing, her insights were spot on, and she offered me some powerful ideas to help me shift my alignment on the subject of money.

Another member who is an intuitive offered free half-hour sessions to discuss business goals and vibrations, and I’m scheduled to talk with her next week.  This is a fantastic, valuable support for what I’m doing.

If you’re not already a GVU member, I hope you’ll check it out.  If you do, I’ll see you on the forum.

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About six weeks ago, Tim took two new jobs.  Neither job is ideal—in terms of hours, money, or the work itself—but jobs are jobs, and we need income.

For the first month or so of Tim’s new 7-day a week work schedule, we struggled a little to accept our lifestyle change.  For years, we’ve worked together at home and enjoyed the freedom of setting our own hours.  It was tough to accept having a couple companies dictate our schedule.

Tim dealt with it better than I did.  He’s good at finding what Abraham-Hicks calls positive aspects (the upside of the situation), and he decided to enjoy the challenge of learning his new tasks.  He also focused on enjoying the variety of people he met. Still, even as I felt a profound sense of loss, as if I was grieving the life we’d thought we created and had to let go to deal with our present circumstances, I saw that Tim’s energy was lower than I’d seen in awhile.  He said he was okay, but his body language and manner said different.

I knew we needed to do something to shift our point of attraction.  Our vibrational frequency was lower than it needed to be to match our desires.  What could we do?

By now, we’ve amassed a pretty decent arsenal of tools to help us shift our energy (I’ve listed a few previous posts at the bottom of this one that talk about some of those tools).  None of the tools, though, were having a strong impact.

For several days, I gave in to negativity and wallowed.  It didn’t feel good.

But it served a purpose.  During those days, I noticed something about what Tim was doing when he got home from work.

Like most people do at the end of their day, Tim came home and told me about his day.  Even though he didn’t complain (we gave that up in March), his conversation was all about “what is.”  And we don’t want to keep recreating what is, so why talk about it.

From Narrator To Storyteller

One day, I said to Tim, “I love you, and it’s not that I don’t care about what you’re doing, but I don’t want to hear about it.  It doesn’t make me feel good, and it doesn’t seem to be making you feel good either.”

I suggested to him that by rehashing his day, he was recreating the energy of it.  When he recreated the energy of it, he solidified himself in the identity of a man working 7 days a week to not even make ends meet.  And it solidified in me the identity of a woman whose husband was working hard to make not enough money.  It felt lousy.

And worse, with those identities, how could the law of attraction bring us anything except more “not enough money” and “working hard?”

“We need to change the story,” I told Tim.

I suggested that he shift what he was telling me at the end of his day.  We created two guidelines for sharing:

1.  He doesn’t share any part of his day with me unless what he’s sharing makes him feel good in some powerful way.  For example, in his job as a hotel front desk clerk, he often gets to see and interact with cute dogs as their people check in.  He loves that, and he can tell me about that.

2.  If he thought about some aspect of the life we want to live, about his identity of a man who has plenty of money and is enjoying his desires, he can tell me about that.  In other words, instead of being a narrator of his day, he would become a storyteller, spinning the yarn of our new reality.

So Tim started telling me about his new woodworking shop and what he was building in it, about his rounds of golf, about our travels in our RV, about our move to Oregon, about playing with our three dogs.  All of these things are part of our virtual reality.

These two changes had an almost magical impact.

First, we both felt better immediately.  We smiled more.  We laughed more.

Second, we enjoyed being together more.  When we were stuck in the blah, blah, blah, of “what is,” the chemistry between us felt flat.

Third, our physical and mental energy shot up.  Whereas Tim had been dragging and was having headaches before the narration to storyteller shift, now he was animated with a dynamic vibration that was palpable.  His headaches disappeared.  And whereas I had been chronically sleepy, I shifted to lively and alert.

Talking about our days is a habit we learn when we’re young.  “How was school today?” your mom probably asked you.  And it’s a habit that’s perpetuated by our classic common greetings:  “What’s up?” “How are you doing?” “What’s going on?”  “How have you been?”

Energy is never static.  We can’t truly be stuck.  But it can feel like we are.  Without thinking about it, we get caught in a rut of recreating our current reality over and over and over again.

If your energy is low, if you’re feeling lousy, check to see if you’re narrating your life.  Is rehashing the current circumstances slowing down your frequency and lowering your physical and mental energy levels?

Try storytelling.

And invite storytelling too.  Trade “What’s up?” and “How are you?” to “What has lit you up today?” and “What’s in your vibrational escrow?”  For the non-Abraham-Hicks savvy, try, “How would you be feeling and what would you be doing if your life was just as you want it to be today?”

Ask yourself this question and tell that story. And ask others and draw out their stories.

You’ll love how happy you’ll feel when you let go of the narrating habit.

Related Posts (Some Other Feel Better Techniques):

Your Tale Affects Your Tail

The Desire Heater

The Power of 3-Up

Start Your Day The Jessica Way

Track Changes

Hitting The High Notes

——-

Photo by Kodomut on Flickr.

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When a whole lot of yucky things are going on in your life and you’ve sunk to the bottom of the emotional scale and you know you’re out of alignment with what you want, what can you do to feel better right this minute?

Abraham-Hicks teaches many processes that can help improve your emotional set point and thus your alignment, but sometimes things can get so overwhelming that it’s tough to summon up the oomph to do any of the processes.  Sometimes, visualizing and journaling and whatever else is just too much trouble.  And remember, if it doesn’t feel good, it’s not helping.

So what can you do when you feel this bad?

You can reach for thoughts that help you feel a little better than what you feel now, thereby climbing the emotional scale, going from fear to anger to blame to doubt, for instance.  But sometimes that can seem too complicated too.

Me?  I like the easy way.

In the last few weeks, my “what is” circumstances have included some pretty lousy events.  If I told you the details of those events, you would understand if I also told you I was feeling lousy.

But not only am I not going to tell you the details, I also don’t feel lousy.

I admit I did wallow a bit last week, but I feel good now.

Why?

This quote from Mike Dooley’s Notes From The Universe explains my shift:

“Isn’t it rather mind-numbing that for everyone, always and forever, they have 10,000 more things to be thrilled about, than not?”

Think about that.  Imagine the power of going through your day thinking about the 10,000 things that are right instead of the two or three or even 100 that are wrong.  Imagine focusing on the glory of a all the clovers in the field instead of worrying about one snake in the grass.

When I saw this quote, I remembered Abraham-Hicks’ statement that appreciation is one of the most powerful positive vibrational frequencies that there is.  Doesn’t it stand to reason that if you go around looking for the 10,000 things that are right, the law of attraction will bring you more and more things that are right?

Instead of trying to find beliefs and feelings that seemed out of my reach, trying to take on an identity of what I want to be, one that just doesn’t seem to fit me right now, I decided to simplify.  I began to look for as many things as I could find that are right in my world.

You know the game “I Spy?” Kids love it.  “I spy with my little blue eye something red,” one player says, and the other players try to guess what it is.

I’ve been playing a new version of the game:  “I spy something right.”

Something “right” is something that feels good, something to appreciate.

And guess what?  It only took spying a couple dozen “right” things for me to start feeling better.

I thought it would be fun if we could play this game together.  What do you think about coming together to gather 10,000 (or more) “right” things here in this post?

Can you imagine the woo hoo vibrational frequency we can create by combining our focus and pointing it at as many good things as we can think of?

I’ll get us started.

I Spy With My Little Blue Eye Something RIGHT

I spy:

1.    My dog, Ducky’s enthusiasm

2.    My husband, Tim’s love for me

3.    Ocean breezes

4.    A solid roof over my head

5.    A comfortable sofa

6.    Nectarines ripening on my kitchen counter

7.    The kitchen counter

8.    Having a nice deep sink with a garbage disposal

9.    My laptop

10. WordPress, which makes it easy to blog

11. The coming of fall

12. The 1957 wheat penny Tim found, which so delighted him

13. The training collar my parents bought for Ducky

14. My parents willingness to help us out as much as they can

15. The gift certificate that my friend gave us that allowed Tim and I to go out to eat on his birthday

16. The fact that I can breathe

17. The fact that I can smell (as in sniff things not as in having body odor)

18. The fact hear

19. The fact that I can taste things like pizza and red wine and avocadoes

20. Pizza, wine and avocados

21. The fact that I can feel textures like Ducky’s soft fur

22. Ducky’s soft fur

23. The quiet in my neighborhood

24. The beach I get to let Ducky run around on

25. The sound of the surf

26. The sound of the breeze rustling trees in my backyard

27. The trees in my backyard

28. Every dollar and cent I have in the bank

29. Every dollar and cent that is on its way to me

30. My ability to write

31. My ability to type

32. Tim’s usual great mood

33. A working alarm clock (the digital kind)

34. A fun alarm clock (the Ducky kind)

35. Flannel sheets

36. Having a comfy bed to sleep in

37. Fans that cool the room

38. Living in a place where fans are rarely needed

39. The infinite variations of the color green in my backyard

40. Indoor toilets

41. Running water

42. Hot water

43. Having a water softener that keeps the water running smoothly through our pipes

44. Having a working DVD/VCR and TV

45. Remote controls

46. Having two cars that run just fine

47. Having one car so old that I don’t care if it’s filled with sand and dog hair

48. Fresh water

49. The ability to drink and eat

50. Being able to sleep

51. Being able to dream

52. Tim’s C-pap machine, which has done away with the need for me to poke him several times during the night

53. Dog beds because dogs look so cute sleeping in them

54. Dogs

55. Cats

56. Deer

57. Raccoons

58. Birds

59. Eagles

60. Horses

61. Cows

62. Soy products so I don’t have to eat cows

63. Tim’s pure joy when eating part of a cow and the fact that we can agree to be different

64. Elephants

65. The brass elephant in my living room

66. The purple flying pig in my bathroom

67. Toothbrushes and toothpaste because without them, my teeth wouldn’t be happy and dentists would be way too rich

68. E-mail

69. Twitter

70. Facebook

71. Being on Facebook as Ducky and how fun it is to interact with other over the top pet owners

72. A working brain

73. The ability to remember good things

74. Music

75. Dancing

76. Microsoft word, which is making numbering this list very easy

77. My ability to cook

78. Getting our oven fixed for $500 less than was originally quoted

79. A working stove and oven

80. The propane that runs our stove, oven, and our gas woodstove

81. A working washer and dryer in my house

82. The fact that Tim does laundry AND irons his own shirts

83. A working iron and ironing board

84. Tim’s bicycle, which he enjoys riding to work

85. The fact that Tim switched to a smaller belt today

86. The fact 99 percent of my hair is still brunette

87.  The pinto bean salad I made yesterday

88. Tim’s appreciation of the pinto bean salad

89. Screens on my windows

90. Windows

91. Not seeing anything except trees on my own property when I look out my windows

92. Living in a small town

93. Libraries

94. New friends I’ve made through this blog

95. Castles

96. Taking photos with a digital camera

97. My ability to walk

98. Having fingernails that grow fast

99. Spending the day working at home with  my dog at my side

100.   Drawers and closets to keep things in

101.   Doors to cover the drawers and closets so I don’t need to keep what’s inside perfectly neat

102.   My massage shower head

103.   Tim’s foot rubs

104.   Lotion

105.   The smell of fresh rain

106.   The way rain sounds on the roof

107.   The way rain feels on my skin

108.   Sunshine

109.   Clouds

110.   Storms

111.   Sunrise

112.   Sunset

113.   The moon

114.   Roads in my town

115.   Freeways

116.   Traffic signals and signs

117.   The fact that 99 percent of drivers do what they’re supposed to do

118.   My ability to drive

119.   My glasses

120.   Being able to read quickly

121.   Being able to write quickly

122.   Playing with Ducky

123.   Laughing

124.   Watching movies with Tim

125.   Popcorn

126.   The fact that I’ve had 3 books published

127.   All the columns and articles I’ve written that can be repurposed into other things

128.   My ability to teach writing

129.   Watching Ducky swim

130.   Teaching Ducky tricks

131.   Watching Ducky perform her tricks

132.   That fact that Ducky comes when she’s called 95 percent of the time

133.   My back massage cushion that does shiatsu while I work

134.   Socks

135.   Memory foam

136.   Pillows

137.   Memories of my dog, Muggins

138.   Clocks

139.   The fact that my thoughts create my reality

140.   The buffet and hutch that Tim made

141.   Tim’s love of woodworking

142.   Funny jokes

143.   Ducky’s freckles

144.   The feel of a good hug

145.   Playing Scrabble with Tim

146.   The solid floor in my home

147.   Locks on my doors

148.   Living in a town where I don’t need locks on my doors even if I use them out of habit

149.   Tables

150.   Chairs

151.   The fact that all my parts work in such a way that I can easily use tables and chairs

152.   How dark our bedroom is at night

153.   Door knobs that make opening doors easy

154.   My jetted tub

155.   The way Ducky can have fun with an empty water bottle

156.   Seeing Ducky’s toys lying around because it reminds me of her joy

157.   Eating lunch out on the deck

158.   The 90 percent of my body that’s perfectly comfortable

159.   Teeth to chew things with

160.   Earrings

161.   The convenience of pierced ears

162.   The fact that there is such a wide variety of color in the world

163.   The fact that my body can digest food and eliminate what my body doesn’t need

164.   The fun of finding agates and shells on the beach

165.   Light

166.   The ease of light switches

167.   Electricity

168.   Batteries

169.   Rechargeable batteries

170.   Phones

171.   Cell phones

172.   Answering machines

173.   Tim’s ability to build websites

174.   Tim’s willingness to do whatever job he needs to do to earn money

175.   Tim’s and my ability to learn new things

176.   The fact that I have gone after my dream instead of “playing it safe”

177.   Thermometers

178.   The way inside of my house looks

179.   My chi machine

180.   Vitamins and minerals

181.   Reading novels to relax

182.   All the pictures I have of Muggins

183.   The fun of doing The Joyful Springer

184.   Meeting dog people through The Joyful Springer

185.   Wind chimes

186.   Singing

187.   Soap

188.   Shampoo

189.   Make-up and the fact that I don’t have to wear it if I don’t want to

190.   The fact that mosquitoes are easy to kill

191.   The way spices make food taste

192.   Having a refrigerator

193.   The fact that no matter how much weight I’ve gained, I still have slender wrists

194.   Having cute ears that don’t stick out

195.   Tim’s patience

196.   The anipals on Twitter

197.   The fact that my 25 year old stereo still works great

198.   Ducky’s dog door

199.   Shelves

200.   Having lots of books

So there’s a begnning.

When you’re looking for things that are right, your mind doesn’t have room to linger over what’s wrong.  It’s amazing how fast you go from feeling bad to feeling good when you do this.

I invite you to play with me.  Please share a list of “right” things in your world.  If you feel like counting them up and putting a total at the end, all the better so we can keep a running total of what we’ve come up with.

Let’s pour on the appreciation here.  Let’s feel great!

Related posts:

I Love ….

Looking For Mr. Gorilla

I’ll Never Do Dishes Again

———–

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr.

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Tim and I are in our car.  He’s driving. I’m gazing out the passenger side window.

Tim says, “Is he any good?”

“What?” I ask.

I have no idea what he’s talking about.  We haven’t been having a conversation.  We’ve been riding in silence.

“Is he any good?” Tim repeats as if hearing the question again will clear it up for me.

“Is who any good?”

“Him,” Tim waves a hand toward the windshield.

“What?  Who?” I look directly in front of the car for some invisible “him” I’m supposed to evaluate.

“The sign.” Tim waves a hand toward the windshield again.

My gaze extends further ahead.  I see a banner hanging across the road. It announces Clint Black’s upcoming performance at a nearby casino.

“Clint Black?” I ask.

Tim nods.

I give him my opinion of Clint Black, for what it’s worth, and I ask him what made him think I would have any idea what he was talking about.  He says, “I figured you were looking at what I was looking at.”

DA DUM! Did you hear that big orchestral crescendo that denotes something important?

Their Experience Is Not Your Experience

Just as I’m not usually looking where Tim is looking, I am not interpreting the world around me the way he is or the way anyone else is for that matter.

So why would I act like I AM interpreting the world the same way as everyone else?  Why would I act like what is there to be seen is a FACT that I must deal with?

Most of us base our actions and decisions on a “reality” that others have created. We react to a world that we think is REAL when in fact it is just a collection of interpretations generated by millions of different vibrational frequencies, i.e. people focusing their thoughts.

Here’s the way Abraham-Hicks explains it:

“In this tangible, physical world, where you can see and smell and hear and taste and touch, your physical senses are literally your interpreters of vibrations. And so, the world you perceive is about your sensors that are interpreting it from vibration to perception.

”When you look at your television, a similar thing is taking place: A mechanism has projected and translated, and now you are using other physical human sensors to further translate. You don’t look at your television and assume that somehow those people are really in that little box. You know that the screen, or the process, is giving you an interpreted version of omething. And everything in your world is that.

“It’s hard for you to get a sense of that, because you are surrounded with so many other interpreters who are born with similar sensors or senses to yours.

“And so, when we say to you, what you see with your eyes is an interpretation of vibration, what you feel with your fingertips, what you hear with your ears, what you smell with your nose, all that you are experiencing is vibrational interpretation, you say (because so many of you are having a similar experience) ‘Well, this interpretation of vibration is reality.’ And we say, the reason you are calling it reality is because so many others are agreeing with you, in general terms, about the reality you are perceiving. But, in truth, you are all interpreting uniquely from your perspective.

“We approach your physical experience in a rather unusual way because once you understand that you are vibrational interpreters, then you can deliberately take it further. Then you can go beyond your physical senses, which are interpreting vibration by utilizing your emotional basis, which is a further interpretation of more defined, intricate interpreting. Your emotions tell you more subtle vibrations.”

In other words, since nothing we’re experiencing with our physical senses is as set as we think it is (and we think it’s set because everyone else is acting as if it is), we can choose to see our world with no reference to what others would call reality.  We can totally ignore what others are perceiving.

AND we can ignore what our physical selves are experiencing.

We do not have to put our focus on what our physical senses are telling us.  Our physical senses may be staring right at a Clint Black banner, but our vibrational focus, translated to us through our emotions, can be happily looking out another window at a vista that is more interesting or pleasing to us, a vista that is more in line with what we would like to create in our world.

I have spent far too much time in the last few years letting my physical self direct my gaze toward a reality created by my past alignment and by others’ alignment.  When I had my “Clint Black Banner Moment,” I understood with utter clarity that I can and in fact MUST not only choose where I want to put my attention but also stick with my choice no matter what others want to point out to me.

We don’t live in a simple world where we all perceive the same things.  We live in a vibrational world that we can each interpret differently.  Call it an alternate reality or a vision or a want—it’s really simply truth.  Each of us can experience the truth of what our desires have created by using our emotions to direct us toward the true reality—the one in which our nonphysical already resides.

I’m grateful today for Tim’s out of context question.  It showed me how silly it is to let a physical perception dictate our vibrational reality.

And so, is Clint Black any good?

I don’t really care.

All I care about is that reality is good … when we decide that it is.

Related Posts:

Too Much Thought

It’s Not All The Same To Me

The Potato Chips Saga

———-

Photo by Cloudzilla on Flickr.

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Ducky turns one year old in a week.  Hard to believe.  I can still close my eyes and feel that warm little ball of wiggles I held in my arms when we brought her home last October.  Tim says he vaguely remembers being able to carry her around.  She’s now almost 45 pounds of mostly spring-generated muscle.

Since Ducky is my greatest and most consistent source of joy (she’s sort of like a cannon that shoots me into the Vortex), I decided to spend a couple bucks for the props to stage a good Ducky birthday picture for The Joyful Springer (it will be on the site on the 24^th).   So a few days ago, Tim and I stopped in Wal-mart to get a birthday hat and balloon.

As we were heading through the store, we heard two little kids singing:  “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Mary, happy birthday to you.”  They were off key in the extreme, but what they lacked in musical ability they made up for in enthusiasm.

I smiled because I thought that was pretty amazing.  Here we were to buy birthday items, and these kids were singing “Happy Birthday.”

The children were maybe three to five years old, a boy and a girl.  Both were in a cart and both had big smiles on their faces.

After the first round of singing, they started over.  This time, they sang happy birthday to Shannon.  Then it was a round to David.  Then it was a round to Brianna.  And it went on.

“It sounds like they’re singing happy birthday to everyone they know,” Tim said.

I nodded, smiling even wider.

These kids were having SO much fun.  Their mom was busy shopping, and they were oblivious to that.  They were just singing at the top of their lungs, happy as could be.

“I want to be a little kid,” I said.  “No worries.  No figuring out how to get money or what to do next.  Kids just have fun.”

“Then be a little kid,” Tim said.

I looked at him.

“Be a kid,” he repeated.  “Forget worries.  Stop figuring things out.  Just have fun.”

I watched the kids again.  I could feel the relief surge through me. Yes!

Of course, Tim and I were describing the Vortex.  Though I’ve been in the vicinity of the Vortex more in the last month or so than I have in the last year, I realized as I listened to those exuberant children that I still wasn’t there as much as I wanted, and I may not have been there when I thought I was there.  I know I rarely felt like those singing kids did.

I thought I was allowing things to fall into place, but I was still trying to figure things out.  Yes, I had accepted what is, and yes, I had my mind on what I wanted instead of what is.  Still, I was spending too much time thinking about HOW to put what I wanted into place.  In other words, I was acting happy but I wasn’t truly vibrating happy.

Real Happy

I left Wal-mart singing, “Happy happy day to me, happy happy day to me, happy happy day, dear Ande, happy happy day to me.”  It made me grin like an idiot.  I’m pretty sure that’s the feeling of the Vortex.

That day in Wal-mart, those children serenaded dozens of people.  I watched many blank or frowning faces transform into relaxed and happy faces as people turned toward the sound of the singing. Sometimes we don’t even notice that we’re not in joy until we see or hear joy.  Then as our energy shifts to match it, we realize we had been a long way from it.

Pay close attention to how you feel.  Are you happy or are you just acting happy?  The law of attraction doesn’t care how you’re acting.  It cares about how you are, or more specifically, how your vibration is.

You can’t fake vibration, and vibration is what attracts.

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A few days ago, Tim and I met with an attorney and provided him with all the paperwork and information he needs to prepare to file my Chapter 7 bankruptcy.  Before that appointment, I had about three weeks to get used to the idea that last year at this time, I thought I had more than $50,000 in the bank and no balances running on my credit cards and now here I am filing bankruptcy because of something dumb that my own husband did, something that ran up all my cards and ran down the bank account.

I realize now that I’ve spent the last ten months in shock.  When you think you’re trucking along doing just fine and then you get gobsmacked with a “what is” reality that seems to have erupted from the ground beneath your feet like a malevolent alien, shock is a reasonable response, for sure.  But it’s not all that helpful to stay stuck in shock for a long time. Shock isn’t exactly a positive vibration.

While in this shock, I have also rocketed up and down the emotional scale.  I’ve been in abject despair, barely contained rage, relentless disappointment, edgy annoyance, and extreme frustration.  I’ve also been in hope and optimism, and yes, I’ve even been in appreciation and love and joy.

I didn’t realize until I gave into the bankruptcy that shock had been the foundation of all my emotion for these many months.  I didn’t realize that I’d yet to fully accept my situation.

The Broken Table

The word bankruptcy can be traced back to the days when business was done on benches or tables in the street.  When a businessman couldn’t pay his debts, his trading table or bench was destroyed—this was the indicator that he was out of business.   The Latin word for table is “bancus.”  And “ruptus” means broken.  Thus “bankruptcy.”

The symbolism seems appropriate to me.  I certainly feel like my table (my sense of stability and security) has been broken.

And until this last week, I have resisted the idea of admitting that it was so broken that I couldn’t fix it without going through a legal process I’d always viewed with an extremely negative perspective.  Did you notice the important word in that sentence?

Resistance.

We all know that when you have resistance, you can’t find alignment with source energy and thus you can’t bring in by law of attraction what you desire to have in your life. And so, all of my shock and refusal to accept that I am where I am has kept me stuck where I am.

Happy Hillbillies

The morning before Tim and I left to go see the attorney, Tim set his metal-framed glasses on the kitchen counter, and when he picked them up again, he was shocked (do you see a theme here?) to find he held only half his glasses.  They’d split right down the middle of the nose piece.

He was baffled.  He hadn’t mistreated the glasses in any way.  They just inexplicably broke.

And oddly, that’s when the shock finally left me.

After Tim and I taped the glasses together and he put them on, I burst out laughing. This was all so ridiculous.

“You really ought to just take off your belt,” I said, “and tie your pants up with a rope, and we can call ourselves hillbillies.  We have all the old stuff and old cars …” (When you prepare for bankruptcy, you do an inventory of everything you have, and I faced the fact that most of what we have is so old it has no value to anyone but us.) “… and now you have taped glasses frames.  Let’s just embrace our situation.”

Tim didn’t see the humor.

I was still laughing.  “Heck, the TV ‘Hillbillies” struck oil,” I said.

I kept giggling.  Maybe I was having a breakdown.

And if I was, it was a good one.  It was a breakdown of resistance.  It was acceptance of what is.

Not that I said acceptance of what is.  I’m not saying focus on what is.

You see, I’ve been doing my best NOT to focus on what is.  But what I’ve discovered is you can’t remove your focus from what is until you accept it.  If you’re pushing against it, you’re focusing on it. You have to be able to say, “It is what it is, and that’s okay.”

What do you do with a broken table?

Well, you can throw it away.  Or you can you use the wood for something new.

Transformations In Wood

A couple weeks ago, my friend, Nancy, sent me an e-mail about extraordinary wood carvings that were created from the tree skeletons left in Galveston after Hurricane Ike’s fury roared through.  About 40,000 gorgeous old trees died.  But the area residents managed to turn this devastating loss into something positive.  They cut down the trees and left the stumps, which wood carvers turned into stunning sculptures of dogs and dolphins and toads and mermaids and angels and a whole lot more.

When I saw the pictures of some of these sculptures, I was struck by the awesome creativity and beauty that can grow from the ugliness of loss.  I knew I needed to apply the lesson to my own situation, but I wasn’t able to do that until I faced my own broken table.

On Thursday, the day after the meeting with the attorney, I began a new way of being in my world.  I’m not just changing a few ways of thinking, I’m changing many ways of thinking AND many ways of acting.

I am taking the broken table of my circumstances and turning it into something new.  I am standing in the now of my life, and without looking back at how I got here, I’m designing a new now and a new future, and in doing so, I’m also designing a new past, because my new thoughts are revising my past as well.

In other words, I’m carving something awesome, something abundant, out of the broken pieces of my life.

What will my carving be when I’m done with it?

I don’t know, but I’ll share it as soon as it takes shape.

In the meantime, I offer this to those who think they can’t possibly be happy in their current situation:

I am standing in the aftermath of a personal hurricane that destroyed much in my life (the finances are just a few of the “trees” that have died in my “what is” reality), and I am happy.  I’m laughing.  I’m having fun.  I’m appreciating.  I’m finding positive aspects.

You don’t have to wait for alignment to bring you something you desire in order to feel good.  Just feel good.  Get in alignment.  And bask in “ahh” of that ease.  Then allow the universe to hand you the tools you need to carve something new.

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So there’s this Vortex, to use Abraham-Hicks terminology.  It’s an extraordinary font of energy—organized, creational energy that holds everything asked for by everyone.

I think of the Vortex as a sort of energy clearinghouse where everything that’s asked for is given, where every request is put into place in a cooperative way for the good of all who are asking.  EVERYTHING asked for, from a better tasting toothpaste to the vastest monetary fortune imaginable, is given in the Vortex.

Obviously, the Vortex is the place to be.

And how do we get there?

We all know the answer to that one, right?

We get there by releasing resistance, by aligning with Source … in a nutshell, by feeling good.

If you really commit to staying aware of your energy, to really knowing whether or not you feel good (don’t laugh—most people in our society are not conscious of how they feel), you can almost discern a pleasurable elastic pulling sensation when you are sucked into the Vortex.  At times, I swear I almost hear a THWAWCK sound too.

And in the reverse, when you’re disgorged from the Vortex, you can feel that too.  I experience “devortexization” (like my new word?) as a sudden energy plummet.  This enervation is generally accompanied by muscle tension (hence my About Face technique) and for me, a sudden desire to eat something with no known nutritional value.

But remaining in the spirit of Fun, Fun, Fun, since I had my Riding the Rapids epiphany, my number one priority has been looking for ways to flip the switch on my energy and vibration.  I need as many ways to do this as possible because I am living some pretty strong contrast right now.  My “what is” is compelling to my pay-attention-to-the-physical-reality trained mind.

Even Abraham-Hicks has noted that it’s much easier to get into and stay in the Vortex before you manifest something lousy.  For that reason, law of attraction coaches and writers who have never created much of a mess, whose biggest “problems” are an extra 10 pounds of body fat, a need to double their six figure income, and a desire for more travel or fame or whatever, don’t impress me much. It’s relatively easy to manifest wonders when 90 percent of your “what is” reality is already wonderful.  The great stuff you have now, if you appreciate it, is the springboard to even better things.

But what of those of us powerful creators who, in our earnest efforts to understand the law of attraction, managed to focus more on lack than on abundance and created big, big messes? It takes a bit more finesse to find ways into the Vortex when your “what is” is 90 percent unpleasant and 10 percent pleasant.

Because I’m in that 90 percent unpleasant place, I’ve made it my intention to find as many ways to feel good as possible, and the law of attraction has responded to my intention with many fun methods.

My latest method is singing.

The High Note Method Of Revortexization

I’ve always enjoyed singing, but most of my singing was always done when I was alone in the car or the shower.  A few years ago, though, Tim (my hubby, a talented singer and musician, graduate of the Army School of Music) talked me into joining the community choir he directed.  Tim informed me that I’m a tenor, and he explained that I would be singing harmony. I’d never sung harmony before.

But I learned how, and I discovered that not only am I good at learning and remembering harmony notes, I love doing it.  Whenever I was singing, I felt good.  All thoughts of negative circumstances fell away.

The choir is no more (long, very non-Vortexy story, so I’ll skip it), and for the last couple years, I’ve been so caught up in the yuck of “what is” that I haven’t even remembered to sing much.

But in answer to my request for more fun, the law of attraction popped a song into my head: “On Top of the World” by the Carpenters.  Yes, I thought.  That’s how I want to feel.

So I tweaked the lyrics a little to refer more to abundance than love, and I began singing that song dozens of times a day. Then law of attraction nudged me with another song—“Believe It Or Not,” the theme from Greatest American Hero. I tweaked those lyrics too: “Believe it or not, I’m walking on air, I’ve always wanted to feel this free …”

Tim started singing along with me, and now he’s going to write me harmony lines for these two songs, and I’m going to sing harmony to his base melody.

Singing launches me into the Vortex every time. If I feel myself going low (low energy, low on the emotional scale), I can get higher and higher with singing.  What works for me is not just music but singing.  Just listening to music doesn’t quite do it for me.  I need to sing, and I need to know the lyrics, or better yet, rewrite the lyrics to fit what I want to be saying.  This focused singing releases resistance in an instant.

Not everyone responds to singing, but if you’re at all musical, you might give my High Note method of “revortexization” (as opposed to devortexization) a try.

1.  Pick an upbeat song. If you’re looking for some uplifting songs, check out Ducky’s Joyful Springer channel on Blip.fm. She’s a Vortexy DJ, and she blips feel good songs.

2.  Look up the lyrics online (search the song name plus lyrics).

3.  Change the lyrics as needed to say what you want to say.

4.  Practice singing your version of the song until you’ve memorized the lyrics.

5.  Sing your song any time you start to feel yourself being pulled out of the Vortex.

This is a really fun process that acts like a big old eraser, wiping out the siren song of “what is.”

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If you’d like a reminder of the Vortex’s power, watch this video:

Fast Tube by Casper

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Photo by emilyamimu on Flickr.

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Ducky In Her Play Bow

Today’s post comes under the heading of “Yes, I KNOW this,” but I think it also comes under the heading of “I can’t have too many reminders.”

When it comes to finding ways to improve our vibrational alignment so law of attraction will deliver pleasurable and wanted experiences into our lives, the methods and techniques are endless.  We can

• Visualize
• “Write right“
• Create manifestation boards
• Pivot off negative thoughts
• Do an “about face”
• Talk about what we want
• Act as if we have what we want
• And a whole lot of other “techniques” we can pay hundreds of dollars for if we’re inclined to invest in all the law of attraction books, CDs, and workshops available online and off.

Or we can reach vibrational alignment the easy way.

We can have fun.

All of those techniques I listed, and most other law of attraction “systems” or “exercises” or “practices,” are intended for one important purpose—to create a positive vibration. What could be a more positive vibration than fun?

Stairway To Fun

Obviously, having fun is good for us.  But we can’t play all the time.  We have things we need to do.

I am the Princess of Play.  I own something like a hundred plush animals (it used to be more—I donated a bunch to hospitals).  I quote Winnie the Pooh.  I love flipping a Slinky back and forth or tossing around a yellow Smiley Face ball when I’m thinking.  To relax, I blow bubbles off my back porch.  I give goofy personality to our furniture, our food, our cars—I anthropomorphize pretty much everything.  Tim and I play lots of board games.  We joke and tease constantly, and we make all sorts of playful bets. And then there’s Ducky—my always-ready-for-fun, canine playmate.  I love to play silly games with her.

But, I’ve always worked this play in and around the serious stuff.  And if the serious stuff gets overwhelming, as it has for me lately, my playtime is diminished.

See, I understand that to have something I need to already have it.  So I know I need to find ways to take on the identity of a financial secure, successful, healthy, slender woman NOW.  And I know I need to do what is before me to do.

At the moment, most of what is before me to do doesn’t, at first glance, seem to have much of a fun factor.  Bankruptcy and everything that is involved with it, for instance, isn’t fun. It’s more of a humiliating chore than anything resembling play.

BUT, with a little ingenuity, pretty much anything can be shifted from chore to fun.

Here’s proof (video courtesy of my friend, Nancy—thanks, Nancy!):

Fast Tube by Casper

It makes you want to install scales under the flooring in your house, doesn’t it?

It does me.

And more than that, this video made me start thinking about how I can turn things I currently consider an unpleasant chore or responsibility into something fun.

It spurred me to begin making one of the driving questions in my day: How can I turn this into more play than work?

Sometimes, the question can be answered easily.  When I’m doing work on the computer, for instance, I reward myself with the occasional tweets on Ducky’s Twitter account. “Yapping” with Ducky’s “anipals” as if she’s actually doing the typing (don’t tell her she isn’t—I’m pretty sure she thinks she’s the one online) is great fun, and it breaks up other more mundane tasks.

Sometimes, the question takes a bit more thought.

For the bankruptcy process, for example, I was having trouble finding ways to view filling out all the paperwork, listing all our assets and debts etc., as play.  But then Tim suggested we use each asset listed as a jumping off point to thinking about what we would like instead.  So we put on the list, 20-year old shelves, and Tim says, “I’m going to have so much fun building the custom shelves for the offices in our new house.”  Or we list, five dog beds, and I tell Tim a memory I have of how much our last dog, Muggins, loved a particular bed.  Using the list as a sort of seeding for fun conversation made the process more like play than work.

I’m finding that if you make it a dominant intention, you really can find ways to turn even the most arduous-seeming chores into something more playful and fun. Doing this creates a win-win.  Not only does having more fun improve your vibration so you attract more good things into your life, it also brings you more pleasure NOW because you can’t help but enjoy your days more if you’re integrating play into your work.

We get a match to what we’re looking at and what we’re looking for.  I’m finding that when I make it a priority to look for fun, ways to have more fun easily come to me.

How about it?  Wanna play?

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About five years ago, I met an elderly gentleman who, according to his wife, could fall asleep within one minute of closing his eyes.  And he could do it in any situation.  Since I often took a long time to fall asleep, I was intrigued and I asked him how he did it.

He told me he learned his “trick” when he was a soldier in World War II.  Because sleep was imperative but sleeping conditions were abysmal, he had to find a way to get to sleep no matter what.  He tried several things and finally discovered one that has worked for him to this day:  When he closes his eyes, he puts all his concentration on relaxing his facial muscles. He consistently falls asleep within a minute of beginning the process.

I was disappointed in his “trick.”  I was expecting something more original.  I’d done all sorts of progressive relaxation in the past and had never found it particularly effective for calming my mind.

I dismissed his technique for a long time, but one night when I was lying awake in the middle of the night with my head full of all sorts of scary negative thoughts, I figured I could give the face muscle thing a try.  I’m glad I did.

It works!  Whereas relaxing other body parts doesn’t do diddly to make me sleepy, relaxing my facial muscles puts me out every time.  All I have to do is remember to do it.

Have I consistently used this method since I learned it?  Heck, no.  I often forgot it when I got all wrapped up in negative thinking.

A couple weeks ago, I began using the technique again, consistently.  In spite of all the turmoil going on, I was able to drift off easily and quickly night after night.

From a biological standpoint, I have no idea why this technique works so well.  From a resistance standpoint, though, its effectiveness makes total sense. When you put all your attention on releasing tension, on letting go, you remove blocks to being fully relaxed.  When you’re fully relaxed, you can sleep.

In the last few days, I’ve discovered that this simple technique can be extended to releasing vibrational resistance as well as muscle resistance.  Done with the eyes open, any time of the day, relaxing your facial muscles puts you in a softer state, one that is more allowing.  When you’re in this more allowing state, it’s much easier to find aligned thoughts.

I never realized how tight my face tends to be until I started doing this process.  Tight muscles tend to be so habitual that we stop noticing them.  This can be true of negative thought/emotion as well.

Relaxing Into Aligned Thought

The way I’ve been using what I’ve started calling my “about face” technique is this:

1.  I notice a negative emotion.

2.  Instead of looking for the negative thought that caused the negative emotion, which is what I used to do, I put all my attention on my facial muscles.  Well, okay, maybe not ALL my attention.  If I’m driving or doing something else that needs concentration, I put as much of my attention as I can on my facial muscles.  I concentrate on relaxing my face.

As soon as I do that, I magically get access to many positive thoughts.  It’s as if relaxing my face opens a door to aligned thinking.  I don’t have to look for better feeling thoughts.  I relax my face, and voila, all sorts of good feeling thoughts pop into my head.

I don’t know why this seems to work this way, but it feels like there’s an energetic connection between relaxing MY physical face and relaxing the face of the situation I’m in.  It’s as if the resistance in my vibration is hooked into the tension in my facial muscles, and when I relax those, the vibrational resistance falls away and alignment rushes in.

Now, I have this awesome “magic switch” to transport me into the Vortex: relax face, get flooded with great thoughts, pop into the Vortex.  Way cool!

This little trick has been helping me A LOT the last few days.  It’s helped me stay in a state of relaxed knowing, of happy security.  It’s helped me remove my attention from the negative aspects of my “what is” reality.

If you haven’t tried this, I recommend you do.  I think it’s a wonderful way to pivot from negative to positive vibration.

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Photo is proof that even my bouncy, wag-full dog, Ducky, drops off to sleep in an instant when she relaxes.

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I started writing right a few days ago.  I’m writing my ideal life.  To start, I dug out some old incomplete journals to use because I didn’t want to go out and buy new ones.  I’m writing in these differently than the way I used to—recording my life as it unfolded. Now I’m recording my life as it exists in the Vortex, that place where all my desires are already reality. I’m writing the life of the identity I’m claiming for myself as a financially free, awesomely successful, and stunningly healthy woman.

In one of the journals I dug out for this purpose, I discovered a list of manifesting steps taped to the inside cover.  The date on the cover was 1998.

When I saw this list, my stomach heaved, and the enthusiastic energy I’d summoned for this good-feeling project was sucked from me as if by a gigantic invisible Hoover®.  On my list of steps, I’d written out the four things I wanted at the time:  financial freedom, success as a regularly published author, a healthy and slender body, and a loving husband.  Okay, so I’m one for four (I have the loving husband).  Seriously, though.  I’ve been after these same things for a dozen years, and truthfully, even longer than that.  How depressing.

But wait …..

The thought that I’d been stuck for 12+ years didn’t feel good.  And I remembered Abraham-Hicks saying that you’re never “stuck” because energy is always in motion so it just seems like you’re stuck because you create the same thing over and over.

I reached for better feeling thoughts, and I found some doozies.

My first thought was, I am living the reality of that husband I wanted a dozen years ago, a husband who was nowhere to be seen on my physical horizon, and yet, here he is in my life now.

Okay, that felt better.

My next thought was, But I don’t have the rest of the stuff.  Why couldn’t I get that?

That felt worse.  Try again.

Here were my next thoughts, the doozy ones:  I have been wanting, REALLY wanting these other three things for over fifteen years.  That means the power of my desire is HUGE.  The energy flowing toward these desires is moving as fast as the most raging river.  No wonder I’ve been so miserable when I’ve been thinking about debt and bankruptcy and being overweight and all the other negative thoughts I’ve had.  Abraham-Hicks uses the analogy of letting your boat go with the river and not against it; every time I’ve had one of these negative thoughts, I’ve been turned upstream, trying to take on the most powerful churning rapids imaginable.  And it’s hurt because I’ve been beaten up pretty bad in the process.  I feel so bad because there is SUCH A HUGE GAP between where my nonphysical being is (way downstream with all those things I desire) and where my thoughts are (stuck in the “what is” of debt and a body I’m not happy with).  That means that to live the life I want, all I have to do is relax.  That’s it.  When I relax, I let go of the oars and the power of my energy flow, which is driven SO FAST by my years of desires, will catapult me toward the life I want.  I have nothing to do but relax and feel good.

WOW! That felt SO good!  In less than a minute, I went from enervated and defeated and frustrated to energized, powerful, and looking at the life I want with enthusiastic anticipation.

In this short minute of thought, I turned around years worth of self-judgment over failing to achieve my desires.  In a light-show quality moment of clarity, I finally owned that all my so-called failure was an awesome amassing of focused desire that was poised to become the life I am claiming for myself.

I am a new woman.  I feel better than I have in a long, long, long time.

If you have ever spent a second lamenting how long you’ve wanted something and how awful it is that it hasn’t come yet, think for a moment about the rapids in your energy flow, the rapids that are rushing toward all you desire.  Realize that your work isn’t to figure out how to navigate those rapids and it certainly isn’t to push against those rapids by trying to hammer what you want into place.  Your only work is to take your hands off the oars, to relax and find ways to feel good.

I’m putting my trust in the power of the rushing rapids. How about you?

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Photo by Axiepic on Flickr.

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