The other day, my mom sent me an e-mail filled with funny excerpts from real trial transcripts.  Many of them made me laugh out loud—like this one:

Attorney: Now doctor, “isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?”

Witness: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

When Mom and I talked about the excerpts, she zeroed in on this one:

Attorney: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

Witness: Yes.

Attorney: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

Witness: I forget.

Attorney: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t want to talk about how funny this was.  She wanted to talk about myasthenia gravis.

She asked me if I remembered when an ophthalmologist misdiagnosed my step-dad with the illness and scared both him and my mom nearly to death because they were sure he was doomed.  I said I did.  In spite of that, she went on to tell me the story as if I didn’t know it.  Luckily, I was weeding through my e-mail while she did, so I didn’t get drawn into her angry story.  If I’d had a remote control that had any influence over her, I would have pushed the mute button … or better yet changed the channel.

Obviously, we don’t have control pads for the people in our lives.  We do, though, have a control pad for ourselves.

I used to go around saying, “It pushed my button,” or “She pushes my buttons.”

I had no idea how ridiculous that was, as if everyone and everything else in the world had a remote control that was the boss of me.  Of course, now that I understand law of attraction, I know that if my buttons get pushed, I’m the one pushing them.

Be Kind When You Rewind

When I listened to my mother the other day, I thought about how often we push the rewind button on our control pad.  It’s like we have this compulsion to weed through the extraordinary amount of sensory input and information we get each day to find the one thing that compels us to rewind into the past and dredge up some old resentment or disappointment.

Here I was with my mother laughin,. and she decided to hook in on the two words in the probably 400 or more that were in that e-mail of funny attorney missteps.  She pushed the rewind button and … whirrrrr … she was back in the past in an unpleasant experience.

It was such a jarring shift in energy to witness that it really got my attention.  How often do I hit the rewind button?

Even though I know how law of attraction works, I still hit that button from time to time.

I’m learning, though, and contrast such as I experienced with my Mom reminds me to be kind when I rewind.  I only want to rewind when I’m rewinding to some triumph or feel-good moment that helps me amp up my now frequency.

Hang Onto That Control

The truth is that we get to hog the remote when it comes to how we focus.  We can mute, change the channel, turn the volume up or down, freeze the image, fast forward, or go in reverse.

If you think of your focus in terms of this kind of control, it makes it a little easier to stay on top of how you use your thought.  Next time you find your mind wandering off in a negative direction, try imagining a nice big remote control with colorful buttons.  Consciously push a virtual button that will take your thoughts in a better direction.

Me?  I’m rather enjoying the “volume up” button.  I keep turning up the volume on thoughts of how successful I’ve already become.

Remember, no one can take that remote away from you.  You push your own buttons.  So push the ones that will serve you.

Related Posts:

Leave Behind Past Misalignment

Writing Write

Photo by Ronier on Flickr.

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Monday, the rain came back.  Hurray!

I’m a passionate rain lover.  I’m okay with the rest of nature’s weather buffet too, but my favorite part of it is rain.  So I was excited when we got our first all-day, steady rain and wind after having two months of dry weather.

Monday morning, Ducky and I headed to the beach to have an invigorating walk in the elements.  It felt awesome!  What a rush!  The feel of the cold sheets of water on my skin, the musky scent, the relentless and energizing rhythm—walking in the rain on the beach is a 100 times better than coffee for an early morning kick start.

So there I was on the beach in the blustery wetness, and I suddenly felt inspired to invoke the power of the rain.

This whim grew from the seed of communications I’ve been sharing with a new friend I made on Facebook, a fascinating woman from Italy who has studied Wiccan traditions.  She also loves rain, which is pioggia (pronounced peeoja) in Italian, by the way.  She told me that she often calls on the elements when she wants to send an intention out to the universe.

Of course, she knows that you don’t need any ritual, Wiccan or other, to send an intention out.  Just by having an intention, it’s out there.  But rituals can be fun, and anything that’s fun is worth doing.

Summoning The Power

In the middle of my walk, I threw up my arms to the heavens, tilted my head back to get the full force of the rain and shouted something like this:

I give thanks to the universe for the wonder of rain.  I receive it with gratitude.  I now invoke the power of the rain.  I summon the power of the rain and send it out into the universe to call forth a flow of financial abundance to me.

Yes, I know that I don’t need to do this to have financial abundance.  Yes, I know that if that invocation comes from a place of lack it will get me nothing but a wet face.  But like I said—it felt good.

Water, Water Everywhere

I keep an open stainless steel water bottle on my nightstand so I can take little sips when I awake during the night.  In the early hours of Tuesday morning, about 5 a.m., I knocked it over.  The metallic clunk followed by my whispered expletive had me out of bed grabbing for something to mop the water off my oak nightstand and the books piled on it.

Then, still half conscious, I went back to sleep.

A couple hours later, I woke up and discovered I had an unhappy belly and an urgent need to use the facilities.  I’ll skim over this indelicate part a bit, but to make my point, I do need to share that I managed to stop up the toilet so badly that even my frantic plunging couldn’t prevent the overflow that cascaded over the sides and all across the bathroom floor.

At this point, my expletives were no longer whispered.  I was still plunging with all my might, and the water (not clean water, mind you) was splashing onto the floor when my previously sleeping husband, Tim, heard me and stumbled into the bathroom.  Bless him—when I explained to him what had happened, he told me to lie down, and he cleaned up the mess.

I spent the next half hour cuddling with Ducky in bed while I basked in appreciation for my wonderful husband.

And that’s when I remembered my little invocation.  I burst out laughing.

Didn’t I kind of summon the power of the rain—i.e. WATER?

Power Gone Awry

Do you see how power can be misplaced?

Now I’m not sure what happened—did law of attraction bring me more water because of my focus on the power of the rainwater?  Of course, I can’t say.  But I do know that I felt, deeply, the lesson I was receiving (for probably the millionth time):  I have extraordinary power.  So do you.  We all do.

Our power is in our focus and thoughts.  It is a power a thousand (or more) times greater than any physical power we can wield.  We can use it to create wonderful things.

And we can use it to create big messes, which is what many of us tend to do.

When we get in those messes, we tend to feel powerless.  But the truth is the exact opposite.  Within the mess is the fuel that will increase our power—the contrast that shows us what we DO want now that we’ve experienced what we don’t want.

Although calling on the rain was a kick, I don’t think I’ll do it again soon.  I think I’ll just enjoy the rain, keep my focus on what pleases me, and allow myself to align with my nonphysical self, who already lives, in freedom and joy, on a nice rainy beach.

Related Posts:

Panther Power

Experts Are Just Powerful Creators

She Won The Lottery On Purpose

Photo by Riebart on Flickr.

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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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My mother keeps many of her memories in a cedar chest at the end of her bed.  The trunk holds awards and clippings—I think she saved every newspaper column I ever wrote, and she has at least five copies of the first whole newspaper in which my first column appears.  The chest holds locks of hair and photographs and playbills.  And it holds some of my early artistic and literary efforts.

There’s the paper plate covered in uncooked pasta and sprayed with gold that I made in third grade.  There’s the misshapen sickly blue mug that I made in fifth grade.  There’s the stilted poetry I wrote throughout grade school, and the 20 page, 10 chapter “novel” I wrote when I was twelve (I think it started with something like “it was a dark and stormy night.”)

My mother treasures every one of these creations.  Why?  Because her only child made them.

Each of us is still the child we were when we were young enough to be making funky art projects.  Each of us is worthy of the kind of love that saves those projects.  Each of us deserves to have our creations treasured and celebrated.

If we act like that child and know our worthiness and we treasure and celebrate our creations, we can release a whole lot of resistance fast and easily.

How?

Resistance comes from disliking the way things are, pushing against what we have in our lives now.

How did we get things the way they are now?  By creating them.

Right now, I’m surrounded by the “treasures” my thoughts have created:  there’s the blob of bankruptcy, here’s the quilt of fat, there are the odd shapes of unwanted jobs and miscommunications and broken household objects and arguments and … enough of that.  You get the idea.  I created everything in my life.  I MADE it.  And I am worthy child of the universe.  So why would I sneer at and criticize my creations?  Why would I hate them so?  Why would I treat myself like that when I would never dream of treating another this way?

Every time I say I hate the way things are, I am doing the same thing my mother would be doing if she destroyed my early projects and threw them away.  I am dishonoring me.

That dishonor is resistance.  Abraham-Hicks refers to it as misalignment with the eternal, nonphysical part of ourselves.  When we hate what we have created, we hate ourselves.

Resistance falls away when you look at every single thing in your life, every unwanted situation, as some wondrous creation you made.  See that lack of money as a crooked birdhouse made with fumbling fingers.  See that lousy relationship as a torn sheet of paper covered with finger paint.

Look at your world and marvel at what you’ve created.  Exult in your power.  You have brought everything around you into being.

Okay, so maybe what you’ve made isn’t something they’d hang in the Louvre.  Maybe no one would buy it.  Maybe you don’t want to buy it.  But you created it.  And you’re worthy.  So celebrate what you made.

When you begin to treasure every single thing in your life, misshapen or not, believe me—resistance will crumble.  Ease will arrive.  Life will feel good.

Related Posts:

Too Much Vision, Not Enough Feeling

Embracing Toddlerhood

How To Always Get What You Want

——

Photo by Corsi Photo on Flickr.

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Yesterday, Bea left a great comment that raised an excellent question.  She said, “I was wondering how to feel good when nothing seems to be working out as desired or wanted or dreamed in life.”  I offered one way of doing this in my last post, but now I’m going to simplify it even more.

Notice that in Bea’s question, she makes a connection that we all make—or at least it’s one that I’ve always made.  She connects naturally feeling good to having things the way we want them to be.

It’s a reasonable connection.  Of course we feel good when things are working out the way we want to them to.

So how can we always have things work the way we want them to?

Do we have to visualize and focus on what we want and meditate and have a manifestation board and write dream journals?  Sure, we can do all of those things.  And they can move us toward more of what we want.  But they won’t make it so we always get what we want.

The truth is no matter how good we are at deliberate creating, i.e., finding the feeling place of having what we want, we will never be able to get the whole world to conform to our desires.  Unless …

One Word Changes Everything

A couple days ago, I read a wonderful audio transcript at Heather Macauley’s site, www.aspaceoflove.com, called “The Silent Language of Peace.” Macauley’s ideas aren’t new—they’re all concepts Abraham-Hicks teaches, but her wording worked just right for me.  The law of attraction brought me just the right information at just the right time.

Macauley reminded me of the one word that allowed me to have all I want right now:

OKAY

She advises looking at every problem, every unwanted thing or person or circumstance in your life and saying, “It’s okay.”

We need to make it okay that what we have is what we have.  We need to make it okay that we are as we are, that circumstances are as they are.

Once we say it’s okay, we’re no longer resisting it, no longer pushing against it.  Once we say it’s okay, we release enough energy to find some part of “what is” that is TRULY okay.

By using “okay” to describe whatever is going on, we’re making everything something we want.  In one instant, we go from lamenting the fact that we aren’t getting our desires to celebrating how absolutely fine everything is.  We’re doing what we want not because we’re trying to manipulate events to be something we want but because we’re shifting our thoughts to wanting events the way they are.

Here’s the way Abraham explains it:

Fast Tube by Casper

Just in the last 48 hours, since I started using the word, “okay,” over and over and over again, my attitude about my life has changed.  I can feel the relief, feel the resistance falling away.

So here’s the ten second process of getting what you want:

1.     Say it’s okay that things are as they are.

2.     Because it’s okay, you can relax enough to find the good in the way things are.

3.     Because you can find the good, you have what you want (underlying every desire is the belief that having that desire will make you feel good—so what you really want is to feel good).

And presto! You have what you want all the time!

Related Posts:

The Appreciation “I Spy” Game—How To Feel Better RIGHT

And A Touch Of Relish

The Small Stuff Matters

—

Photo by Horia Varlan 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

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Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr.

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In the last post, I told the story of how Tim saw a banner with country singer, Clint Black’s name on it.  Before the day that happened, I hadn’t thought of, seen reference to, or in any way stumbled over Clint Black’s name, songs, or picture for years.

The day after the events I related in the last post, I watched an internet marketing video, and the marketer referred to Clint Black.  Wowza!!

Related page:

Law Of Attraction Results

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Photo by Jvh33 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

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Photo by Cloudzilla on Flickr.

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At the end of May, thanks to some serious misalignment, the law of attraction brought to us an uprooted, leaning tree.  The “facts” are that a freak wind storm broke off the top of one tree, and that treetop fell into a second, dead tree, knocking it partially over.  Surrounding trees caught the dead tree and kept it from going all the way over, but its position was precarious.

The day after the wind storm, we got an estimate for removing the tree.  The cost would be $850 … which might as well have been $850,000.  We didn’t have the money, and we still don’t.

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know that a couple months ago, my “what is” situation was a turmoil.  I’d just gotten sued over debt. I had no idea how I was going to pay my bills. We were in danger of losing our house. Blah, blah, blah.  The bottom line is that my mind was full of “dead wood thoughts.”

What are dead wood thoughts? They’re “how” thoughts.

How Thoughts Block Happy Thoughts

You know you’ve thought yourself into a tangle of dead wood when you’re continually mulling over how you’re going to make something happen or how you’re going to get something.  Back in May, my brain was stuffed with how thoughts—how am I going to handle this law suit, how will I pay for the tree, how will we pay our bills, etc.

As long as those how thoughts were in my head, I couldn’t get a clear stream of happy thoughts going.  Oh, I’d manage one or two or three, but I couldn’t get a flow of good feelings going.

Finally, though, I saw what I was doing, and I forgot about the how.  I stopped trying to figure things out.  In fact, for awhile, I stopped thinking as much as possible.  I didn’t try to visualize what I wanted or talk about what I wanted.  All I did was watch my dog, Ducky, as much as possible, and I read and I napped and I did whatever I felt moved to do.

To use Abraham-Hicks language, I let go of the oars.  I just let my boat turn with the flow of the stream and I enjoyed the ride.  I got in the Vortex.

And the tree?  It kept leaning.

Falling Into Place

So over the last month, my vision of the life I desire has gotten stronger and stronger.  Law of attraction has brought to me an amazing amount of information about houses, cars, and other goodies that I want.  I keep seeing the Toyota 4 x 4 extra cab, long bed truck I want.  I keep stumbling over things that help me clarify my desires about the trips Tim and I want to take.

And as for the money?  Have I thought about that?  As little as possible.

The “what is” is that we’ve filed for bankruptcy and because of that, the creditor calls have stopped.  The amount of money we need each month is 2/3 of what it was 2 months ago.  Tim is working in 2 jobs, which he got very quickly after his temporary job with the Census ended.  Each week brings some new development that gets us closer to the financial stability we desire.

I’ve cleared so much of the dead wood in my thoughts that I’m experiencing more calm than I have in years.  I can’t say that I’m in exhilarated expectation yet, but I’m okay with calm for the moment.

Calm is working rather well for me in fact.

Last week, my mother told me she thought we should take down the tree before the fall storms come and so she and my step-dad would lend us the money to have it done.  Well, that sounded good to me.  And from my place of calm, I thought getting another quote wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Tim made one phone call that led to a guy that led to another guy who came out today.  This new guy looked at the tree and said, “Interesting.  Quite a tight spot.”  This is what all the other guys had said about why it would cost so much to remove.

I remained calm, just waiting for him to give me an estimate.  I had $500 or better in my head.  But when he said, “We can do it for $200,” I was tempted to hug him.  When he said, “We’ll get started right now,” I might have levitated a bit.

I called my mom and asked if she could get me $200 cash within a half hour.  Thrilled to be lending us $200 instead of $850, she said she’d go to the bank.  Five minutes later, she called and said that my dad had been “hiding” money, and he had $200 in a drawer and they were bringing it down. Five minutes after that, I’m not kidding, the tree was down and all the wood was stacked in a depression hidden behind brush in our yard so you can’t see it.  It looks like the tree was never there. I’ve never seen a tree fallen and cut up so fast in my life.

See how slick that works? Remove dead wood thoughts and get physical dead wood down easily.

The law of attraction can bring easy solutions to every situation.  In fact, it can bring easy situations that never require solutions because there are no problems to solve. But the law of attraction can’t bring this sort of fall-into-place ease if we’re doing the mental equivalent of flailing our arms about.  The harder we try to figure out how to do something, the farther we get from alignment with that something.

It is not our job to figure out how.  That’s up to the universe.

It’s our job to desire and allow. When you let go of figuring it out, you relax into a place of calm, a place of ease … a place where dead trees disappear in the blink of an eye.

Related Posts:

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Two Steps To Great Decisions

About Face

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Photo by Paul Schultz on Flickr.

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In the last couple months, I’ve heard, from many sources, the idea that sometimes things have to get bad before they can get good. Some law of attraction teachers suggest that the universe has to create things that you perceive as bad in order to lead you to where you want to be.

You have to hit bottom before you can go up. You need to have it all fall apart before you put it back together. You have to have a storm before you get a rainbow.

I don’t buy it.

I believe in a universe managed by the law of attraction you can go from one good experience to the next.  I think this universe can get you where you want to be without taking you through experiences that you find unpleasant.

I don’t think you have to get fired to get a better job.  Heck, I don’t even think you have to have a job to have financial abundance.

I don’t think your house has to burn down in order to be led to the perfect place to live.

I don’t think you have to go through a nasty break-up to find Mr. or Mrs. Right.

I don’t think you have to get sick before you can appreciate your life.

So why do good things often come from bad things?

I think great things grow from awful things because those awful things provide such clear contrast that they allow us to fire off a rocket of desire so pure and powerful that it’s a COME HERE NOW frequency that the law of attraction must respond to.  Does that mean you have to have that kind of extreme contrast to finally get on the same frequency as what you want?

I don’t think so.

I think the idea that it has to be hard before it’s easy is just an old belief that we like to pass around.  I think that we can make it as easy as we want it to be, but we stay in old grooves that make it hard.

Ours is an energetic journey, a thought journey, but because we have the THOUGHT that struggle and action is necessary, we create that struggle and need for action before we get where we want to go.  We create it with the belief that it’s needed.

I’d like to hear your thoughts this subject.  Do you believe that it has to get bad before it can get good?

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That Thing You Do

The Difference A Moment Can Make

Not One Single Complaint

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Photo by Paul Dex on Flickr.

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