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.
Instant manifestation. We all want it, but if we give it any intelligent thought, we know it’s generally a bad idea.
Whenever I think of instant manifestation, I remember one of the original Star Trek episodes in which the crew took shore leave on a planet where whatever they thought about happened. Some of the thoughts ended up having deadly results. With no buffer of time between thought and result, we can create quite a mess.
Still ….. instant manifestation. You want it. You get it. If we could be deliberate about our desires, instant manifestation could be pretty cool.
I know this. Because I experienced it on Sunday. (more…)
Yesterday, I set my intention: Wanted: One Fat Focus.
Since then, I’ve been thinking more about how to get it. How do I consistently create that mass of little appreciations that becomes so big and heavy it keeps my teeter-totter from moving as much?
Watching Ducky perform one of her tricks, I got the answer.
Last Friday evening, we had dinner with friends, Neil and Nancy. Ducky was invited too, and she did a couple of her tricks for them. Nancy particularly liked Ducky’s “touch it” trick. She asked, “How did you teach her to do that?”
Though it’s not a complicated trick, it is a bit of a challenge to teach to an enthusiastic puppy obsessed with food. Teaching Ducky this and other tricks requires a lot of repetition, and that, I concluded last night, is the secret to building up the heavy mass of appreciation.
When I taught Ducky to “touch it,” I started by teaching her the foundations that lead to it. I taught her “sit,” then “down,” then “stay.” With each of these commands, I used a treat to move her into the position I wanted her to be in, and once she got there, I gave her praise and the treat.
With stay, I held her in place at first then allowed her to sit or lie on her own. When I said, “stay” and she moved, I put her back in place and repeated the command. If she didn’t move, I said, “good stay,” and gave her a treat.
Once I had these in place, I started working on “touch it.” I put the treat in front of her and said stay. I said “touch it” as I picked up her paw and put it on the treat. Then I said, “Good touch it.”
We did this multiple times a day for several days, and then one day, I said, “touch it,” and she did. Once dogs learns a trick, the trick becomes second nature to them. These days, when we get out a treat, Ducky sometimes dances (on her hind legs—spinning in a circle), waves with her paw, and rolls over before you say a word.
So how do we translate this into training minds?
Deliberate Thought Training 101
Based on my ongoing success with Ducky, I’ve come up with a training program for my puppy-like brain.
It’s a four step process for teaching the brain to “like it.”
What I’m aiming for with this process is having a brain that automatically looks for something to like about every little thing I see or experience. I want my thoughts to “dance” without needing a command and “roll over” away from negative judgments and focus.
I want all this to be second-nature, done without effort the way Ducky does her tricks these days. Before I can get there, though, I need some training.
1. I figured I needed to start with a foundation. Getting to “like it” from a place of mindlessly observing what is would be like asking an untrained dog who doesn’t know how to sit or stay to “touch it.”
So the way I’m doing this is to teach myself to “sit and stay on appreciation.” I constantly put myself in the position of appreciation by saying over and over in my head, “I appreciate …. ” Then I fill in with something after that.
This isn’t as obtrusive as it sounds. I’ve found in the few hours I’ve been practicing this that I can repeat this while I work, eat, and have conversations.
2. Now that I’ve gotten a foundation, I’m moving on to putting myself in a position to “like it.” I pretend to have the mindset of an eager pup, expecting everything to be a toy, sure that the whole world is there to amuse me. With this perspective, how can I dislike anything?
If I move out of this position, I put myself back in it with an anchor. An anchor is a neurolinguistic programming (NLP) technique. It’s a physical gesture linked to a specific thought or feeling response. Many anchors are unconscious, and in fact, they become unwanted habits—like chewing on nails when anxious or needing a cigarette to concentrate. You can create anchors on purpose, though. The way to do it is to elicit the desired state, which can be done with visualization, then make the gesture while in that state.
I created my anchor by using my favorite state of appreciation—watching Ducky do something cute. While I watched her, I put my thumb up and waggled it back and forth (a cross between thumbs up and wags).
My anchor is working pretty well so far. When I shift from the eager place of “the world is a cool place,” I waggle my thumb, and I am right back in position again.
3. Now that I have my foundation and my anchor (the equivalent of me putting Ducky’s paw on the treat), I keep repeating my “command:” “I like.” Then I smile. That’s my reward.
4. And as with training a puppy, I am doing all of this over and over and over and over again.
I’ve just begun this training process so I’ll have to let you know its long-term impact. For now, though, in less than a day, I’ve seen a marked reduction in the up-down of my mental teeter-totter. Apparently, I’m trainable, because this seems to be working.
You don’t need to follow my method for getting that teeter-totter to stop popping up and down. Greg commented, after yesterday’s post, that he’s using a virtual hug and self love to weigh down the other end of the teeter-totter. Karen uses her thought clicker (one is on its way to me too, and I’m sure it will help). Whatever works!
The great thing is that as soon as you make the effort to get that teeter-totter stable, the law of attraction will bring you thoughts that match your new thought vibration. It gets easier and easier.
Have you found a way to still your thought teeter-totter? Please share it so others can give it a try too.
I love comments and welcome yours. To leave a comment, click on the “comments” link (it will say “No comments or “1 comment” or more) at the end of the tags in “Posted in” at the end of this post.
Tim and I have made a pact. For one week, starting today, we are not going to complain about anything, not one single solitary tiny thing. Not out loud and not in our heads.
Complaints are, of course, negative energy. Complaints aren’t vibrationally aligned with anything we really want.
Abraham-Hicks says:
“You have in your vibrational escrow all those things you want, and you could pick any one thing on the planet that’s going wrong or in your life and give it your undivided attention, and you could keep all of those things that you want from happening because you’ve activated such a vibration of lack over this one thing. Isn’t that interesting? Because whatever it is that you use as your excuse to offer your vibration, sets the tone for your point of attraction.
“Haven’t you noticed that the the worse it gets, the worse it gets for awhile, until you come to your senses? And the better it gets, the better it gets, until you fall back into your old habits? In other words, haven’t you noticed that you can get on a run where you’re feeling really good and things just get better and better and better and then some old person shows up in your life or something happens and you get re-focused or you watch CNN or you go to the movie on Global Warming and you have sort of a Resistance Relapse?”
In other words, every time we turn our attention to complaining, we activate resistance that keeps us from moving toward what we desire.
But we spend a lot of time complaining … about really silly stuff, generally.
I find it funny, actually, how someone like me and others I know can talk about the law of attraction and how like attracts like and how we create our reality and then two seconds later complain about something.
It’s like my friend and I are looking at a fire. I say, “If I stick my hand in that fire, I will burn my skin, and it will hurt.” My friend nods sagely and says, “That is so true. We must keep our hands out of the fire.” Then we both put our hands in the fire.
Well, this week, my hands are staying out of the fire.
Complaints don’t serve me. If I see something I don’t like, I will use the contrast to help me determine what I do like. Then I’ll think about and talk about what I like.
If others are complaining, I am no longer going to stick to the social convention of, “Oh, yes, I know what you mean,” which is generally followed by another story of complaint.
I will listen and then find a positive aspect and mention that.
So if you are someone who plans to talk to me this week or communicate with me this week, be forewarned. I’m off the complain-chain.
This is the week for comMENDing, not comPLAINing.
Let’s applaud life instead of jeering at it.
Want to join me in a complain-free week? Leave a comment and state your intention to join us in our pact. Let’s see what we can create together by commending instead of complaining.
“You’re picky about the car you drive. You’re picky about what you wear. You’re picky about what you put in your mouth. We want you to be pickier about what you think.” Abraham-Hicks.
I created this blog as a way to help me and others be picky about what we think. I wanted to see what would happen if I deliberately focus my thought on what is right in my life and what I want.
Instead, my intention to focus my thoughts this way has unleashed a torrent of thoughts about what is wrong in my life and about what I don’t want.
In other words, it has shone a spotlight on how far I am from where I want to be. I keep zeroing in on the mess I’ve made instead of the little pockets of wonder in the mess.
A reader posted a comment yesterday and included a link to a video that reminded me of what I need to screw my head on a little better and focus my thought much, much better. I’d watched the video before, but I’d obviously forgotten everything I heard.
Focus on what’s right. That’s what Abraham-Hicks emphasizes. Instead of looking at the pieces that haven’t fallen into place, we have to look at what has fallen into place.
I have trouble with this. With so many pieces of my life out of place right now, finding what’s right seems the same as finding one small glass fisherman’s float hiding in the driftwood somewhere along a 50 mile stretch of beach.
It’s like looking at a pile of 3000 jigsaw puzzle pieces and trying to find the one that has the small yellow spot on it.
So hard to focus on the good when the good seems to be overwhelmed by the bad.
BUT …
We do it all the time. I do it everyday, actually.
As you can see from the header (and if you know me, you know this), I have this incredible, joyful Springer spaniel, Ducky. Ducky truly is pure grin-inspiring delight.
[Oh wow … and talk about law of attraction. Just as I wrote that sentence, Ducky burst into the room. She and Tim were out running errands, and I thought they’d be gone another twenty minutes.]
When I watch Ducky play, I am not thinking about anything except watching Ducky play. I don’t see the room around her. I don’t think about money. I don’t think about writing. I just focus on Ducky.
So I can do it.
Ducky knows how to do it too.
In the picture, Ducky is focused on a plastic practice golf ball. She has an overflowing basket of nice toys, but these little plastic balls totally delight her. She likes to throw them then pounce on them.
She likes to paw at them.
She likes to toss them and take whatever action is needed to go get them:
Ducky doesn’t care about anything else when she has one of these balls. It’s a focus on what’s right.
Today, someone who read my last blog post told me that she was like me, someone who wanted to be a writer but hadn’t been able to achieve her goals yet.
That comment took me aback. How did I manage to convey the idea that I wasn’t yet a writer?
I AM a writer. I’m a three-times published author. I’m an ex-newspaper columnist. I am most definitely already a successful writer.
Ah, but obviously, I don’t feel like one. My last post sure made it clear that I don’t feel like one.
So what is my attraction point? What am I lined up with? I’m lined up with not yet being a successful writer.
Enough of that. I’m going to be like Ducky. I’m zeroing in on what I already have.
And that’s the path of least resistance. That’s how we align with what we want.
This morning, Tim and Ducky and I went on our walk, as usual. It was a slightly drippy morning—a few squalls moving through and the leftovers from yesterday’s steady rain dripping from the trees. We had a great hour and ten minute or so walk and were heading back to the car.
Tim reached into his pocket for Ducky’s leash.
It was gone.
The leash we carry in the forest is a simple nylon lead that Ducky’s grandpa (my stepdad) gave her for Christmas. It’s a John Deere leash. My dad got it because he has a John Deere riding lawn mower that he treats like a treasured sports car and a John Deere hat that he loves to wear (he’s 80 years old—it’s his idea of hip attire).
The leash was perfect for walks because it was small and tucked into a pocket and was just enough to control her at the start and end of our walks, at the trailhead near the street.
When we realized it was missing, Tim said he and Ducky would retrace our path and try to find it. One pass through the whole forest takes about half an hour at the pace we usually walk. Tim can go faster (since my ankle injury, I don’t move the way I used to), so I planted myself on a bench in the forest clearing and waited.
The bench, by the way, is lovely. It’s a wooden bench with a verdigris cast iron rose-patterned back. It bears a dedication plaque that reads, “Hilda Marion Glover, 1924-2007, Sit and Hear the Silence.” The greatest gift we can expect from life, I think, is to be loved as much as someone obviously loved Hilda Glover.
I was having a little trouble finding a feel good place before I sat on the bench … for reasons not worth going into (they come under the heading of NI). But as I sat there, an umbrella shielding me from the tree’s drips, my ears tuned into the forest’s pattering music, I felt myself finding alignment with the greater part of me—my nonphysical self.
I started playing out virtual scenarios in my head. I ran them like little movies: my agent calls on Tuesday to tell me she finally read my book, loves it, and plans to start submitting it to editors this week; a different agent calls and tells me she loves Puppies Interrupted and manages to sell it quickly, to the same editor who worked on Marley and Me, for a six-figure advance; Tim wins a lottery Tuesday evening, and we go see an attorney the next day to find out how best to handle the money; we move to Oregon and fix up an ocean-view house; we take a trip down the coast in September to celebrate the day Tim proposed, and he plays the Pebble Beach golf course ….
The longer I sat there visualizing these wonderful scenes, the better I felt.
Once in awhile, I’d find myself feeling not as good. I’d check what I was thinking and realize my mind had wandered back into “what is” instead of “what I want.” I’d poke my mind, and move it on to something better.
I sat there for 25 minutes. Suddenly, Ducky burst from the trees and tore down the path toward me. We had a tail-wagging reunion. Tim said he didn’t find the leash.
We walked the circuit together again (Ducky got a 2 hour and 15 minute walk this morning) and still didn’t find the leash. Someone must have picked it up. Sigh. I hope they enjoy it.
Tim said maybe it was a sign. When we move to Oregon, we plan to get Ducky an Oregon Ducks (University of Oregon) leash, so maybe we lost this one to make way for the other one. It’s a nice theory.
I miss the leash, but I enjoyed my sit. Because I had nothing else to do while I waited for Tim, I really had a chance to focus my thought.
I wonder whether just sitting and finding scenarios that feel good is more productive than DOING things that don’t feel good.
I’ve heard The Secret gurus say that you can’t sit around waiting for something good to happen. One of the speakers/writers quoted in that book (I forget which one) says that if you sit around waiting for money to come, you’ll find yourself sitting on the curb, homeless.
Abraham-Hicks might take issue with that. They say that action is great, when it’s inspired, but action isn’t necessarily required to get what we want. It’s not what we do. It’s how we’re aligned.
I was aligned in the forest today. I could feel it.
I want to feel like that more often.
I’d like to have the courage to do that instead of doing the logical things to make money.
I’m moving closer to that courage (thanks in large part to a great new friend who sends me wonderful, encouraging e-mails—in fact, I need to add that to my “I love …” list:
Paz’s e-mails
Maybe my new motto needs to be “Sit and Hear the feel good thoughts.”
Valentine’s Day seemed like a good day to add a few more things to my “I Love …” List:
That Ducky is “meeting” dogs from around the world on Twitter
Knudson Lemonade Spritzers
My body pillow
Hugs
Tim’s kisses
The smell of a dog’s feet (they smell like corn chips)
That drifting half-asleep, half-awake state where you can dream lucidly if you want to
Mission-style architecture and furniture
Arched windows and doors
Playing tennis
Playing pickleball
Playing ping pong
Playing racquetball
Hiking
Lighthouses
Ducky’s freckles
Watching toddlers waddle
Rain’s amazing percussion in the forest
The peaceful stillness in the forest
Watching Ducky and Dixie play
Laughing with friends
Making new friends
Biscuits
Romantic comedies
Giving and receiving cards
Putting treats in Ducky’s crate for her to discover (she thinks the Crate Fairy puts them there)
Learning new words
Adding things to this list
This is definitely a feel good tool. I’m finding it helpful to try and think of new things to add to it everyday.
The more I look for things to appreciate, the more things I find. And Abraham-Hicks says that, by the law of attraction, the more I appreciate, the more I’ll experience things to appreciate.
A friend told me she was making a list of things she loved. What a great idea! What better way to feel good than to deliberately think of all the things you love?
Abraham-Hicks say that the vibration of appreciation is one of the most powerfully positive vibrations you can experience. When you’re appreciating, you’re aligned with source, with your nonphysical self, and when you’re aligned, you’re a vibrational match to what you want.
So that’s what I just did; I made a list of things I love and appreciate.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Tim
Ducky
Muggins
Me
My house
All the trees in my yard
Trees in general
Privacy
Living near the ocean
The constant sound of the ocean
Rain
More rain
Even more rain
Blustery days
Laughing
Winnie the Pooh
Tigger
My memory foam/latex king-sized mattress …. Ahhhhh
My memory foam pillow
Ducky sleeping against me
Watching Ducky sleep
Watching Ducky play
Watching Ducky watch TV (she likes dog shows)
Watching Ducky do pretty much anything … (yes, even peeing)
Walking in the woods
Walking by the ocean
Finding agates
Finding shells
Finding glass floats
The glass floats I’ve already found
The big driftwood logs Muggins once carried that I saved and Tim sanded and sealed and that are in my bedroom reminding me of how wondrous Muggins was and still is (in nonphysical form)
Having my day free to do whatever the heck I want to do
Sweetheart roses
Taking pictures
Taking pictures of dogs
My laptop computer
My ability to type quickly
My ability to read quickly
My ability to think quickly
Being able to walk
The fact that Tim tells me he loves me several times a day
Having a husband who thinks I’m beautiful no matter what
Ducky’s exuberant greetings (when we’ve been apart for 5 minutes)
Petting Ducky
Watching House Hunters International on HGTV
Baking
Going out for dinner
Going out for breakfast
Going out for lunch
Miniature golf
Air hockey
Shooting arcade games
Racing arcade games
Celtic knots
My bedroom furniture
The hutch that Tim built
The mountains
Mount Rainier
Sunsets
Sunrises
Rainbows
Eagles
Mystery novels
Piano music
Listening to Tim sing
Singing with Tim
Watching Tim direct a choir
Long talks with close friends
Coffee with hazelnut cream
Dreaming about Muggins
My 22-year old 4runner, which keeps on truckin’
The Weatherwax, the forest where we walk Ducky
Good water pressure
Gas cook stove
Garbage disposals
My ceiling fan
My washer/dryer
The fact that Tim does laundry
The fact that Tim helps me clean the house
Having the house clean and neat
Clean sheets
Flannel sheets
Fuzzy navels (the drink, not lint in a portion of the anatomy)
Peaches
Raspberries
Crusty French bread
Manicotti
Mexican food
Mu shu chicken
Vegetable egg rolls
Simple gold jewelry
My celtic wedding band
My Muggins necklace (her picture in 24k gold)
Abraham-Hicks
The law of attraction
My peaceful neighborhood
Quiet evenings at home
The movie, Love Actually
The movie, Notting Hill
Interior design
Shopping for décor stuff
Sewing teddy bears
Snow
Having a nice ex-husband
Being married to a very sweet man
Having my hair washed
Thinking about the Waggery
Thinking about traveling in an RV with Tim and Ducky
Being slender (I can vaguely remember what that felt like)
My covered back deck
My small town
Being 1 minute from a grocery store
Being less than that from a beach
Getting a pedicure
Massage chairs
Writing a novel
Finishing a novel
Buying presents for friends and family
Wrapping presents
The yuletide
Decorating for the yule
Opening presents
Holy Clothing (it’s a brand, not something spiritual)
Ebay
Getting unexpected money
Winning
Success
Pancakes on Sunday mornings
Being able to see, hear, smell, feel, and taste
Cobb salad (without the bacon)
Avocados
Artichokes
Picnics
Bev Doolittle art
Strawberry/banana smoothies made with soy milk
Submarine sandwiches (with turkey, cheese and all the fixings, especially with vinegar … but NOT from Subway—they’re okay, but not my fave)
Training Ducky—especially when she GET’S IT!
The Pacific Northwest
The Olympic Mountains
Fort Warden in Port Townsend, WA
Costco
Lazing in a hammock
Hummingbirds
Butterflies
Ladybugs
Fuzzy caterpillars
Chipmunks (especially feeding them)
Feeding apples to the deer across the street from our house
Day trips
I’m making it a goal to continue to think of things to add to this list. How can I be thinking of things I don’t like if I’m scouring my head for things I love?
The mind is like an untrained dog, one left to languish in a backyard, maybe on a tether or in a kennel, not given instruction, not guided to happy purpose. Most of us are extraordinarily lazy about what we think.
I’m sure that’s why so many people, including me, are still waiting for all the things we thought the law of attraction would bring to us. Most don’t realize that the law of attraction is bringing a match to our thoughts all the time; the reason what we’re getting isn’t what we want is because the majority of our thoughts aren’t a vibrational match to what we want.
Lazy thoughts are “what is” thoughts, observation of something that’s going on, something that happened to you or someone else or something going on in the world. We think we need to talk about current events (sometimes to such lengths that if the topic were a dead horse, we’d have pulverized it into mere wisps of tissue by the time we’re done).
The truth is that unless something is what we want, unless it truly makes us glad or brings us hope or makes us feel appreciation, it is not something we need to be talking about. This includes disasters like those in Haiti—which doesn’t mean we ignore them. You can put your attention on something that needs to be done, like bringing aid to people who need it, but the attention needs to be on the solution, not the problem. Lamenting what has happened doesn’t help anyone. We have to learn to start where we are and find thoughts that bring relief.
What you focus on perpetuates.
I KNOW this.
But do I control my thoughts accordingly?
Nope.
I let my thoughts meander like that untrained dog, digging holes (coming up with terrifying scenarios about what might happen in the future), chewing on shoes and furniture (running problems through my head over and over), barking at every little noise (paying attention to anything around me, whether I like it or not).
This morning, in spite of that intention to feel good and feel happy, I woke up aware of my financial situation. I threw a choker chain over my mind and yanked it away from that unhappy line of thinking. I put it in a nice heel next to thoughts of things I like (my bed, a memory foam/latex foam combo, is very comfortable and much of the hip and back pain I had before I got it is gone; the storm we had last night blew through quickly and left behind no damage; Ducky greets me with delightful enthusiasm each morning as if I’m the most fascinating person in the world).
But as the morning went on, I realized my thoughts must have been someplace I didn’t like because I felt flat and blah. Not sad or depressed. Not consciously angry or discouraged. Just a little lethargic.
This definitely wasn’t the “I feel happy—it’s a perfect day” the way I wanted to feel.
Tim and I were walking in the forest with Ducky (another thing to feel good about), and I told him I wanted to lift my energy.
He said, “What do you want? Tell me about things you want.” (Another thing to appreciate—I have a very supportive husband!)
So I started telling him about the house I want us to buy—I talked about the rooms and the view and the property it sat on. I talked about its location and what I wanted to do to the house.
Once I started talking, I felt SO much better. I could feel my energy rising; a little surge of enthusiasm started percolating.
Since then, I’ve been able to build on that by using this “what do you want?” focus as a leash that pulls my mind back in line when it starts circling the yard of fear and sadness.
Ducky, at less than 6 months old, is better trained than my meandering mind. It’s time to change that.
I’ve got 29 days left to teach my mind enough feel-good tricks to change my life.
Making feeling good my #1 priority has changed my life! I now have a new site, Up From Splat. Come visit me at Up From Splat and get ongoing inspiration, encouragement, and resources to help you align with all your desires!!
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?
