The Secret Is Wags

A few days ago, this Abraham-Hicks quote landed in my e-mail inbox:

“When you’re vibrating purely, you get only what’s a match to that. It’s your ambivalence: ‘I like that but I don’t like that… I like that but I don’t like that..’ that keeps what you like and what you don’t like coming at you all the time. You don’t have to ‘turn the other cheek’ when you are in vibrational harmony only with what you want. Then, only what you want comes.”

This isn’t new information, obviously.  I know noticing what I like brings me more of it and noticing what I don’t like brings me more of that.  For some reason, though, this statement immediately projected an image of a teeter-totter into my head, and as I moved through my days afterward, I became acutely aware of how my thoughts constantly shifted from likes to don’t likes and how the teeter-totter in my head popped up and down in sync with my shifting thoughts.The graphic visual spotlighted how much my thoughts go up and down, up and down, up and down.  Just in the short five-minute drive from our house to the forest where I walk Ducky, for instance, I watched my thoughts do something like this:

• The cherry blossoms in that yard are lovely. UP
• They need to pull some weeds. DOWN
• I’m glad they repaved this road. UP
• Why did they leave those pieces of asphalt piled up at the corners? DOWN
• That’s where the nice people who own the Mexican restaurant live.  UP
• They’ve left their garage door open—what a mess they have in there. DOWN
• It’s a nice mild day; no rain. UP
• The mosquitoes are going to be ferocious on the back trail. DOWN

It’s amazing I’m not in a state of perpetual motion sickness.

I’ve been paying attention to my emotional guidance system to help me monitor my thoughts, and I’ve been doing SO much better than I was even just a couple months ago.  No more panic and anxiety.  I’ve been feeling good.

But when I started paying attention, I saw how much I focus on things I don’t like.  I seem to attach a dislike to every like I come up with.

I’ve even done it with Ducky, my feel good touchstone:  Ducky makes me laugh, and she purely delights me, but I sure wish she wouldn’t bring in sticks and tear them into pieces to leave on my rug.

Remember being on a teeter-totter when you were a kid?  You needed someone of somewhat equivalent weight on the other side so you could consistently pop up and down.

When I was in grade school, one of my classmates was an extremely fat girl.  Most of the kids wouldn’t play with her, so I did.  One day, she and I settled onto the teeter-totter, not thinking about how the difference in our weights was going to impact our fun.  I was a skinny kid.  She was huge.  I straddled my end.  She got on and sat down.  I shot up in the air so fast I nearly fell off.

No matter how hard she tried to push off the ground to pop up in the air herself, she couldn’t do it.  I was stuck up in the air until one of my friends came over and hung on to my end to lower it down.

Teeter-Totter Thought

The high end of the teeter-totter is our focus on likes.  The things that please us allow us to push off and fly into the air.  The things that don’t please us are the push-offs on the other end of the teeter-totter that send us back to earth.  Most of us have as many dislikes as we have likes, so the balance of our thought is half up and half down.

The law of attraction matches our experience with the balance of our thoughts.  If we’re half up and half down, no wonder we get so many things we don’t like in our lives.  We go up, and great things happen.  We go down, and lousy things happen.  Our experiences teeter-totter in perfect rhythm with our thought vibration.

What we need, I’ve decided, is a nice fat focus on likes that is so big and so heavy that it catapults us into the air and leaves us there.  That “up” position on the teeter-totter is Abraham-Hicks’ vortex.  It’s vibrational alignment with all we desire.

I know you’ve had times in your life when something you like SO commands your attention that you don’t even notice negative things.  Falling in love comes to mind.  Christmas morning, a major win in sports, landing a big job, winning money—these are all such big, heavy likes that they fire us into the air and leave us there for a time.

But how can we focus on something that feels that good when nothing that good is happening in our “what is” reality?

We can either get so adept at visualizing from a place of “I already have what I want” that we feel like we’re focusing on something good that already exists OR we can focus on so many little likes that they glom onto each other and form a big heavy blob of positive energy that acts the same way a single, heavy focus does.

I’m still working on visualizing from the place of “I already have what I want.”  I’m playing with a new visualizing technique that I’ll report on when I have a little  more practice with it.  In the meantime, though, I’m finding that just being aware of the thought teeter totter is making it possible for me to consciously look at more likes than dislikes.

Just over the last day or so, I’ve begun to see all this little likes come together to create a fat focus that is starting to weigh down the other end of my teeter-totter so I’m up in the air more often.  It’s pretty fun to feel that high (excuse the pun).

Are you aware of how much your thoughts are teetering up and down?  Pay attention.  You may need to create your own “fat focus” to raise you up.

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In keeping with the wise dog theme I started yesterday, I’m calling on the wisdom of my own dog, Muggins, today.  Muggins went from physical to nonphysical form on October 19, 2009.  She’d been with me in physical form for 17 years and 17 days.

Muggins was a 40 pound Springer spaniel who loved life.  One of her favorite parts of life was carrying big sticks.

On our beach walks, Muggins routinely carried huge sticks.  She was a master at finding the fulcrum point of the stick—even if it was way off center—and then lifting her head to carry sticks that weighed more than she did.  I was used to seeing her do this, but two of the sticks she carried were SO big (one over 8 feet long) that I had to haul them home and keep them for posterity.

After Muggins moved into nonphysical, Tim sanded the sticks and put a coat of polyurethane on them.  They’re in our bedroom, a memorial to our beloved Muggins.

Last week, a friend who knew Muggins but hadn’t been in our house before, came over.  I’d told her about Muggins’ stick carrying in the past, so I showed her the sticks.  She put her hand on one and said, “No! She couldn’t have carried these!  They’re so big!”  My friend lifted one of the sticks.  “No!” she repeated.  “That’s too heavy for a dog Muggins’ size.”

I assured her that Muggins did indeed carry those sticks, and Tim pointed out that when Muggins carried them, they were saturated with water so they were even heavier then and even bigger because he’d sanded them down since then.

Our friend was amazed.  “I believe you,” she said, “but it seems impossible.”

And so it does.  How did a small dog carry such big sticks?

She did it with joy.

Muggins LOVED carrying those sticks.  Her eyes lit up when she found one and set about figuring out how to carry it.  She carried her sticks with her head high, a prance to her walk.

When people driving by on the beach slowed and pointed at her (it really was an amazing sight), she raised her head even higher and fluttered her tail.  She was something, and she knew it.

She knew something else too.  She knew how to do the seemingly impossible.  You do it by feeling such joy for your task that you don’t do the work … the universe does it for you.

Muggins was a great teacher in my life; but I’m a slower learner sometimes.  I’m just getting her lesson.  You don’t have to exert when you act from a good-feeling place.  When you act from a good-feeling place, the universe does the work for you.

I used to take all action according to a strict AGENDA that I created from a GOAL-DRIVEN place of great DISCIPLINE.  What did it get me?  Not a whole lot worth talking about.

My work these days comes from a totally different place.  I act from a place of delight.  And if the delight isn’t there, I don’t act.  Where is this taking me?

I don’t know yet.  I’ll keep you posted.

But in the meantime, I’m sure having a good time.

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So we need to have what we want in order to get it.  Got it?

And how do we pull this rabbit out of our hats?

(Sorry, couldn’t resist the bunny reference—it is, after all, Easter …. By the way, if Ducky in her bunny ears doesn’t make you feel good, check your pulse.)

Since I had my big “By Jove, I think I’ve got it” moment, I’ve been working on how to integrate this awareness into actual practice in my life.  I know I need to be the woman I want to be in order to be her, but how exactly do I do that?

The way I do this is to know that I have already become her.  I AM her.  The moment that I decided to be this woman, I became her.

In actual physicality? No, not exactly.

But my nonphysical self became her, and my nonphysical self is where all my power lies; so that part of me is the part that matters.

It looks like we live in a physical world.  We’re surrounded by all this stuff, all these EVIDENCE of facts and things.

But all of this evidence is an illusion.

We live in a world of energy, a world of vibration.  The physical manifestations of that energy are just interpretations of all that energy and vibration.

So it doesn’t matter what we’re seeing or experiencing on the physical level.  What matters is what we are on the nonphysical level.  Where is our intention?  What have we already become?

To be happy, to feel good, I have to be who I am.  And by “who I am” I mean the woman who is already living all that I desire.

In order to do this, what I’ve been doing for the last couple days is make every move I make and every thought I think one that the ME of I am what I am would think.

There I go being confusing again.

Let’s see if I can paint a picture.

Pretend I’m Ducky.  I’m hanging out.  I see a leaf.  I want the leaf.  I pick up the leaf.  I have the leaf.  I wag my tail because I have the leaf and I’m happy about it.  I drop the leaf, and I still wag my tail because the leaf was just one way for me to be happy.  The truth is that I’m just happy.  It’s who I am.  And all I have to be is be what I am.

So on the human front, I have become Ande, the woman who has financial security and success.  I don’t need these things anymore because I have them.  I have chosen to become the truth of my I am.  I am secure and successful and happy.  And all I have to do is live consistently with what I am.

Whenever I feel bad, I know that I am not being the woman I am.  I am being some other woman, some woman from my past, one who is the product of all my old vibrations, the ones that weren’t lined up with the truth of who I am.

And what am I to do with all this evidence around me? All this physical evidence?

I see it as the light of a star.

All those lights you see in the sky at night are not real.  They are the product of a star that died a long, long time ago.  The light looks real, but it isn’t.

In the same way, the evidence of financial lack in my life right now (low account balance, debt etc) are just evidence of my old vibration, my old life.  Not real.  Evidence of lack of success is evidence of an old vibration.

The truth of I am what I am isn’t out there; it’s in here.

“I am what I am” means that I am being the real me, the me that has already achieved, in energetic form, all that I desire.  It means that I am no longer trying to be something I’m not yet.  I’m being who I am.

And what does this have to do with manifesting what you want?  Everything … and nothing.

It means everything because, by the law of attraction, when you become what you want, what you want must come.  It means nothing because when you become the I am of who you are, you are no longer trying to manifest anything.  You don’t need to.  You feel great now.

Another example.  Tim’s I am is a financially secure millionaire lottery winner.  That is who Tim is.  That is his reality.  He doesn’t need to win a lottery because he already has.  He feels like he has.  He’s as happy now as he will be when the physical reality matches up with his inner reality, the I am of his nonphysical self.

Since we want what we want to feel good, then feeling good now seems like a much more efficient way of living then trying to get things to make us feel good.  So the way to feel good is to take on the identity of the person who think you would be if you had what you think you need to have in order to feel good.

Get this in your head:  I am what I am.

Here’s something that could help:

Fast Tube by Casper

Nothing is more important than feeling good.  Feeling good is a natural by product of being the “I am” you want to be.

Feeling good becomes easy when you know you ARE what you are.

Let me know what you think.  Does this make sense to you?  Any thoughts?

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.

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By Jove, I think I’ve got it … or at least I’m getting darn close.

Jove, or Jupiter was, in Roman mythology, the king of the gods, and the god of sky an thunder.  I think invoking his name here is appropriate because the expansion of my insight into how to live the life I want feels like it is as vast as the sky and should be heralded with a drum roll the likes of which only thunder could create.

On the way home from a day trip on Wednesday, Tim and I stopped at Sears to return a lawn mower blade that didn’t fit.  Ducky and I were going to wait in the car while Tim ran in.

He picked up the blade, and I handed him the receipt.  He then decided to pick up a couple pieces of trash from the car to throw them away on his way in.  Then he looked around and said, “Oh, no trashcan.”  So he put the trash back down.

And he said, “Where’s the receipt?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I gave it to you.”

He briefly checked all his pockets.  He looked on top of the car.  He looked at the seat and the floor of the car.

It started to rain … very hard.  The wind picked up.

Tim searched more frantically.

I asked if it blew away.  He looked around.

I asked if it was under the car.  He got down on his hands and knees on the wet pavement.

I said, “You just had it.”

“I know!”

Rain drenched him.  He got back in the car and shut the door.  He sat there for a second.  Took a breath.  Searched his pockets again.

There was the receipt, crumpled up in his front pocket.  He’d jammed it way in there when he’d picked up the trash and when he’d done his cursory pocket check, he’d missed it.

He shook his head and got out of the car.

I pondered what had happened.

I’d just watched my normally calm husband frantically search all over for something that he had the whole time.

It was like looking in a mirror.

For years, I’ve been searching “out there” for financial security and success.

What exactly IS financial security and success?

Since if you asked 100 people, you’d get 100 different answers, I have to say that financial security and success are states of mind.  They are feelings that result from things being a certain way, the way a person thinks they need to be in order to have that feeling.

Make sense?

So if these things are a state of mind, then why have I been looking “out there” for them? They were with me the whole time, stuck way down in my pocket, all crumpled up.

Recently, Greg pointed me toward The Field Center, and when I read some of their material, I got the clearest understanding I’ve ever had of what Abraham-Hicks calls “vibrational escrow.”

Vibrational escrow, Abraham-Hicks say, is a sort of energetic holding place for all that we desire.  That holding place is created the minute we desire something, and the way to get what’s in the holding place is by aligning with our nonphysical selves.

I started this blog to play with the notion that all you have to do to get what’s in that holding place is find reasons to feel good.  I’ve struggled far more than I thought I would with HOW to feel good when you’re facing all kinds of things that don’t feel good.

I finally understand how to do that.

How To Feel Good

The way to feel good is to have what you want.

Huh?

Within the law of attraction is what The Field Center calls a paradox.  I’ve not heard Abraham-Hicks call it that, but their teachings certainly reflect that they’re aware of it.  The paradox is that you can’t have what you want until you have what you want.

Say again … huh?

To use Abraham-Hicks language, you can’t attract rich from feeling poor.

The paradox is in the fact that if we want something, we have an awareness of not having it.  That awareness is what keeps us from having it.  We think we’re vibrating on a match with having it, but we’re really vibrating on a match of not having it.

Think of it this way … I never think about wanting a roof over my head because I currently have one.  We want what we want because we don’t have it.

So the way to have what we want, the way to feel good, is to become a person who has what we want NOW.

In other words, I must know I hold the receipt to my financial security and success in my hand, right now.  I’m not looking for anything.  I’m enjoying having what I want.

How do you do this?  Stay tuned.  Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing to experiment with this the last couple days.

In the meantime, any questions?  Comments?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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.

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Last week, I wrote about how all the creditor calls we’ve been getting don’t bother me anymore.  I did exactly what Abraham-Hicks tells you to do with everything in your life: I found a way to get easy about it.

I couldn’t change the calls.  So I accepted them and removed my attention from them.

Want to throw out a guess at how many creditor calls we’ve had since last week?

Two.

We used to get 20 or more a day.

Ah, that feel good magic.

You get easy, and it just gets better and better.

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Yesterday, Greg, made some great comments about fear on the post, Still Complaint Free (Mostly). He quoted author, Guy Finley’s discussion of the way we embrace fear and make it our friend, thus allowing its power to unplug us from the divine energy that is meant to flow through us.

I had a realization when I read Greg’s comment.  I discovered that I am no longer fearful.

When I started this blog at the beginning of the year, I was terrified. I truly thought I was on the verge of losing my house and my way of life.  I had no idea how I’d get the money I needed to keep us going after the first of March.

I started this blog as a way to process my intention to find alignment with my nonphysical self, the part of me who knows everything is just fine and in fact has everything and is living everything, on a vibrational level, that I desire.

In the past few weeks, I have experienced huge shifts in the way I feel, and more positive experiences are flowing my way as a result.

We’ve received enough money, from writing coaching fees, a loan from my parents, and some blog donations, to keep us afloat into June. And am I afraid of what will happen after that?  Amazingly, no.  I know something will fall into place.  I don’t know what that something will be, but I know we’ll be okay.

So this is good.  I’m no longer fearful.

But …..

Yesterday evening, I was rushing to finish up some work so I could join Tim in the kitchen to fix our dinner, and I noticed I was tense.  When I got to the kitchen (it was about 7:30), I said to Tim (in keeping with our no complain rule, I was careful with how I chose my words), “I want to have a lifestyle where I can work at a comfortable pace and stop for the day before 6 p.m.  I want to work on my books, and I want to draw.  I have no interest in being a ghostwriter or marketer or writing coach.”

I really did try to keep my tone light, but my eyes filled with tears.  Why was I crying?

What was I feeling?

I stopped and checked in and discovered I was angry.  Very, very angry.

I am no longer fearful, but I’m angry about having to do the work I’m doing.  I am back in the internet marketing world, a world I deliberately walked away from at the end of 2007.  I am revamping websites, trying to drive traffic to a site, redoing sales pages, creating sales videos … all the things I consciously left behind because I didn’t enjoy them.

And now I’m pissed.  Really pissed.

How did I get back here?  Why didn’t our plans work out?

Okay, this doesn’t sound good, does it?  Doesn’t sound like vibrational alignment.

And it isn’t.  But it’s an improvement.

I’ve gone from fear to anger.  I’ve moved up some on the emotional scale.

The Emotional Scale

Abraham-Hicks’ emotional guidance scale, from the book Ask and It is Given, looks like this:

• Joy/Appreciation/Empowered/Freedom/Love
• Passion
• Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
• Positive Expectation/Belief
• Optimism
• Hopefulness
• Contentment
• Boredom
• Pessimism
• Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
• Overwhelment
• Disappointment
• Doubt
• Worry
• Blame
• Discouragement
• Anger
• Revenge
• Hatred/Rage
• Jealousy
• Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
• Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

As you can see, anger is five rungs above fear, so I’m moving up.

Abraham talks often about finding relief a little bit at a time.  It’s inadvisable, they say, to try to vault from fear to joy.  Any time you can improve your emotions just a little, you’re moving into alignment.

I have spent a lot of time at the top of the scale lately.  I get these peeks at appreciation and love and joy more and more throughout my days. But sometimes, when I look too much at what is, I slip down again.

I’m not slipping all the way to fear, though, and I call that a victory, especially given the precarious “facts” of our situation.

Those facts don’t concern me anymore.

Choosing Better Feeling Thoughts

I’m creating a new story, and my anger has shown me I’m experiencing contrast that is spurring me to be even more specific in my story.

So since I won’t complain (whining about the work I’m doing would be my old pattern, but whining is just squeaky complaining, so I can’t do that), I need to choose new thoughts.  Here I go:

Although the work I’m doing right now isn’t my first choice, I’m grateful for the contrast it’s providing, contrast that’s showing me what I really want to do.  I know I hated this type of work in the past, but I could choose to find something good about it now.  I could clean up my vibration about internet marketing and find the fun in it.  I am enjoying the networking I’ve been doing on Facebook and Twitter.  I hadn’t expected that to be fun and yet it is, so maybe internet marketing can be fun too.

Going back through my e-book has given me a sense of accomplishment because I’m remembering just how much good information is in the book, and that is giving me more confidence to sell it.

The better I feel about the work I’m doing, the faster I’ll get to the work I really want to do.  So I’m going to find the positive aspects of this work.

One of the best positive aspects is that Ducky gets to hang out with me while I work and I can pet her as much as I want.  That feels really good.  I think I’ll just focus on that for awhile.  I can’t feel anger and focus on Ducky at the same time (except when she steals food off the counter; but that’s another story).

And just like that, I’m all the way up to contentment.

And moving on up ….

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After I posted, How I Spell Relief, I received a message from a new writer friend. I’ve only corresponded with Gina for a couple weeks, but positive energy and enthusiasm radiate from her. Her attitude about life can be summed up in the title of a Facebook group she created, HELL Yes, Pigs Fly (the group is closed right now because she’s working on it, but it will be open again soon).

Regarding how to find a feeling good place when your work or efforts are being rejected, Gina wrote:

“What has helped me so much is to take complete responsibility for myself, to understand in an emotional way that I don’t HAVE to prove myself to anyone, to BE myself fully.

”Those rejection letters or any comments that sting are whatever YOU NEED them to be to validate whatever YOU NEED to feel or whatever feels comfortable to feel. There are all kinds of ways to validate fear that we all have, all kinds of ways to see failure if failure feels easier emotionally than success does. It’s about making a decision to change what feels comfortable if it’s something we’re ready to move away from.

“We repeat what we know. I had emotional abuse plugged into my love receptacle when I was a child. THAT was love for me. So, while I was anxious and determined to get away from that kind of love, I also struggled in a horrific way because THAT was my picture.

“Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to break free from an old picture and to paint a new one.

“Writing is such a personal expression. Sharing it is intensely personal. It’s hard to NOT feel it personally when someone doesn’t love what you’ve created.

“Take what feels constructive and helpful …. Leave the rest behind. You don’t NEED anything that doesn’t feel constructive and helpful. That’s just trash.

“Your journey is what matters most of all. A turn left instead of right changes your whole world sometimes. LIFE is full of wonder.”

And so it is, Gina.

Gina’s words prompted me to take a look at the picture I’ve been painting the last few years. When I looked, I wasn’t happy with what I saw. The picture was disjointed and dark, full of images that had nothing to do with the life I want to live and everything to do with my fears, resentments, and disappointments.

Tim, Ducky, and I spent yesterday evening with our good friends, Lyn and Kathy and their dog, Jake, on the beach by a fire, under a sky full of “God’s little lanterns.” While the dogs played, we humans sat by the fire and listened to the surf provide percussion for a chorus of frogs singing Spring harmony from east of the dunes. The dogs ran and barked and wagged, and we humans talked and laughed.

For over four hours, life was pure and simply perfect. Everything was right. I felt peaceful and secure and loved. I hope my friends and my husband felt the same. (I know the dogs did—they always feel that way.)

I’ve been flailing about for years trying to do things that would bring me the feelings I experienced last night. In the flailing, I’ve painted a mess.

I’m ready to paint a new picture, one that looks like yesterday evening. And what thrills me is that I don’t have to go back and redo the picture I’ve created over the last few years. I can just turn away from it and put my attention on my new canvas.

Abraham-Hicks says, “There is nothing for you to go back and live over, or fix, or feel regret about now. Every part of your life has unfolded just right. And so –now– knowing all that you know from where you now stand, now what do you want? The answers are now coming forth to you. Go forth in joy, and get on with it.”

And that is what I’m going to do.

You create your reality. What picture are you painting?

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Getting what you want requires that you feel like you have it before you get it. This is the cornerstone of vibrational matching—creating an energy vibration within that matches the external thing or experience you want.

But, say what? I have to feel good before I get the thing that’s going to make me feel good?

For many, many months, I’ve struggled with how to do this. When finances are in the toilet, your body is a candidate for the Overweight and Out-of-shape Hall of Fame, your marriage needs some serious work, and your career has disappeared into a black hole, how in the name of all that’s good are you supposed to find a way to feel good before you feel good?

“There’s too much bad stuff for me to find the good stuff,” I’ve whined too many times to count.

And so, of course, I kept getting more bad stuff.

Abraham-Hicks says, “One who is mostly an observer thrives in good times but suffers in bad times because what he is observing is already vibrating, and as he observes it, he includes it in his vibrational countenance. As he includes it, the Universe accepts that as his point of attraction and gives him more of it. So the better it gets the better it gets. Or the worse it gets the worse it gets. While one who is a visionary thrives in all times.”

Even though I have a great imagination and have visualized my heart out, I am a World Class Observer. I may visualize; but in between, when I’m knocking about in the world, I’m looking at what is.

So obviously, when I look at the mess I’ve created, I keep getting more mess.

In the last couple weeks, I’ve started getting the hang of finding that speck of feel good in the big, bad, lousy, feel yucky pot of bean chili that is life.

I’m getting the hang of it because I’ve started seeing the power of it.

It’s like cayenne pepper vs. chili powder

When you make chili, if you want it to have enough flavor, you have to dump in a lot of chili powder. A teaspoon or two won’t do. You need a ¼ cup or so, maybe more in a big pot to get nice robust flavor.

Chili is like negative focus. It takes quite a bit of negative focus to create really big messes in life. You have to REALLY linger over worry, anger, or fear to get a nice flavorful pot of Lousy Stuff.

Now cayenne pepper is another story. It only takes a pinch of cayenne to make a BIG impact on a pot of chili. Cayenne is powerful stuff.

Cayenne is the feel good thoughts in life’s chili pot. It only takes a little bit of positive focus to start turning things around. And because cayenne is so potent, you only need to find one tiny little good thing to focus on for it to start having an impact on every aspect of your life.

I’m really starting to get this (I’ve been reading about it for years, but it takes my belief system and daily activities a while to catch up). I’ve been making it too hard.

I thought I had to get in a feeling place of being rich and thin and thrilled to pieces about my husband and totally successful in order to make changes in my life. All that, of course, in the glop I was in, was too much to do.

All I really have to do is find one thing to focus on that makes me feel good. One thing. (I guess Curly had it right in City Slickers—it really is about one thing.)

That one thing acts like cayenne and starts touching everything in my life.

I’ve been using my dog, Ducky, as my one thing. Ducky totally delights me. She makes me SMILE. And I’ve built on that one thing by creating a blog about Ducky and my last dog, Muggins, and all the other joyful dogs out there. The Joyful Springer has become my cayenne. When I’m tempted to look at all the other things that are wrong, I return my attention to Ducky and The Joyful Springer (sounds like a fairy tail, er, tale, doesn’t it?)

And things are getting better. I’ve manifested some money, some reduction in our debt, some new supportive friends. I’m enjoying my husband more, and he’s forgetting less than usual. I’m eating less food without trying to because I’m just feeling so much better. And my career? I’m not concerned. It will follow along in its own time.

The other night, Tim and I watched Brigadoon. There’s a great line in that movie: “… sunshine can peek through a wee hole.”

Good thoughts and the vibrational frequency that goes with them can poke through a wee hole too. It takes just that wee hole to allow alignment to start flowing between you and your nonphysical self, the self that already stands in vibrational alignment with all you desire.

I’ve started focusing on that wee hole. And I think the hole is getting bigger.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on finding the specs of good in your life. 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.

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Okay, so I’ve found relief on the subject of debt. Now I need to find relief on the subject of creating an income, and more specifically, on the subject of selling my books.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from an agent who had requested a partial of my novel manuscript. She said she enjoyed it and it was very well-written but that she didn’t connect with the main character as much as she’d hoped.

Funny thing, that. My old agent, who decided not to represent the manuscript, said one of the things she did love about it was how compelling the main character was.

As you can see, it’s not about the facts. The facts vary from person to person.
Over the last week or so, I’ve received several rejections to my manuscript query letters. These letters have really been upsetting me. I’ve felt the grinding clench in my belly whenever I saw one.

Two days ago, though, when I got a rejection, I caught myself feeling bad and deliberately went looking for a better thought: “Okay, so I don’t like having my work rejection. What do I want? I want to find an agent who loves my manuscript and the way I write and is enthusiastic about representing me. I don’t need to agonize over each rejection because the universe will bring me the right agent at the right time when I just relax and allow.”

I reminded myself of a story a friend told me last week. She lives in New York City and has to hail cabs on a regular basis. She said she and her sister used to get very upset when cabs would pass them by, but my friend’s mother would tell them not to get upset because the right cab would come along. My friend said that she learned her mom was right. Often, when a cab finally did pick them up, they’d take my friend and her sister to their destination and not accept payment for the fare.

I know that my writing success isn’t about my talent so much as it’s about my vibration. In the past, I’ve always gotten upset by every rejection I’ve received. Obviously, this upset was a disallowance of what I wanted. Every time I got upset, I pushed away acceptance. And I got another rejection. And got more upset. And got another rejection…. And so on and so on and so on.

Abraham-Hicks says we’re never standing still even when it feels that way. We’re never stuck. We’re just creating the same thing over and over.

So I’m learning to relax about rejection. When I got the one yesterday from the agent who couldn’t connect with my main character, I only felt the slightest tension and annoyance before I caught myself and said, “I appreciate the contrast to remind me that I want an enthusiastic agent. The right agent is out there. In the meantime, I appreciate my ability to write and the fact that I keep being told that my writing is good.” And I could feel the relief.

So how do I spell relief? F-O-C-U-S. I focus on a good-feeling thought or experience. And I feel relief.

Are you finding ways to release resistance to what you desire? I’d love to hear your story.

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When you’re in the kind of financial mess we’re in, you get a lot of creditor phone calls. Our phone rings a couple dozen times a day … all credit card companies wanting their money. Who blames them? I want to give them their money; truly I do.

The credit card debt consolidation company we’re working with has advised us not to talk to any of these companies because the companies are known for harassing and bullying people, and all of our companies have been notified that the consolidation company is now our spokesperson for negotiating settlements. So we don’t answer these calls.

We’ve blocked some of them, but they use dozens of numbers. They call our home phone and our cell phones.

For months, this has been a HUGE source of stress for me. Every 30 minutes or so, the phone ring, and our helpful phone system announces, in it’s mechanical female-sounding voice, “Call from credit card services,” or “Call from toll free” or “Call from [name of company].”

It only took a couple of weeks of this before I started tensing every time the phone rang. I could feel the fear all through my body. Roiling stomach. Tight shoulders. Clenched jaw. The sensation of someone sticking a vacuum cleaner tube down my throat and sucking the air from my lungs.

I have always had great credit. I’ve been very careful about that. The only debt I thought I had (until I found out that Tim had been keeping all this credit card debt from me) was our mortgage. I don’t know how to be okay with being in this situation. It goes against who I am.

In other words, I have HUGE resistance to being in this situation. I HATE knowing that my credit is trashed. To use Abraham-Hicks terms, the calls pull me out of the Vortex, out of alignment.

I now know what it feels like to experience that old cliché, the wolves are circling. Although … I like wolves. So let’s say sharks. These companies definitely seem like sharks to me.

Of course, I’ve been aware that my reaction to these calls is resistance, and I know that I’m most definitely NOT in alignment when I feel all those negative feelings about the calls. But I haven’t been able to change the way I responded.

Until now …

This morning, the phone rang while I was eating breakfast. It was one of those calls. Most of these calls are hang-ups. But once in awhile, someone leaves a message. When someone leaves a message, we hear it being recorded.

So I listened to a woman leave a message about the “business” we have with them and “opportunities” we need to discuss. I kept eating my breakfast, and when the message ended, I noticed something.

I wasn’t tense.

I wasn’t upset.

In fact, I was totally calm.

Hmm.

I hadn’t really noticed anything changing over the last several days, but it seems I’ve been making a shift about how I respond to these calls.

I thought about what I’d just listened to. Why didn’t it upset me?

I realized it didn’t upset me because I’d somehow disconnected the meaning of the call from the sound of the call. I’d heard the voice and the words, but I hadn’t hooked those words to anything else.

It was just a voice on the answering machine recorder.

Aha!

There it is.

This is the answer to how we can be selective about what we pay attention to.

In 1964, two psychologists, Colin Blakemore and G.F. Cooper, set out to test selective perception and as scientists are fond of doing, they decided to use innocent critters to do it. They put newborn kittens in one of two environments. One environment had only horizontal lines and the other had only vertical lines. The kittens spent five months in these environments.

When the five months were up, the kittens were removed from their limited environments. And guess what? The kittens that saw only vertical lines for five months bumped into horizontal things as if they couldn’t see them. And vice versa for the kittens who had seen only horizontal lines. The scientists had trained selective perception into these poor kittens.

The same thing has happened to us. We have learned selective perception. Through our life experiences, through what the media bombards us with, through beliefs and instructions from parents, teachers, friends, and others, we have come to see our environment in a certain way.

Sometimes the way we process our world serves us. It serves us if it makes us feel good.

More often, the way we process our world limits us. It limits us if it makes us feel bad.

Because of my background regarding credit and creditors and debt , I’ve been perceiving all these phone calls in a negative way. I’ve processed them as harbingers of doom, symbols of failure, badges of shame. No wonder I had all those physical reactions to them.

It wasn’t the CALLS that were the problem. It was my thought about the calls.

It went something like this: A creditor is calling us. I hate that we have so much debt. How could Tim have done this to us? I feel like such a failure. What if we can’t pay the debt off? What will happen to us? We could lose our house ……

One thought hooks to another and another and soon I have this train streaking through my mind: The Doom Train. Sounds like a movie title; all it needs is a little tag line: “Be afraid; be very afraid.”

Probably because of my commitment to feeling good and my pact to give up complaining for a week, I didn’t allow myself to make all those negative connections when I heard the call today.

Instead of using that old “train of thought,” (that’s one cliché that has a lot of truth in it), I let my thought be a little solitary pump car. You know those little railroad maintenance vehicles that have the handles you pump up and down to move the little cart down the railroad track?

That’s what my thought was. A solitary little thought: “Well, there’s a creditor call.”

That was it. No connecting thoughts. No Doom Train.

Wow.

Very cool.

If I can do that for these calls, can’t I do it for everything else too?

I really can choose what I pay attention to.

In this case, I just paid attention to the voice on the machine, and I didn’t allow myself to linger on the words or all the meaning I usually attach to the words. And as soon as the call was over, I returned to focusing on my breakfast, which I was enjoying.

Whew! This has been a long post.

But figuring out how to turn my thoughts into pump cars instead of railroad cars hooked one to the other feels like a breakthrough.

It’s going to be so much easier to feel good when I don’t have to attach one bad thought to another.

How about it? Wouldn’t you like to turn your negative thoughts into pump cars? One thought = just a little pump car. It rolls on by. It means nothing. It’s gone.

If we’re going to create trains with our thought, why not create positive trains? Instead of a Doom Train, I want a Happy Choo-Choo. Don’t you?

Now that I’ve made it my intention, I know the law of attraction will help out and bring me more good thoughts.

What kind of train do you have chugging through your head?

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