I’ve pretty much always been a die-hard fan of the idea that action is what brings results (not surprising considering the world we live in operates on this idea for the most part). First, you plan and set goals. Next, you employ discipline by taking action towards those goals. Finally, you react to circumstances and with luck and flexibility you will meet your goals and get results. It’s completely logical and very satisfying because there’s a lot of control in that process.

There’s a lot about that process that did not produce feelings of happiness for me though. Many times, the whole planning thing eluded me because I didn’t actually know what to do or how to plan for what I wanted. Often the action that I thought I should take wasn’t fun or reinforced a story that didn’t feel right to me. Sometimes even if I had planned and taken action, the results didn’t come or didn’t conform to my expectations. I began to believe that there was something wrong with how I was approaching the process or with my discipline or with the goals I had set. I lost confidence in my intuition and got stuck in a big “I don’t know” cycle: I don’t know how to plan for this, I don’t know what steps to take, I don’t really know what I want, so how can I plan or take action, if I can’t take action I can’t go anywhere, I’m stuck but the only way to get unstuck is to do something, etc. Yuck!

Lately, though, I’ve discovered that the most liberating, happy-making thought I can have is “I don’t know.” It’s a big leap, I realize, but the reason “I don’t know” is so hard is that typically we attach fear to it as if not knowing will bring us misery and only knowing will bring us what we want. But what if we don’t have to know anything? What if good things can happen to us without knowing how and when they will come and without knowing exactly what we want? What if doing something is beside the point? (How does that thought make you feel? A little scared at not having control over the process maybe? Good! That’s exactly where I’m poking you. Poke. Poke.)

The Law of Attraction (1. Ask, 2. Answer, 3. Receive) says that if you ask for something and then come into alignment with it, you will have it every time. At no point during this process do you have to know anything.

Step 1 is asking, which we do all the time anyway. Even if we don’t know exactly what we want, we are always asking for more happiness. I’d like more money because then I’d be happier. I’d like to be healthier because then I’d be happier. I’d like to be in a great relationship because then I’d be happier. When we’re faced with contrast in our lives we are noticing what we don’t want and asking for a situation that makes us happier. If you know something specific that will make you happier, great! But you don’t have to know for good things to come into your life.

Step 2, the how/where/when, is completely and utterly out of our control. And what a relief that is! Let’s compare thoughts for a minute. Which feels better: “I can’t get what I want unless I know how or when it will come to me.” or “I don’t have to know or worry about how or when things I want will come to me.” “If I don’t plan and stick to a plan for getting what I want, what I want will never come to me.” or “The plan for getting what I want has already been taken care of, all I have to do is be happy.” For step 2, not knowing is better! Even if we can think of five different ways what we want could come to us, attention to those thoughts put us out of alignment with the hundred other ways that would work. Why not embrace something that is beyond our wildest dreams? (See how fun that thought is? What comes to me will be beyond my wildest dreams!)

Step 3 is coming into alignment with what we want. Here’s something fun: by rejoicing in “I don’t know” you’re at least halfway there. “I don’t know” has so much baggage attached to it usually. (I don’t know: but I should; and it scares me; and not knowing will keep me from getting what I want; but other people do and not knowing makes me less or dumb; and there’s only a limited amount of time to figure things out.) If we can say, “I don’t know and I’m glad I don’t know because it makes my life so much easier,” we’ve knocked a big obstacle to happiness out of our way.

The tricky (and awesome) part of Step 3 is that we can’t work or worry our way into alignment. Thinking, “I need to work on that” creates an out of alignment vibration. So does thinking or worrying that we need to be better or more or different than we are. What brings us into alignment is feeling happy. What brings us into alignment is feeling content. If our reaction to wanting more is “Woohoo! I’ve just asked for more and now it’s coming!” we’re in alignment. If our reaction to wanting more is, “What do I do to get what I want?” we’re not in alignment. We don’t do anything, the Universe/Source/God does all the doing. We get to focus on being happy and the only action for us to focus on is the action that makes us feel eager or passionate or excited or content. Yes, that’s right, we can come into alignment with anything we want by petting puppies or playing with kittens.

Now, I’m not saying that if we enter a puppy vacuum where all day is playing with puppies people will knock on our doors with handfuls of cash (although I guess I’m not ruling it out, because Hello! Doggy Day Care). I’m saying that if the only thing we care about focusing our attention on is things that bring us joy then we will be inspired to do things that will bring us what we want. We won’t have to struggle or force ideas or pound the pavement. We will just play and be inspired and let our world move around us to bring more and more and more happiness into our lives.

If thinking about the future makes you unhappy, focus on the now. Instead of worrying about what will make you happy in five years or five months or five days, think about what will make you happy in five seconds or five minutes or five hours. Will taking a break or going for a walk or eating a candy bar or calling your best friend or petting a kitten make you happy in five minutes? Do it and appreciate the fact that by doing it you’ve moved that much closer to everything you could ever want. Recognize that being happy in five years starts and ends with being happy right now, right this second. Everything else will take care of itself.

Here are some affirmations that will help us own “I don’t know,”:

• “I don’t know how, but everything will work out.”
• “My life is so exciting because I don’t know how happiness is going to pop up next in my life.”
• “I’m so relieved I don’t have to manage all the details of my happiness.”
• “I’m grateful that I can delegate the logistics of the manifestation process to the Universe.”
• “It’s so fun to focus on being happy rather than figuring out the pesky details of things.”
• “Every day something wonderful I never imagined comes to me.”
• “When I concentrate on things that make me happy rather than things I “should” be doing my life is so much easier.”

This post was cross posted from the Uncover Your Bliss Blog.

There’s a great post over at The M.A.P. Maker about thought redirection.

Have you ever tried not to think of something, only to have that something dominate your thoughts? There’s a famous experiment where researchers told the subject to try not to think of a white bear and then had them blurt out whatever came into their mind over the next five minutes.

What dominated their thoughts? You got it. White bears.

Here’s an article that suggests it’s the same with our negative thoughts. Trying not to think those thoughts will only make them breed like bunnies.

The trick, according to the article, isn’t suppression, it’s redirection…

For those of us on the positive thinking path, we’re acquainted with the spiral of negative thinking. We believe that positive thinking creates good in our lives so when we have negative thoughts we worry that we’re undermining that and then by thinking that we’re undermining positive thinking we’re making it worse which leads to being upset which leads to us thinking it will be worse etc. etc. etc.

The article referenced in the post has a great alternative to help snap us out of our negative thoughts: ask yourself a question (specifically about how you can turn the situation around or about what your goals are). I would take this idea further by suggesting that you turn the situation around. Whatever subject you’re feeling negative about, you can redirect those thoughts by thinking, “This situation is a blessing because …” or “This situation is helping me learn something about myself because …”

I love this idea for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a constructive way to let go of our negative thoughts and/or face our fear. If we run away from our negative thoughts instead of trying to figure out why they’re there, they just take up that much more attention (often in the background, churning away). If we can turn them around and look at things in a more positive light, the fear and negativity will dissipate before we spend too much time on them. Second, the more you look for the blessing in the curve balls life throws at you, the easier it will be to find blessings all around you. Things that would typically phase you become opportunities for growth and passion.

My go to blessing is that the contrast in our lives helps us ask for what we want. In other words, every time we see or experience something we don’t want, we ask for what we do want. And the Universe always says yes.

What blessings are around you?

Cross-posted from the Uncover Your Bliss blog.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of obligation a lot recently. I’ve been reading a lot of Body Acceptance blogs lately and when the subject of weight or health comes up the idea of obligation goes hand and hand (more on this in a minute). I thought about what a relief the thought, “I don’t have to be or do anything unless I want to,” has been for me. I remember what a relief it was when someone told me that and I got it. It was like I had their permission to be me. And I had to step back and really think about why I needed permission to let go of obligation like that.

Here’s what I’ve come up with: I think the reason we need permission to let go of a lot of obligation in our lives is that the obligation did not come from inside of us in the first place. We don’t inherently want to make ourselves miserable to look or be a certain way, but there is typically a lot of pressure to do so. So much pressure, in fact, that we feel like we’re failing if we don’t conform to the standards that other people have set for us. If someone sets new standards that are easier for us to take steps towards we feel relief because they have given us permission to take an easier path. Somehow, what we really think gets mixed up in these standards and we lose part of ourselves to the process.

So. This post is about increasing our awareness of our perceived obligations and letting them go. We’re allowed to be who we are right now, all the time, without anyone else’s input. I’m going to give examples of obligations I’ve found in myself and others and then give us permission to let them go.

Body Obligations
You don’t have to be fat or sick to appreciate these—body obligations are some of the strongest imposed by society today. There is a monumental push for us to be super thin. Thin is typically a benchmark for beauty, health, and class. Fat is typically a benchmark for ugliness, illness, poverty. I’m here to tell you, that fat or thin is just a condition of body. It’s not an indication of beauty or health or economic status. Neither is it an indication of morality, personal strength, or intelligence. Deep down most of us know this, but because we’re barraged by the message that thin = good and fat = bad multiple times on a daily basis, it’s easy to forget.

No one has ever proven that fat people eat more than thin people. This perception has been shaped by media and their manipulation and portrayal of what being fat means. There is a preponderance of evidence that shows that health is a determination of lifestyle rather than weight. Thin people who never exercise and eat crap are just as unhealthy as fat people who live the same kind of life. Likewise, fat people who eat nutritious foods and exercise on a regular basis are just as healthy as thin people who do the same (and actually there are studies that suggest extra fat helps with a variety of illnesses from cancer to diabetes—yes that’s right, diabetes—and helps people recover from heart attacks). Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. Right now, thin is held up as an ideal for beauty, but if you’ve seen art or studied history you know this certainly wasn’t always true. The truth is, beauty can be found everywhere in anything if we just look for it.

So you knew this was coming, but you don’t owe it to anyone to be thin. In fact, you owe it to yourself to give yourself a break about what you weigh or how you look. Some magic number on a scale isn’t going to keep you happy for long because as humans we are always striving for more and to be better. If weight is an marker for happiness then we would always be chasing a number rather than being present in our physical bodies and listening to what they’re telling us. You’re allowed to be happy no matter how much you weigh.

Here’s one you might not have seen coming: you don’t owe it to anyone to be healthy either. Just as there is a cult of thin, there’s an obvious cult of health. I’ve seen many people in fat activist circles who push being healthy as an acceptable excuse for being fat. “Don’t hate on me because I’m fat—I’ve got great cholesterol and blood pressure. And I exercise a lot and love salad.” I think the cry should be, “Don’t hate on me because I’m fat. I’m a person with a particular body type making my way through this world and my body type and lifestyle aren’t hurting you.”

Life is about what makes each of us happy. If what gives me good thoughts and makes me happy right now is that I’m not going to worry about what I eat and how much I exercise because I know nothing can hurt me if I don’t let it, then that’s how I’m going to live my life. If what gives me good thoughts is that I love the way my body feels when I move and I love the way I feel when I heat nutritious food then that’s how I’m going to live my life. And either choice is completely valid. The only voice that needs to be heeded is the voice inside of us when it’s telling us how to be happy. You’re allowed to be happy no matter how healthy you are.

Life Choice Obligations
That said, you don’t owe it to anyone to be happy. If you want to be miserable and see the evil or bleakness in everything than go right ahead. No one can make the choice to be happy for anyone but themselves. You are not weak or stupid or deficient if you need to be upset. It is a life choice and a set of circumstances just as any other state of being.

I’m assuming though, if you’re reading this blog—one dedicated to finding bliss that is—that you do want to be happy. We’re all going to encounter people who have an idea of what will make us happy. (Hello! This is the blogger who is giving you suggestions about what will make you happy.) Many of them really want to see us happy and have big hopes for us and make suggestions based on what they think or have experienced. Sometimes, other people can see things for us that we can’t see because we’re emotionally invested in our current situation. Even so, we need to take steps that are accessible to us based on where we are right now.

So the question to ask is what will actually make us feel better than we are feeling right now? Not what should make us feel better, but what actually will make us feel better. Here’s a bunch more things that may be on your “should” list that you’re not obligated to do:

You don’t owe it to anyone to:

• go back school,
• have a high powered job,
• have a low powered job,
• have lots of money,
• be poor,
• be smart,
• be beautiful,
• have certain things,
• be “good”,
• be “bad”,
• think a certain way,
• agree,
• be different,
• be cheerful,
• be sad,
• be a great mother/family member/employee,
• [insert your own here].

         

 

You are the only one who knows what will make you happy. If you’re working towards something and it makes you feel like crap, that is not what will make you happy, because, wait for it … it’s not making you happy. If you think you “should” be doing something because it will make you happy, but the thought that you “should” do it is making you miserable, stop thinking that thought and do and think what actually gives you a feeling of happiness or relief. Here are some examples—think about which thoughts feel better to you:

“I should go to school so I can get a better job.” Or “I love my job.” Or “I can find a new one that I’m great at right now” Or “I would love to go back to school so I can learn new things and live the life of a student.”

“I should lose some weight.” Or “I love myself no matter how much I weigh.” Or “My lifestyle is really fulfilling to me.” Or “I’m looking forward to moving my body because it makes me feel great.” Or “I’m really happy to be me in all my uniqueness.”

I may not know you personally, but I can tell you with 100% certainty:

You are awesome. You’ve had so many interesting experiences, made fantastic choices, and are an incredible manifester. You are someone I’d like to know. You know what makes you happy and are completely capable of managing your own life. Your body is a wonderful machine that helps you experience the world in a way that only you can. You have it in you to live a joyful and fulfilling life and you do things every day to help make that happen. The only person you owe anything to is yourself.

This post was cross posted from the Uncover Your Bliss Blog

I’ve added a bunch of new links to the sidebar under “Body Acceptance.” on my Uncover Your Bliss blog.  The abundance of resources and support for this topic is overwhelming (in a good way). Here are a few I want to highlight:

12 Steps to Health at Every Size
Health at Every Size is a way of life that focuses on how you’re feeling (sound familiar?) and making friends with your body instead of what you weigh or what body type you have.

Good With Cheese
This is one of my new favorite blogs because it is about a woman’s journey to listening to and accepting her body. And because she’s hilarious.

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty
Here’s an oldie but a goodie that is worth a re-read (every. freakin’. month.).  It’s about how we don’t owe prettiness to anyone.  We only owe happiness to ourselves.

Here are some particularly good posts that I’ve come across recently (they may not have actually been written recently, but they’re new to me.):

Crush-Worthy
This right here sums up one of the best thing about participating in the Health at Every Size movement: The joy that comes with a lovely realignment in priorities.

You Won’t Go to Hell Because it Tastes Good
This post challenges us to remove moral judgment from what we eat.

I dare you
The Rotund dares us to go an entire day without thinking or saying negative things about our bodies.

The past month kicked my ass.

It’s hard for me to type it, and then copy it into Wordpress, and then publish that. Here I am, the self-appointed Queen of Positive Thinking and then events conspire to knock me down and question everything in my life. To say the least, it’s been a humbling experience. Less than a week after I wrote a post Titled (oh merciless irony!) Doubts:

Stop struggling. Stop clawing. Stop working. Let go. Get out of your own way, stop making things more complicated than they are (which is not at all). Do what comes into your mind to do, when it comes into your mind. Trust that the worst possible thing that could happen to you will always be the best possible thing that could happen to you. Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is. The Universe always says yes to what you think and ask.

Stop looking outside of yourself to find happiness. That means stop waiting for people and things and money and situations. Let them go. Turn “what is” into the best day of your life. Turn your focus inside…

I was facing a situation that shook me to the core of everything I have become. The details aren’t really important—I can easily explain them away, put a positive spin on them, change them into a blessing, etc. What’s important is how they affected me: I was in a state of complete despair. I mean that literally—I was at a point where I had no hope, I was angrier than I remember ever being, where I felt the last three years of my life were a complete waste, where I felt completely spiritually abandoned, where the only thing that felt real to me was that despair. Everything I gained since I moved to Colorado felt like a joke, and once I started questioning a few things, everything became questionable. My mother called it the Dark Night of the Soul, but I called it a big steaming pile of poo.

My words about letting go and stopping my struggles and finding happiness inside were taunting me. I had even printed them out along with the affirmations below them and hung them on the wall behind my computer before everything broke open. When my crisis began, I would glare at them in defiance and think, “I’m amazed I have friends if this is the kind of crap I’ve been saying to them. I’m a jackass.” I came face to face with exactly how hard it is to hear those things when times are tough.

My mother, going through a slightly less traumatic but still difficult crisis of spirit herself, kept trying to talk me down. “There’s a reason! There’s a reason! Something’s coming. You’ll be ok. Just surrender and let go.” And the core that is intrinsically who I am desperately wanted to believe that. The fiery ball of resentment that had taken me over kept demanding, “Less talk! MORE RESULTS!” And I went into that spiral of bitterness that results from fear that being upset was just making everything worse, but who cared if I was questioning everything I believed in. My whole existence became that spiral. I didn’t even know how to live my day much less live my life. It felt like a failure of staggering proportions. Here I was, completely and utterly incapable of following my own advice and what was worse, my ever-reliable brain couldn’t figure out how to move on.

So I’ve been recovering from that. And I wish I could say that I magically got everything back and here I am in happyland again, la la la. It’s not true though. I got beaten down so far and became so tired in all four of my bodies (physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual) that I had no choice except move on. Well that’s not true, I had a choice: I could either stay upset and do nothing and feel nothing or I could just put one foot in front of the other and make little choices to make myself feel better. It was time to take my own advice by doing what I could in any given moment to make myself feel better because I couldn’t live feeling bad all the time anymore. Things are the way they are and I can either live with joy and hope or I can be sad and bitter. And since I made the decision that I was done being sad, the joy and hope have started filling the empty spaces. What a wonderful affirmation, no?

So here’s my revised plan for letting go–this is how I’ve convinced myself to join the land of the (happy) living again:

1. There’s nothing to figure out. There’s just me and how I’m feeling and how I’m reacting to my life.
2. There is only now. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow will take care of itself.
3. I am always allowed to feel, to think, to eat, to move, to say whatever/whenever/however I want.
4. Affirm that my intuition will never fail me, even if it leads me in painful directions.
5. Tell myself over and over (whether I’m feeling it or not): The Universe always says yes.

 
Yes, the past month kicked my ass, but I’M BACK!

This post is cross-posted from the Uncover Your Bliss blog.

So you’ve been working hard reaching for better thoughts and facing your fears. Or maybe you’ve been working hard at thinking about reaching better thoughts and facing your fears. But things still kind of suck, but you don’t want to think about how they suck because that would just make it worse right? But if you’ve been working hard and things still suck at some point they either have to turn around or you will start to doubt that you have control over things after all. And you really, really don’t want to doubt things. But they keep creeping in and just when you thought they were going to get better, they kind of got worse.

So then you wonder if this is the “healing crisis” you’ve heard about—where during the healing process, things get worse before they get better because you’re getting at core beliefs. Healing or not, it’s definitely a crisis. You’ve got bills to pay and work to do and a life to live and what if this whole line of reasoning is bullshit? And then you struggle to nip that line of reasoning in the bud. But damn, it’s not fair how easy it is to slip into a terror spiral, but how hard it is to claw your way to a positive thought. Why is that anyway? And while you’re on the subject, why are doughnuts really bad for you, but twigs and leaves are great?

“Why can’t things be easy?” you ask. Where’s your found winning lottery ticket? Where is your miracle? How long do you have to work at being happy before you’re actually happy? How long do you have to pay for old mistakes? Why can’t you watch The Secret or read Think and Grow Rich and then automatically get it and never have to struggle again? Why couldn’t you remember what you knew before you were born? Why are you so far from where you want to be? How long are you going to have to imagine where you want to be instead of looking around at what is?

If that sounds even remotely familiar, I have an answer for you. It may not be what you want to hear, you may wish you knew me in person so you could drive to Denver and smack me. That being the case, I’ll work up to it by saying that all of those questions are my questions. So if they’re familiar to you, know that we are soul mates. The answer is a poem dedicated to me. So here it is:

Stop struggling. Stop clawing. Stop working. Let go. Get out of your own way, stop making things more complicated than they are (which is not at all). Do what comes into your mind to do, when it comes into your mind. Trust that the worst possible thing that could happen to you will always be the best possible thing that could happen to you. Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is. The Universe always says yes to what you think and ask.

Stop looking for outside of yourself to find happiness. That means stop waiting for people and things and money and situations. Let them go. Turn “what is” into the best day of your life. Turn your focus inside. Pretend for a moment that you don’t want any more money or things or people or particular situations. Got it? Can you see it? Now what can you do to be happy? Is it going to school or going to Paris or doing yoga or getting a kitten or quitting your job or singing or saying a prayer? What do you want? When you’re clear on that, do what you can (that’s important) and believe the resources to do the rest will come to you. Know they are coming. Be excited about the delivery. (Try not to track the package.)

Here’s how you let go:

• “I always get what I want, it’s like magic.”
• “I just think about things that will make me happy and they appear.”
• “I never know how something is going to come into my life, but finding out about the trip is part of the fun.”
• “The entire Universe realigns itself to bring me what I want.”
• “I don’t ever have to feel bad.”
• “Today is the best day of my life.”
• “Thinking happy and positive thoughts is really easy for me.”
• “I know I will always be taken care of.”
• “My life is more fun now that I don’t have to control everything that happens in it.”
• “It’s exciting when challenging things happen to me—they show me how to dig out resistance.”
• “I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next!”

This post is cross-posted from the Uncover Your Bliss blog.

 

As you might now if you’ve read anything I’ve written, I am all about abundance these days. I want to surround myself with people and things that make me feel good. I want to live with the assurance that if I release myself to the creative process of life, everything I want will come to me. I wasn’t always this way though coming from the extended family that I did—who often celebrated how long they’d had something rather than it’s functionality or condition. I very much had the mentality that if it worked we used it. I often “made do” with many of the things in my life because they were there and there was no point in spending money to buy something that was better or prettier when what I had worked just fine.

Can you see how “making do” has an energy of stagnation and lack? Now, I’m not talking about the beat up pair of shoes that you love and make you feel like you can walk a million miles when you’re wearing them. That has an energy of love. I’m talking about the things that you’re keeping around just because they work, and you’re having a hard time justifying getting one that is more pleasing because it seems like a waste of resources. This is where I circle back around to the title of this post: I think it’s really important to surround ourselves in aesthetically pleasing things–whatever that means for each of us.

If you read almost any book on organization or motivation, it’s going to tell you that you have to find ways to want to do things. If you’re trying to organize, that means buying baskets and folders that you want to touch and see around the house. Maybe it means finding some fun pens you love to hold and use and see their ink on paper. Have you ever noticed that when you encounter people who have a hobby or a career they love, they have surrounded themselves with the fun gadgets and accoutrements that go along with their activities? When you go over to someone’s house who clearly likes to entertain, they typically have pretty dishes and glasses (not necessarily expensive, but pleasing nonetheless). Families who like to spend time in the living room will often have big, smooshy couches that make you want to dive right in.

My point is, those things display the passion and joy of the people who own them–even more, those things help fuel the passion and joy for those people. I’ll give you an example. I love to cook and bake. I find such creative pleasure in finding a recipe, adding my personal flare, and then receiving the warm appreciation from those who eat what I’ve made. One of the results of my passion for cooking is an obsession with pretty and useful kitchenware. So I have a standing mixer to help me whip up eggs and cream and batter and bread dough. It removes a lot of the grunt work that I find unpleasant. (Some people love to get their hands in floury dough–and I totally appreciate that inclination. Personally, it gives me the heebie jeebies.) I bought some extremely lovely Nigella Lawson ceramic measuring cups. When I look at them, not only do I feel a surge of happiness from their shape and color, but they remind me of the joy Nigella Lawson brings to everything she makes and her life in general.

So what happens when we surround ourselves with things we love? Imagine what your life would be like if everywhere you looked, you saw something that made you smile or feel good. How would you approach doing tasks that you would otherwise feel are unpleasant if you have beautiful or fun tools to do them with? What if you never had to “make do” with anything, but could either find joy in what you have right now, or manifest something that puts you in a happy state of mind?

Transforming your environment into something that pleases you is typically something that happens little by little over time (Extreme Home Makeovers aside, of course), so I’m not suggesting that you throw everything you don’t like away and spend every dime you have to buy new things. Because ultimately this is not about things it’s about an attitude and a state of mind. If we retrain ourselves to think that we deserve to have an environment that brings us joy, to choose to surround ourselves with things we love on a day to day basis, we will be shifting our awareness towards abundance and we will continually affirm that we deserve to live joyful lives.

Share the story of how something you love found its way into your life at the Uncover Your Bliss forums.

This post is cross-posted from the Uncover Your Bliss blog.

Many of you have been playing with the idea of manifestation. You've bought into the idea (mostly) that your thoughts actually create what's going on in your life and if you're anything like me, that idea has probably filled you with empowerment and dread. "I can create the things I want? Awesome!" "All the crap in my life is my own doing? Gaargh!" This post will be my attempt to remove at least some of the dread from the amazing process of deliberate creation and has been inspired by the book The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent by Esther and Jerry Hicks. The book gelled a lot of ideas that I couldn't quite reach and has been an invaluable resource in my growth process.

First a refresher: The Law of Attraction states that there are three steps to manifesting what we want. The first step is asking which happens a thousand times a day—every time we have a preference for something. We cannot help but ask and even though we are compelled to drum the point home, focusing on asking for the things we want is unnecessary because our wanting does it for us. The second step is the answering which the Universe does for us so once again our attention is not necessary. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that our attention to how the things we want will come into our lives only limits possibilities and is usually detrimental to the process. The third step is receiving and this is the part of the process that requires our full focus. That is the step I'm going to be talking about in this post.

I'm going to cut right to the chase and tell you that the crap in our lives serves a very useful function. The experiences we don't want are here to inspire desire for what we do want. If we encounter someone who is mean to us, we automatically ask the Universe to be surrounded by people who treat us with respect. If we can't pay our bills, we automatically ask to be surrounded by abundance. If our cars break down, we automatically ask to have reliable transportation. If we never had displeasing experiences, we would never feel the joy of the creative process and its results.

Why, oh why, do they have to hang around though, right? If their purpose is to help us ask for things, why don't they go away after we ask? They stick around because we are focusing our attention on the asking and on why we're asking instead of receiving what the Universe always brings us in reply. So, we can't pay our bills and we automatically ask to be surrounded by abundance. And instead of thinking, "Oh yay! This unpaid bill was a reminder that I want abundance and now I've asked and now it will naturally flow into my life because the Universe always answers yes! I'm so glad I couldn't pay my bill!" we think, "I hate the fact that I can't pay my bills. I wish I had more money. My bank account is so empty. I don't even want to look at these bills." Even though the Universe always answers yes and is responding by bringing abundance into our lives we cannot bring it into physical manifestation until we know—until we feel—that it is here.

Until then, we just send out conflicting thoughts. The Universe says "YES!" when we ask for more money. The Universe says "YES!" when we affirm that we don't have any. Which thought is going to win? The one you think the most. It goes beyond that though. The one that wins is the one you feel is true. Do you feel surrounded by abundance or do you feel surrounded by lack? All you have to do is look around and whatever you've manifested is what you've been focusing on.

The task of receiving becomes learning how to deliberately and with great intent change the way you feel by reaching for a better thought and then a better thought and then a better thought. I used to think that if I could just visualize puppies and kittens all day, my life would be great because I would feel great thinking about cute little balls of fluff. But avoiding the things we have negative feelings about doesn't address the creative process. If we don't create a new situation with positive thoughts and feelings about it, the creation will never come to us.

Think about something you want to change. I'll continue the example of money. Our first thought may be, "I don't have enough money." That thought makes us feel scared and nervous and worried. So we reach for a better thought. "I don't have enough money now, but I know the Universe will bring me what I need." That's a little better. It's still dwelling on the lack, but it makes us feel a little better. We reach for a better thought. "I've always been taken care of and found a way to pay my bills." This moves us from a thought of not being able to afford things to an affirmation that we have and can do so again. "I've actually come a long way. I remember when I was younger and had so much less than I do now." Life is a progression and we've grown along the way. We have a demonstration of our ability to bring what we want into our lives. "I'm really excited about all of the wonderful things I'm going to be able to do with my money [insert detailed fantasy here]." We're spending the money in our heads as if we already had it. We're coming into alignment with what we've asked for.

This may seem simplistic, but how do you feel after going through a progression like that? Do you feel better about the thing that was making you feel anxious? Do you feel hopeful? More empowered? Yes? Go forth! Run through this process every day. If the answer is no, you may be reaching too high. The goal is not to reach a state of total bliss, the goal is to feel better than you do at any given moment. If you can only get to thought #2, that's great. You've raised your vibrational level and it will be easier to raise it further from there next time.

This process takes practice. I've said this before and I probably will say (and create a post about) it again many times : Happiness is a choice. You have to choose to be happy in a hundred different ways every day. One of the best ways to make that choice is to reach for a better thought in any given situation. If you're feeling worried or angry or scared or anxious, reach for a different way to think about things and keep going until you feel relief (relief is what raising your vibration from a negative thought feels like). Don't run away from whatever is upsetting you, turn around and change it by empowering yourself with happiness. I don't know about you, but just the idea that the Universe always says yes to what I want, and there are things that I can do right now to receive what I have asked for makes me feel extremely relieved.

This post is cross-posted from the Uncover Your Bliss blog.

I thought about coming back from my summer hiatus last week (or even earlier this week), but then the symmetry of not post for a full month seemed nice and I didn’t. What did I do during my break from the internet?

1. Re-read the Harry Potter series in anticipation of the new book (which. was. awesome.),
2. Sweltered in the heat (which was not awesome),
3. Took my last Reiki class (I am now a Master Teacher, huzzah!),
4. Spent time with my mother (which is always nice),
5. Listened to the buzzing in my head,
6. Played a bunch of Wii,
7. Moved the forums from my own system to Zaadz.com (more on this in a minute),
8. The rest is a blur.

Of the items on the list, two are particularly relevant to Uncover Your Bliss:

The first is my Master Teacher status. I am in the process of developing class materials and I will begin teaching Reiki in September. I will be offering classes online as well as in person for those in the Denver metro area. I will post more information including dates and outlines in the near future.

The second is the forum move to Zaadz.com. If you receive my newsletter*, you know about this already. Here’s the announcement:

Uncover Your Bliss Forums Are Moving to Zaadz
For a while now, I’ve been cross posting many of my blog posts to my Zaadz blog. Recently they launched a service for business owners that offers community features likes forums and this handy, dandy newsletter. I like the features so much, I’ve decided to move the forums over to my Zaadz site.

For those of you who don’t know, Zaadz.com is a growing online community of people who believe they can change the world through love, connection, and responsible capitalism (you can read their mission for more info). The ideals of the group fit right in with what I love about online community and when I was offered the opportunity to leverage some of the great tools and resources I jumped at the chance.

So what does this mean for you?
First, you’ll be receiving a newsletter approximately once a month to update you about what’s been going on at Uncover Your Bliss. The newsletter will highlight upcoming events, recent blog entries (which you’ll be able to find at Zaadz and at uncoveryourbliss.com), and any fun discussions going on in the forums.

Speaking of the forums, to participate in any of the discussions, you’ll need to register with Zaadz. Ordinarily I would avoid a situation where members would need to sign up for a third-party account, but Zaadz is an incredibly responsible, non-invasive company. You will not get spammed and you then have access to other fun resources such as your own blog, your own discussion forum, and lots of good vibes wherever you go on the system. If you’ve already posted to the other forums, feel free to move what you’ve posted over (or not, it’s up to you).

I’m a huge fan of the Zaadz.com community and feel very comfortably intrusting this part of my business with them.  I hope you’ll take the time to create an account to post in the forums and explore Zaadz.  Feel free to contact me about any questions you have regarding this transition or signing up.

*If you’d like to receive the newsletter, you can sign up here.  You do not have to be a member of Zaadz.com to get the newsletter.

This post is cross-posted from the Uncover Your Bliss blog.

In my last post, I discussed coming to terms with our drive to want more and being grateful for what we have now while we want more. Today I’m going to talk about money itself–what it is and what it represents.

If your family was anything like my family, money was a sore subject. Although we were always taken care of, we didn’t have a lot of money and there was always fear that there just wouldn’t be enough. The subject of money was weighted with heavy emotional baggage that centered around fear for the most part. That fear was something I inherited and has shaped many parts of my life. As a result, it’s something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about so I could shift from feelings of fear and lack to feelings of abundance and joy.

What is a fear about money?
At it’s heart, a fear about money is a fear of living without comfort. No one really cares how many green pieces of paper they have, what we care about is what kind of life we’re leading. Do we have housing that meets our needs? Can we buy the food we like? Can we have the things that bring us joy?

Fear about money is a projection into the future that we will not be able to have the things we need to live a comfortable life. It is expressed doubt about the limitless abundance in the Universe. I’m saying that without judgment–I have certainly been in a place where I could not feel the limitless abundance in the Universe. I would say to myself, “That’s all well and good, but where is it?”

What is money?
When I was asking where the abundance is, what I meant was where was the money and the opportunities for making money. The trick is that abundance is a feeling not a thing. Abundance is a surety that everything we need and want are at our fingertips available whenever we need it. Abundance is gratitude magnified by a sense of well-being. Abundance is recognition of the comfort all around us.

So if abundance is a feeling, what is money? The most obvious manifestation of abundance is money and so it’s very easy to make the two interchangeable. I think this is where a lot of the confusion about abundance and prosperity lie. Money is a physical representation of energy (as are all things, when you think about it). When I perform a service I give of myself and my time and I am rewarded by a return of energy. Usually that energy is money, but if I’m volunteering that energy could be in the form of gratitude from those helped. We then pass that energy on when we spend money. When someone provides a service to us, we return the energy they put into what they did. When we buy a product, we are exchanging the energy that went into manufacturing that product.

A helpful way to visualize this is, as Joanne Hay suggests, by always thinking of money as gratitude:

“Essentially, a person is wealthy because she gives benefit for which others feel gratitude and so give money in return. A truly rich person is inspired to give benefit because their appreciation of existence leads them inevitably to assist in its unfolding in some useful or beautiful way. Their earnest offering is valued by others and much gratitude comes their way. By calling dollars gratefuls and money gratitude we see more clearly the essence of abundance. We feel more freedom to benefit others in a way that brings us joy. We are less likely to deny our abundance and feel more willing to give to others who have benefited us.”

How can we move from lack to abundance?
Just as making the decision to be happy in little ways every day takes effort, choosing to feel the abundance of the Universe and eliminating the emotional baggage of money takes effort. When you begin to worry about how you’re going to pay for the things you need, it’s important to immediately get in touch with gratitude. For example, if you’re worried about paying your rent or your mortgage, get in touch with how grateful you are to have a roof over your head. Think about how wonderful it is that the world shifted just for you so you could live there. Visualize how great it will feel to pass on your gratitude to others. Express thanks that you will always have what you need when you need it.

Do this every time you are feeling worried or edgy about money. When it’s time to pay your taxes, get in touch with your gratitude about the services your government provides you and the opportunities you have. When you fill up your car’s gas tank, feel grateful for your mobility and for the loving earth that is providing energy so you can get where you need to go.

This is not the time for negativity. You may be unhappy with your landlord or your government or the price of gasoline, but none of those details can discount or invalidate the abundance in your life unless you let them. When you get in touch with your gratitude and share it with others, you will increase awareness of abundance in the world and make it a better place for it.