How Moments Connect

There are times when we pay attention and are able to see moments string together like a jeweler strings pearls. Alter even one moment, especially because of an incorrect assumption, and the potential outcome shifts.

One reason the movie “It's a Wonderful Life” is a popular classic is because of the main message: each person plays a significant role in many lives, whether it’s a positive or negative role. Another reason is that the movie story demonstrates how events or moments connect in the bigger picture. We don't always pause to consider this.

Others and I played our roles in specific moments that, upon reflection, played out with the precision of fine clockwork. The result was the first-time inclusion of a piece of art in a local gallery by a member of my gang of friends. The timing sequence involved was so exact it caught my attention.

Our gang had gone to prior showings at the gallery in our Brooklyn neighborhood, and had discussed how the work of the active artist among us could easily be included in a showing. The opportunity came and he submitted a piece to be considered. Time passed and it was now two days before the opening and he hadn’t heard anything from the gallery owner. Then the magic began, and did so through “ordinary” moments.

Here's how the magic played out. One friend who lived on the first floor of our building e-mailed that she had returned from a follow-up visit to her surgeon. I felt inspired (compelled) to ask if I could go see her right then. She agreed, and I acted on it. I used the stairs rather than the elevator, and by the time I got to the floor where the artist friend lived, he came out of the elevator. I asked about his submitted piece to the gallery. He said he'd heard nothing from the gallery. Note: He'd used the elevator because he was coming up from the basement. Had I used the elevator, we would not have seen each other because I would have gotten out on the first floor and the elevator would have then picked him up in the basement.

I suggested he follow up with the gallery since we know that some e-mails never arrive or get lost in the shuffle. He shifted from crestfallen to more hopeful, went inside his apartment, and I continued down the stairs to visit my other friend.

When I returned to my apartment, I found an e-mail from my artist friend stating he'd followed up with another e-mail to the gallery, as I’d suggested. He could just as easily have assumed there was no point to doing so. Our gang tends to make our e-mails about certain topics a group e-mail; so another friend e-mailed a comment about this. Feeling frustration on behalf of the artist friend, her negative comment was based on an assumption that proved not to be the case.

I had an event to attend that evening. Before I left my apartment, I received an e-mail from my artist friend saying the gallery owner e-mailed back that his piece was included. Had he heard my suggestion and decided not to act, or had he accepted the other friend's assumption as truth (we all do this at times), or had I taken the elevator instead of the stairs, he and we would have missed out, as would have others: his work is genuinely good.

At the evening event, I was talking with other friends about attending the gallery show, when the gallery owner walked up. I told her my friend was excited about being included. She told me how happy she was he'd e-mailed her again because she’d really wanted to include his piece, but his e-mail had gotten lost among the torrent of e-mailed submissions she'd received.

If you look at how many people were involved in this singular event (including the people who put the event together I attended that night, and who had to know whom) and how things flowed, you get an idea (if you've never played with this before) of how energy can work, when we allow it (and pay attention to the smaller and bigger picture). You also get a glimmer (if you've never considered it before) about how connected everyone and everything is. Remove or alter, even by seconds, any one moment (or person) from the list above and you can see how the outcome could have shifted in a variety of ways.

We participate in helping energy flow either positively or negatively. It's always a moment-by-moment choice.

It's also a great lesson about how making an assumption, and assuming it's true, and then acting as if it is true, has the potential to steal experiences (and magical moments) from us. I try to remind myself as often as possible that when something looks one way, it may be another. Very often, what's necessary is more information.

A real problem can be solved; an imaginary one cannot.

It's a good practice to ask, "Do I have enough information to know what's really going on?" This one question can save us minutes or hours or years of entering the negative-thought vortex, based on an incorrect assumption. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.   

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

How Spiritual Practice Works Best

Spiritual practice is something we fine tune as we go along in life. We learn what works and what doesn’t. But there are a few aspects that we must always be consistent about in our practice.

Ernest Holmes said in The Science of Mind that “Perfect belief is the beginning and the end of all good mental work.” Makes sense to me, but that can be tricky to achieve. Perfect belief, of course, means the absence of doubt. Perfect belief and doubt cannot exist in the same space or they’ll cancel each other out. Perfect belief results in perfect practice. Perfect belief and practice are what most of us aspire to build up to. How can we do that?

Holmes offered something about that as well, and these are the aspects that must be consistently practiced. “We should work, not with anxiety but with expectancy; not by coercion but with conviction; not through compulsion but in a state of conscious recognition and receptivity….obstruction is the result of a ‘hang-over’ of belief from past years…”

We should work our spiritual practice not with anxiety but with expectancy. Well, we get the part about anxiety. Anxiety never attracts more of what we desire, but only what matches our feeling-based thoughts swirling around in that emotion. Anxiety may happen before our spiritual practice, but when it happens during and after our practice, it’s a clear indication that doubt is stronger than faith, at least temporarily. But what about the expectancy aspect? What are we supposed to expect? We are, first, to expect the Law to work as it’s designed to, which means to align with and match what we feel, rather than solely what we say we want. It’s up to us to remove any knots in that thread. And, we are to understand that what we want cannot contradict the highest good, or it won’t be fulfilled. So even though we can and are meant to make a specific request, the safest thing to ask for and expect is for our highest good and the highest good of all involved to be fulfilled. Then we need to trust that.

We should work our spiritual practice not with coercion but with conviction. Well, you can’t actually coerce the Law of Attraction (Manifestation). That’s not how it works, but we sure do give it a go fairly often. We end up roiling our own energy when we do that. Conviction isn’t that easy either, because again we’re back at facing the fact that any doubt we have is stronger than our trust in Source’s ability to provide the highest good for all involved. But a belief in the Truth of how the Law is set up to work with us and for us, that level of conviction, puts us in harmony with the Universe and in flow.

We should work our spiritual practice not through compulsion but in a state of conscious recognition and receptivity. How often, especially when stressed, do we then get “serious” about our practice? We then become like the wolf in the childhood story of the three little pig—we huff and we puff and we try to blow the undesired whatever from our life through affirmations and so on. A calmer way is to practice conscious recognition about cause and effect. There’s a great deal of discussion about this, but for the purpose of this conversation, let’s say that sometimes the effect we experience is directly caused by us through our feelings, thoughts, words, or actions. Then there are times when “shift” happens and we cannot find a way to point the finger in our direction. At those times, we need to realize it is now up to us to get directly involved with cause and effect from that moment on and find something we can align our thoughts and feelings with that leads us out of darkness and into light. And at that point in time, we must become receptive to what’s presented to us, for us, and through us and go from there.

Obstruction is the result of a “hang-over” of belief from past years. What an effective mental image those words create of something we all experience. Beliefs and practices of the past that never served us well but are still carried by us certainly feel like a hangover. We don’t perform at or feel our best. We struggle to be clear and articulate in our moments and overall life. If you’ve never had a hangover, you won’t understand how the person doesn’t function at full capacity or how long it takes for the person to feel like himself again. The more we let go of beliefs from the past that never served us or no long do the healthier and stronger we feel. Plus, the more we then open up to what we’re truly capable of feeling and accomplishing.

How we practice life and our spirituality do more than overlap, they are one and the same. This time, instead of focusing solely on the spiritual practice when you now reread the key part of Holmes’ quote, focus on these words as a practice for life as well: “We should work, not with anxiety but with expectancy; not by coercion but with conviction; not through compulsion but in a state of conscious recognition and receptivity.” It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.   

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

The Breath of Inspiration

A friend gave me a rock that has the word “Inspire” on it. The design is such that you hold it in your hand and rub your thumb over the word, so I picked it up and did this. The next thought that flashed into my mind was this: To be inspired is to be in spirit. Now, many of you already know that, and certainly others have written about this, but I was curious about the dictionary definitions of inspire and spirit.

Inspire means to blow breath into or onto, to breathe in, infuse with life, prompt toward a thought or feeling, have an animating effect on, impel towards creative efforts. Definitions for Spirit included breath, courage, soul, life, to blow breath into, thought, enthusiasm.

If spirit means life and inspire means infuse with life or blow breath into, then when you feel inspired, the “breath of life” moves into, for, and through you, as well as into, for, and through that which you feel impelled toward, animated about, are passionate about.

So often, many people are concerned about how to identify their life purpose, their purpose for being here. What if it’s as simple as considering what inspires you? You may respond by saying many things inspire you. What if everything that inspires you is actually facets of one underlying theme: Live an inspired life?

When breath was used to define inspire, it was used as both an inhalation and an exhalation. Feeling inspired is a form of inhalation. Taking action is a form of exhalation. When your actions produce a desired outcome, your enthusiasm increases (inhalation), and you take another action (exhalation). Being inspired about something and acting on it is you breathing your purpose into your life and simultaneously sharing it with others. The result is more breath of inspiration and spirit for all.

If being inspired means being in spirit, or even the other way around, you can be fairly certain you’ll feel momentum to keep moving in a forward direction. Motivator and author Barbara Sher said, “The sooner you start getting some of what you really want, the more energy you’ll have to go for the rest of it.”

When inspired and in spirit, we feel alive and on purpose. Think of a time when you felt this way. This feeling is a good tool to measure if we perceive ourselves and our lives as on track and fulfilled in whatever way is appropriate for us. When inspired and in spirit, we’re in the flow.

For those who’ve wondered what it takes to operate in the flow of spirit, perhaps it requires awareness of this “breathing” inward and outward. To keep in flow, you find and affirm your inspiration, follow it, and act on it. This feeds and enhances the energy you have to keep going, and going for more, whether what you want more of is something at the inner level, outer, or both.

There’s a tendency to focus on what Spirit provides to us when, ultimately, our quantum Universe is a give-and-receive operation or system. Sometimes, all we need to do to kick-start it is give ourselves permission to receive then allow ourselves to give, or reuse and recycle, if you will, what we receive. “It’s not about what we can get from the flow, but that we get into the flow,” as Jeanna Gabellini stated.

When we focus solely on what we can get from the flow, that’s restrictive. It’s like inhaling and holding your breath. When we get into the flow, what we desire moves to us. Some of it is for us, and some of it moves through us so that we participate in the great give-and-receive loop that feels so good.

When we feel challenged, we can remind ourselves to “Just keep breathing,” and take in a breath that opens ourselves to inspiration. And then all manner of expected, unexpected, and wonderful things can happen—to us, for us, and through us. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.  

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

Don’t Let Resistance Run Your Life

Resistance is an automatic reaction to undesirable experiences in your life. Resistance may seem natural, even right, but some instances of resistance cost you big-time.

How can resistance cost you? Resistance creates more things to resist: like attracts like. It creates a near-constant stream of negative thoughts that lead to even more negative feelings expressed verbally, physically, or internally through health imbalances and uninspired life experiences.

Look at anything you resist in your life: Status of relationships, finances, career, success, etc. If your desire is strong for anything to NOT be what it is, you’re current address is on Resistance Loop. Resistance will cause what you do not want more of to continue and possibly expand, most especially, any unpleasant feelings and emotions you have about whatever caused you to feel resistance in the first place.

You have a right and responsibility to yourself, to NOT engage with anything or anyone you know you are better off without (negative people, news, events, etc.) when you can choose otherwise. And, as challenging as it may seem, you really can choose what you feel and therefore think, say, and do.

And there will be times when you find you’re in a situation with no easy out or solution. This is truly the time to release resistance and ask, “What can I do that I will do?” This puts your conscious mind to work in your behalf. You may not be able to alter the particular situation, but you can shift what you feel, think, say, and do, and do this in a way that leads you to perform with personal integrity and grace.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete," said Richard Buckminster Fuller.

You can choose to release your insistence that something or someone in your life be different—insistence, just as resistance, really does not work as desired—and take actions required in and for your best interest, without being tense. Tension does not shift anything, except, perhaps, your blood pressure and your ability to get proper sleep and rest. Adjust your thinking and approach in this way to get your subconscious programming aligned with your conscious choices and actions.

One big form of resistance that may challenge you is to NOT include or allow any past experiences in the NOW. This is a challenge because your subconscious will play back tapes of previous struggles and will do this with lots of detailed images. This causes you to recall, focus on, and feel specific past struggles, as though they are happening in this moment. They are not. You may have present-moment matters to address, but past ones are over. Past matters only affect the moment you’re in now, if you allow them to.

As long as you believe those old tapes are still part of your current reality, or react to them as though they are—which is precisely what the brain and then body do when old tapes are played, you resist any positive present-moment shifts: “I HAVE to feel THIS way now because I once (or more often) experienced THAT.” This approach will block your good, and your serenity, from coming to you. Your release of resistance gives the Universe permission to deliver your good—what is in and for your highest good. This release also allows serenity in, which is a feeling you desire anyway, underneath all the other stuff you believe you desire.

You learned certain aspects of resistance from others who learned them as well. It is the tape your subconscious plays in its belief that this approach, habit, or practice will help you survive. Your subconscious focuses on what helps you survive; your conscious mind focuses—or can—on what helps you thrive. You want them to work as a team, which means you have to NOT listen to old, negative tapes when they run. You want to create new tapes and run THEM.

Ernest Holmes wrote: “Healing, then, is accomplished by uncovering, neutralizing and erasing false images of thought, and letting the perfect idea reflect itself through subjective mind into the body. When one realizes that everything is Mind and that nothing moves but Mind . . . he will see that nothing can permanently heal unless it be accompanied by right thinking.” Healing can refer to anything in your self or your life or your business that you feel is not whole, healthy, joyful, and fulfilling. Ultimately, it’s always your feelings and thoughts that need to heal.

Pay attention to when and how often you run such tapes. Put right thinking into practice until it becomes more natural to you, whatever time that takes. Practice self-observation rather than self-judgment as you move through this process. Self-judgment is a form of resistance.

Release the belief that you will (eventually) never repeat old patterns. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won’t. Belief that you must never repeat them is . . . Resistance. It’s more important that you observe when you resist so you can consciously choose to embrace what you really want to feel, rather than emotionally engage what you don’t want. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

Do You Ever Feel Restricted or Limited?

How easy is it, really, for you to manage your thoughts when negativity sneaks up on you and bites you on the bum? Maybe this will help.

You’re going along just fine then wham! Something or someone throws you off kilter, and you feel restricted in some way. This feeling of restriction causes some level of fear to pop up—even anger is fear-based—and suddenly you feel as though you’re treading water, perhaps in a storm, especially emotion-wise. Not a good feeling. And if you usually do any inner work at all, you then tend to go into self-judgment: “I know better; so why don’t I do better?” That restricted feeling that surfaced as a result of the event seems to double, because you’re now dealing with two issues, not just one.

Ernest Holmes wrote this in his book, The Science of Mind: A sense of separation from good causes us to feel restricted; while a sense of our Unity with GOOD changes the currents of Causation and brings a happier condition into the experience. Everything in the physical universe is an effect, and exists only by virtue of some invisible cause. Man’s individuality enables him to make such use of the Law as he desires. He is bound, not by limitation but by limited thought. The same power which binds him will free him when he understands the Law to be one of liberty and not of bondage. The power within man can free him from all distasteful conditions if the Law governing this power is properly understood and utilized.

What we attract, whether it’s welcomed, not welcomed, or a period of what seems like stagnation, is a result of limited or restricted thinking—our mental attitudes, which can either connect or disconnect us from feeling and trusting our unity with Good and therefore Source, as well as what we are actually capable of. Since these thoughts and attitudes are a result of a mental process, we’re the only ones who can shift them in our favor.

Holmes stated that “The conscious thought controls the subconscious and, in its turn, the subconscious controls conditions.” Law of Attraction always works according to our subconscious thoughts, and our subconscious thoughts can be shifted with our conscious thoughts. “We plant the seed and the Law produces the plant.” Our thoughts are always at work for us, showing us our personal cause-and-effect power. Easy to know; easy to forget; easy to feel “Say it isn’t so.”

Why do we bind ourselves and our lives with limited thought? We know we do this, we know what to do about it; so why is it such a challenge to shift this in our favor? This is a challenge because we learned, by example and or statements during childhood, things like “We don’t have enough money because someone or something outside (or even inside) the family unit prevents this.” This limited thought process is not restricted to money; it can include education, health, common sense, endurance, success, confidence, and so on, which tends to always reflect effects via money in the long run, because society has promoted the belief that money is the way we and our worth or worthiness are to be graded. We practice this, without realizing what we’re doing. And, we make it worse by comparing ourselves and our lives to others and letting others tell us what makes us and our lives a success and or worthy. Bah! Humbug!

Holmes wrote, “There is One Infinite Law; and every time man thinks, he sets this Law in motion. . . . There is One Limitless Life, which returns to the thinker exactly what he thinks into It.” We are always thinking something into motion and possibly into our experience of it. The only way to use this in our favor is to seek and reveal and remind ourselves about the Truth of how Source set up the Universe, the Law of Attraction, to work and then put it into practice, especially when we feel challenged. Easy to say, isn’t it; not so easy to remember to practice.

I ride the same roller coaster many of you do. I feel good, in the flow, and then something makes my ego-aspect quake a little or a lot, and I’m into that treading-water feeling. And, yes, reminding myself of the Truth does get me back into balance and flow, but only after I do something specific: Calm myself down, request then trust that my highest good is always and in all ways provided, and then LET IT GO. What I let go of is the frantic, panicky energy my ego-aspect unleashes and the backward thinking process that goes with that.

There are times when you just have to push pause and catch your breath, when you just must stop all the thinking that takes you nowhere but in circles that wear a rut into the ground beneath you. Letting go feels completely counterintuitive, yet it’s the only thing that has ever truly shifted the energy, experiences, and results for me at such times, and or led me to right action. Initially, it freaks me out somewhat, but I just remind myself of all the times I did this and the positive shift this dynamic created—and fast, not to mention how good it felt to let go and be serene instead of stressed. This method is not for the timid. Most of us were taught to emulate Chicken Little. However, you might not recognize how strong you really are and the Truth of your unity with Source, until you take this route.

The fact of the matter, of life, is this: Stuff is going to happen, shift is going to happen. We’re not here to experience a life with no challenges or changes. There isn’t one animate or inanimate thing on Earth that does not experience challenges and change. Ultimately, it’s not about the challenges, it’s about how we manage ourselves in relation to them. That saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” is a good one to keep in mind. Big stuff shows up at times for all of us, but how we react to stuff can cause us to act as though even the small stuff is big stuff. We wear ourselves out. We practice the wrong things; and when stuff happens, we go into default behaviors, because that’s what we practice more often.

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, The Signature of All Things, the main character reaches a point in her life and her mental attitude where certain truths about mosses become apparent to her, and she sees how these truths relate to people as well. The character writes that mosses endure challenging times through a process of adaptive change. What’s the first thing most of us do when faced with a challenge or change? We resist, rather than adapt; though, if we’re to survive challenges, we eventually have to adapt in some way. You wouldn’t be where you are today, if you hadn’t done this with a measure of success throughout your life. Please take a moment to appreciate this fact.

The character also writes the following, and you can see how it relates to us: That moss was almost certainly a different entity before it was moss; that moss—as the world continues to transform—may itself eventually become a different entity; that whatever is true for mosses must be true for all living things. The strong find a way to survive and the weak retreat and give up. I’ll bet you’re a lot stronger than you ever imagined or allowed yourself to imagine. 

Train yourself to shift restrictive thoughts to ones based in Truth, truth about how the Universe and the Law of Attraction, the Law of the Universe, works. Do this so you allow the Truth of your personal power to inspire you into strength and right-for-you actions and solutions. Celebrate your strength and ability to adapt. The Truth truly does set you free. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.                  

          

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

What Is the Main Thing You Should Focus On?

Bob Proctor said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” We are best served if the main thing is what we focus on. So, what is the “main thing?”

Is the main thing one of these: Actions? Beliefs? Desires? Goals? Results? Nope. The Main Thing is stated in this additional wise statement by Bob: “Your results are an expression of your own level of awareness.”

Ernest Holmes can contribute something about this from his book, The Science of Mind: “There is a law in physics which says that water will reach its own level by its own weight. There is a law of metaphysics corresponding to it; consciousness will externalize at its own level, by its own recognition. We may call this faith, we may call it embodiment, we may call it whatever we will, there is something in the Universe which responds and corresponds to our mental states. Therefore, it is imperative that we turn from the relative, because TO VIEW LIMITATION IS TO IMPRESS IT UPON THE MIND, and accentuate the state of consciousness which produced it. It is not always easy to turn from fear, from poverty and pain, and from the hurt of human existence, to that which is perfect. But whoever can do this—and will train himself to do it—will be like the man healed of blindness. He had little comprehension of how it had been done; he could only say: ‘Whereas I was blind, now I see.’” Your primary focus is better placed on expanding your awareness. Everything else is built upon this. How often this fact gets lost in the shuffle, a shuffle often tempered with fear and frustration.

Are you aware of things you can do but aren’t doing, in your own best interest and perhaps in the best interest of others as well? Are you doing things you really don’t have to do, but haven’t reached the point of awareness that you don’t have to do them or accept or allow them? Are you aware that improper focus on results creates an energetic ripple-effect that impedes your experience and progress?

If too much focus is on desired results (future), you’re not 100 percent in your present, right-now moment, with all the opportunities at hand for your benefit. You’re also not fully aware of, which means you’re not fully appreciating, all that you do have right now (appreciation is a magnet that draws and delivers your good to you). The most significant things you have with you always are your current level of awareness and your ability to expand your awareness.

If too much focus is on desired results, you go into compete-mode: competing with your past and with others; competing to get more money, material items, satisfaction, and so on, rather than being in creative-mode, which leads to and results in all of these. In compete-mode, you struggle. You fret. You take lots of actions or feel immobilized, driven primarily by panic, fear, frustration, or doubt.

In creative-mode you use your energy wisely and follow what you feel inspired and motivated to do, which then leads to something that benefits you as well as others. When you follow what you’re inspired and motivated to do, you are joyful and enthused more often than not. You pay attention differently, which expands your awareness, in each moment. You appreciate the journey as much or even more than the destination; and, you are true to yourself.

If having more money or any desired result is a concern—that is, it causes you to worry—where is your focus, your energy, your awareness? Likely, NOT aligned with creativity, enthusiasm, joyfulness, inspired ideas, inspired motivation, much less Trust in the Source of All Things to operate in and on your behalf. You may stand in the inner space of all this chaotic energy, using spiritual techniques frantically (or not) and expect desired results to penetrate that energy and end your emotional pain and frustration. You may do the same with frantic outer actions (or not). That’s kind of like expecting to perform at your best while someone standing next to you is raging at you: you are both the performer and the one raging. You can expand your awareness about this with this thought: “I can get anywhere from here,” here being wherever you currently are at the inner and outer levels.

You may have been lured into a fallacy about results through flashy-things e-mails that aim at your fears and tell you that if you do “this,” you (like the sender) can get thousands of dollars or massive success or whatever form of relief you seek and do so overnight, in one week, in one month. Maybe you can, but how long was the inner and outer journey to get where you are now? However long, this doesn’t mean shifts into improved circumstances will take as long.

Or, you may repeatedly start new paths or projects then stop doing them just as quickly as you decided to start. This happens because you are looking, perhaps somewhat desperately, for something to create that shift you so desire. This is also what many of the books, tapes, videos, and so on that take up, perhaps clutter, your space are about, which can also sometimes be flashy-things: You seek the magic “key” that will unlock the innate awareness you already possess, though you may initially or still believe it is something that has to come from outside of you, from somewhere or someone. At the very least, let these things stimulate your thoughts that lead to awareness. Shift yourself first; calm down and allow your awareness to communicate with you and inspired ideas appropriate for you to arrive. Then take action you have head-and-heart alignment and genuine enthusiasm about.

You can easily fall into the trap of focusing on results, to end your pain or frustration fast, instead of expanding awareness, which shifts pain into wisdom, which is a far better guide to actions that lead to improved experiences and results. If your energy is entwined with beliefs that hold you back and keep you unaware of your true power, even if you use flashy-things and get some results initially, you’re awareness may not shift and you’ll find yourself paddling in the same old boat, perhaps more than once. 

And, you’ll repeat similar inner experiences, and similar outer ones, until you expand your awareness in a way that shifts this. You’ll continue to focus on what you don’t have or can’t do and not appreciate what you do have and can do or already do. What you CAN do from the inner level goes underused, or even ignored, more than put to best use. You continue to believe the Power is outside of you, which means you don’t expand awareness and expression of your True Power. Denial of your true power is the foundation of your discontent. And this behavior does nothing to strengthen your Self trust or to trust your experiences happen for a reason, or that you can expand your awareness as a result of them.

A very simple example is when I found I had to walk in weather that was cold, windy, and rainy and asked myself how I could expand my awareness about that. My immediate answer was: I can choose how I “do” weather. I could be unhappy and complain about it or I could find something to appreciate or focus on a project I was enthusiastic about. Just as we are not obligated to complain about weather we consider inclement, we are not obligated to complain about lots of things, rather than do something more constructive or productive with our time and energy. Alan Lakein said, “Time equals life; therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.”

You may also have been convinced that “fast” is the way; yet, the contrast that belief creates with the belief in—the trust in—Right Timing is not recognized and allowed. Do you even perceive the energetic conflict that particular belief sets up inside of you? Expand your awareness As You Go. Your results will keep pace, in their right timing for your particular spiritual purposes. This means some results WILL happen fast; but you frustrate yourself when you expect every result to do so. This causes you to not pay attention to the Important Stuff—the opportunities to expand your awareness going on all the time. Your awareness is the foundation that underlies everything in your life.

Here are some awareness-expanding questions:

§         Do the thoughts, words, actions, FEELINGS I have (or “feed”) support that the power over my self and my experiences is outside of me or within me?

§         Should I do what everyone else does, or says I “should” do, or should I open myself to inspired ideas and motivation about what’s appropriate for me, based on my head-and-heart alignment, and act from there?

§         Does my motivation to take an action come from inner knowing or from fear? Which will energize me? Which will exhaust me?

§         Am I paying attention to my feelings and what they attempt to tell me?

§         From what level of awareness do I listen and act?

§         Do I connect my experiences to my thoughts that preceded them as often as I might?

Your experiences and results are an expression of your own level of awareness, which is something you have absolute control over. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Life and how you choose to perceive and experience life improves when you amp up your awareness. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.                      

          

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

What Is Your Mental Atmosphere?

Why do the same types of events or same types of people—ones we don’t want to experience—keep turning up in our lives? We work on ourselves, we know about Law of Attraction; so, what the bleep is going on?

That’s a big topic, of course, but we need to start somewhere: We’ll start with mental atmosphere. Ernest Holmes, in his book, The Science of Mind, says this: “Each person has a mental atmosphere which is the result of all that he has thought, said and done, and consciously or unconsciously perceived. The mental atmosphere is very real, and is that subtle influence which constitutes the power of personal attraction, for personal attraction has but little to do with looks. . . . No matter what the lips may be saying, the inner thought outspeaks them, and the unspoken word often carries more weight than the spoken.” Yep. It’s what’s under the “ground” that influences what’s above the “ground.”

My thoughts about why we get the repeats we get is that we have unresolved (to our satisfaction) issues. Let’s say there’s someone in your life you feel did wrong by you or to you, in whatever measure and over however long a time, but you either know you will never tell them off or get back at them the way your ego would like you to or you can’t (they’re somewhere unknown to you or in some state of being where you can’t reach them, or are deceased). In this type of situation, your ego-aspect is going to feel unfulfilled. And it’s going to nag the hell out of you. Only, ego doesn’t nag you about what you should be doing at the inner level and what your lesson is for your personal evolution, but about what “they,” those you’re upset with, should be doing that makes them take responsibility and, perhaps, even make amends. Talk about your hamster-wheel experience.

Water seeks its own level; so does energy, including and especially your energy. Your energy is your signal that you send out, the signal that gets matched. It’s the program language that shows up on your life screen. If you have an unresolved issue with someone or with a particular event—which actually means there is something within you that is still unresolved, you’ll continue to draw people and circumstances to you, to give yourself yet another opportunity to figure out what to do or choose how you will deal with it. But, of course, there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Which is your predominant mental atmosphere based on or in: Ego or spirit? Are you sure? Your ego-aspect sends out signals, like a duck call that attracts ducks to you, while your spirit-aspect subtly nudges you to take care of matters in the highest possible way—ultimately, for you and how you feel about yourself and life. The tricky part is that the ego-aspect thinks it’s all about the other person, people, or event, and what you need to say or do to put them right or in their place. Sometimes, that is necessary because you’re actually helping another with their evolution by doing this, as well as your own evolution (e.g., people who allow themselves to be doormats finally get kicked in the proverbial or actual butt enough by others and life to speak up and stand up for themselves and learn how to make better, more conscious choices in their best behalf—that’s real progress, isn’t it?). Your spirit-aspect knows that it’s always and in all ways primarily about you. You are who and what needs to be healed and re-Minded, and only you can determine what that will entail.

This is not a judgment, because goodness knows I have my moments, but you can watch people who talk the talk but don’t really walk the walk, even though they think they do. Now, granted, every one of us has the right to feel what we feel and to even react when something comes out of the blue and metaphorically (or literally) slaps us. Those not-good feelings we have at such times are to be expected, allowed, and paid attention to.

If you believe you’re supposed to be so evolved that you maintain your cool no matter what happens at the moment it happens, and even afterwards, well, how’s that working for you so far? How realistic is it, really? We’re not here to be emotionless; we’re here to feel emotions. Emotions guide and teach us, if we let them, as we’re meant to. But we’re also here to figure out how to manage emotions and how to use them for personal growth, rather than allow them to manage us and thwart or cause our personal growth to stagnate.

Proficient and efficient management of emotions is an ideal to work toward, but don’t burden yourself with the heavy expectation of perfection. It’s more important that after you freak out a little or a lot, you use your inner tools to regain your inner balance so that the way you deal with whatever is going on is done so with personal integrity and head-and-heart alignment. If you err, forgive yourself. This means you assess what didn’t feel good at the inner level and figure out why it didn’t feel good, and how to improve what you think, feel, say, and do the next time and how you handle yourself from this moment on. And there’s likely to be a next time, based on what Holmes’ said about mental atmosphere, until you figure out some stuff about you. Then, even if a next time happens, you will feel about it and handle it differently, because you’ve evolved a bit or a lot.

If you’re not attracting the quality people and events and circumstances you really want, look within, rather than outside of you. Get your mental dipstick out and check the level of your energy. What kinds of thoughts and feelings do you predominantly have each and every day? That’s your mental atmosphere. What you put into the field is what you get out of the field.

What happens is not random, even though we sometimes or often would like to believe that. Your experiences are for your personal evolution; and here’s the really freaky part: they are designed or agreed to by you. That can be icky, but it’s true. And when you grasp this, you’ll have stepped into the realm of higher spiritual understanding, which may be uncomfortable at first but gets easier and far more rewarding as you progress.

And no matter how much your ego-aspect wants to put responsibility for your mental atmosphere on someone else, for whatever reason, that’s just not the way it works. That’s not the way to get desired experiences and results—at the inner and outer levels, or to feel about you and life the way you really want to.

Will you choose an ego-based or spirit-based mental atmosphere? One keeps you a prisoner of your own making; the other sets you free. Freedom at the inner and outer level: It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.                     

          

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

What’s in Your Memory Bank Account?

Those darn negative thoughts that just won’t go away, no matter how much inner work you do, are just plain annoying. What’s up with that?

Best-selling author Barbara Berger (with Tim Ray) wrote in her book, The Awakening Human Being: A Guide to the Power of Mind, about the Law of Thoughts Arising. Right off, she’s given you a big clue: It’s a universal law that thoughts will arise. “Thoughts arise and disappear. This is the first law because it describes an impersonal universal phenomenon which is true for everyone. No one knows why or where thoughts come from or what a thought is, but everyone has thoughts. This is the nature of life on this plane.”

Berger goes on to explain that when thoughts arise, it isn’t because we’re doing anything wrong; thoughts come and go on their own. Isn’t that the truth! Have you ever had a song or theme music start playing in your mind for, apparently, no reason? Where did the trigger thought for that music come from, why did it happen, and why that song or tune? And, how long does it take for you to get that recording to stop playing over and over in your mind?

Part of my daily morning practice includes reading the day’s message from Ernest Holmes’ book, The Science of Mind. I’d already decided what my article would be about this week, but was pleased to receive support through this reading. Holmes stated that everything that has ever happened or will happen leaves an imprint on “the walls of time; and could we walk down their corridors and read the writings,” we’d read the history. He likened this to how we can record voices and images, store them away safely, and revisit them, even decades later and still hear or view them. Well, this is exactly what we do: walk the corridors of our memories. And it’s not just our personal history involved; it’s also our physical, mental, and emotional genetic history.

That’s what those pesky negative thoughts are about: Our feelings and mental images, based on our perspectives and interpretations, imprint on our memory cells, like pages printed for books on shelves or paintings created and hung on the walls. Plus, there are genetic imprints on our cells as well. A thought arises and the next thing we know, we’re traveling down the corridors of our personal hall of records.

A negative-thought replay was going on for me, and this new thought came to me: Pebbles, Stones, Rocks, Boulders. I carry a lot of positive memories, which I do choose to replay from time to time. But isn’t it interesting that positive replays tend to occur more when we deliberately seek them out, rather than arise spontaneously. Negative-thought replays seem to arise far more spontaneously, but maybe that’s not really true. Maybe we have them closer to the surface than we realize. Maybe our practice is to go down negative-thought corridors, and we don’t realize this is our practice. It happens so fast, who has time to notice why it’s happening? And, after all, it’s what most people do, isn’t it? We call it being logical, or say it’s justified. We’ve made this practice almost a law, by virtue of so many of us doing it so regularly, as though it’s the only way to go.

I spoke with someone who’s trying to resolve a particular situation. The next steps are obvious, and we discussed them. Yet, every step discussed was met with a comment from the person about why it can’t be done or what’s impossible. I finally said, “Maybe you need to stop pulling up all the negatives you can imagine. You need to make a decision. The first decision is to get more information, because you’re deciding what can’t be done rather than discovering what can be done.” She agreed that was what she was doing. If all you focus on is what can’t be done, how or when the heck will you focus on what might or can be done? Which one will get you to an improved and preferred circumstance first?

Our memories are like bank accounts. You’ll find highs and lows there; and where you are with them fluctuates—because thoughts arise. But you can deliberately create more positives that get imprinted and stored in your memory bank account. You can also deliberately—or by default—continue to subtract from it by focusing on negatives. That’s what my Pebbles, Stones, Rocks, Boulders thought brought to my attention. I thought about how sometimes we get a pebble in our shoe. Maybe we stop and take it out; maybe we keep walking on it, complaining the whole time to ourselves or someone else.

Stones, rocks, and boulders, of course, won’t fit into our shoe; and if they did, we’d certainly stop and get them out right away. But when they are thoughts, which are already memories or become memories as we think them, we’ll put them into our shoe ourselves, repeatedly. When such thoughts come up, I’ve started saying to myself, “Pebbles, stones, rocks, boulders.”

I don’t need to figure out which category my negative thought fits into; that’s just walking the same path with something in my shoe that doesn’t benefit me. Saying those four words gets my attention on what I’m doing to myself—and that I can stop doing it. I can treat even the bigger ones like pebbles and remove them from my shoe then get on with creating something positive and feeling appreciation for the good stuff and people in my life, as well as the positive possibilities.

Thoughts arise. You maybe can’t break or change the law of this, but you can decide what to do from there. You can decide whether you’ll visit your memory bank account and count your negatives or your positives, as well as decide which one you’ll put more of into your account. What you put in and what you take out of your memory account is always up to you, and will reflect the inner life you experience, which then influences the outer life you live. You can choose to make your memory bank account work against you or for you. Choose for you. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.                    

          

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com

Is It an Excuse or a Reason That Holds You Back?

We sometimes say we want certain things and may talk quite a bit about our ideas, but we don't take the actions needed to make them happen. Perhaps a more honest statement would be, "It would be nice, but I'm not willing (yet, if ever) to do what it takes." That's a better thing to say because it's authentic.

The fact is this: Sometimes reasons, based on facts, do hold you back. But such reasons can point you in another direction or point your attention toward another way to accomplish what you desire to. Someone intent on success, whatever that means to them, makes a plan, figures out resources needed, and gets started, taking step after step until the outcome is reached, however long it takes. Intention (and commitment) sees obstacles as clues about what doesn't work and inspires us to ask what might work instead.

When we say we can't or shouldn't have to do something in order to have what we desire, this is the time to look within. Sometimes, a particular fear is the cause of this mental attitude. Sometimes, it's a belief that doesn't serve us. If there is something you truly want but never seem to be able to attain it or you tend to stop just short of the mark, you want to look at what's holding you back. Your excuses are a good place to start.

Make a list of things you believe you want in life. To the right, make two columns titled, "It Would be Nice, But..." and "Whatever It Takes, I Intend to Make This Happen." Place a checkmark in the correct column for each item you list. This not only distinguishes what you'd like from what you are committed to, but also shows where your energy is going and where it needs to be better directed. Expending energy wishing for or talking about something you’re not committed to taking action on is a huge waste of your precious energy, skills, and talents. It keeps you from realizing your dreams and goals. It also causes those who listen to you to not believe you, if all you do is talk.

Sometimes, what holds a person back is unknown and requires therapy so it can be discovered and then result in a significant shift happening. Maybe time with a life coach will help to discover how to go beyond self-imposed limitations. Maybe the right-for-you self-help book, where you do what’s asked, works like a charm. At the very least, if you categorize what you believe you want into the two columns suggested above, you discover whether an item is a genuine intended goal—or not, as well as where you limit yourself with excuses, or where you plan to succeed. The question is: Do you want to be remembered for your excuses or your successes? Which one allows you to feel the way you desire to feel about yourself? After all, why you want what you say you do is always about how you want to feel about yourself, anyway.

I was contacted by someone who'd read one of my articles and then got my Take This Life and Live It! workbook. Our conversation left me inspired. A major transition is taking place in her life, one most would consider negative. She contacted me because she wants to move forward in the way most appropriate for her. This is courage in action.

The reason I say this woman is courageous is that she doesn't choose to focus on the past. She chooses to focus on the present and strengthen and direct herself so she can better create her future now. She intends to use the workbook to not only better understand what is happening at an inner level (emotions, thoughts), but to also map out how she wants her life to look from this point on (work, relationships, finances, etc.). She intends to make conscious choices on both levels and do what she can to make this journey easier and focused. Detours will arise; but she'll have her direction in mind and will find her way back onto the path to get where she aims to go. Her choice is to respond, not react; to move forward, not stagnate; to be her own compass, her own North Star.

Most of us have to cope with a major life transition at least once in our lives, one where the foundation we believed to be solid beneath us shifts or crumbles, and we find ourselves looking for a foothold. Many deal with the accompanying emotions as best they can and eventually choose to get on with their lives. Some, sadly, choose to stay rooted in pain or frustration. The result of this is either a life not lived fully or a tragic story that makes the news.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage takes action in spite of fear. Action sets you free. It's important to make it Right Action, not reaction. Since this woman decided to face this challenging time in this way, I trust she will accomplish whatever she chooses as she heads forward, deliberately, on her path. Whatever she was before, she is on purpose now. Be on purpose. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.                 

          

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer

You are welcome to use this article in your newsletter or on your blog/website as long as you use my complete bio with it.

Joyce L. Shafer is a Life Empowerment Coach dedicated to helping people feel, be, and live their true inner power. She’s author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, But I Have Something to Say” and other books/e-books, and publishes a free weekly online newsletter that offers empowering articles. See all that’s offered by Joyce and on her site at http://stateofappreciation.weebly.com