​Shortest read: Scroll down past the first photo and skim through the end for the things you’re likely to say to yourself in the headings. Drop in with those to see how else you might approach it and what other words might serve you better.

Less of this:

• This can’t be happening.
• This is bad.
• This is not okay.
• What is wrong with me?
• How could I have done (thought, said) that?
• This is so hard.
• I feel so guilty.
• I have to figure this out.
• I can’t
• I don’t know what to do.
• I don’t know how.
• I’ll mess it up.
• I messed it up.
• I missed my chance.
• Everything’s ruined.
• It’s not gonna happen.

INTERRUPT that shit. Stop talking, get off the topic, hit the pause button, redirect your focus, move away from this, get out of head and into body, do anything but keep following those trains of thought or bits of dialogue. You’ll just built momentum in the wrong direction if you keep going with something that was not a useful direction to go in the first place—a direction that leads to all you don’t want.

Next I’m going to offer better things to say to yourself for each of the above.

Replace each heading below with something like the suggestions that follow. Feel better? More of that.

This can’t be happening.
This is reality, so it must be normal human stuff that I don’t need to get all riled up about. I’d like to accept what’s happening here, which doesn’t require me to like it or approve of it. I’d like to get real. From that place, I think I can see more clearly and peacefully where I’d prefer for things to go.

This is bad.
This is just life unfolding. I don’t need to label it good or bad, just soothe myself where it feels bad and reach for thoughts, words, ideas, a vision, one action to take that feels better.

This is not okay.
It’s okay. It’s really okay. I’m okay. (Hey, younger me, I’ve got you. You’re okay. This isn’t the old thing you were stuck in. We’re not stuck here.)

What is wrong with me?
There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m on a human journey and sometimes I’m in touch with loving that journey. I’ve come a long way. All is well. I’m willing to keep showing up, learning, growing, healing, being a better version of myself.

How could I have done (thought, said) that?
There’s nothing I ever do that isn’t normal human stuff. When it feels off to me, I can love that my guidance system is working. When I feel bad about it, I can make myself feel better and take actions that feel aligned to me. I can simply course-correct. I don’t have to make identity out of anything I do, think, or say. I can simply keep feeling into what I prefer and head that way.

This is so hard.
This is just unpracticed. It’s probably not that hard. I could build these muscles. I could get used to this. I really just need to try the new way here and now and not jump ahead mentally beyond this moment.

I feel so guilty.
Most guilt is false and based on old concepts I no longer believe or someone else’s concepts I don’t need to subscribe to. If I feel guilty, instead of carrying around a guilty feeling and talking (to myself or others) about how guilty I feel, I can check it out. If I’m really guilty, there’s stuff to do (make amends, clean it up, do something else now or later). But if I’m not, then I simply need to soothe the part of me that’s uncomfortable about something here. (I don’t like being seen by them in this way; I hate not giving someone what they seem to need and want from me; I don’t like disappointing them; …

I have to figure this out.
I don’t need to figure this out right now. I need to soothe myself and get into a better space and then watch for inspiration—maybe just for one next step to take toward what feels aligned with what I’m after.

I’ll never figure this out.
I’ve learned so much in my lifetime, corrected so many wrong understandings, expanded my viewpoint, stretched my perspective … I’m open to perception shifts and new information and awareness. I don’t have to have everything clearly in view right now. In fact, that’s not how it works. What I see and don’t see now is all good enough.

​I can’t.
I’ve surprised myself with things I’ve gotten to that I didn’t know I could get to. I will again. I may or may not achieve this specific thing. I’m still going to keep aiming for things I want to create and experience and be/do/have and who knows how life will surprise me next, and how I may yet surprise myself.

I don’t know what to do.
I don’t need to know what to do. I can just soothe myself and get realigned and then I’m more likely to see one way to aim roughly in the right direction.

I don’t know how.
I’ve done so many things I didn’t start out knowing how to do. I don’t need to know how. I need to keep in view what I’m after, what matters to me, and follow what comes to me to do.

I’ll mess it up.
I’d like to be done predicting my own failures or graceless processes. I’d like to be willing to fail or bumble through something without making identity of it—or start making identity out of my badass risk-taking self.

I messed it up.
This didn’t give me the outcome I wanted. That’s okay. That’s a normal human experience and part of the human journey. In fact, I’ve gotten so much better at releasing outcome, which sometimes enables me to move forward when I’m not sure how things will go. So … Now what?

I missed my chance.
Life is full of opportunities. The field of pure potentiality is always before me. Life brings things around again & again & again. As Abraham-Hicks says, You can’t miss the boat because there’s always another boat coming.

Everything’s ruined.
I love catching myself in all-or-nothing thinking and knowing it can’t be true. Everything can’t be ruined. I’m still alive. There’s more to love, enjoy, savor, learn, create, play with …

It’s not gonna happen.
I don’t know what’s next or what will or won’t come to be. I know I have a few things I’d like to head toward. I love the journey. I love remembering it’s a journey, not a struggle toward a series of outcomes. What will be will be, and in the meantime, here I am. I so appreciate getting to be here.

Got it? The simple concept is, less of what makes you feel bad, more of what is soothing and encouraging and makes you feel better-good-great. Walk yourself through kindly. Speak to yourself in ways that are actually helpful. Do not ALLOW yourself to carry around thoughts that defeat you and make you feel like you’re not living your life well, you’re not enough, you’re not equipped for reality. You’re doing great. You’re equipped. You’re amazing.

Love & blessings, Jaya

This is a relatively brief one, so take it in. As always, you can sift through following the bold print if you want a quicker read. Get the gift of this important thing to notice & reframe, with easy tactics for making this all feel better and for your beautiful life to go better for you!

This persistent NOT ENOUGH thing. You too?
I still catch myself, while doing things, moving about my world, transitioning from one task or event to the next, holding a vague sense of finding myself wrong, not doing enough, not having gotten to something yet, not performing or achieving at the right level, not not not …

Sometimes I feel a vague or acute disappointment or dissatisfaction, especially at the day’s end, that I might put any or all of these words to:

• I didn’t get enough done today
• I still haven’t done X or Y
• I’m not doing enough in general
• I’m not accomplishing enough
• How will I fulfill my potential at this rate?

If you amplify all of this (and some egoic part of you actually thinks its job is to amplify this), this swiftly swells into a baseline (wrongly held as factual) of I’M NOT ENOUGH. (Hey, whether you’re actively saying that to yourself OR NOT, that’s the message.) It may even follow a dissonant crescendo all the way to I’M NOT A GOOD PERSON BECAUSE I’M NOT DOING ENOUGH.

Um. WTF?
It’s so unfair, and it’s just wrong. It’s based on a false premise that your worth is and must be established by what and how much you do. It implies that this constant negative assessment (which by some wacky defiance of emotional mathematics keeps adding up to NOT ENOUGH) somehow does something of value.

To be clear: It does not. Go ahead and look for whether that soothes you, bolsters you, motivates you, energizes you, inspires you …

It’s also horrendous self-parenting. Imagine the parent following the kid around while tensely describing what they’re not getting to and how they’re not doing enough and how disappointing they are in what they are and aren’t doing. BAD parenting.

Imagine putting a child to bed at the end of the day with a furrowed brow and a list of all they haven’t gotten to and what they didn’t do well enough and what they’d better be on top of tomorrow …

This is not the picture of parenting that goes with a thriving child, is it?

Here’s what I do with this:
I interrupt it every time. I interrupt it as quickly as I notice it (at the first whiff of it) so it doesn’t build momentum. I do not accept walking around with that sensation, never mind any self-talk that might go with it.

When I catch it and interrupt it, I give myself (usually out loud to fully hear them) new messages that feel good and encouraging. Messages that

• establish: I love my life, my dance with consciousness, myself
• remind me life is not a to-do list
• call me back to grace, to unearned worthiness just because I’m here
• promote holding myself with love and approval and a sense of well-being

Because that positive, generous vision of myself, held in view, reinforced, and constantly cultivated, is actually what points me to flow with life in the best way. That’s what calls me to feeling good and embodying goodness and creating good and beautiful things.

Sometimes living in the flow does look like accomplishment and efficiency, and sometimes it does not. The flow is the flow. One version of it is not better than the others. We all know it feels better when we’re in it. We all know what resistance to the flow feels like. If we try to make the efficient version of flow the right version, we will, again and again, judge ourselves harshly and be disappointed in ourselves.

​Time for reparenting, or conscious self-parenting
If you didn’t get perfect parenting, welcome to the club. Whatever you did or didn’t get, it’s up to you now. Will you parent yourself unkindly, always gazing at yourself through that NOT ENOUGH lens? Or by bringing in calm, soothing, encouragement, positive messaging? Will you tenaciously hold yourself in good esteem?

Why should accomplishment and efficiency be the ruler by which you measure your worth, your whole life, or even any given day? That doesn’t even make sense. That sounds like modern human foolishness, not universal or divine intelligence.

I invite you NOT to ALLOW ongoing self-defeating inner dialogue and negative assessment. I invite you to quick interruption of what is unfair and inaccurate and keeps you feeling bad. Then aim for what feels better, and tell yourself the things you need to hear to soothe and encourage yourself, to promote loving your life as your wondrous dance with consciousness.

Toward that end, here’s a 15-minute 3-centers meditation (addressing body, heart, head) that contains positive messaging in and for each center. And if you like the 3C approach, you can join in live every day from 11:45 to noon six days a week. My lovely colleague Rebecca Mehnert leads on M-W-F, and I’m on T-Th-Sat. Join link is on the homepage of my website (scroll all the way down).

Love & blessings, Jaya

How we do put things in categories
It’s as if we human beings can’t make sense of life unless we think and talk and dream and plot & scheme in terms of separate realms of life that we can name. For example:

• family
• friends
• health, physical well-being
• home life
• love life
• money
• work & career trajectory

Florence Scovel Shinn, author of The Game of Life and How to Play It, posited four squares of life: 1) health, 2) wealth, 3) love, and 4) perfect self-expression.

There are many ways to slice the pie.

Sometimes, I find myself pointing out to a client that the Universe doesn’t care about realms of life. Ultimately, it’s all your one life. We slice it up into (and fixate on) the categories to manage it all and to sort through it mentally and conversationally.

And why do I feel the need to point that out? Why does that even matter?

It matters in a huge and perhaps surprising way.

When you fixate on a category that’s wobbly, thorny, painful, baffling—problematic in any way--you feel bad. Then, perhaps, you tend to focus on how bad you feel about it, and you keep it in view mentally so you don’t lose track of this problem you need to solve. You put what’s not working under the microscopic, so it takes up your whole field of vision and determines your feeling state. Familiar?


Quick LOA review
In Law of Attraction (LOA) terms, you’re now a match for the problem, not the solution. You’re pointing at what you don’t want—whereas the advice for harnessing the power of LOA (which, like gravity, is operative whether you use it to your advantage or not) is to point at, or keep the focus on, what you DO want. Remember, what you focus on expands. The feeling state you’re cultivating determines what you’re calling in. And since what you point toward also establishes the direction you’re heading, then when you fixate on a currently (or chronically) dissatisfying life category, you’re pointing toward what you don’t want—and building momentum in the wrong direction, propelling yourself toward the unwanted.


Applying this to life categories
Let’s say your love life isn’t to your liking and your brow furrows and your heart feels heavy when you think about it; whereas other realms of life are going pretty well. Maybe work is really humming along and your home has never felt more welcoming and containing and aligned with your aesthetic. How does it benefit you that the Universe doesn’t care about categories?

You can actually make your life better by looking away from your love life. GET OFF THE TOPIC of the problematic category. For those of you already objecting, I’m not saying never think about it. I’m not saying don’t sit with it in a clear state and with an open mind to invite inspiration and right action.

But that's not what most of us do with the thing that isn’t going great for us. Typically, we ruminate, or get in our heads about it, and focus on it in tense & straining, discouraged & disempowered ways. We grip the problem (or wrestle it to the ground, as Abraham-Hicks says) and either force solutions or brood about the complexity & perhaps hopelessness of the whole thing. Again, this makes us a match to the problem, not the solution. We’re contracted and unhappy, and (you know the difference viscerally, right?) not relaxed, trusting life, open to the multiple solutions that want to come in—never mind what we do or don’t see here and now.

So what if you gave relaxed, appreciative, even joyful attention instead to what’s going well? As you focus on what you feel good about, the multiple areas in your life where things are easy & running smoothly, the areas of success and flow, the stuff that satisfies and generates new ideas & creative impulses … then you become a match for more of that. You invite more of that (watch for more of that, notice more of that, generate more of that).

​Then what about the category that’s not going great?
As you keep the realms of life that are going well in view, and focus there, and thus build your predominant feeling state from there (i.e., you feel good more & most of the time), then the Universe, or LOA, is happy to flow that over to any specific category, because CATEGORIES DON’T MATTER. (I could almost say they’re not real.) It’s really all you. So imagine what happens with the hard stuff when WHO YOU ARE is the happy, relaxed, trusting one who generally feels great about your life.

I invite you to literally imagine it. To think back to when you’ve felt that way. To take in others around you who live that way. Make this as real to yourself as you can, mentally, so that you’re more likely to live into it in the practical day-to-day of it.


But what about DEALING WITH what’s not going right?
Well, again, NO RUMINATING. (That puts you in ongoing focus on problems and robs you of presence. It keeps you from enjoying what’s going well and optimizing what you have the power to control right now. Otherwise stated: it keeps you from loving your beautiful life.) Choose CONSCIOUSLY and well the moments when you do think CLEARLY about the tricky, dissatisfying stuff.

Go in when you’ve been focused on the good stuff, so you feel clear and capable and optimistic about things moving forward. Then you’re just sitting down with something to tend in your beautiful life, even if it’s not your favorite thing. You’re simply showing up for yourself when it’s time to pay bills or look something up or go to the appointment or add up numbers or do just one next thing that seems aligned with a sense of possibility. You aim roughly in the right direction and trust your capacity to course-correct. Coming in relaxed and happy and open to inspiration and guidance, you no longer approach this previously problematic category as some impossible puzzle to solve, or an ugly, tangled mess that no comb could ever smooth out, or even something that, in your case, at least, is just beyond hopeless.

It matters that categories don’t matter because you can just focus more generally on all you love in life, and then create more of what you love in every single aspect of this one life.

See how that works? Are you doing it already sometimes? (Please do bother to take in where you’ve already experienced this! Know that you know this already!) Would you like to do it more and better? I’ve found it to be a marvelous thing for a grand experiment, a worthwhile project, an enjoyable bit of play in stirring up more of what you love.

Love & blessings, Jaya


Further reading, anyone?
I’ve written before about the wisdom & power of getting off the topic. Here’s more on being a match to the problem, not the solution. And here are some anti-rumination bits to check out:

1. Rumination relief
2. Dissolving rumination with a breath & a question
3. Rumination to support your well-being

​
There’s a miraculous little search bar on my website! I’ve also written about course-correcting, feeling good or just feeling better, running grand experiments, following your (very own & unique) guidance system, teaching yourself from what you’ve cleaned up before, and … a whole bunch of stuff to support you in well-being and thriving.

Questions with obvious answers
These aren’t worth asking, yet we do ask them or even ask nonverbally. Maybe cut to the chase, and head for that obvious answer?

• Should I hang out with this person who drains me?
  
  
• Should I spend the holiday with these people who yank me back to old stuff I don’t want to be in?
  
  
• Should I keep doing this thing that’s making me hate myself while I do it?
  
  
• Should I make small talk with and be polite to this person I don’t respect or enjoy?
  
  
• Should I smile for them when no genuine smile is arising for me?
  
  
• Should I stay in this interaction that’s becoming increasingly violent by the second (even with no physical violence involved)?
  
  
• Should I stay longer as I notice myself feeling more and more contracted [exhausted, withdrawn, frustrated, humiliated, powerless, overwhelmed, …]?

​​

• ​Should I keep following this topic (in conversation or mind) that’s making me feel self-righteous [angry, annoyed, defensive, some kind of bad]?

Questions based on a false binary
These typically start on a flawed premise that leaves out a whole lot of possibilities and therefore won’t get you to a useful answer [creative solution, new insight, unexpected next step, brilliant course-correction] anytime soon.

• Should I stay or should I go?
  
  
• Is this working for me or against me?
  
  
• Do I do this for money or for service?
  
  
• Do they get it or are they clueless?
  
  
• Do I love them or not?
  
  
• Should we follow this plan or start over?
  
  
• Is this a good or a bad idea?
  
  
• Should I keep my day job or just do what I love?
  
  
• Should I put myself out there or stay in my bubble?

​Questions that take you out of your business
Here, you’re asking from a place where you don’t belong, where you actually have no control or agency. You may notice you’re mentally and emotionally exhausting yourself or even being propelled to take fruitless [forced, uninspired, just wrong, …] actions to try to manage what isn’t yours to manage. These questions typically make you feel disempowered, discouraged, or any kind of yuck.

• Shouldn’t they be doing X or Y instead of wasting their life?
  
  
• Will their feelings be hurt if I say or do that?
  
  
• Am I doing something wrong? What’s wrong with me?
  
  
• How long is this going to last?
  
  
• How many times do I need to tell them …?
  
  
• Why is this happening?
  
  
• Has the whole world gone mad?
  
  
• What have you done for me lately?
  
  
• Why haven't they answered my text [email, voicemail, note I left under their windshield wiper]?
  
  
• Do [will] they approve?
  
  
• Is everything okay?

​If you do keep asking questions that don’t serve you, consider what could support a shift and perhaps bring relief, a sense of new possibility, or movement toward freedom and lightness. Skim through the following and linger with what feels relevant:

You may want to look at the beliefs underlying the question (beliefs about friendship, relationship, roles, ethics, …). You may believe something different in your current reality or phase of life that hasn’t fully come to light and that it would help to articulate. Or you think you’re operating out of your current belief system when in fact you’re still applying an old belief. (A good grown child does this or that for their parents, whatever the cost to self.)

This question may be the equivalent of pointlessly chasing your tail. Put it down and invite a new one, or brainstorm a whole list of questions to support you to think something through more clearly.

A question may be brought to you by some old emotional attachment to operating a certain way or playing a certain role that’s all tied up with being safe [being loved, being good, belonging, succeeding, …]. It could help to be in some process (e.g., inquiry, journaling, coaching, therapy) to locate that so you can disconnect what got wired together. (No, you actually would still be safe and possibly safer if you did move away from or have way more boundaries regarding that person or group.)

You may be asking yourself something you’ve already made a decision about, so it goes without asking. Unless it’s time to look again for real and possibly make a conscious new decision or renegotiation, you don’t need to go in again for more questioning. (You said you wouldn’t get in the passenger seat when that person is driving. So don’t.)

www.amazon.com/Scooch-Edging-Into-Friendly-Universe/dp/0997740108/ref=sr_1_1?
​Some questions are helpful, expansive, empowering, productive. They redirect you to what feels better. They lead to fruitful pondering (not ruminating) and make you feel alive, curious, open-minded, inspired, connected, capable, and more. If you like, find some excellent questions to ask yourself in this blog post:
1 good breath + 1 good question = rumination dissolved!

I like the question NOW WHAT? so much that the conclusion of my book, Scooch!: Edging into a Friendly Universe has that for a title. Bumped into a wall? Now what? Just interrupted an old thought pattern? Now what? This puts you in presence, and open to where you actually want to move toward, or just the one next step roughly in the right direction.

Love & blessings, Jaya

P.S. Who are you to ask yourself crushing questions? Here’s a blog post that invites you to something kinder. 

Try this on: I am one with the Universe and all the workings of the cosmos, which include what is expressed in a single atom in the microcosm that is my own body. Thus, as you move around thinking more in terms of living in alignment and flow, this could most certainly, at a given moment, look like a parking space opening up for you in that right-place-right-time (seeming) magic.

It could equally land you all the way across the parking lot—in which case you might play with the idea that there’s some gift for you in the journey. Could be a chance meeting with a person, animal, or vista. Or maybe the invitation and opportunity to drop speed and efficiency and simply get present to and value this moment of mundane reality: human being on planet Earth, walking across the expanse of a lot dotted with cars.

Applying this REPLACE-DON’T-JUST-RENAME concept ubiquitously
Where have you changed what you call something? Look at that thing and consider what else you’ve changed besides the name. Do you see and think and speak about it differently? Do you interact with it differently? Do you have a different experience of yourself, others, or life that goes with the new labeling? Is there anything you see to do to take this renaming further so you’re actually in a whole new framework and reality?

Examples of typical renaming to jog your thinking …

• Taking on or giving someone a new job title
• Switching out offensive names or terms for politically correct ones
• Changing your name or what form of your name you ask people to call you
• Changing your pronouns or those you use for others based on their request
• Calling something a more highbrow name (like saying films instead of movies)
• Calling something or someone a kinder or more generous name
• Changing out words you don’t want in your vocabulary for spiritual or personal growth and empowerment (like dropping should, or saying and instead of but)
• Changing what you call something old that happened to you (like acknowledging it was abuse, not just poor communication; or acknowledging it had an innocent component—made sense at the time to the person who you then felt was against you or negatively impacting your reality)

If any of those resonate or make you think of something operative for you, check it out. Is it just a name change? Or are you revising the concept on many levels and feeling the better for it?

Ah, the joy of getting ever more clear …

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here's a related writing: DROP REWARD & PUNISHMENT and set yourself free to live & love your life