(Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in these writings to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.)

Here, you’ll find the first of 5 FOCUSING & ALIGNMENT PROCESSES I want to offer you precisely because

1. they’re easy
2. they can be done quickly
3. they’re super effective for getting you feeling how you want to feel about yourself, your day, a relationship, a particular task (whatever!)

All of these processes come from Abraham-Hicks, where I’m getting most of my dynamic learning & input for feeling great about my evolving life these days!

These tools are especially wonderful to use first thing in the morning, so you establish for yourself how you want to feel. Don’t let others, your inbox, the news, the commute—DON’T LET ANYTHING ESTABLISH YOUR FEELING STATE FOR YOU. Don’t let something external tell you what to focus on. Don’t even let your habitual thoughts or feelings co-opt what’s possible for this brand-new day.

Tool #1 follows below.

EASY EXISTING MATCHES
(You might write EEM at the top of your page)

This process has 3 easy steps, and the first 2 could take 30 seconds. Step #3 takes as long as you want to give it. Really drop in with it, whether you do that for 1 minute, 5, or until you have your own sense of completion. Most important, notice, when you’re ready to stop, that you feel different—you’ve shifted your feeling state. You’ve established yourself in feeling and believing you can feel HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL.

Step 1. Simply notice how you feel.
Let’s say you’re not so sure you feel fantastic today, or some dissatisfaction or hard feelings have already started to form. Perhaps they even grabbed you right when you woke up. You can feel the force of how they’re starting to call in other upsets & complaints. You can feel it in your body. Your mind has taken off without your go-ahead, and you can already feel the MOMENTUM of a line of thinking that’s self-defeating or just makes you feel bad. You know you could end up evaluating your whole life, right? And you’ll find it faulty or meh. (Funny how that works.)

Step 2. Identify and write down how you want to feel. This could be about a particular topic or an upcoming event today; or, in general, just how you’d like to feel right now and on this day.

Let’s say you establish that you want to feel like you love your life. You want to feel great.

Step 3. List Easy Existing Matches
All you’re doing here is writing down things already fully present in your life that match the feeling you’re after. This allows you to call it up, know it’s already yours, remember it’s alive for you. This isn’t something you need to strain or strive for. It’s not out of reach or unknown. It’s already yours!

Just list what’s right in reach that already fills the bill: easy existing matches.

On a very recent gray & frigid morning, I created an EEM list for feeling great. It included things like this:

• The flash sessions I did recently were so fun & fulfilling
  
• I’m so happy with my simple daily qigong practice that makes my body feel good and makes me feel good about tending it
• I keep loving that I stand up daily from a low squat without using my hands
• I’ve been eating good food and my digestion is amazing
• I’m warm & cozy inside with the gas fire in the chimney all lit up like the real thing
• I’m so excited about my qigong mentorship coming up with Mimi K-D
• I get to go back to the wildlife center next week and see Charlie, my favorite crow (this made me flash to our last meeting, when I handed him a silvery spoon and he took it from me and drifted over to his water bowl to wash it off)
• I love that I’ve been in low-key winter mode, more dreamy & less active, and I appreciate even more that, if even a whiff of should-be-doing-more comes in, I’m releasing it and finding that I feel aligned with this moment, this season
• The potential for getting a bunch of 3C meditations on my YouTube channel just makes me happy
• I feel great about feeling great that I live in KC KS with my mother, and every day there’s evidence I’m improving her life
  
• I have so many tools and so many ways to reach for feeling great when I don’t, and I’m using one right now
  
• …
  

Note that I did NOT feel great when I began, and I did when I stopped. I also didn’t feel horrible when I began (though I would have used this process just the same if I had). I like to catch things early, before they build momentum. I love to sit down first thing in the day and do some processes to head right away toward how I want to feel.

Bee tee dubs, one of my morning processes is free games on the New York Tiimes app. Which Abraham has never suggested, but they constantly remind us to judge nothing. Do what works. Follow what delights you. Mind your feeling state, because that’s minding your alignment. When you feel aligned, inspired thought comes in, right action grabs you, the thing to look up or reach for or attend to comes clearly into view. Try it, you’ll like it.

And, hey, you know this already. You’re doing it already on some level. So try it more. Early and often.

Abraham taught me: Care about how you feel. And when you feel bad, reach for what will make you feel better.

Process #2 coming soon! If you’re drawn to #1, practice that in the meantime. No process you know about does any good unless you use it. I dare you to use it daily. (But really I want you to follow your curiosity about what’s possible to stay as aligned as possible for your total well-being.)

Love & blessings, Jaya

Scroll down to below the next pic for a few super-helpful resources. Headings are there to guide swift skimming!

Almost everybody I work with or know in any context is deeply dismayed by the latest elections in the US. People are using words like devastated, shattered, and terrified, and are talking about grieving. There’s no problem with any absolutely & automatically valid reaction you’re having. More than anything, I invite you to look for soothing. See if you can stay away from ongoing focus on all that’s WRONG.

AND I also want to invite you back to what is true, what abides, what is real, what we can actually count on, what matters, what will get us through, where we might put our focus to feel fully equipped to carry on with our intentions for our own lives and the greater good and the Earth itself. Scroll down for a number of resources to explore if & when you feel drawn.

First, a story from someone else
My friend & colleague Susan Meyer is a mindfulness meditation teacher and nature photographer. She already has a habit well in place, most every morning, to visit the river she lives next to in upstate New York. Via the practical magic of her kayak, she often gets right in it. Her relationship with this river represents a deep soul connection. Susan didn’t watch election results come in on the evening that was happening, and before she looked in the morning, she went out to meet the river—and to meet herself at the river—first of all.

What happened was that she got a visceral sense of a sort of timeless view of what matters. Even going only as far back as the beginning of the story of the United States, she felt into how this river had seen the Revolutionary War and all that has taken place in the human realms from then to now. The river had flowed through it all; continued to provide water and take part in the water cycle; held and fed any number of beasts and fishes and birds, plants and trees; provided solace & peace & nourishment to any number of humans. This river was full of hope & love & an ongoing vote cast for life to continue in the healthiest possible way for all concerned.

And from that awareness, Susan felt the time was right to check the election results. In that very moment, a two-word text that told all she needed to know popped in from her daughter: “Soooo….. Canada? 😭”

What I’ve been doing & holding to
Most of y’all know that I do EXTRA processes for soothing & clarity when something feels off, and I’ve been processing away to spend as much time as possible in alignment. (Note that you can click on the tag PROCESS on my blog to see specific tools there. There’s also a helpful tools tab on my website.) Prioritizing alignment and cultivating a sense of well-being includes more time in nature and more care with basic things like nutrition and sleep and qigong, in my case—substitute whatever you do that you know keeps your body feeling better and your breathing coming in more fully.

I’m holding fast to all that I care about. All the intentions I had for myself and this country and various populations I care deeply about—these are unchanged and still with me. I’m committed. I’ve been thinking about how many people hold like beliefs and care just as deeply as I do, and we are united. I know the laws of the Universe are unchanged by election results, and I’m still tapping into all that keeps me creating & living into visions of what matters to me and allows me to support others on their journeys.

I’m so clear that I cannot support people if I go into depression or deep freeze, things I did routinely in the past anytime the political landscape felt threatening and like it was just going in the wrong direction (seemingly counter to evolution and not aligned with the good of all concerned!). In fact, I believe the evolution is always underway, and it’s evident to me, looking back over time, that the process never looks linear. And still, we’ve evolved, and we will continue to do just that.

Further resources, including from others, can be found below the next photo. Headings allow for quick skimming to see if anything calls to you.

RESOURCES

A SONG
Here is a song that makes me teary & goosebumpy, written & performed by singer-songwriter Kathleen Hannan of NC. She started writing this right before the election, finishing the recording just before the results started coming in. She wrote me that she wanted to create a song to tap into “what would still be here no matter which way the election went.”

EFT
I have created an EFT (emotional freedom technique, or tapping) playlist on my YouTube channel for post-election pain & general political suffering, dread, and fear & loathing! These were drawn from pre-existing EFT sessions and I’ll add to the list as more arises.

A MEDITATION
On the night of the American elections, I sent out a link to this mailing list to offer a 3-centers meditation. I had recorded it at noontime with no clue of how things would turn out. Here it is again, as you may still find it helpful in meeting your dread and soothing yourself in body, heart, and head. Find this election-soothing 3-centers meditation on YouTube.

POWERFUL TEACHINGS FROM ABRAHAM-HICKS
If you ALREADY know & love the work of Abraham-Hicks and want & feel able to invest 50 bucks in a spiritual perspective on the political scene, I strongly recommend purchasing the Abraham Now broadcast that took place a few days after the elections, on November 9. I found all that was said deeply healing, supportive, and full of wisdom, clarity, and encouragement to stay connected to what is always real, whatever may be going on politically for better or worse. If you aren’t already pretty connected to these teachings and to Abraham-speak, you may not vibe with how they talk about this or even get what they’re saying (because of their particular lingo and perhaps because a foundational understanding of what & how they teach would be needed). That said, if you feel drawn, go go go!

DROP-IN GROUP COACHING
Last Monday night, during drop-in group coaching, we did some beautiful work together to soothe election fears & woes. Please join anytime, including tonight. The topics we cover are set by what people bring forth. You’re always welcome to talk or participate in silence, you can insert a question in the chat, and you can be off-cam, if you prefer, even if you choose to offer a coaching topic. This information, along with very occasional cancellations, can always be found on the homepage of my website.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​(Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in these writings to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.)

I meant to get this email out earlier but I got busy googling Can you freeze red lentil soup? and then best lesbian dating apps for Kansas City, then I looked again to make sure I hadn’t missed any of the free NYT daily puzzles.

Just kidding. I HAVE, however, been thinking about how distractions have innocent motives*. Your little or grand time-wasting side trips carry messages & invitations for your greater well-being—if only they can elbow past your self-accusations of lazy distractible unfocused procrastinating or whatever you choose to call it to make yourself feel bad.

(*Thank you to brilliant coach Jude Spacks for giving me this phrase and concept of the innocent motive.)

Ever notice that feeling bad about your behavior (thus yourself) is possibly the LEAST likely way to move away from what you’re not loving? It’s certainly not the easiest, quickest, or kindest way out!

So, wanna drop the judgments with me for a moment and explore what wants to come through that could actually feel good to you? That could in fact usher you right into the next bigger-better version of yourself?

DISCLAIMER: Please don’t misread me and think I’m saying you should never play games or run curious online searches or binge-watch a good show. I’m not saying that at all. I’m addressing the surplus of that—and how you know it’s too much is not related to a concept or number of minutes. Just this: It feels like too much TO YOU. It feels BAD.

See what hits you in this list of possible invitations seeking to come in when you reach for the stuff that zaps your time and messes with your ideas of productivity. Which messages might be for you? Or what else do they bring in as fresh ideas for what you’re really after?

Your (loving, entirely UNscolding) guidance system may be saying:

• Are you sure you’ve been playing enough, honey? Schedule in some fun time more consciously. Stuff that’s REALLY fun, please. Run & play with dogs & children. Ambush a cat who will ambush you back. Dance, laugh, take a field trip somewhere new.
  
  
• Hey, you’re really seeking to alleviate some discomfort here. Move away from your [desk, cubby, work station] more often. Take more small breaks. GO OUTSIDE, even to step out and breathe a bit with your senses activated. Move the body and get energy flowing all through you. Give your eyes the rest and treat of looking up into trees, skies, light.
  
  
• The thing you’re avoiding you actually want to do. There are some [fears, worries, not-sure-how’s] in the way. Come along. Let’s step into the shallow end at your point of least resistance and take one simple step with ease. See how that goes. Watch for the possibility of momentum building.
  
  
• You’re not CLEARLY making certain choices in your life to create & experience more of what’s actually important to you—what you truly want. Where are you abdicating to what others want from or expect of you? Choose what you actually want to be/do/have in order to fully be you (then maybe you won’t choose this piddly-distraction stuff you don’t actually want to give hours to).

It could be so many things! More below for you to see what’s yours or jogs your thinking toward the more precise issue/s for you.​

  

• There’s something you’re [sad, mad, confused, disturbed] about and you’d actually feel better sitting with that a minute. What if you just sat and breathed it without trying to figure it out? Just feel it in the body and give it a kind, compassionate gaze. Pause to breathe in and around it. Don’t go to the head, leave solutioning alone, and instead offer what feels bad a few conscious moments to see what may arise.
  
  
• ACTUALLY, dear one, you’re too obsessed with productivity, and your inner rebel wants to push against that. Consider your natural fluctuations of energy. What if you went with the flow more & consciously chose the nonproductive sometimes? Let it be okay to have ebb & flow. Your experiment with this could show you increased productivity overall! (I dare you to run the experiment!)
  
  
• The more you don’t let yourself be as big as you could be, my love, the more you reach for things that diminish you, that trivialize the fullness of all that you are, and that fill your time with the superfluous & insubstantial.
  
  
• Sweetheart, you’re working too hard, pure & simple. Work easier. Spend more time relaxing & aligning, even in small spurts and transitional moments, so that the quality of your work (your offering to the world!) is imbued with ease, flow, a satisfied sense of well-being.
  
  
• Do less, and opt in fully to what you do choose to do. Don’t allow yourself to be divided.

Hey, I recently did a group EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) session that felt like an inspired journey of connecting to and honoring the guidance system that’s unique to each of us. Check it out if drawn! Your guidance system can support you to get out of anything you don’t actually feel good about doing RIGHT NOW and point you to what would truly meet your needs, fulfill your desires, and move you along toward your visions and intentions!

Love & blessings, Jaya

​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