(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

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.

​From a recent Abraham-Hicks daily message: “The Universe is not punishing you or blessing you. The Universe is responding to the vibrational attitude that you are emitting. The more joyful you are, the more Well-being flows to you.”

Some of you have heard that in my current life with my elderly mother, I’m seeing lots of (bits of) Hallmark movies. Which has led me to coin the term Hallmark-movie wisdom. Can you guess how wise I consider these constant nuggets dispensed by vanilla characters who never offend?

Some of the scripts feature references to THE UNIVERSE, and I’m always fascinated by how this Universe is presented. Most recently, our protagonist was in (pretty) tears because it seemed that she and her friends were DOING THE RIGHT THING and while her friends were getting REWARDED (which meant, they were getting something they wanted and having fun in the process), she was being PUNISHED (or, not apparently getting the outcome she wanted and having less & less fun as she focused on that).

The Universe DOES work this way: You will tend to have increasingly less fun as you focus on all that’s not going just as you want it to. (Nailed that one, scriptwriter.)

The Universe, I daresay, DOES NOT work this way: You get rewarded for your goodness or doing it right by getting just the outcome you want (and perhaps even the desired journey on the way to that desired outcome).

And if you don’t get that, you’re being punished.

Factor in the sad predicament of thinking you’re doing the right thing but not being rewarded, then it also feels grossly unfair that the hoped-for outcome was withheld, and now you’re a victim of this cruel Universe that failed to notice what a good little vanilla girl you are (or whatever your flavor & gender identification).

​To get out of punishment/reward mentality:

Notice that this mindset was instilled in you when you were quite young, and perhaps your child self is interpreting events and getting stuck in feeling bad about things when you’re there. Call in your adult self who gets that shit happens and there’s no reward or punishment about it.

Call in your spiritual self who maybe gets or is starting to get or has experimented with getting that when you carry on believing you’re supported by life, and keep aiming the direction you’d like to go, then you don’t need to get tripped up on evaluating all the ups and downs in the journey.

In fact, you can treat open and shut doors as equally helpful—both offering good information to have, and letting you go where you are and aren’t going.

And you can treat hard or challenging things as building muscles for you that are currently still weaker than you might like. (Remember: muscles are appealing and make you feel strong and capable and badass and maybe even sexy, so build those muscles instead of sinking into a puddle of punishment mentality that just makes you want to give up & cry.)

Your spiritual self probably also knows (and can be called on to remind you) that the more we look away from outcomes while we’re on the journey, the more we benefit from the journey (which includes having fun, feeling good feels, and having wondrous & worthwhile encounters & adventures along the way), and the more PRESENT  we are—so we don’t miss the journey or get lost in a constant referencing of the future and what it’s going to bring in terms of outcomes.

Your chronologically aging self, whatever number of years you can put to that, almost certainly knows that outcomes are surprising. And that sometimes, in retrospect, what seemed like a bad outcome was a bullet dodged, or something invaluable learned or gained, or someone precious brought into the story, or a fantastic story to tell, or … or … or …

So here are some possible components of a reframe:

You don’t even need rewards to be happy.
You don’t need to label outcomes as good or bad.
You don’t need to be bothered by the ups and downs along the way.
You don’t need to assign meaning to whether things are going along to your liking or not or landing just as you thought you wanted.
Do not define anything as punishment, then you’ll get increasingly free of needing to evaluate whether you’re good or prove that you are.

Do focus on loving your life.
Aim toward what you want. (Look away more from what you don’t want.)
Have as much fun as possible along the way.
Gain from anything that does or doesn’t happen.
Carry on and watch for how life keeps supporting you in a million wonderful & often wonderfully unexpected ways.
Watch for how much well-being flows your way.
Watch for how much well-being you generate by living & loving your life and not seeing any of it as reward or punishment.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Want a quicker read? You can simply learn or review the placemat process by starting below the first pic. Scroll down, baby …

I was thinking about how hard it is for people to LET GO of trying to control all the parts and believing I’M THE ONE who makes it happen. Doership! We even stir up more confusion by accusing ourselves of being irresponsible or not properly showing up when we’re not doing our utmost (as we tense up & exhaust ourselves) to think of everything and manage all the parts.

That’s a problem because

• you can’t see all the parts
• you can’t know all the possible ways this dream or vision or desire could look (by desire I mean things like: I want a fulfilling job, I want my finances in order, I want a healthy & beautiful relationship, I want a body I feel good in)
• you don’t know the fastest, most efficient way to get to where you’re going; there are fun shortcuts you haven’t yet dreamed of (but you might benefit from going back and finding where life got you somewhere much faster & more easily than you could have with all your wits)
• you don’t know all the amazing detours & pauses & strange happenings along the way that are going to give you exactly what you need, whether you knew you needed it or not (but you could go back and consider the wise workings of that in your past)
• when you think you have to orchestrate what you can’t possibly, then you try to via worry, rumination, tiresome repetition & reviews … and that creates all kinds of dissatisfaction & destabilization (familiar?)
• you have no clue of (here comes some Abraham-Hicks language) all the cooperative components lining up to bring all the parts together into some beautiful whole you get to live out & play in—that next unfolding where you get to grow yourself & create & dance with consciousness & just be in love with this amazing human journey & the wondrous settings & characters in it

Those who use the G-word sometimes say, Let go and let God. Um, sure, that can be used to go complacent or excuse not stepping up. It can also be used to let go of what you can’t control, and let the greater intelligence do its thing. It will always include you in the doing (some of us think you are God and God is you), but won’t put you in charge of what you just don’t have the capacity to do, manage, or control (since you’re also in this limited ego-reality as an individual human being).

When I first heard the term the organizing intelligence of the Universe, it just sang to me. I was already aware of the love force and fully down for that. I hadn’t thought about or even begun to take in (and that will be an ongoing process till I die) the unfathomable intricacies & crazy brilliance of what I now call the orchestration.

So how do you come to know that, work with it better, FLOW with it, give yourself to that current? Play your part and put down what’s not yours?

​
The PLACEMAT PROCESS from Abraham-Hicks is my favorite way to put stuff down and get crystal clear about what I’m doing and what I’m not doing. And bee-tee-dubs, it’s called that because Esther (yeah, the nice white lady from Texas who channels Abraham, which or who is actually a group of entities, I know, I know, but stay with me, please, because it’s brilliant)—Esther got this process while she was at a restaurant and used a paper placemat to try it out.

For those who like Byron Katie’s 3 kinds of business, note that this allow you to clearly and on paper (where you won’t get sidetracked by all the slippery seaweed in the mind) write down in one area what belongs to the Universe and even to other people, and separately note what’s yours.

​
​The act of writing it down is also a literal and symbolic putting it down. Placing it in those larger hands, or into that great holding net where everything’s being gorgeously woven together in a way that works for the good of all concerned.

So in your area on the paper, you write down only what you’ll do today. Abraham says, Mean it. Whatever you put there, you know for sure you’ll get to it. Cool if you get this wrong, folks. Use it to take in how confused you still are about how much you’re supposed to and can get into a day. We’re actually not meant to CRAM OUR DAYS full with productive activity. Ay, that’s the great cultural lie of doership and what it means to be good little worker bees. (I imagine real bees are relaxed & having a good time as they bop around collecting pretty powdered nectar & turning it into exquisite golden honey.)

But it’s not just that I’m NOT DOING the things I put down in the Universal Manager area. The organizing intelligence, or what A-H calls the Universal Manager, is all over it. Bringing things together with that uncanny right-place right-time precision, flowing things your way, getting people queued up to enter stage left or bump into you as you round the corner, in short—orchestrating. Or … lining up cooperative components that will support you to get to where you’re going.

Do watch if you choose to experiment with this. Notice how things moved forward that you didn’t touch because you gave them, for real, to the UM who knows how to effortlessly make it all happen & come together gorgeously.

So ANYTHING you’re thinking about, worried about, wishing you could get to, thinking you should already have gotten to (but truth is, you won’t get to it or can’t do anything about it today), PUT IT DOWN. You’ll know as you write (and after) you really are putting it and did put it down when you feel some RELIEF. When you relax. When you feel light instead of heavy. When you feel you’re doing enough, it’s good enough, all is well. (Notice the trust in this?)

Put down all that you don’t need to carry today because it’s really not what’s up for YOU to manage, hold, do, or orchestrate. Examples:

• What’s happening with your kid who’s struggling
• Getting taxes in on time
• Working out your social issues
• Planning your vacation
• Moving that other project forward
• Getting back to So-and-So
• Helping more turtle hatchlings get to the water
• …

When you can look at your little (way littler) list and feel good about THAT being the stuff of your activity today, you’re on the right track. Maybe you’ll even remember that the ACTUAL stuff of your day is not just what you check off the to-do list but …

• love, peace, joy
• dancing with consciousness
• laughing
• being a body breathing, grounding, connecting to the senses
• living in presence
• playing with random acts of kindness
• letting the beauty and wonder of life make its impressions on you
• …

Hey, I’ve heard Abraham gently & playfully scold people for acting like they’re delegating things to the Universal Manager, and then they have the right to be upset if something didn’t move something forward the way they’d hoped. You’re getting the benefits of the process when you feel RELIEF. Intend relief. Note relief means less resistance. It means you’re entering or you’re in the flow. It means you’ll give yourself a much easier time of it. There’s more going on too but … that’s enough, isn’t it?

Love & blessings, Jaya