 (Photo of person with tattooed arms gripping head from Blake Cheek on Unsplash)
... AND GET ONTO HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL I can already hear someone out there mumbling about denial or spiritual bypassing. Please just come with me on this ride. Afterward, I’ll drop you back off where we started, and if you want to carry on with what you were doing before … you get to do that. Note that this writing includes a 3-min audio I made to support you in how to think and speak about how you want to feel. What do we typically do with a topic that’s problematic to us? The topic where we’re not where we want to be and we really REALLY want it to change? WE STAY ON IT. We’re taught that’s a good thing. It’s the right thing. It’s how we’ll be sure to change it. 3 examples of our problem topics and how we stay on it follow. Finances: we keep looking at the bank account, reviewing spendings, fretting over how else to make money; we keep an eye on news of the economy. Relationship: we keep going over what we’ve done wrong, compare ourselves to what others are doing around us, get caught up in the sorry way the song or movie makes us feel, stalk an ex or a new interest on social media. Job: we think about how underused our skills & talents are, worry about the dynamics with boss or colleagues that make things problematic, stay on top of job notices and what’s happening in our field. My favorite current phrase is No no no no no no no no no. Side trip: Check out this quick clip from the film Get Out and just stop when she’s all done saying no. (In this part, we found the nice black woman creepy before we learned that the creep effect came from—SPOILER ALERT—her body being occupied by an old white woman.) (If you watch a couple of seconds beyond the no, you get the priceless way our protagonist is looking at her.) So here’s what I invite you to instead of staying on it. GET OFF THE TOPIC. Look away. Do not give it your time and energy. Don’t speak about it. Interrupt your own thoughts about it—obviously (but let’s be explicit) especially when thinking about it feels bad and starts taking you to nefarious places (like finding yourself wrong or not enough, predicting horrible futures for yourself, comparing yourself to others or imagining what they think about you, etc). By staying on it, you think you’re minding what needs minding, but you’re really reinforcing what’s wrong. As Abraham-Hicks loves to point out, you’re focusing on what’s missing, what’s lacking, what’s not here yet—when you think you’re focusing on what you want. Quick reminder of the most basic basic basic Law of Attraction (LOA) teaching: What you focus on expands. Or, what you rehearse and review, you get more of. And what you’re focused on is the problem. Even holding something like it’s a problem and constantly looking for solutions is focusing on the problem. So what expands—or WHAT YOU GET MORE OF—is the problem. I have this problem. This is a problem. I can’t figure out this problem. Or worse: I’m doing everything right and there’s still this problem. Then it just all feels like a mind-fuck and you start to feel life is against you. Or you turn that problem-focused gaze to every realm of life and start finding it all wrong, and you were just kidding yourself about all you thought was improving, and ... Let’s quit that. Okay, so let’s say you want to run an experiment here (I highly recommend thinking in terms of experiments) and actually practice getting off the topic. What would you focus ON if you go OFF that? FOCUS ON HOW YOU FEEL AND HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL. How you feel tells you where you are with the topic now. Notice you don’t need to analyze thought to just know that, right now, how you feel with this whole topic is
How you want to feel is easy to identify. What would you feel like if the topic were not a problem and did not require cracking a code or tensing up to give it your full focus to make sure you tame this beast??? I began with negative phrasing, there, so now let’s flip it and get more to the point. How would you feel, related to this topic in your life,
I’ve made a 3-min audio to demonstrate how you might think about it. I made this during a session with a client using the topic of not liking the body you’re in because you think it’s too heavy. If you get off the topic and stop focusing on what’s wrong with it, and how to change its size, and what those imagined or perceived others think of it, then this audio gives you words for how to frame things instead, focused on your feeling state. (Hey, start at the 55-second mark if you JUST want the things you could say to yourself to grope toward how you want to feel. There’s some preliminary stuff that repeats some of the above.) Let’s take a moment to look at WHAT TERRIFIES PEOPLE ABOUT THIS TACTIC. In short, the fear is that then YOU’LL BE STUCK WITH THE PROBLEM. If you make yourself feel good now—or feel how you’d feel if all this realm of life were just as you’d like it--then you’ll just stay put right where you are. Okay, well, if that happens, at least you’ll be a fool who feels much better. HOWEVER, what’s more likely to happen is that your life will gradually (and sometimes very quickly) start to match how you feel. Your behaviors will match what you want more of. It will be easier to head toward what you want more of because you’ll feel better and more hopeful. That’s how LOA actually works. I invite you to play with it. In summary: Lighten up, quit thinking there’s a problem, look away from what’s wrong, and let the work and play be about feeling how you want to feel. Bonus: how you feel NOW alerts you to whether you’re focused in the right place or not. If not, please head back toward how you want to feel. Say things to yourself like I said in the audio. Get off the topic of what’s wrong. Has this concern popped in yet? YEAH, BUT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO SOME THINGS IN THE PRACTICAL, MATERIAL WORLD RELATED TO THIS TOPIC. Cool. Of course. That’s reality. I’m not saying don’t do stuff. Just do it when you feel good. Do it when you feel how you want to feel. And DO NOT TRY TO WORK ON THINGS AND MOVE THEM FORWARD WHEN YOU’RE BACK IN THE OLD PROBLEM MENTALITY AND THE FEELING STATE THAT GOES WITH THAT. And if you started working on things while feeling good and you even START to feel bad again (at the first whiff of feeling bad), get off the topic again. Got it? Now we’ve come full circle. If you’re still worried about denial or spiritual bypassing or losing track of the problem and being stuck with it—now’s your chance to just say Jaya’s full of shit and I just want to do what I’ve been doing. If you get what I’m offering here and you’d like to get it better, a great old LOA-oriented blog post to review is Are you a match to the problem or the solution? Love & blessings, Jaya
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Want to get on with it? Find your point of least resistance.
Hey, have you figured out yet that it’s just resistance when you keep putting off what you say you want to do or what you think you should be doing? It really helps to know it as resistance. It helps to call it resistance. Otherwise, you have to call it lazy or lame. You might get into self-scolding or even self-loathing. And I bet you know that’ll never get you where you want to go. In fact, judging your resistance is more likely to increase it. So what if, instead, you noticed the resistance and just got okay with it—human thing that it is, for human being that you are. What if you declared that you’re in no rush, you’ll get there in your own good time, and you’re simply going to head that way through your point of least resistance? Ah, then you get to actively enjoy the binge-watching (and notice when it’s not fun anymore, because enjoying it means it’s not fraught with shame or misery that keeps you stuck there). Or you get to appreciate prioritizing the easy task, and move swiftly and surely through the ease of the simpler, more obvious, more joyous thing that must also be done. As you feel good about working with ease, you get to increase feeling good in general. And from that place of feeling good, and having had some guiltless fun or checked off a to-do or two that cost you little, you might take a (satisfied, can-do) breath and go for the harder thing. Sound better? I’m giving you three examples to illustrate the point of least resistance, so check out the one or ones you’re most drawn to. Example #1 targets the Enneagram’s self-preservation instinct (self-prez to Enneagram geeks): getting yourself to the gym. Example #2 correlates with the sexual instinct: working up to leaving the relationship, or agonizing over the belief it’s really time to go (but you don’t or can’t). Example #3 addresses the social instinct: wanting to rev up your connections or grow your circles. After reading your preferred example(s), drop down to the subhead “More implications of the point of least resistance.” # 1: What if, instead of judging yourself for not getting to the gym, you welcomed yourself to the human race and considered how very many people struggle with how to work in working out? What if you stopped calling it lazy and instead took a look at the actual issue for you? This could lead you right to your point of least resistance. You might be inspired to get an accountability buddy, try a new modality that looks more fun or doable right now, or find a YouTube guide or a class. You might start simply walking or biking more to get from point A to point B. You might determine that a few good stretches could change how you feel in your body and start taking two-minute stretch breaks when that scrunched-up-at-the-desk sensation creeps in. So much is possible! But not when you get trapped in resistance, and not when you see a point of least resistance but don’t grab it because you treat it like an evil (or at least believe that you’re wimping out, not doing it right, not doing enough). # 2. What if, instead of forcing yourself to walk out of the relationship you suspect you’ve outgrown, or even forcing a stay-or-go decision, you located your point of least resistance? What if you gave yourself full permission to hang out there for a while and see what comes next? Your point of least resistance here could be about spending more time alone or with friends. It could involve making a pact (with your partner or yourself) to have fewer arguments (walk away at the first whiff!) and spend more time in appreciation or admiration, while putting aside stuff-to-work-out or what-to-do-next for a time. Or it could be working on passion and connection in every other realm of life while allowing, in the relationship realm, the relief of simplicity and neutrality (but not misery and criticism, at least on your end)—then you could see where that takes you. # 3. What if, instead of telling yourself you’re hopeless at the social thing (as you wish for more of it), you told yourself that growing your connections is a good intention to hold and play with? There’s already less resistance in that. Then you might consider what feels manageable and aims you roughly in the right direction without some great overhaul of either character or habits. It could be going out to eat alone, even with a book or device for starters, or going to the movies solo or with a friend or partner and appreciating that others are about, having a similar experience. Or you might join a class so that you have a repeating experience of gathering with a fixed population on a shared point of interest in shared space. Your point of least resistance might even be an online group! It might involve self-permission to join something in silence, allowing yourself to begin by focusing on your inner experience. It might be to find a buddy to do something you’ve never done or want to do more of (salsa or karate? wine tastings or vegan cooking? choral singing or meditation?)—something that happens to be done with or among other human beings. More implications of the point of least resistance You won’t grow your social, sexual, or self-prez self from a place of feeling like you’re perpetually off your game (or like it’s a game you’re not remotely equipped to play). But you can grow any one of those by stepping from one point of least resistance to the next, and just see what gives as you allow yourself to step onward, curious about what’s possible, open to what reveals itself. I cannot say enough about my love of the point of least resistance (and how much it’s helped my clients and program participants). It’s all about stepping in where it makes the most sense because it feels best and easiest and most aligned with where you are right now. This concept is super compatible with the idea of scooching (you may already know how much I love to Scooch!). The point of least resistance came to me through Abraham-Hicks, who teaches that it’s also your point of greatest alignment, most fun, and greatest joy. I keep playing with it and loving the experience and results. It’s so much kinder than all the forcing and straining or the judging and shutting down. I invite you to it (and you can learn about it in my beautiful and now beautifully cleaned-up and polished Expansion audio program). Love and Blessings, Jaya Note that my post Force Nothing adds to the ideas presented here on least resistance. |
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