End of year, 2017
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The Imperative of Feeling Good Oy, people did not feel so good in 2017. My Facebook post this year that got the most attention started with this question: “Do you fall into horror, sorrow, despair over the political scene, racial injustice, environmental degradation, and all that’s wrong with this planet?” Uh, this apparently struck a chord. I ended the post with the words “The Earth needs your inspired presence, not your distress.” What was in between? Basically, an invitation to feel good. I believe that prioritizing feeling good is how you’ll do the most good for yourself, your loved ones, anyone you encounter, and any sentient being who shares the planet with you, plus for the Earth itself. I also believe that whatever you vote for for all of humanity, you'd better be willing to accept for yourself. When you’re distressed about the world, aren’t you sickened by things like greed, pointless inequality, stupidity, carelessness people show toward the earth and all its places and various inhabitants? Don’t you just want everyone to live fully and simply, well and happy, feeling good? Well, then—not maybe but for sure—you need to allow yourself to live that way. The better you feel and the more often you feel good, the more good you can exude, the more inspired actions you’ll take, and the more ways you can vote for that goodness to spread to the good of all. Hey, any way you slice it, you can only do so much. You’ll do so much more—and it’ll all feel better—from a place of feeling good. Selfish alert? Aren’t we in danger of becoming hopelessly self-absorbed and -indulgent if feeling good is the priority? No.
So prioritize feeling good. When you feel bad, make it your business then to soothe yourself, to scooch toward feeling better.When you feel bad, do not problem-solve or project a future from there. How will you project anything good from that vantage point? Your future will be filled with bleak predictions and greater horrors. It’s like voting for what you don’t want! I actually mean this: don’t even try to create small and large solutions or supports of any kind for others (or yourself) when you feel bad. Soothe yourself, and turn a calm and hopeful gaze outward when you feel good. When you're full of hope, ask, “How can I serve? How can I be part of the solution?” How? Do you have even an inkling as to how to manage this prioritizing-feeling-good thing? At its simplest: move away in the moment from what feels bad and toward what feels better. To keep from trying to say here all there is to say on the topic, let me point you to some brief Facebook posts I’ve made recently on various ways to move toward feeling better. My most recent post is below the links, and I print it here because it directs you back to yourself and all you know, and it happens to make the perfect conclusion for all I’ve written here.
From 12.21.2017 on Jaya the Trust Coach Facebook page: Invitation to point yourself toward living in the kind of world you want to live in, having the life you want to have, feeling how you want to feel. Start today. Start every day! If that feels hard or daunting or utterly baffling (why wouldn't it, sometimes?), then scooch that way: Begin with the feeling aspect. You can make yourself feel better. What do you know to do to soothe yourself, to feel better in your body, to honor what supports you? What do you know about responding to thoughts that bring you down & scooching toward thoughts that feel better? I cannot overemphasize the power of simply paying attention to how you feel & making it a priority to feel good, to move toward feeling better. From there, you won’t get selfish & do less for others or the world. You’ll feel able & inspired to do more. Seriously, start today. Love & blessings, Jaya I just finished teaching an 8-week online course to support people struggling with sleep. It went so beautifully and I can hardly wait to give it again in 2018. My class participants changed their stance toward lying awake to one of nonresistance and started lying awake differently, with the intention of resting and meeting consciousness. We also worked on how to move through a day when sleep-deprived and in general treated all the attendant challenges as a spiritual boot camp to use for building muscles in applying certain spiritual principles. People successfully changed their relationship with lying awake, came closer to themselves, stopped being anxious about sleep issues and day-after-rotten-sleep issues, and many reported sleeping better. I'll be launching this again by spring of 2018. I look forward to growing this thing so beautifully begun at the close of 2017 (a year that kept many people awake nights with monkey-mind raging and anxiety surging through).
In the meantime, get the rules for lying awake if sleep troubles you! Send anyone you know with sleep troubles to the page that describes the course and allows them to download the rules for lying awake! |
Below, I'm announcing 2 things I feel sooo good about:
1) My book Scooch! now exists as an e-book! 2) My January visioning workshops in the Ithaca area are all set up for 2018. (Yup, they're organized around feeling good.) 
I'm e-lated about the new e-book status of my book Scooch!: Edging into a Friendly Universe.
Go check it out on Amazon, buy it, gift it, bless it! See the "Look inside" feature to read some tidbits. If you already know and love it, and if it's in your integrity and pleasure to do so, Here are some ways you can promote Scooch!:
Visioning 2018 in Ithaca and environs!
A soul-nourishing, creative daylong adventure in the depths and whimsical shallows for women who are interested in being in processes of self-discovery and in living ever more conscious, intentional lives. Want a quick view? You can get the bare-bones outline of the day (9:30-4:30) here. Want every last detail? This page tells the whole story of the Feel-Good visioning workshop. You can attend in Trumansburg on January 13 or in Danby on 27. 
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