DO NOT CLAIM IT AND GET STUCK WITH IT

​Have you ever noticed that when you label something you notice in yourself, while it can be helpful and perhaps validating, you can also give it more power? This is a THING and this name PROVES THAT IT’S A THING. Worse, you may now feel sort of helpless or at the mercy of this big bugaboo with this serious name. FRAUD SYNDROME (also called impostor syndrome) is a great example of this.

Once you declare you have fraud syndrome (and keep talking about it and explaining it to people and to yourself), you stake down this sense of not being enough, not really fitting in here, not being valid in the role you’re playing or the task you’re fulfilling. What’s crazy (I mean, besides the fact that it’s simply not true) is that it’s likely you chose this playing field yourself! In other words, you want to be in it and you care about learning more here, perhaps even developing some level of mastery.

What if you simply noticed thoughts moving through that you might put in the FRAUD SYNDROME bin? What if you wrote them down or said them aloud and looked at what you’re actually saying? You can actually dismantle wrong thinking instead of reinforcing it by announcing to the next person that you have this cursed fraud syndrome thing.

What is it you’re saying?

• I’m not equal to this
• I’m not as good as people think I am
• I’m not fully qualified to be doing this
• I’m not on par with So and So [or everybody else or the people I’m comparing myself to]
• I’m in the wrong place
• I still have a lot to learn

That last statement is probably the only one that’s actually true. And it’s also not a problem and good to know.

What if you noticed and let it be okay that these thoughts are in the mix? You don’t have to believe them, though. You might make little of them. You can in fact work gently to move along your ideas of fraudulence instead of making identity out of them.

Fraud syndrome is so normal—which is why it’s been named and we’ve all heard of it. Everybody has it in some way or has felt it in some context. That doesn’t make it a useful or accurate or necessary label. It’s certainly not the best description of who you are and what you’re up to.

What follows from saying, in essence, I AM THAT? Only disempowered ways of being: you’ll tiptoe around hiding something, or puff up to compensate for something, or buck up to prove something. As a (not really but self-declared) fraud you’ll do SOMETHING wacky that serves no one, least of all you.

Like any- and everything else you might feel about yourself (e.g., confident, self-conscious, powerful, wobbly, happy, sad), the sense of being a fraud comes & goes. It has different levels of potency at different times. It’s not a solid thing you're stuck with; it’s not even objectively measurable.

In other words, it’s really, truly not worth the price of the label. Why would you set yourself up to live into or fight against such a thing?

You can ease and SOOTHE and counter and CLEAR OUT the sense of being a fraud. You can notice you're in that mentality and pivot quickly! Here are three seriously simple things you can do toward that end.

Thing 1. Ask yourself some judicious questions to get real with yourself:

• Am I engaged in some equivalent of selling lemons in a used car lot?
• Am I saying or implying I know everything in this realm or have all the answers?
• Am I claiming a level of training or experience I don’t actually have?
• Am I using someone else’s name or title?
• Am I using false credentials?
• Am I trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes?
• Am I lying about anything here?
• Am I being reckless or breaking laws in doing the task or work I’m doing at my current level of training or experience?

Actual answering these questions will have more power than walking around arguing for limitations by giving them the bogus title of FRAUD SYNDROME.

Thing 2. Be clear what it means to be a fraud and actually take in that you are not that! Tell yourself that nope, in fact you are not an impostor in any way, shape, or form.

Yes to the questions in the above bullet points would be cause for considering yourself a fraud (um, and then you could correct that, not worry about it).

Or check out and take in this definition of impostor from Merriam-Webster: “One that assumes false identity or title for the purpose of deception.” Not what you’re up to? Then you’re not a fraud. (If that is what you’re up to, either carry on or clean it up but there’s no label needed either way.)

Thing 3. Soften it. What’s truer than “I have fraud syndrome” or the thought underlying that, “I’m a fraud”? Restate it to yourself in softer, more accurate, more manageable terms:

• I haven’t yet attained the level of mastery I value and want to have
• I’m not as good at this as I’d like to be
• I intend to keep improving my knowledge and skill set over time
• I’m on a journey of becoming, and I actually want to keep growing
• I’m willing to say I don’t know and then, if applicable and wanted, to do some research and gather more information
• I’m teaching what I’m learning, and it’s potentially or actually good for all concerned
• I’m willing and even happy [proud, inspired] to be on this growth edge
• I’m currently out of my comfort zone and that means the zone is expanding, as it’s meant to over time
• I’m a work in progress and always will be, because I want to be a lifelong learner and I value my evolution

Does it feel better to think in these terms? Are you in fact being more real with yourself (and therefore with others) when you look again, beyond the label of fraud syndrome and a blind acceptance (and regurgitation) of that label?

You’re not a fraud. You’re on a valid journey of becoming. It's really about building muscles, gaining confidence over time as you try new things and move toward mastery all over again. I invite you to be willing to be in a growth process, to run experiments, and to play with trial-and-error knowing there will most certainly be errors along the way. Keep going if and because you love what you're up to! And gauge the improvement and evolution as you go, instead of constantly noticing what you haven’t yet attained.

Finally, feel like a badass more often. YOU ARE BADASS. If you think not—well, you get to be if you decide that and live into it.

Love & blessings, Jaya
For those who love or want to try Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT, or tapping), here's a session I did on Fraud Syndrome (13:46).

And here's another tapping session on Fraud Syndrome (15:09).

​Other typical power zappers (besides walking around thinking, speaking, and acting like you're a fraud) can be found here.

​Bottom line up front: If you’re surrendering from a place of alignment, it will not feel bad.

It will not feel like giving up. Not on yourself, not on your dreams, not on your becoming—which means your evolution, your greater expression of all that you are, your getting more of what you want.

It will not feel like defeat—and you will not feel like a loser or a failure.

It will not feel like a wet blanket, a rained-on parade, a burst bubble.

It won’t even feel like losing your agency.

The right kind of surrender, in fact, feels GOOD. It feels like RELIEF, like relaxation. Like contracted muscles softening, opening, dropping down.

It feels like the blessed end of unnecessary striving—most often, letting go of what you can’t possibly control, what was never yours to control in the first place.

It feels like a welcome-home, like coming back to yourself, back to your business. Back to what’s actually yours to manage, to control, to choose.

That’s why SURRENDER—the good kind—cannot be all-or-nothing. Be careful with questions like, Should I hold on (to this WHOLE THING) or surrender (this WHOLE THING)? In that great ball of wax, there are disparate bits to sort through: weighty bits that you could put down and lighter bits with your name on them that you could hold onto firmly with (at least some semblance of) competence and ease.

​In the aligned surrender, you still get to have choices.

In fact, you’ll have some decisions to make.

The decision-making gets way, way easier once you’re deciding from a place of sanity, not trying to manage the unmanageable. When you’re not arguing with reality (as Byron Katie puts it), not pushing against anything (as Abraham-Hicks repeatedly reminds us NOT to do to have the best life and greatest ease and fullest power to create), then you can stand solid, relaxed and aligned, on a firm foundation of seeing and accepting reality as it is.

From that foundation, you’re free to manage what’s yours to manage, and you simply keep letting go of the rest.

I chose the phrase keep letting go very intentionally. It’s important, even crucial.

I so often see super-smart human beings thinking in terms of pulling some plug to be done with something once and for all. Usually, their language betrays that they thought that would (or should) happen, as they speak especially in terms of still—as in, I’m still trying to convince the doctors to listen to me. I typically have my coaching clients reframe that in a heartbeat in session.

Just BRING IT TO NOW. Just be with your impulse to grab the reins of someone else’s horse again, and get really good at putting them back down as quickly as you catch yourself. Correct it in the moment, not in the whole of how you operate.

Hey, you do get to have a plug pulled sometimes, maybe from a powerful healing process or ritual; maybe through an epiphany or stroke of insight; maybe from a peak experience or some hellacious unwanted event that floors you and rocks your world, leaving you forever altered. But most of the time, the undoing, the reprogramming, the unraveling and rewiring—all involves what you notice now, pause with now, accept right now because it’s here right now.

In that conscious pause, you can find where to surrender and where to assert or simply choose. In the now-moment, you make your best choice within your control toward what you want and who you want to be, now and now and now. and now and now and …

So love, please don’t surrender out of a sense that you’re screwed and have lost all capacity to choose. In every situation or relationship or moment, there are areas of letting go and areas of holding fast. Let yourself feel the RELIEF of what you appropriately stop trying to control and the POWER and SATISFACTION of making all kinds of choices where they’re yours to make.

In fact, don’t abdicate the choices that are yours to make.

In a moment when you come close to where you do have agency, tune in: What’s important to you here? What do you want? (Not, what do others around you want or even want for you?)

This is your life. What you can’t control in it is not your business, so do surrender that. But that surrender will not be absolute; most absolute surrenders involve giving up and failing to locate your right agency. Locate your business here and now and find your power to choose, to act, to stay true to yourself. My dear one, be(come) someone who knows when and how to surrender and be(come) the one who chooses your life.

Love & blessings, Jaya
​
Like it when someone reads to you? CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO VERSION OF THE GOOD KIND OF SURRENDER (6:20).

THEN DO AND GET MORE OF WHAT YOU LOVE

I was wondering what I wanted to do next in the group work I’ve been loving so much. It’s so deeply fulfilling to me on so many levels. So I sat down with pen & paper to find what Abraham-Hicks calls the feeling place.

That’s it. That’s all I was seeking to locate. What does this thing I love feel like? (Below, I’ll flag for you what I did NOT begin with—things we typically begin with that keep us stuck.)

As with everything I offer you, focus on what this calls up for you about you, even though I’m offering an illustration about me! I invite you to let it remind you of similar or even different things that stir for you when you know you’re right in there doing what you love in the most satisfying way.

FEELS LIKE …
Feels like I’m in great company—people opted in, dropped in, present, open, engaged
Feels like all present are curious, fascinated, excited, eager
Feels like recognition & connection
Feels like fun, like being in the sandbox, like playing in the magic together
Feels like being in love, happy to see every face and all the shifting expressions
Feels like wonder, wow, delight
Feels like goosebumps, no way, truth better than fiction
Feels like I’m learning and teaching at the same time, evolving with my clients
Feels like growth, expansion, evolution—mine, theirs, shared
Feels like coaching in the dynamic now, responding in the moment to what arises in the moment
Feels like being in my zone of genius, at ease, in flow
Feels like surety, like knowing what to do or say next
Feels like absorption, like there’s nowhere else I’d rather be
Feels like wonderful storytelling from different voices
Feels real, feels authentic, feels like come-as-you-are
Feels like Abraham’s phrase tuned in, tapped in, turned on

After I wrote all that out, I was fully connected to those feelings, that feeling place, and ready for the one next thing to do toward what I want to create.

Next, I’ll put this process to finding or even appreciating your person for those focused in the dating & relationship sector.

You know when it feels really right and just works with someone? Even for a while, at times, in the beginning, or the closest you’ve gotten to yet? Or can you imagine what you’re pretty sure it would feel like based on what you’ve learned about what is NOT IT, what you know you don’t want?

Feels easy, feels natural, feels unforced
Feels spontaneous, unrehearsed, experienced fresh in the moment
Feels like recognition, feels like knowing & being known
Feels like acceptance, feels spacious, feels welcoming
Feels relaxed, feels calm, feels like comfort
Feels like letting down, letting go, letting be
Feels fun, feels like easy laughter, like hard laughter, like shared secret smiles
Feels exciting, animating, activating
Feels sparky, feels mutual, feels like a volley of good energy, banter, inspired ideas
Feels chosen, feels wanted, feels right
Feels like adoring, appreciating, cherishing
Feels like being adored, appreciated, cherished
Feels like good attention, good mirroring, being seen, being appreciated
Feels like mutual admiration
Feels like learning, growing, opting in to forays out of the comfort zone
Feels like adventure, feels like delight, wonder, awe
Feels simple, easy, intuitive, organic, obvious
Feels satisfying, feels good, feels like OF COURSE

Are you getting it? It’s so wonderfully easy and more helpful than you might think to get you moving in the direction you’d like to go—especially when a lot feels unclear and unformed. If you took in the above feeling statements at all, you probably started to touch into or even really got hold of the feeling place.

This is not where most human beings are taught to begin, so it’s not where we habitually begin—or even get to at all. In fact, we can get stuck early on and shut down possibilities because we begin in all the wrong places:

• How will I do this?
• How will I get there?
• What will I call it?
• Do I need training?
• Can I do it without [social media] [a dating app] [a sudio] [an investor]?
• What things in my history make me likely to falter or fail?
• Where will the resources come from?
• What do I need to figure out to make this work?
• What do I need to do (do do do do do do)?
• What will people think of this?
• Will anyone value this?

Also, beware of old labels that represent things you make identity of (conditions, diagnoses, history, tendencies) that in no way represent WHO YOU ARE:

• I have so much impostor syndrome
• This is making my ADHD kick in big time
• I’m no good at [this whole thing] [this part that I think I must be good at for this to work]
• This has never worked for me before
• My anxiety is activated every time I think about this
• I’m a [Nine] so of course I’m procrastinating

About that last one, do fill in your own Enneagram type, if you’re aware of that construct, and notice how you chalk certain behaviors and mindsets up to that (or any other construct you relate with). Instead, use what you know about your tendencies to recognize and pivot from that autopilot way of seeing & approaching things—which is not WHO YOU ARE and in no way limits what you’re capable of or what you get to experience next.

Let’s give a quick nod to WHO DO I THINK I AM? Pointless question whose job is just self-attack. Either answer the question to actually locate who you think you are to alleviate a sense that you have wrong ideas about your journey, wants, preferences, skills, talents; or move away from that question entirely. It’s ridiculously unkind.

Notice that nothing in the above bulleted list is an actual concrete, inexorable, intractable aspect of anyone’s identity or even reality, however much they accurately know about themselves, their experiences, or their current conditions.

Anything you notice that’s in your way is something to respond to consciously: you can question it (as with The Work of Byron Katie or my short inquiry process); use it to pivot from unwanted to wanted; or respond to with some process to bring forth other and stronger truths that actually align with what you want and support you to head that way (and believe you can do it and you get to have it!). (See the marble game or a focus wheel, both from Abraham-Hicks.) Or book a session with Jaya!

One truly effective and crazy-simple process is to FIND THE FEELING PLACE. And do it in witing. It’s more effective that way. Second-best is saying it out loud.

Love & blessings, Jaya

NO PENANCE, NO PUNISHMENT, NO PURGATORY

Your worthiness doesn’t fluctuate. That’s the main impression I’d love for this writing to make on you.

How deserving you are of happiness & well-being right now doesn’t change from one moment to the next.

Your worthiness is never contingent on what you have or haven’t done. Or how well you’ve done it. Or whether you’ve done enough.

The Universe is not evaluating & grading you at all times, so if you’re still living as if that’s what’s happening, if you’re still doing that to yourself, I invite you to play with another possibility.

I invite you to understand, fully embody, and live into your actual, inherent, unwavering worthiness.

Why you might think your worthiness fluctuates
You were raised by unhealed people who believed that worthiness varies based on all kinds of things. You grew up in a culture that still holds that as truth. You were subjected, often with the best of intentions, to constant evaluation, reward & punishment, and messages of what you should & shouldn’t do according to others (who didn’t even agree on all the particulars of right & wrong). It makes sense that you thus decided you had to earn your worthiness and that you were constantly at risk of losing it. You did whatever you needed to do in response to that—worked hard & harder, strove to be good, hid things, omitted information, lied outright, defended, rationalized, begged, charmed, fought, fawned, fled, froze. …

What (routinely) makes you feel undeserving
Whether you believe it a little or a lot, I’m inviting you to notice right now what makes you feel undeserving, what you think can strip you of your inherent deserving of all good things at all times—a worthiness that’s actually never in question and can neither be earned nor unearned.

You might think you no longer deserve to feel good, succeed, be loved, or experience well-being of any kind under some of the following conditions:

• You’re in a bad mood
• You snapped at someone or, worse, yelled (or, worse …)
• You lost it; you stopped behaving like everything is okay and you’ve got it handled
• You’re having judgy thoughts & you can’t get out of them
• You didn’t do the thing(s) you think you must do to be well (yoga, exercise, meditation, morning rituals, eating just right, whatever)
• You’re not dressed as you like to be dressed or you’re having a bad hair day
• Someone around you is in a bad mood or has disconnected from you so you walk around with the vague or acute feeling you’ve done something wrong or it’s your fault
• Someone you love is having a hard time and you think you should have somehow prevented this
• You’re all in a wrinkle about something that’s not your business and some part of you knows it’s not your business (and you make that a reason to feel bad about yourself and/or keep reiterating your position on the matter instead of making it a reason to come back to your business and reconnect to your inherent worthiness)
• You haven’t tamed some beasty thing you think you’re supposed to have all figured out and it’s crawling around in your mind
• You’re strapped financially and focused on what’s currently (and maybe historically) not pretty about money in your life
• In any or several realms of life, it looks to you like your life isn’t working and things definitely aren’t working out for you
• You acted in a way or did a thing that represents something you don’t like about yourself, and you wish you were or think you should be beyond it
• [fill in what else you see in your self-witnessing]

So what happens when you (inaccurately) think your worthiness has notched down?

What you do when you feel undeserving
It can look a lot of different ways to believe that here & now, you’ve lost your worthiness badge, you’re unworthy, you don’t deserve … Here are some typical ones:

• You stay sad, mad, or in any flavor of bad mood
• You move into each next segment of the day expecting things to feel bad or not go to your liking, thus having a whole bad day that you might carry into sleep and wake up with the next (& next & next) day
• You start mentally sabotaging what you say you want by reviewing why you can’t have it (and your reasons may be totally unrelated to your current self-perceived unworthiness, but they were launched by that & further reinforce it)
• You engage in more direct self-sabotage by taking or failing to take certain actions
• You start fights with others
• You push away connection with & comforts from people, animals, nature, music, water, good food, etc.
• You put yourself with people you don’t like, stay indoors, stay in bed, go ascetic or overindulgent
• You deprive yourself of fun, pleasure, creativity, whatever nourishes your soul
• You stay in situations & relationships that aren’t right for you in the name of working harder or somehow fully earning the right to leave
• [I invite you to add your favorite self-punishments or ways you stave off well-being or withhold it from yourself]

I don’t want you to live this way! Do you?

Purgatory pause or self-imposed limbo
In summary, you start believing in a punitive Universe again (Do you believe in a punitive Universe?), probably with yourself as the punisher-in-chief. You think you need to be in some sort of limbo for a while, as if you must undergo some purification before you deserve anything in life that rcould be heavenly (like ease, fun, money, fulfilling work; harmonious connections with other sentient beings; feeling healthy or at ease in your body, looking good, liking yourself; getting to work, play, love, and live with people you like and can be fully yourself with; and the list goes on).

Wait—is it true that your worthiness doesn’t go up and down?
I dunno, seems true to me. It’s a more empowering belief that I think brings out the best in us. And I can’t think of a graph where fluctuating worthiness actually gets charted except in our faulty unexamined belief systems where very old & inaccurate stuff prevails. More important & more relevant to you, I invite you to explore that for yourself. At the School for The Work of Byron Katie (which I attended seems-like-just-yesterday in 2006), Katie asked us, What if you could move without a trace from one moment to the next? She invited us to believe that we could. (And she has always invited folks to run their own experiments, saying, “Don’t just take my word for it.”)

You might ask yourself:

• Do I live in a punitive Universe? (I would say, only if you make it so.)
• What good comes of feeling unworthy so much of the time?
• What good comes of putting myself in some existential time-out instead of shifting quickly into what feels better?
• What is served (except reinforcing a false belief in unworthiness) by punishing myself instead of simply course-correcting & moving forward?

Note that moving forward could certainly include a well-placed apology, making amends, paying something back or forward. I’m not saying you need to go into denial about having moments when you don’t prefer how you just felt, behaved, chose, spoke, whatever. We will have such moments as long as we’re alive! I’m definitely saying that you might look at how long you hold yourself as wrong & undeserving and how much this results in your walking around feeling wrong & undeserving a good chunk of your life.

I’ve written about swift course-correction before (type it into the search bar on my website!). Given what you’ve observed about young humans:

• Are we supposed to get it all right from the start, or learn some things along the way, often through trial and error and a certain number of mistakes (and experiences of so-called failure)?
• Are we supposed to have it all figured out, or gather deeper understanding and better life skills as we go?
• Are we meant to be sweet [steady, polished, clear, patient, …] all the time? (Is that possible? Is that desirable?)
• Are we meant to know every right-thing-to-do and instantly decisive toward the right choice and easily follow through?

Isn’t all of this a life’s work? Is there a time limit on trial-and-error? Can’t we keep experimenting and keep growing and keep bumping into something that hits us as off and keep course-correcting toward what feels more aligned as we go? What if you trusted your inner guidance system and your own strong internal moral compass more than a belief you should never get it wrong, followed by punishment & purgatory and staking yourself deeper into the camp of unworthiness?

Another invitation to soothe yourself
I invite you to a grand experiment of soothing yourself when you feel bad. Not judging, not punishing, not analyzing, not trying to figure out where you went wrong, not seeking to justify your position, not allowing yourself to keep simmering in bad-mood sauce till you (somehow) earn getting to feel good again. When you feel bad, even if you’re sure you’ve done something wrong, disappointed yourself, fallen short of your idealized self, just feel better. 

Soothe yourself. Give yourself kind messages. Make choices about where to put your attention that would feel good to you now, not make you a good person (by your currently warped estimation of what that means when you’re in that bad space). Course-correct toward the wanted, starting with managing your feeling state and just going easy on yourself and others. Then take actions when you’re ready to take the ones that actually serve you.

You are inherently worthy!
If you’re alive, you are worthy of a wonderful life. You are worthy of a good day, any number of good segments throughout the day, a good NOW. You are worthy of love, health, a body you feel great in, work that deeply fulfills you, wonderful relationships with other sentient beings and rocks and things, time in your happy places, laughter, wealth, freedom & mobility. I could go on. I invite you to go on.

And move on quickly when you’re feeling bad about yourself. Refuse to live in a senseless illusion that’s robbing you of this moment and sometimes whole days, weeks, months, and years when you get stuck in false penitence.

Love & blessings, Jaya

As I was engaged in this writing, this daily message came in from Abraham-Hicks Publications:
Many believe that Source is outside of them and that you are separate from Source and being tested in some way. But only you can cause the feeling of separation from Source. That is what all negative emotion is.
  Source is never withholding from you. Source is always focused upon you, surrounding you with appreciation and unspeakable love.

You can sign up for daily inspiration & reminders from Abraham.
​
My favorite thing is to receive the ongoing live transmissions through Abraham Now programs, one to four times monthly.

Because You Are!

Blurry photo of people on a whirlwind amusement park ride from Lorenzo Fustaino on Unsplash.

It’s Not a Problem That It’s Never Done
Things are never done. Period. You know the old adage A woman’s work is never done—another reason to blow up the binary! No one’s work is ever done. Of course your work is never done! Stop treating this like a problem—or worse, a failure on your part.

Likewise, your play is never done, your pleasure is never done, your learning is never done, your creative impulses & ideas are never done, your adventures are never done. Not until you die. And then … something else. So if you’re alive in this form, there it is: everything is in flux and more is always lining up. Seriously, what if you saw that with zero pressure or stress—or with the capacity & commitment to soothe that and give yourself new messages when the old hold sway or reassert themselves?

You get to enjoy and be at ease with the thing you’re doing right now. More important, and more empowering: You can decide to enjoy & be at ease with each thing you’re doing NOW. Or not. What do you decide?

Unlearning & Retraining
On a day-to-day basis, noticing what’s NOT done (really, truly) does NOT need to be felt as pressure. If it registers as guilt or failure or any kind of problem that jars your system, PAUSE. Break the spell. Crack through the illusion. Breathe consciously for a few beats, and give yourself a reality check: actually, you ARE doing enough.

Going slower with lower energy today? That, too, is a human reality: you’re still doing enough. Breathe through it. Embody & appreciate each thing you do. Align with the energy of the day as the orchestration takes care of what’s obviously not yours to do, or won’t look the way it does on high-energy days.

Are you inefficient today? Still doing enough. Shift your energy, stretch, hydrate, take a break, take a walk, then see what you most want to give yourself to as best you can and as much as you want to here & now.

Have others shown up or failed to show up in ways that maximize flow & easy movement through necessary tasks (for whatever you’re up to together)? Um, that’s normal too. Unavoidable, in fact. Just do what’s yours to do (which may or may not include communicating with them), and you’re doing enough. (But if you’re spending a bunch of mental time on what’s wrong with them, you’re doing too much—of what won’t serve you at all to connect to higher intelligence, which never goes along with some assessment that you’re the victim of others’ character flaws or work ethics or whatever.)

Imagine a New Reality
What if you lived with an abiding sense of enough-ness (even fullness, wholeness) in the now? What if you kept FEELING into that and returning to that feeling and reaching for it again each time it slipped away? (And slip it will—no problem.) What if you ended each day with a sense of satisfied completeness?

Imagine savoring what’s happening now and gazing ahead with joyful anticipation (not frowning trepidation) for what’s coming next?

I’m always running on empty. I can’t get ahead. I’m working nonstop and it’s never enough. Beyond not accepting such statements as normal, how about being struck by their sheer absurdity? Speak again if you catch yourself thinking or saying such things. Do not concur when others do.

No doubt, life can feel intense, and in some realities that’s the status quo for some time (in certain jobs, parenting circumstances, health challenges; um, during certain waves of socio-political clusterfucks). Even if you’re on a roller coaster, you’re still existing in this one moment of the ride, right here, right now, and there’s nothing to be done (not by you) for or about the other moments. When life feels like a crazy carnival ride in perpetual motion, there’s still only now, now, now, now, now. And there’s still the orchestration holding what’s beyond this moment with an incredible & incredibly intelligent force. Your trouble and graceless navigating begin when you leave this moment mentally to worry, fret, tally, review, analyze, complain, predict—which means you’ve forgotten about or aren’t playing with the orchestration. Interrupt the mental departures and call yourself back to now. Release the stuff that doesn’t belong to now to that greater force.

Back to the (amazing) Orchestration
To bring it full circle in this writing and to cement it as a way of life:

• NOTICE & appreciate the orchestration.
• When you see that something moved forward without your doing, smile, laugh, play an invisible, internal kazoo or high-five your nearest person, cat, or dawg .
• Have a mini-awe-fest when the necessary resource drops in your lap or the right person just shows up as you round the bend. (Who or what called in this being to cocreate with, hire, date, adopt, start the book club with, meet at the gym—whatever it is? Yessssss, it’s the orchestration!)
• Wave a cheerful goodbye to the email you didn’t have to write because someone wrote you first with that next step in progress or in place.
• Do a little dance in the echoes of repeating book titles or supportive apps or programs or podcasts or whatever comes into your field to bring you greater ease & more fluid functionality.

I especially invite you to notice the moments you can simply act on a thought or an impulse NOW. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Guidance comes in now for now. Don’t talk back. Don’t wait for some greater readiness or further instructions or surety about right timing. Trust those impulses. That’s part of the orchestration. YOU’RE part of that vast intelligence. So flow with it now and now and now.

Love & blessings, Jaya

The Placemat Process from Abraham-Hicks is a great way to anchor yourself in an ongoing sense that it’s not all up to you. (Try it for a number days for it to bring more than relief for the day, though it’s good for that too. Used repeatedly, it’s a consciousness shifter.)

If you’d like more on doership (the idea that you’re NOT the doer), read here.​