 Image of sandy human hand with tiny & cute crab standing on fingers from Manikandan Parthiban on Unsplash. I’ve been wanting to write about FEELING BETTER but the message seems so cute and small, I was thinking you might be tempted to laugh in its tiny face. But here goes. We’ll start with the bullet-point version:
From there, rinse & repeat, and live your life feeling good, or at least feeling better. I could stop right there. I’ve made my point. To be fair, it’s a point that Abraham-Hicks keeps making, and I’ve taken it in and made it mine. I want to pass it on to you because it’s important. It’s bigger than it appears to be. Look, I can see for myself that JUST FEEL BETTER sounds simplistic, but it packs a powerful punch when you actually apply it. When you care enough about feeling good; when you’re sufficiently committed to feeling good that you reach for feeling a little bit better ANYTIME you feel a little bit worse, then ... I daresay it’s the key to ongoing well-being. So let me add a few things to help you take it in, keep it in view, and get a few ideas in place on how to apply it. (You’ll think of more as you keep playing with it. And if you’re going to play with this at all, this is key: KEEP PLAYING WITH IT.) What do you reach for to feel a little bit better? Let’s break it down into categories of thought and action. In my coaching work (and life as a whole), I’m always aware of and working & playing with all three centers of intelligence—body, heart, and head. The heart center is what we’re working with as a whole here, so in this writing, I’ll offer ways to engage both head and heart center toward feeling better, thus putting them in service to the heart center. HEAD CENTER: REACH FOR BETTER-FEELING THOUGHTS Here’s a simple questioning tactic. Let’s say you notice you’re not feeling great and you remember that you only have one job right now: to feel a little bit better. Formulate a question to give yourself two alternatives: one that goes along with what you’re telling yourself that makes you feel bad, and one that counters it. So you’ll give yourself a sort of 2-part multiple choice question. Examples follow. Example #1 Imagine that you caught yourself thinking or saying I’m no good at this. Here are some two-part questions you might use to help you reach for feeling better:
If you answer yourself truthfully, you’ll almost certainly reach for the choice that counters what feels bad. (Because you’re not in truth when you’re telling yourself things that feel awful.) If you reach for the mean & rotten option, offer yourself new questions with different choices! And then notice whether that feels better or worse, to find a few truer, better-feeling things than what you were telling yourself as you started to sink. If it feels better (even a little bit better), keep going. Buoy yourself up. Fully establish yourself in a different mindset. Keep heading toward feeling better, feeling better, feeling better till you actually feel good. Keep going with the same tactic for a while, or follow the next inspired thing that comes to you. Example #2 Imagine that you caught yourself going into the future with bleak predictions. Maybe you just heard yourself threaten yourself with being unpartnered, alone, and lonely for the rest of your days. You might shift that by asking:
That idea of self-soothing takes us into the realm of action (the body center), so let’s go there next.  Image of cat with one open eye lying in cat hammock from Amy Chen on Unsplash. BODY-CENTER: REACH FOR BETTER-FEELING ACTIONS Noticing what feels bad, reach for a simple action that would make you feel better. Note that this can be on- or off-topic. So if you’re feeling bad about your cluttered home, you could go through one little stack of mail sitting on the countertop (on-topic and feels better) or you could go outside to do some yard work (off-topic and still works to make you feel better). Whatever you do, keep it SIMPLE. Do the easiest thing. The most effortless thing. The thing that isn’t prescribed by your inner taskmaster or church lady but by the compassionate good parent in you who wants only to support you to feel better. (If you’d like more on conscious reparenting, check out Your Not-Enough Messaging.) If you feel immobilized, for example, what would be a simple movement? WAIT. First, note that finding one simple feel-better action requires getting out of your head about all you SHOULD be doing. It requires dropping evaluation. It requires bringing it to now, so you’re not preoccupied with your whole work day, your future, your entire life. What you’re not doing right now is fixing your whole life. You’re not taking care of all that you’re aware of, all that you think is building up with a wordless accusation that you’re not doing enough or with a menace of failure and an untimely tragic death. You’re just coming up with ONE SIMPLE THING TO DO THAT FEELS BETTER:
(Sidenote. Step Outside was #4 in my series of 5 quick & easy processes for focus & alignment, also derived from the teachings of Abraham-Hicks.) REACH FOR FEELING BETTER USING ALL 3 CENTERS AT ONCE Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), also called tapping, is a great soothing modality that hits all three centers. Here’s an EFT session whose thrust is to get you out of your head and into just feeling better. I’ll be back with more on how to work with this modest-seeming principle of feeling better. Yup. I went from not being sure I could write about this at all to aiming for a little series. May it serve us all to feel better way more often, and even as a way of life. Love & blessings, Jaya P,S. Here’s another blog post on how to reach for a question to get out of rumination and reset the mind. And here’s one more with 11 quick & easy microadjustments for feeling better that you can make in the moment, as needed.
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YOU’RE OFF-BASE & WRONGLY FOCUSED. every. single. time. Here’s how to turn it around. Image of Jaya avatar at bedtime from Bitmoji. Note that BOLD TEXT is intentionally set up to help you scan & skim & scram. Storytime, or Telling on Myself I found myself unhappy with the choices I made one evening: I was too sedentary, resisted going out into nature when I still could have, then comforted myself by with a digital game that became the phone equivalent of a bag of potato chips. When I came to for real (the inner tugs were happening all along, but no thanks), I was fascinated once again by how quickly the mind goes to making myself wrong, considering myself a loser, scolding myself for not doing better, accusing myself of being a fraud, and more of the stuff that matches that. Familiar? None of this is loud or continuous in my current way of being, and typically may even have no words actually or consciously put to it. I do really value catching and practice catching the subtler stuff at earlier stages. And, as it happens for the typical humanoid, the subtle, quiet stuff gets more blaring and glaring as you keep ignoring the earlier stirrings of what feels off. Which I did, that evening, so yeah—glaring & blaring came along as my head started hurting and my eyes burning and actual sentences forming to attack my character. Catching Yourself & Remembering or Reminding Yourself of a Few Things I took in that I’d been feeling worse and worse and that I was in low-level self-loathing. I reminded myself of a few things that were within reach (and the more you practice this, the more you have within reach):
Refocusing If I had refocused earlier, it would have been easier, taken less time, and allowed me a shift into an evening of acceptance and baseline contentment at the very least. (You’ll see an image of the Emotional Scale from Abraham-Hicks below, and contentment, at #7, is the last thing on the positive end of the scale before things head into what feels worse and worse. Sometimes they call that point satisfaction. I think of just accepting what is without judging it as being at that baseline as well.) But no. I refocused at bedtime. I did go to bed ridiculously early, which was a very good idea. Especially since I hold a strong well-practiced credo of putting myself to bed kindly and releasing the day, whatever it did or didn’t hold, and declaring, Tomorrow, all things new, all things possible. By refocusing, I mean reaching for the right process or soothing support here & now. Just reach for what might feel right. If you ever read what I write, you know I love me a good inquiry or focusing process. You can find the word process as a category tag on my blog to find the ones I’ve written up over time. There’s also stuff on my website under tools. A favorite process of mine is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping), and there’s now more than one playlist on my YouTube channel devoted to that. (And for now, I’m still offering free EFT for whoever shows up on a Saturday morning at 10 ET—see link on homepage of my website.) Reach for the Easiest Process First That night, I decided to listen to an Abraham audio in the dark while lying in bed. But first, I did a quick mental listing of what had gone right that day. Otherwise stated, I found easy existing matches for the idea that I did do some things right, or that the whole day wasn’t a bust. I generally recommend & practice doing such things in writing or at least speaking them aloud, but I DIDN’T WANNA. The mental review still helped a lot. The fascinating thing was that I discovered or took in all over again that I’d actually had a great day. I’d felt good all day (till late afternoon); I’d gotten some things done I felt good about doing; I’d been a supportive and kind presence to my elderly parent I live with; I did that in ways that felt easy and genuine for me (not taxing, not sacrificial), including watching The Six Triple Eight together, which we’d both been wanting to see & were happy to watch; I’d had a sweet, fun conversation with my stepdaughter; and then some! Side Note about Globalizing Bad Feelings How quickly a bad feeling about one thing in life or one part of a day becomes the whole story! And it’s just not true—or it’s not an accurate assessment (a sure sign that it’s not time to assess). So make it a habit not to believe and take off running with any globalized sense that everything about you is wrong or bad—or everything about your life, your future, your relationship, your work, your finances, your anything. Please certainly do not accept it as a valid basis for beating yourself up (um, because nothing is that). Reach for the Next Process that Could Help in Another Way, from Another Direction Then I put on my headset and turned on the desired Abraham audio on my phone, with the intention of receiving good reminders and some soothing. Note that intention matters. I was not looking to find what I’d done wrong or how I could do better. This would have skewed what I heard into a warped process of figuring out what was wrong with me or what I’d done wrong or even how I got off-track. Is the importance of that crystal clear? That kind of setup basically exacerbates the sense of being wrong and amplifies the feeling bad. Even more important, it doesn’t let in soothing in the fastest or most efficient way. (Kind of like piping water through tubing with kinks in it.) Sometimes, looking for soothing is the only thing to do (and please don’t read or treat this as a last resort!). Abraham likes to say, Soothing is the solution. Or, Soothing is solving. Especially at the end of the day—and certainly any other time or area when or where you’re particularly vulnerable (too much happening at once, scary or super-hard things going on, experiencing physical or chemical imbalance, having a particular person or group of people in your field, being thrown off in some specific realm of life …).  Image of Jaya avatar sleeping on the moon from Bitmoji. Keep Expanding into the Wanted Feeling State A certain discipline is required to keep rejecting ugly thought forms that introduce themselves. Whether this means self-accusation or hating on someone else or making bleak predictions about the future (anything in the mental realm that feels bad!), just take these thoughts for what they are: concepts still trying to form as words and images to match the bad feelings that took hold. Basically, those feelings have a certain amount of momentum going, and they won’t just screech to a halt, even as you’ve consciously begun the pivot in the other direction. Let’s say another defeating or self-critical thought creeps in. Give it a nod, or label it something simple--That’s just a thought. Or declare, That’s not completely true, or tell yourself, It’s really not time to evaluate. If you can just witness it and refocus, even better. How quickly can you notice mental activity or feel in your emotional body that you’ve gone off the soothing lane and onto the rumble strip—and simply head back to soothing? Whenever you’re rejecting or moving away from something, see how clear you can be about what you’re embracing or moving toward. So that night as self-castigation tried to reassert itself, I kept releasing that and heading toward soothing by dropping in again with whatever the Abraham voice was saying in that moment. (And that, of course, was encouraging, not scolding me.)  Screenshot from an Abraham-Now Broadcast video program. The image has a tree of life illustration in the background. Black text reads: Emotional Guidance Scale Excerpted from the book, Ask and it is Given, page 114 Copyright 2004 by Jerry and Esther Hicks 1. Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation 2. Passion 3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness 4. Positive Expectation/Belief 5. Optimism 6. Hopefulness 7. Contentment 8. Boredom 9. Pessimism 10. Frustration/Irritation/Impatience 11. Overwhelment 12. Disappointment 13. Doubt 14. Worry 15. Blame 16. Discouragement 17. Anger 18. Revenge 19. Hatred/Rage 20. Jealousy 21. Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness 22. Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness SIDENOTE about emotional scale above. I caught this screenshot of the emotional scale from Abraham-Hicks during an Abraham-Now Broadcast. These are amazing video programs you can sign up to receive live (which also gets you the replay to listen to again and again, one of which I was listening to in the story in this writing). They cost about $50 each. There’s a benefit I’m finding from hearing the most current transmission of Abraham wisdom, which is always fine-tuning and evolving, and from being part of the building dialogue as people from various parts of the planet bring questions and share experiences of applying the concepts from one broadcast to the next. Noticing a Thing or Two for Future Reference I find that most mental notes to do better next time don’t do much good. Practicing meeting yourself kindly wherever you are, over and over, sitch after sitch, day in and day out—that does all kinds of good. It sets up a new or ever-stronger tendency or habit pattern of walking yourself through anything well. So when I look ahead to a sort of doing it better next time, I like to focus it this way: What could actually help? That night, I noticed that it helps when I remember that late (in this case not that late but later) in the day is a potentially vulnerable time for me, and it does me good to slow down at that time and check in if anything feels off. I noticed that I hadn’t done any segment intending for that evening. I love segment intending, and had used it earlier in the day (back when things were going well!), but didn’t use it when hunger struck in the late afternoon … and Mom was ready for food too, and I’m the cook, and I told myself it was too late to go outside for a walk. (In fact, I could still have managed both simple food and simple outing.) Segment intending sets up simple intentions for how you want to feel, or how you want to show up, in just the next one thing ahead. That could have supported my choices and their execution, as it usually does quite nicely. And, again, maybe using segment intending during or when facing the time I’m most likely to wobble (for me, late in the day) could be an excellent tactic to keep in view. (I like to literally post notes about things like that until they’re imprinted on my consciousness.) Finally, Abraham said something in the audio reminding me to just feel better, and gently move up the emotional scale. I had lost track of that. I had been moving down that scale over the course of the evening! Look at the tipping point under #7, contentment, on the scale in the diagram above. I could have kept myself there if not headed upward, but I made a boring choice when I sat down to play a game and, from boredom, started feeling pessimistic while going more unconscious. Subtly and surely, then less subtly and super surely, down the scale I went. It didn’t look like much to the naked eye (no debauchery, no meanness, no money gambled or spent), but it felt bad, and my response was a numbing tactic (just onnnnnnnne more word game). I lost track of feeling better and simply CHOOSING into feeling better. Which is the simple and sure-fire way to move up the emotional scale instead of further down. No Matter What’s Up: EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY I slept well and woke up predisposed to reach for feeling better. In the past, going to bed in a bad state would have meant waking up in that state and expecting to have, then creating, a wretched day. This is why I remind myself at night, Tomorrow, all things new, all things possible. I put on an audio first thing (which I typically do anyway as a great way to establish a desired set point quickly). I sat down to do a couple of processes to further establish myself in the focus I wanted for this new day. When I caught some color coming through the window, I stepped outside for one of the best sunrises I’ve seen in a while, with gold and peachy colors at the base and rising layers of violet and mauve, with a few blues peeking through. Bonus, a pair of robins were not only singing heartily nearby, but also doing some acrobatic flirting and frolicking. Spring in the air! And that, my friends, is how to refocus so you create improvements from a better point of departure. Perhaps you’ve noticed that trying to do better from the point of telling yourself all that you’ve done wrong and how you must really do better in fact does NOT move you along very quickly or very well? That it creates a miserable journey in conflict with the goal of getting you to a better place? I invite you to to keep finding, practicing, and coming back to simple ways to be your own best ally. Soothe yourself. Walk yourself toward the best version of yourself. But don’t expect yourself to be there all the time. That last bit is literally a sentence Abraham said into my headset that night. And it was soothing: Of course I won’t be there all the time. There will always be contrast. And I can pay attention to how I feel and reach for feeling better whenever I notice I’m feeling bad. I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’re all in this together. Love & blessings, Jaya  Image of Jaya avatar stepping out into the morning from Bitmoji.  Still shot from film A Lien. Hey, if you’ve ever read anything I send out, you know my intention is to inspire, soothe, support. I’m pointing you to what feels better, not worse. That’s still true here, and I’m also seeking to meet you in any pain and distress you may already be feeling in the current American socio-political climate. If you’re not there now, you may want to come back to this when you are. Or engage with this now to get a strategy in place for next time you’re walloped by the hard stuff. Below, I offer three simple (one SUPER simple) strategies for BEING WITH what hurts about the state of the USA. Maybe it comes into your field sometimes or often. Maybe you just don’t want to shut out the pain altogether. So this will give you ways to feel you can contain it when it’s active. You can experience soothing and even offer it out at the same time. There’s the possibility of not being wrecked by it (at least not in an ongoing way), or of feeling it without a sense that it’s unbearable. Strategy #1: CONSCIOUS BREATHING AS SUPPORT IN THE MOMENT How immigrants are treated at this time is one of the worst current issues for me. The photo above comes from the short live film A Lien, which clocks under 15 minutes and was one of the five nominees at this year’s Academy Award. The directors (brothers David and Sam Cutler-Kreutz) use a lot of close-up, even claustrophobic, cinematography to bring us right up against the pressing fear felt by immigrants and their families. In this story, we meet a family made up of a white American woman, a brown man originally from a Spanish-speaking country, and their little daughter. We watch the man getting arrested during their scheduled green-card interview, not because he’s done something wrong, but because he’s easy prey. Yes, these people are following the right legal protocols and he’s detained during that process like a guilty fugitive from the law. It’s an actual current practice that the filmmakers depicted with great skill in a few minutes. Predictably enough, watching this felt devastating to me. Right? No surprise. I already find the whole issue, the whole reality, to be devastating. Remember, I’m offering strategies here for meeting the pain we’re already in, and being able to do that in the moment that pain strikes anew. The breathing strategy I used is the super-easy one. I simply breathed through the film (the whole time) very, very consciously. I felt the pressure of the fear and was immersed in the wretchedness of what real human beings are subjected to for no good reason, so I breathed into that. I breathed around that. I breathed as fully and gently as I could. I made space for the pain inside my own body using the kind spaciousness of the breath. Notice that this tactic doesn’t take you out of the reality or even out of the pain. It makes it bearable. It makes it containable. It gives you a way not to tense up against the pain (resistance). Instead, you’re acknowledging what hurts (here it is, this is reality right now), and you’re bringing in the breath to help you contain it. Never force the breath when you do this. I once heard Marion Gilbert, a somatic Enneagram teacher, talk about how the breath will never force its way in anywhere, so we don’t need to force it into places that aren’t already open. We can gently direct breath that way and it will lap kindly up against any walls or shields we have up in resistance and self-protection. It will gently finds its way in through the cracks, forcing nothing. I don’t even know anymore what’s her language and what’s mine when I talk about this. It’s been with me and in my guided meditations since I heard her discuss this, because it struck me at once as truth and consistently matches what happens in my experience. I used this tactic all through the film, on my drive home, and later when it grabbed me again, including in the wee hours. Very helpful. Bonus breathing support Find my playlist of soothing 3-centers meditations on YouTube.  Photo of Pema Chodron in front of a waterfall. This is the picture (with waterfin motion) used in her 12-min video describing Tonglen. Click on pic to watch that video. Strategy #2: THE BUDDHIST MEDITATION PRACTICE OF TONGLEN TO SEND OUT COMPASSION AND EASE SUFFERING If you click on the photo above, you will get a short video of Pema Chodron describing the practice of Tonglen. In a nutshell, you’re breathing in the pain of the world (or of one population or one sentient being), feeling its claustrophobic density, then breathing out a sense of spaciousness and relief. She lays it out clearly in four simple steps. The Buddhist approach is typically very heady. And there’s a ton of HEART in Tonglen. It’s really very beautiful. When you can’t do something here and now in the physical world, you can use a meditative approach to offer goodness into the world and intend the release and removal of suffering. A couple of tweaks I don’t think Pema uses the word RELIEF. I invite you to feel the out-breath as relief (or even the intention of relief) for you and for those you’re focused on. She talks about exuding that from every pore of your body, and I’d like to invite you to then send it way out to the ethers, to space, so that you tap into infinite spaciousness and possibility. The Universe has room to contain this. The Universe (and time, evolution) can dissolve and dissipate the whole thing. She also suggests using a word during that relief phase, during the out-breath that invites the release of suffering. Certainly, do use a word if that works for you. I prefer focusing the feeling and leaving language out of it. I like to use images that call me to spaciousness and relief, including a simple image of light-filled empty space radiating out, out, out, though and beyond that exhalation. A structural support you might use If you like Pema’s idea of using a gong at the beginning of the meditation as a way to access some semblance of clear mind, do you already know about Insight Timer? You can set up timed meditations using various sounds of bells, chimes, and gongs. So you might take Pema’s idea of 4 phases of tonglen and consider how long you’d like to spend on each one. Open with a gong and choose some other sounds to ring at specific intervals, calling you to each next phase. It’s not that hard to figure out and it will hold the structure for you while you simply move through the soothing and blessing experience of tonglen. Here’s a shorter version of Pema describing tonglen. Under 5 minutes!  Photo of tall cairn (rocks of diminishing size stacked one atop another) at the edge of a body of water from weston m on Unsplash. Strategy #3: REACHING FOR BETTER-FEELING THOUGHTS Wait, I’m sorry. Did you think I wasn’t going to mention Abraham-Hicks this time? I must, because they teach a very simple process of stringing thoughts together, preferably out loud, reaching for one statement after another to soothe and soften anything that feels bad. Whatever you’re telling yourself that feels awful, however true or real it may be, you can counter with better-feeling thoughts. And later, when you want to give some conscious attention to what hurts, you can come back to it from a solid place. Side note on staying with thoughts that hurt Don’t stay in the pain of the world full time. I would even invite you to take whole days and other chunks of time off. No one is equipped for full-time focus on what feels terribly wrong. No one can function well steeping in the worst of it. No one can bring love and beauty and relief into the world from a steady focus on hate, pain, horrors. Please take that seriously. Thoughts on how to reach for better-feeling thoughts Better-feeling thoughts often involve what Abraham calls zooming out, or going general. Take yourself past the specificity of what’s problematic and painful. Take eagle view, or even satellite view. Look across the eons from geologic time if you need to. A better-feeling thought is anything you can tell yourself that’s kinder, gentler, truer. Reach for what stirs hope. Doing this calls in or activates your intentions or greater values for yourself and others, for the entire world. In other words, it bring focus to the wanted, not the unwanted. Reaching for better-feeling thoughts shifts your focus to what feels more relaxed and in flow, or to downstream thoughts (not the upstream thoughts that push against the current). Please do practice it for yourself and your smaller world, then you’ll have better access to this tactic for the big-ticket items. Honestly, this is probably hardest to do for things in the greater reality, the political realm, the global stuff. (Perhaps because you have less agency there.) And still, reaching for better-feeling thoughts can support you to walk yourself through harsh realities. For now, you may not be able to fix or change something. You can shift your focus and cultivate ways of thinking and talking to yourself that allow you to process the harshness, and perhaps to be part of the change. An example of stringing together better-feeling thoughts The day I watched the film, I started reaching for better-feeling thoughts as I got close to home and lingered in the car to find a few more before heading inside. The best I was able to do involved finding some statements of willingness and acceptance, and it actually did help. For me, it was a no-bullshit way to feel better. I took off from hearing myself think, I don’t want to live in a world where this is happening. Right after that, I heard Barbara Kingsolver say (a character of hers says it to another in Animal Dreams), You do live in that world. So from there, I found my willingness to be in this world, as it is and as I am.
You can go on and on and on with this. Say whatever comes to you out loud and carrying on until you feel even a little different. Reach AND tap to take it further If you want to try this tactic while you tap (using the technique of EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique), that creates a sort of reaching-for-better-feeling-thoughts-ON-STEROIDS. I have a whole EFT playlist on YouTube geared to support political pain & anxiety. Check it out if drawn. Reminder of an ongoing resource Or come to a Monday-night drop-in group-coaching session (info below and on the home page of my website). People sometimes bring the topic of political pain, and we meet it together. Anything is allowed in the space, including the personal that may feel small by comparison. Anything anyone brings is the stuff of human reality, and I make sure we approach it in a way likely to benefit all present. Love & blessings, Jaya PROCESS #5 of 5 for quick & easy FOCUS & ALIGNMENT Photo of old-fashioned water pump in green garden from Michael Fortsch on Unsplash. RESISTANCE ANYONE? Well, the answer is forcibly YES, because we all have resistance about something, sometimes more, sometimes less. When a lot feels hard or complicated, resistance grows. We resist
And as we all know, resistance feels bad and can make us feel bad about ourselves. We scold ourselves for being lazy, procrastinating, not getting behind our goals with action, not putting ourselves out there. … None of that gets to the actual root of anything and just makes us feel worse. Remember, these processes (this is the fifth of five I’m passing down from the wisdom of Abraham-Hicks) have the intention of helping us feel better—which bring us into alignment, into trusting life and its processes, into connection to inspiration and guidance. PRIME THE PUMP (from metaphor to process) Priming the pump is so simple and so very helpful. When you need a little support to rev up the energy to do something you don’t wanna do but you actually do want to get done … this is the tool for you. Have you ever seen one of those cool old-timey outdoor water pumps for bringing water up out of a well? There was one in the backyard of my paternal grandparents’ old black-and-white farmhouse amidst the cotton fields in Arkansas. It thrilled me to actually draw water after a bit of pumping with my own small, capable arms and hands, my very own strength. But you had to prime the pump before the water started trickling, then flowing out smoothly in no time at all. You just had to be willing to find the patience and exert the energy for a number of dry, seemingly fruitless pumps, while hoping and believing things would get going and the flow was on the way! So how do you quickly & easily prime the pump for those things you have resistance to—but actually do want to show up for in the name of well-being, cleanliness, following laws, moving toward goals and dreams, and more? It’s actually kind of STUPID-EASY. PRIME THE PUMP ON PAPER Abraham-Hicks offers this process of simply making a list of anything that makes you feel better about doing it. The list can include why it’s easy, what you appreciate about taking care of this, resources you have (working machines and tools, people you can ask for help or delegate to, online tutorials, etc.), and whatever else you think of. An example follows.  Photo of old-fashioned water pump in garden with purple flowers from Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash. A SIMPLE EXAMPLE I recently sat with my bizarre resistance to getting some audio meditations to my amazing helper standing by and ready to turn them into YouTube videos. I decided there was no big thing to figure out. There often isn’t! Or if there is good reason (or wacky reasons!) for your resistance, you probably don’t need to locate and label the why of it to move things along. I decided that what I really needed was to prime the pump. I quickly thought of a few things that I jotted down. I watched the stuff of support, readiness, and readiness accrue on the page. (I’ve emphasized in prior processes offered that what we’re focusing on comes into sharper, clearer focus when we WRITE THINGS DOWN.) Here’s what I came up with:
All of that was obvious and came right out. I’ve had instances of priming the pump that took a bit longer, but in general, it’s not that complicated. Just write self-evident things that are actually TRUE, and let it be enough to remind you that YOU’RE FULLY EQUIPPED TO DO THIS THING and you have good reason to do it, along with plenty of support right at hand. For those who feel unsupported in general or in the particular area you’re focused on (a common-enough basis for resistance), get super basic in your ideas of what supports you. It’s empowering and reassuring to do this. Think of how easy it is to get clean water or breathe clean air while you work; how you have a working phone, laptop, or whatever you need that’s already right here; you have a functioning body, or one functioning well enough to do the task at hand or some part of it. THE OUTCOMES RELATED TO PRIMING THE PUMP You know this already: it’s helpful, with any tool you use, to let go of outcome. Don’t do a process to make everything go just how you want it to go and get you exactly what you want in the exact way and time you want it. Do the process only to reach for feeling better. Use priming the pump to bring focus to what could help move you in the direction you want to move in (or simply help you feel how you’d like to feel) with no expectation of brilliant success or swift completion. Just get things moving. Prime the pump and you just may find yourself marveling at the flow that follows.  Photo of satisfied fluffy ginger cat sleeping from Ludemeula Fernandes on Unsplash. After I primed the pump in the example above, I was able to create a whole document that very day with instructions, links, music correlated to potential playlists … It felt amazing—so satisfying, such a sense of completion. The cat luxuriating in a sun puddle in the photo above is how I felt in the wake of all that. And the first playlist of soothing 3-centers meditations now exists (because my helper seems to be resistance-free)! I wish you the same with whatever you’ve been resisting or tend to resist. You’re equipped. You’re as ready as you need to be. Love & blessings, Jaya You can find Abraham-Hicks process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #2, Segment intending, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #3, Zoom in, zoom out, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #4, Step outside, right here. PROCESS #4 of 5 for quick & easy FOCUS & ALIGNMENT Photo of cloudy sky with dark clouds in color variations. From Osarugue Igbinoba on Unsplash. (Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in each post to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.) Today’s piece-of-cake process requires no paper or pen, just the capacity to move through a threshold from indoors to outdoors. If that’s difficult or you can’t leave the premises in the moment you have the impulse to reach for this process (and do follow those impulses!), do you have access to a window? Just look out. Better still if you can open the window for even a moment, in any weather, and breathe a bit of fresh air. STEP OUTSIDE I step outside early in the day, sometimes just for a minute or two, sometimes to hang out for a few. I do this in the midst of my other focusing processes because, seriously, going outside (or your variation of that) fully counts as an alignment process. I’ve met some birds, squirrels, cottontails, and raccoons that way. The bird song is remarkably present in all weathers (even if scant), and the crescendo of music in the springtime is downright life-giving. It’s nice to learn the temperature by encountering it, experiencing it, not reading about it. If you don’t like how it feels, see if you can appreciate the contrast between inside and out; enjoy both the variety and your preference. Gauging the movement in the air as it plays all around you allows a specific kind of connection to consciousness. Air can feel still (almost silent!), flowy, breezy, windy. Watching current air movements register in the rippling branches of trees is a presence practice in itself, calling forth your own ongoing dance with consciousness. And, oh, the sky. The great, ever-present sky, I have learned, provides constant solace.MAKE A GAME OF FINDING COLORS IN THE SKY Spending time in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, right by the ocean, I was struck by the insane number of beautiful colors in the sky. I developed a habit of being on the beach, usually practicing Qigong, for the hour leading up to and lingering just past sunset. As the sun sets or rises, the shifts are so quick you can almost decipher them (even see them quite clearly) with the naked eye. Watch for this anywhere on the planet. (I once wrote about a little life lesson or reminder from the swiftly changing Caribbean sky.) I’m in Kansas now, landlocked, living in a townhouse in a little cul-de-sac. When I step outside, I see other houses that look almost exactly like my mom’s. My old self would have made this cause for ongoing disdain and possibly depression. Now, I look up. Instead of telling myself that this is not the sky of the tropics (I used to focus relentlessly on what was missing, what I didn’t have), I search for colors in the Midwestern sky. At some point, I started playing a game of finding five colors in any sky. I almost always can. I very often find more. I told this to a color-blind person recently, who was instantly sparked by the idea and declared they would look for textures. (Brilliant! Now I’m noticing textures a lot more.) Even a simple blue sky isn’t monochromatic. There’s a lighter blue near the horizon line, and you may find a deeper shade as the eyes scan upward, and the deepest blue looking right up. White clouds aren’t just white. They’ve got edgy bits of shadow, with notes of violet, mauve, gray. (Get subtle and snobby, as if describing a fine wine.) Closer to the sun, a yellow-gold may gleam through. Even in a gray sky, shades of gray abound, and some of that gray turns out to be mauve or almost dark blue. I could go on. I cannot tell you how fun and fulfilling I find this absurd little game. I can barely express the benefits of looking into the sky. I know them viscerally, not semantically. Russ Hudson, my favorite Enneagram teacher (who gives huge emphasis to presence), sometimes uses the phrase Let it make its impressions on you. I love this phrase. And I love letting the sky make its impressions on me.  Photo of a blue sky with dramatic clouds. Some are dark,and others appear to glow with light. From Jake Weirick on Unsplash. WANT A BRIEF, RELATED AUDIO FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH? Remember that these five quick & easy alignment and focus processes come from Abraham-Hicks. Here is a lovely 10.5-minute video/audio to give you more ideas directly from Abraham about what it does for you to step outside and what you might do, experience, remember, feel, and allow out there. (If you bump into some of their jargon you don’t know, just ignore it and focus on what you instantly get and what appeals to you. There’s something in this for you if you’re drawn in. I find this to be a little gem of a talk.) WANT A LITTLE EXPERIMENT WITH LAW OF ATTRACTION? Of course, it’s nice to be out for the best skies at sunrise and sunset. Here’s a fun experiment to run: if you make a point of stepping outside or gazing out the window more than once in the day, and you’re cultivating a mindset of finding colors, you may notice you start receive tugs or impulses (and follow the impulses!) to look or head out when there’s more going on, when prime-time skies hit. That’s an easy to show yourself that what you give your attention to really does start echoing back to you. This way, you can play with LOA for free and at the risk of catching more amazing skies.  Photo of a pale sky with clouds lit yellow and purple from sunrise or sunset. From Jei Lee on Unsplash. NURTURE & REVEL IN YOUR LOVE FOR THE EARTH For those concerned about the environment, whether as a matter of course or more acutely in the current era, go love it up. Don’t just hate things happening that seem wrong and counterintuitive to you. Do spend time in nature. Remind yourself that beautiful places exist and that birds are flying around and animals are playing, grazing, gathering. The Earth, like your own amazing physical body, is constantly and actively self-repairing and bringing anything that’s off-kilter back into balance. Concern yourself less with what’s wrong (even if you’re right that it’s wrong) and more with healing and thriving mechanisms in progress. And take in and love and experience the beauty, the magic, the ongoing perfection. As Rachel Carson taught, cultivate a sense of wonder and teach and model that to younger human beings (who are almost always predisposed to meet you in the awe). People learn to give a damn better from a sense of what they love and cherish than what they fear and feel as spinning out of control. The Earth is still spinning properly in the perfect orbit. Give her your love. QUICK NOTE ABOUT THE SEDENTARY LIFE As with all of these processes for focus & alignment, stepping outside is great to do several times a day, as needed. You know your body wants to move. Your blood wants some support to circulate. Your screen-weary eyes want to stretch their gaze and take in something that isn’t digital. At the risk of repeating myself, follow every impulse to take even a super-quick pause to look out and up. Your whole body, nervous system, and breathing flow will recalibrate in a lovely way every time you do this. (Drink water while you’re at it!) You can find Abraham-Hicks process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #2, Segment intending, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #3, Zoom in, zoom out, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process $5, Prime the Pump, right here. Process #5 coming soon! And yes, I still love feedback. Love & blessings, Jaya |
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