Strange things to experiment with, here in the midwest.

So it turns out even how you get through a violent storm is all about focus.

And your power to focus is something you can consciously control, whether you use (develop, hone) that power or not.

Click on button just above (below subtitle) to skip reading and hear the 11-min audio version.

Photo of a tornado and dark, ominous sky with a field in the foreground from Nikolas Noonan on Unsplash.

I have always been afraid of tornadoes. You don’t need a big story for that to be true. Violent wind conglomerates that can twist a house off its foundation and give it a new address—that’ll do right there. My dad did have a childhood tale of trying to race a twister home and getting plucked off his bike and deposited unceremoniously (also unscathed) in the cotton field up the road a ways.

So I was predictably feeling fear the other night when a tornado watch had been declared till midnight. Watch means the conditions are right, so pay attention for the screaming sirens that mean the actual demented winds have been sighted—then head for the basement post-haste. I’d made the trip downstairs the week before with my 89-year-old mother, so I could still access the felt sense of that particular warning system—uncomfortably weird, eerie, relentless. (I could use the same words to describe the song of coyote packs, which I also occasionally hear from my bedroom, but I consider that sound divine.)

I decided it would feel better not to go to bed for real, but to lie fully clothed on my made-up bed. Solid plan, if based in fearful vigilance: just lie on the edge of trembling for a few hours, ready to walk my unsteady housemate downstairs if need be.

Photo of blurred figure near a window with a blurred nighttime storm visible through textured glass from Emanuel Haas on Unsplash.

I’m practiced at and now predicated to think in terms of feeling better. I also treasure the concept and experience of presence, so I make it a point to get back to body awareness as quick as I notice I’ve left it. In fear, I left. In noticing, I wondered right away what else I might do to feel better.

The breath is always a great first thing to tune in to and bring in as a felt sense, and doing that brought me back to my senses. I could see and hear the lightning storm exploding in the darkness behind my blinds. I could feel the power of the storm, something charged in the air even here inside the house. From that conscious contact with body and breath, a better-feeling thought came in on its own: There’s something I like about this. That singular thought shifted everything, as I then chose to make it my predominant thought—my focus.

I decided to bring the storm closer and let it make its impressions on me. I opened the blinds, then felt inspired to crack the window, and that felt okay. So I lay back on my bed, not quite relaxed, but curious. I was going to allow myself a fuller, more sensory experience of the storm and just let my fear be in the room too. Beyond my uncovered window, the lightning was so striking (okay, no pun initially intended, for real), with traveling craggy patterns and gorgeous, intermittent sheets of light. The cloud shapes staggered in and out of luminescent relief against the darkness. Here I was in a light show!

I could also smell the storm-drenched air. It smelled good. The sound, uninterpreted, was magnificent. The more I felt into the storm and engaged with it in a sensory way, the more (and more quickly) my experience shifted. The noise went from scary and bomblike to interesting, intense, insistently alive. Everything felt vibrant.

This was the crux of the feeling state that ended up eclipsing the fear I’d begun with: vitality, wide-awakeness, aliveness. In this now-moment, the storm was my connection to life. Lying within that perspective, allowing that to take over my focus, I didn’t even care about tornado or no tornado anymore. (And it never manifested.)

Photo of lightning in the night sky from Ahmed on Unsplash.

Culturally and thus individually, we’re predicated to focus on thinking rational thoughts and taking appropriate actions. In fact we think of focus as meaning focused thought, focus on a task. You don’t need to throw all that out (there’s a baby somewhere in that murky bathwater), but what if you played with more focusing of EMOTION? What if you first paid attention to and worked with and mastered your feeling states? Then from a place of feeling how you want to feel (perhaps something more easy, relaxed, clear, confident), you could think and act accordingly. This has been my grand experiment thanks to the teachings of Abraham-Hicks.

It was amazing and surprising to bring it to the storm. I’ve never done such a thing before—just tried with more or less success to soothe my fear and tell myself calming things. My predominant emotion at the beginning of the storm was fear. Lying on the bed consciously seeking to drop down tense muscles and find some flow in the breath, I tuned in to a new possibility of focus. Storms may be scary but they’re also beautiful and fascinating in their electrical fervor. Immersing myself in that didn’t exactly take me to a relaxed, peaceful vibe, but I don’t need peace as a constant emotional setpoint. Do you? I don’t want anything as the only thing I ever feel!

And feeling (not thinking about, not taking an action against) the power of the storm took me to awe, wonder, vibrancy—states that emotionally feel way better than fear. This is the power of presence. I left the dream of danger on the horizon (which was rushing my way in a screaming crescendo), I shifted to feeling solid in my body and connected to the breath. Through my senses, I became connected to the storm, no longer separate. The story of being snatched in the night evaporated because it gave way to actual experience and a chosen focus that brought a wanted feeling state.

I think if I can do it with tornadoes, I can do it with anything.

I think you can do it with anything, whatever the particulars of your amazing life, whatever your senses may bring in as you bring yourself to presence in any moment, in whatever circumstances, and scooch toward your best possible focus here and now.

I’ve written about the importance of just feeling better, of prioritizing feeling good. I invite you to a strong intention to keep catching yourself feeling bad for any reason (and it’s so easy to justify feeling bad because … life), and vow to walk yourself, PRACTICE walking yourself in one way or another toward better, better, better … good.

This comes straight from the teachings of Abraham-Hicks. The more I play with, learn, practice, and support others in the concepts and processes offered from Abraham, the more I like myself and my life. The more I hone the power of my focus. The more things around me look like more of what makes me feel good. I want this for everyone on the planet.

This stuff can freak people out a bit, as we’re taught to be suspicious of too much well-being or feeling good. We’re suspicious of feelings, period. With and without helpers of whatever kind, I invite you to risk feeling good too much of the time and play with meeting yourself and your life head-on, whatever the current conditions.

For the record, I love to combine these teachings with coaching processes. I’m very skilled at helping you look into your thinking, notice what you’re prioritizing, find how to create worthwhile experiments to test these principles for yourself in the lab that is your life. I strongly believe that you (anyone!) can find the power of generating more of the feeling states you want, and from there more of everything that makes your life something beautiful and fulfilling that must then be a blessing to the beings of this planet and the Earth herself.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Did you notice this post has an audio version? See button just under the title.

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.

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!

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.

• I love planet Earth.
• I want to be here.
• It’s kind of amazing to live a human life.
• There has always been hard stuff here on this planet.
• There has been hard stuff during my life and in my life.
• There has always been beautiful stuff here on this planet.
• There has been beautiful stuff during my life and in my life.
• I want to be a human being on planet Earth.
• I’m happy to be here now though I don’t feel the joy in this moment. So much has unfolded already, so much is still possible.
• I recognize the evolution.
• I accept that evolution happens with ups and downs, in what feels like going forward and backward again, and not as a direct trajectory of increasing goodness.
• I accept being here in this moment in time.
• I accept being in this country. For all my grudges against it, there are many ways I have it easy and benefit from living here.
• I’m willing to be a human being.
• I’m willing to be an American.
• I’m willing to be white and I believe that there are ways to use that experience for the good of all.
• I’m willing to be where I am as I am and I’m willing to learn how to do this all better.
• I’m willing to hurt. I’m willing to let in the pain of injustice and prejudice and fear-based policies that harm innocent people. I’m willing.
• I’m willing to soothe myself.
• I’m willing to create joy and beauty in my life, which I wish for every other human being.
• I’m willing to bring soothing to myself and to any human being who comes into my field or contacts my work.
• I’m willing to keep showing up.
• I’m willing to be part of the expansion.
• I can believe that love prevails.
• I know I don’t benefit from a focus on hate. Right now, I choose to focus on love.
• …

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

The day I sent this post out in an email, I meant to get it out earlier but I got busy googling Can you freeze red lentil soup? and then best lesbian dating apps for Kansas City, then I looked again to make sure I hadn’t missed any of the free NYT daily puzzles.

Just kidding. I HAVE, however, been thinking about how distractions have innocent motives*. Your little or grand time-wasting side trips carry messages & invitations for your greater well-being—if only they can elbow past your self-accusations of lazy distractible unfocused procrastinating or whatever you choose to call it to make yourself feel bad.

(*Thank you to brilliant coach Jude Spacks for giving me this phrase and concept of the innocent motive.)

Ever notice that feeling bad about your behavior (thus yourself) is possibly the LEAST likely way to move away from what you’re not loving? It’s certainly not the easiest, quickest, or kindest way out!

So, wanna drop the judgments with me for a moment and explore what wants to come through that could actually feel good to you? That could in fact usher you right into the next bigger-better version of yourself?

DISCLAIMER: Please don’t misread me and think I’m saying you should never play games or run curious online searches or binge-watch a good show. I’m not saying that at all. I’m addressing the surplus of that—and how you know it’s too much is not related to a concept or number of minutes. Just this: It feels like too much TO YOU. It feels BAD.

See what hits you in this list of possible invitations seeking to come in when you reach for the stuff that zaps your time and messes with your ideas of productivity. Which messages might be for you? Or what else do they bring in as fresh ideas for what you’re really after?

Your (loving, entirely UNscolding) guidance system may be saying:

• Are you sure you’ve been playing enough, honey? Schedule in some fun time more consciously. Stuff that’s REALLY fun, please. Run & play with dogs & children. Ambush a cat who will ambush you back. Dance, laugh, take a field trip somewhere new.
  
• Hey, you’re really seeking to alleviate some discomfort here. Move away from your [desk, cubby, work station] more often. Take more small breaks. GO OUTSIDE, even to step out and breathe a bit with your senses activated. Move the body and get energy flowing all through you. Give your eyes the rest and treat of looking up into trees, skies, light.
  
• The thing you’re avoiding you actually want to do. There are some [fears, worries, not-sure-how’s] in the way. Come along. Let’s step into the shallow end at your point of least resistance and take one simple step with ease. See how that goes. Watch for the possibility of momentum building.
  
• You’re not CLEARLY making certain choices in your life to create & experience more of what’s actually important to you—what you truly want. Where are you abdicating to what others want from or expect of you? Choose what you actually want to be/do/have in order to fully be you (then maybe you won’t choose this piddly-distraction stuff you don’t actually want to give hours to).

It could be so many things! More below for you to see what’s yours or jogs your thinking toward the more precise issue/s for you.​

  

• There’s something you’re [sad, mad, confused, disturbed] about and you’d actually feel better sitting with that a minute. What if you just sat and breathed it without trying to figure it out? Just feel it in the body and give it a kind, compassionate gaze. Pause to breathe in and around it. Don’t go to the head, leave solutioning alone, and instead offer what feels bad a few conscious moments to see what may arise.
  
• ACTUALLY, dear one, you’re too obsessed with productivity, and your inner rebel wants to push against that. Consider your natural fluctuations of energy. What if you went with the flow more & consciously chose the nonproductive sometimes? Let it be okay to have ebb & flow. Your experiment with this could show you increased productivity overall! (I dare you to run the experiment!)
  
• The more you don’t let yourself be as big as you could be, my love, the more you reach for things that diminish you, that trivialize the fullness of all that you are, and that fill your time with the superfluous & insubstantial.
  
• Sweetheart, you’re working too hard, pure & simple. Work easier. Spend more time relaxing & aligning, even in small spurts and transitional moments, so that the quality of your work (your offering to the world!) is imbued with ease, flow, a satisfied sense of well-being.
  
• Do less, and opt in fully to what you do choose to do. Don’t allow yourself to be divided.

Hey, I recently did a group EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) session that felt like an inspired journey of connecting to and honoring the guidance system that’s unique to each of us. Check it out if drawn! Your guidance system can support you to get out of anything you don’t actually feel good about doing RIGHT NOW and point you to what would truly meet your needs, fulfill your desires, and move you along toward your visions and intentions!

Love & blessings, Jaya

At some point in my growth journey, when I was having some obvious successes and actually feeling better a lot of the time, and I was ALSO feeling bad or impatient about what I wanted to manage better or have success with faster, I started thinking in terms of NOW much more.

Right now, am how am I walking myself through? Right now, how am I talking to myself about what's happening? Right now, am I making myself feel worse or better?

3 directions to focus how you walk yourself through
Here’s a great clue about what to do for yourself, your entire self, in any NOW moment you realize things aren’t feeling good. Know and remind yourself that you’re a 3-centered being. That is, you have

1. A body
2. A heart
3. A head

They all three need tending kindly. And they all three have wisdom and guidance for you (that comes in NOW, in the actual moment you need it). And if you’re stuck in one center, either tend it, or GET OUT. Reach for one or both of the others.

Body tending
Ask yourself, Right now, am I even in my body? Am I taking in that my body is tense, contracted, agitated, overrun with adrenaline [whatever it may be]? Am I moving nervously or frenetically, or am I going frozen or stagnant and need to rev things up? Your body wants you to tend that, soothe it, calm your nervous system. There’s also simple stuff like HYDRATE. EAT GOOD FOOD.

Back to body basics: ground; connect to the felt sense of the breath (and stay with that a while, even as you go about your business); connect to the five senses (or however many you’ve got).

Do something that feels good physically: Move, dance, exercise, stretch, do yoga or qigong, walk. Take a bath, take a nap, take yourself to a natural setting where your senses will be filled with life-giving, soul-soothing stuff.

Take an action: The realm of the body is also the realm of action. Is there one thing I could do right now that would feel good to do? That would make me feel good about tending any corner of my world? That would move something forward and potentially start some momentum toward what I actually want to be, do, have? Find your point of least resistance and do one thing.

Heart tending
Right now, as I notice I feel bad emotionally (frustrated, angry, sad, discouraged, scared, disappointed), am I making room for it and soothing it, or am I judging it or evaluating how I’m doing or telling myself what I should be feeling itself? Heart tending isn’t about thoughts, so stop analyzing or evaluating or explaining your emotions. Maybe stop talking (to yourself or others) about them. FEEL THEM.

If you must bring the head in, then notice whether you keep going from one thought to the next to keep matching and probably revving up what feels bad. And could you instead tell yourself kind things that are likely to make you feel better?

The heart wants you to ground yourself (see body tending above), feel the feeling in the body, breathe it (make room for it with the breath), allow it. Just let it be, let it have its life, and give it 2 things:

1. Awareness
2. Breath

How simple is that? That’s it folks. Your heart space, when in pain or discomfort of any kind, wants those two things. Review them: awareness & breath, awareness & breath, awareness & breath.

Head tending
Right now, am I believing and carrying on with thoughts that feel bad or interrupting them? As you notice that thoughts are making you feel bad, consider some version of this: maybe they don’t match what your Inner Being knows to be true; or they don’t match the way Source gazes upon you; or they represent an assessment that isn’t useful and isn’t coming from the part of you that’s seeking to believe in yourself and step consciously toward your full potential, or the best you’ve got right now, or the truth of who you are.

You can simply reach for better-feeling thoughts. Just tell yourself or write down one thing after another that makes you feel better instead of worse. Go general at first (I don’t have to figure this out right now, I’m okay and my needs are met, I’ve gotten through worse before and other human beings have too). And go from there.

You can do a focus wheel. (I just did one this morning when I noticed I felt bad about something and wanted to clear that up before I moved anything else forward!)

You can do some inquiry (including a short-cut version of processing unhelpful thoughts).

You can check out whose business you’re in and then look for what your actual business is here (where you have agency and what’s yours to manage). (Hint, it’s always your business to soothe yourself and to shift your state if you don’t like the state you’re in—or, to keep it simple, if you don’t like how you feel.)

Bring it to now, and walk yourself (all the parts of you, body, heart, and head) toward what feels better right now.

My intention for myself and my ongoing practice are to keep going deeper with this, keep getting more subtle. I invite you to it. You are worth your own kind, gentle, patient walking-yourself-through. You are worth feeling good much more of the time. You are worth interrupting quickly what doesn’t feel good and responding kindly to what feels bad. Take care of yourself, body, heart, and head. Walk yourself through, lovingly. Then you can truly feel good much more of the time.

Love & blessings, Jaya

I've also written specifically about TALKING YOURSELF THROUGH.
​

​I think of mouse view as what you see and how it feels when you’re down in the nitty-gritty details, and eagle view as what you see and how that feels when you rise up to get the bigger picture or the greater perspective.

There’s more space up there, and you get more spacious in your assessments.

There’s more room for everything, and more points of entry for new characters and resources to come in.

There’s room for surprise.

Let me relate this to something I’ve talked about plenty and some of you know outside of my work—because you, too, listen to Abraham-Hicks to be inspired and to get reminders about how to live as a happy creator of your reality. Remember GO GENERAL? (Skip down to below the eagle pic if you don’t want the review.)

The idea is that stress comes in when we get into the details—how, when, who? Where will the money come from? What about the parts I don’t know how to do? Is there enough time for this? In other words, stress happens in MOUSE VIEW. Look up the totem or symbolic meaning of mouse and you’ll see the word fear all over the place! (Oh, little trembly mouse.)

The teaching, then, is to GO GENERAL when you find yourself in stress. In other words, TAKE EAGLE VIEW. Remind yourself in general terms what you’re doing, what you’re after, what’s likely to work out over time, how you’re doing okay, how it’s all unfolding just fine. Give yourself general, nonspecific reminders of what you can believe that makes you feel better, soothed, and eventually empowered to go back in. (Ah, powerful eagle, soaring above it all.)

And go back in you will! No one’s inviting you to ignore details. I’m very much inviting you to get out of that realm when you’re stressed (at the first whiff of stress!), and go general to get realigned, to gather up courage and hope, to trust life and whatever process you’re in. THEN, go back to the details. Until you get stressed again (and maybe try to catch that first whiff and RESPOND) …
Some things eagle view can do for you:

Shift your perspective of time from all the cutural not-enough message to way more spaciousness to play in.

Remind your body that contraction feels bad and opening, relaxing, breathing good air feels GOOD.

Remind you of the greater journey you’re on and have been on. Bring in that comparative of how you were doing before or how you used to handle this, and WOW-LOOK-HOW-MUCH-BETTER-YOU’RE-DOING-NOW. Just look how far you’ve come.

Remind you of a larger vision that the current task is in service of—and what you CARE ABOUT, perhaps are passionate about, all of which is way larger than any frustrations related to this moment or this task. There’s a reason you’re doing this thing. It’s NOT to plow through it or check it off a list. This task is actually a worthwhile stepping stone toward somewhere you really want to go, something you really want to create.

Call you back to your place in this picture, and even the fact that ultimately, yes you are replaceable. Maybe there’s stuff you can let go, delegate, stop micromanaging or controlling at all, leave alone entirely. Resign from a few jobs you’ve taken on. Let go of micromanaging even yourself according to some pre-chosen standard that doesn’t fit this now-moment. And maybe you can drop back into your right place, your right role, and let it all be easier and more manageable. (LET it be easier & more manageable.)

Bring in a sense of peace and well-being that always exists beyond any tiny or overly precise realm of focus. Beyond what they’re presenting in the news, beyond the thing that’s not working right now, beyond how others in your field are currently showing up, beyond what you have or haven’t figured out up to now, etc, etc.

Remind you that YOU DON’T NEED TO FIGURE IT OUT RIGHT NOW. Or probably ever. Pan out, look away. At the risk of mixing metaphors: Something wants to come in through the back door when you’re looking out the front.

Get you back to LOVE when you’re all focused on what bothers you about someone, what they’re doing wrong, how you’re not getting what you want from them. Beyond this moment’s frustration or fear or resurgence of distress over all you can’t control—there’s nothing but love.

Come back to There’s no problem. It really is all okay. Take satellite view. Take galactic view. It’s really all okay.

Love & blessings, Jaya

p.s. Check out the simple process of zoom in, zoom out from Abraham-Hicks to find more language for the same idea of stretching your way of looking at things for maximum alignment & well-being. They started talking in these terms in late 2024/early 2025.