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

How we do put things in categories
It’s as if we human beings can’t make sense of life unless we think and talk and dream and plot & scheme in terms of separate realms of life that we can name. For example:

• family
• friends
• health, physical well-being
• home life
• love life
• money
• work & career trajectory

Florence Scovel Shinn, author of The Game of Life and How to Play It, posited four squares of life: 1) health, 2) wealth, 3) love, and 4) perfect self-expression.

There are many ways to slice the pie.

Sometimes, I find myself pointing out to a client that the Universe doesn’t care about realms of life. Ultimately, it’s all your one life. We slice it up into (and fixate on) the categories to manage it all and to sort through it mentally and conversationally.

And why do I feel the need to point that out? Why does that even matter?

It matters in a huge and perhaps surprising way.

When you fixate on a category that’s wobbly, thorny, painful, baffling—problematic in any way--you feel bad. Then, perhaps, you tend to focus on how bad you feel about it, and you keep it in view mentally so you don’t lose track of this problem you need to solve. You put what’s not working under the microscopic, so it takes up your whole field of vision and determines your feeling state. Familiar?


Quick LOA review
In Law of Attraction (LOA) terms, you’re now a match for the problem, not the solution. You’re pointing at what you don’t want—whereas the advice for harnessing the power of LOA (which, like gravity, is operative whether you use it to your advantage or not) is to point at, or keep the focus on, what you DO want. Remember, what you focus on expands. The feeling state you’re cultivating determines what you’re calling in. And since what you point toward also establishes the direction you’re heading, then when you fixate on a currently (or chronically) dissatisfying life category, you’re pointing toward what you don’t want—and building momentum in the wrong direction, propelling yourself toward the unwanted.


Applying this to life categories
Let’s say your love life isn’t to your liking and your brow furrows and your heart feels heavy when you think about it; whereas other realms of life are going pretty well. Maybe work is really humming along and your home has never felt more welcoming and containing and aligned with your aesthetic. How does it benefit you that the Universe doesn’t care about categories?

You can actually make your life better by looking away from your love life. GET OFF THE TOPIC of the problematic category. For those of you already objecting, I’m not saying never think about it. I’m not saying don’t sit with it in a clear state and with an open mind to invite inspiration and right action.

But that's not what most of us do with the thing that isn’t going great for us. Typically, we ruminate, or get in our heads about it, and focus on it in tense & straining, discouraged & disempowered ways. We grip the problem (or wrestle it to the ground, as Abraham-Hicks says) and either force solutions or brood about the complexity & perhaps hopelessness of the whole thing. Again, this makes us a match to the problem, not the solution. We’re contracted and unhappy, and (you know the difference viscerally, right?) not relaxed, trusting life, open to the multiple solutions that want to come in—never mind what we do or don’t see here and now.

So what if you gave relaxed, appreciative, even joyful attention instead to what’s going well? As you focus on what you feel good about, the multiple areas in your life where things are easy & running smoothly, the areas of success and flow, the stuff that satisfies and generates new ideas & creative impulses … then you become a match for more of that. You invite more of that (watch for more of that, notice more of that, generate more of that).

​Then what about the category that’s not going great?
As you keep the realms of life that are going well in view, and focus there, and thus build your predominant feeling state from there (i.e., you feel good more & most of the time), then the Universe, or LOA, is happy to flow that over to any specific category, because CATEGORIES DON’T MATTER. (I could almost say they’re not real.) It’s really all you. So imagine what happens with the hard stuff when WHO YOU ARE is the happy, relaxed, trusting one who generally feels great about your life.

I invite you to literally imagine it. To think back to when you’ve felt that way. To take in others around you who live that way. Make this as real to yourself as you can, mentally, so that you’re more likely to live into it in the practical day-to-day of it.


But what about DEALING WITH what’s not going right?
Well, again, NO RUMINATING. (That puts you in ongoing focus on problems and robs you of presence. It keeps you from enjoying what’s going well and optimizing what you have the power to control right now. Otherwise stated: it keeps you from loving your beautiful life.) Choose CONSCIOUSLY and well the moments when you do think CLEARLY about the tricky, dissatisfying stuff.

Go in when you’ve been focused on the good stuff, so you feel clear and capable and optimistic about things moving forward. Then you’re just sitting down with something to tend in your beautiful life, even if it’s not your favorite thing. You’re simply showing up for yourself when it’s time to pay bills or look something up or go to the appointment or add up numbers or do just one next thing that seems aligned with a sense of possibility. You aim roughly in the right direction and trust your capacity to course-correct. Coming in relaxed and happy and open to inspiration and guidance, you no longer approach this previously problematic category as some impossible puzzle to solve, or an ugly, tangled mess that no comb could ever smooth out, or even something that, in your case, at least, is just beyond hopeless.

It matters that categories don’t matter because you can just focus more generally on all you love in life, and then create more of what you love in every single aspect of this one life.

See how that works? Are you doing it already sometimes? (Please do bother to take in where you’ve already experienced this! Know that you know this already!) Would you like to do it more and better? I’ve found it to be a marvelous thing for a grand experiment, a worthwhile project, an enjoyable bit of play in stirring up more of what you love.

Love & blessings, Jaya


Further reading, anyone?
I’ve written before about the wisdom & power of getting off the topic. Here’s more on being a match to the problem, not the solution. And here are some anti-rumination bits to check out:

1. Rumination relief
2. Dissolving rumination with a breath & a question
3. Rumination to support your well-being

​
There’s a miraculous little search bar on my website! I’ve also written about course-correcting, feeling good or just feeling better, running grand experiments, following your (very own & unique) guidance system, teaching yourself from what you’ve cleaned up before, and … a whole bunch of stuff to support you in well-being and thriving.

​Let’s clear up the heaviness, distress, guilt, obligation, anxiety, energy leaks, bad feelings & bad vibes, self-loathing—whatever way you feel rotten about texts, WhatsApp messages, Instagram (or any social-media) messages, emails, cards & letters, little notes left, messages in bottles, WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER.

We have so many ingenious ways to be in touch, create connection, and send love. You can use these to make you feel GOOD or you can use these to make you feel all manner of BAD.

Please use communication tools consciously. Use them ONLY to support you to feel how you want to feel. (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!)

You do not owe anybody messages. Unless you’ve made some clear, contractual agreement with someone, YOU DO NOT OWE THEM

• reaching out to them for any reason at any time
• getting back to them at certain times
• responding within a certain timing
• messaging at any particular frequency
• sustaining a frequency of messaging from one era or event in the next era or event

(Hey, integrity side note: it really helps NOT to tell people you’ll get back to them at any certain time because then you’ve said that so, sure, you’ll feel guilty & bad if you don’t do what you said you’d do. Just DO get back to them when it’s right, and leave out the promises. Or keep track of and follow through with what you say you’ll do.)

You are not a bad person if you have unanswered messages from others sitting anywhere in your world. These others wrote you because they wanted to, when they wanted to. They were following their timing, not yours. You do not owe them lining up with that.

They wrote you when they felt like it for their reasons and with their thoughts & feelings going. Some of those thoughts & feelings are ego-based—that is, related to their personality structure and what they have & haven’t worked out yet, and what they want from you, and what their beliefs are about what’s what and what they owe others and what others owe them.

Please know (um, KNOW that you know) that all of the above varies tremendously from one person to the next. There’s no standard, no one-size-fits-all.

It is not your job to track all of those things for others.

It is not your job to work yourself around other people’s stuff.

In fact, if you make it your job, you will fail. You will also feel all manner of BAD: obligation & guilt & sadness for disappointing them [and whatever else or other you go to]. And if you don’t get right back to them, you will feel things like this:

• pressure
• frustration
• not-good-enough-ness
• guilt & obligation
• annoyance that people are writing you
• defensiveness
• resentment
• a desire to push others away
• a desire to make contact (when you do) with all kinds of apologies

(I recently wrote about how resentment can be a very useful messenger. Check that out if and only if you feel drawn to do so. You also don’t owe anyone clicking on the links they send you.)

You might consider disconnecting any false equal sign you’ve got going between someone messaging you and you owing them anything.

They messaged me = I owe them a certain response in a certain timing

Set yourself free. Then you can just give everyone on the planet permission to reach out to you when it’s right for them, for their reasons, and you can give yourself permission to reach out to them when it’s right for you, for your reasons.

Let’s talk about leading with apologies when you get around to reaching out to someone.

Don’t.

Seriously, stop it.

No love agenda is served by beginning a communication with how sorry you are that you haven’t been in touch or you didn’t respond sooner. You have & had reasons for your timing. (You’ll have fewer & simpler reasons when you don’t carry around a bunch of baggage related to messaging.)
​

​It actually gets worse if you’re telling all your reasons for why you are & aren’t communicating at what frequency or in what timing. (When you relax around this whole topic you won’t feel the need, or you’ll simply see a reason to tell if that’s kind & appropriate—and it likely won’t be apologetic.)

If someone has a problem with how you’re communicating, it’s their problem. Let them bring it up with you if they want to, then you can listen to them lovingly (or however you want to) and just tell them the truth about how you prefer to manage communication, which may not coincide with how they manage it.

If someone wants to make you wrong for how, when, and how often you communicate, let them. Leave them to it. But don’t join them in making yourself wrong. Don’t give a false apology.

In other words: do not join someone in agreeing that you’re wrong or bad because of how you communicate following your actual life, timing, work load, emotional reality, chosen focus, preferences, and so on.

If someone lets you know that you’re bothering them by the way you communicate and their feelings are hurt and it means this or that to them and they want X or Y from you—you can take that in kindly. But that doesn’t then mean you owe them any of it, or that it would serve either of you for you to deliver that.

(If you’re someone who needs the reminder to check in with yourself about your own actual current capacity: please check in with yourself OFTEN about your own actual current capacity.)

CRAY-CRAY ALERT: It serves nothing and no one for you to keep communicating at your pace & frequency while simultaneously continuing to feel bad & guilty & wrong because of what that means to someone else. How about making a clear change instead?

Um, this means that if you just keep feeling all manner of BAD about messaging, and aren’t changing anything (perhaps because you don’t really want to or at capacity or aren’t wired that way or …), you will be stuck feeling bad. You’re doing that to yourself. It’s not someone else or their expectations or desires doing that to you. DO NOT DO THAT TO YOURSELF.

Set yourself free of what it means to them, and just communicate how you want to. And, META-BONUS: communicate clearly, when it comes up, about your communication.

If you find you have reasons or feel guided to communicate differently with someone in a way that would feel better for all concerned, by all means, do that. (Or experiment with it for a bit and course-correct as you get new data.)

Changing how you communicate with someone would ideally be based on your intentions for the relationship and your sense of what would feel better TO YOU. (If you’re basing it on guilt & obligation, or placating & people-pleasing, it won’t feel any better.)

I wish you freedom to be your most authentic self, unburdened by what others are up to. You get to be you. The more self-permission you have to live (and communicate) authentically, the more you’ll just follow your beautiful guidance system to be in touch with others in right timing. It can be simple & easeful. It can feel good. It can be a simple matter of following the impulses as they arise.

Love & blessings, Jaya

4 Things to remind yourself early & often
(which will connect you to self & to guidance)

1. Bring it to now: Come back from the future (quit predicting what you don't want) and come back from the past (quit accruing towers of one thing stacked on top of another so it's all too much) and don't try to figure it all out. What can you do right now to align with this moment? Notice that you're equipped for this one moment.

2. Come back to the breath: Breathing is a felt, sensory experience, but we typically don't feel it. I love to invite people not to breeaaaaathe or even to take a deep breath, but to simply drop into the breath; follow it; stay with it; feel it. Feel its soothing, its kindness, its calming capacity. Feel how it brings you to the core of your being and brings your whole nervous system down a notch or two. It's powerful to take some moments dropping in with the breath and come back to yourself.

3. You don't have to figure it all out right now: This is a great thing to tell yourself to get out of your head, out of fix-it mode, out of believing you're not okay till you have it all sorted out and see the way forward. Actually, if you don't see it all clearly, then you don't have to figure it out right now. Soothe yourself instead (see Come back to the breath above).

4. You are guided: Life wants to get you where you're going. It wants to feed you, provide for your needs, heal and evolve you, keep bringing you closer to love. When you think you need to know what the future will hold, or insist on a blueprint for getting there (when there isn't one), or--yuck--fault yourself because you must be doing something wrong if you don't see the way forward: STOP. Quit thinking you're all alone and it's all up to you to find your way through the dark. You're guided. Connect to guidance.
​
Love & blessings, Jaya

heyyyy. LOOK RIGHT for CORONA SUPPORT label under CATEGORIES. Find posts most likely to support you as you move through the fascinating challenge of a pandemic. You're equipped to meet this, and to meet yourself kindly on this journey!

At the bottom of my EFT playlist on YouTube are some videos made during Covid that can still apply when life throws scary global things at us. This one, for example, was a tapping session on letting go (as we grasped and tried to control what we couldn't).

Part of trusting your guidance system is trusting in your capacity to course-correct: not to get it right!

Course-correction is a power—may even be a super-power. You have the power at any given moment to simply course-correct toward what feels better to you than where you find yourself to be or what you thought you were aiming for. Isn’t that kind of amazing?
   Sound too easy? Here are some typical ways you might hamper your innate ability to simply and swiftly course-correct anytime.
​
You’re too attached to the course you’ve set--so you’re not open to guidance about where to head NOW.
Maybe you need to be right or you believe you have to finish what you started or you really really want that thing you were heading toward. But guidance comes in now, for now. You may be guided to Santa Fe and find yourself called to Seattle midway. Santa Fe is just what got your attention and sent you roughly heading the right way! Will you let go now and head Northward as new information comes in?
   Reminder that the Universe can provide the general thing you’re after in multiple forms. A great way to counter attachment to a specific form is to remember the general thing you were after: a fulfillment, a compatibility, a connection; a sense of place that felt like home; a new, heightened level of expressing your intelligence or artistic vision—perhaps your entire being. Name the general intention and open to how many specific forms could fulfill that.

You have too many bad feelings about where you find yourself right now.
What if you didn’t judge the status quo? You may have regret or self-recrimination about what got you here. You may feel defeated or discouraged because of how someone else or your own body or life itself seems to have betrayed you. You may categorically hate where you are and be embroiled in the very real complications of your current reality. What if you entirely accepted where you are right now?
   Invitation back to nonresistance! I just read words from inspired pelvic pain coach Lorraine Faehndrich saying that her healing began when she stopped fighting her body and everything seemingly wrong with it, and from that space of acceptance simply started listening to what it was telling her. (And her body did not withhold! Inner guidance!) Likewise, my sleep class kicks off with an invitation to nonresistance—hence its name, Give It a Rest: Get Your Sleep Back by Letting It Go. Participants begin by accepting sleeplessness and sleep deprivation, and end up resting better and … sleeping! Byron Katie’s first book is called Loving What Is because she invites readers into nonresistance—or as she puts it, out of an argument with reality. “Argue with reality and you lose,” she loves to say, “but only 100 percent of the time.” You’re fine wherever you find yourself at any given moment, and the course-correction asked of you is within your skill set.

You think course-correction requires knowing exactly where to go or what to do next.
No no no no no! Just think of it as always good enough to head roughly in the right direction. The tweaks (and radical shifts) are made along the way as you keep paying attention! Trust that.

You’re having trust malfunctions!
   You don’t trust life to show you the way. (For life, plug in Source/the stars/Higher Power—you name it for you.) Guidance has always been forthcoming and always will be.
   You don’t trust yourself—what? To read the signs right? To stay the course? Pause to tune in to what you fault yourself for or expect yourself not to get right. Even if you’re right (and you probably are) about your history or tendencies, whatever you lack or whatever flaw you perceive in yourself will never be fully true. Identity is not fixed, your limitations are ready to become your new strengths, and you get to recreate yourself and your life as much as you care to do. You get to keep course-correcting toward more of what you want and who you most want to be.

You’re confusing letting go with giving up.
They feel really different. Letting go can feel downright good. If not, it will certainly bring relief and probably some sense of new possibility. At the very least, here comes a question like Now what? or What’s possible now? Some part of you can begin to feel the breeze from the open window now that you’ve shut that troublesome door. Giving up feels awful. It feels like defeat, heavy and contracted, and inspires self-loathing or at best instant regret and second-guessing. It feels like failing yourself (sometimes others—but see the next point for where worrying about that can get you!) Trust what brings relief and lightness: that’s part of your guidance system.

You’re listening to someone else’s opinion or advice instead of what’s coming from your inner guidance.
Hey, some people will quickly, and for years, default to failing themselves—as long as they never fail others. That’s always misguided. What’s right for you will be right for them, even if they fight you on it initially. Could be their weak self (or attached or unclear or unhealed self) calling you selfish for following your path. You must nonetheless follow your path. Make your guidance system more important than their unhealed stuff!
   By the way, if you go to what someone else wants from you (or deems best for you) because they’ve called you a name or brought forth your worst fear, you’ve just succumbed to manipulation (which obviously isn’t coming from their highest self, and may or may not be conscious on their part). DO NOT CHOOSE YOUR PATH BASED ON MANIPULATIONS FROM OTHERS. (And hey, if you think you’re being manipulated but aren’t sure, I know a good coach. I’ve walked more than one soul out of confusion on that point—funny that being confused is a sign of being manipulated!—and back to clarity about their own knowing.)
   Risk being selfish—or irresponsible or bad or all over the place or whatever they’re calling you that cuts you to the quick--and just go when everything else but your fear calls you elsewhere.

A few more things that could hamper swift course-correction:

• you’re blocking awareness because you’re scared of what you’ll see
• you aren’t sufficiently pausing to check in with yourself
• you’re missing kind guidance from the Universe because it involves something, perhaps a loss, that you’re calling failure or punishment
• you’ve never thought of this in these terms before and now that you have, you’re there (so don't declare you're stuck where new awareness has dawned and you're actually shifting)

Love & blessings, Jaya

P.S. For more on advice (and when it's right or wrong for you), See Want inner muddle? Seek outer guidance.