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

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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

​I was doing a focus wheel early one morning to get my head space right where I wanted it. (Focus wheels are FUN and you can add color or use different colored pens. TRY IT. No tool is better for pointing yourself properly toward the day or some specific task or event that you notice has anything sticky or heavy in it for you.)

Somehow the lightening sky caught my attention through a window and I had the impulse to jump up, step outside, and look up.

And then I didn’t want to. It’s getting cold, and I’m not acclimated yet, and I tend to resist cold.

And I accused myself of not focusing if I got up. (It’s a weird way we talk ourselves out of following guidance—with some righteous-sounding accusation.)

But that place in my side where I got the tug was still doing something, and I’m pretty committed to following those nudges & impulses when I get them. So I got up and went outside.

Wow. The air was amazing, if a little cold—then the longer I stayed the more I felt into how fine it was to feel cold. The clouds were kind of blushing just a little bit with the edge of the sunrise (which is mostly blocked where I am, so I LOVE when I step out while the clouds are still reflecting some color). The moon was a skinny sliver, which may be my favorite phase in its cycles—and most certainly is my favorite in the now-moment when I catch it in that phase.

And then as I stood there, I happened to look down and over as a rabbit popped out of a hiding place and hop-ran away from my human presence. They may not have been happy to see me, but I was oh so happy to see them. I love a rabbit sighting, and I’d been thinking I hadn’t seen one in a while.

And then I looked up at the moon and clouds and sky again and remembered something I love to say to myself: let the morning make its impressions on you. I did that. I loved it. And I felt so alive.

Let the morning make its impressions on you. You can place any word you like in the slot morning is taking up in that sentence. However you fill in the blank, the idea here is a call to PRESENCE.

Fully take in the thing you’re bringing awareness to. Let it make its impressions on you. Feel it in body and heart. There’s head-center stuff to notice too—like associations, symbology, or even just using what you perceive to consciously tell yourself things: This is a lovely morning. What an amazing way to start the day. This is going to be a great day.

This is not a wow or intense story. There’s no car chase. No falling in love, except with the moon, all over again. Nothing extraordinary or even worth writing about.

Except I really wanted to write about it because it has huge implications for your connection to your guidance system, and for living the life you want.

I want to invite you to follow those impulses that make you feel alive. That’s one way you know it’s a good impulse. (Okay, sure, if you’re an adrenaline addict or if anything that’s really self-harming makes you feel alive while you’re healing something, this does not apply.) For the impulses to do what nourishes your soul and thus your entire being, go. Jump up. Step out.

Let some small thing be worth a moment of disturbance, like it’s worth it to drink water, to do a stretch, to gaze at a face you love in the middle of your work day or any activity.

Notice your resistance to following those impulses. Don’t worry about it or judge it. Don’t even sit around asking, Why do I resist these things? Do notice. Notice that you’re calibrated to talking yourself out of things that actually align with what you say you want or value or who you want to be or how you want to live.

That’s no problem, because we all do this. And we all have a guidance system that’s equipped to move us through and around resistance. We all have resistance. It’s a wacky human thing. Do be aware of it and notice it, and just take a moment to call it what it is: it actually helps to name your resistance.

We sometimes especially resist little things. You won’t make or break anyone’s day or ruin their life if you push against an impulse to go look at the moon.

But actually, you could change your day more than you suspect in the moment. You will certainly rob yourself of that dance with consciousness in which you’re constantly whisper-called and gently nudged, again and again, so kindly, so gently, to all that you want.

And when you practice following those tiny impulses with the little things, you get really good at doing the dance (YOUR DANCE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS) and you can apply it in all things large or small. Most of us talk back to some absurd percentage of the guidance-system impulses that come our way. What if you didn’t?

What could your life become if you made it a practice to just respond, now, to all the nudges toward LIFE and feeling alive and taking care of yourself and reaching out to someone and and and …

Find easy, tiny ways to just respond to the guidance. It’s actually not inconsequential to let the dawn make its impressions on you. Or to throw into the pot the random spice you just thought of or the vegetable that caught your eye. It does something to get up and brush your teeth when you feel the tug to go do that next. Follow your guidance system. One tiny impulse at a time, it will get your right where you want to be.

And one noticing and countering of resistance at a time, you’ll become a well-tuned dance partner to this custom-made guidance system that kind of only has eyes for you—and actually has the good of all concerned forever simultaneously in view. You really can’t go wrong. Wanna make it a practice?

Love & blessings, Jaya

Let me just say a few words about your marvelous guidance system (which you can amend as you like to fit what rings true for you) and then I’d like to look with you at what on earth you would let decide your life for you if not that. Head straight for that bullet list below if you just want to consider what else could lead what you do and don’t do, what you choose, what you do or don’t admit to your experience, your heart, your life. And just after the bullet points is a doozy that needed its own paragraph, so maybe read that too.

You have so much freedom to create your life from the inside. You get to notice everything out there that gets your attention and run it by how it makes you feel, whether it feels aligned or off to you, whether it sparks an expansive, excited sense of creating the next thing you want (in all realms of life), or whether it feels defeating or depleting or fraught with obligation, guilt, old stories and decisions made in the past, and so on.

You get to keep it fresh if you want to. That’s true even if you can’t instantly change current conditions. You can always change how you feel. You can always change what you say yes or no or how much to right now. And your guidance system is always calling you to what feels better and more aligned. With zero judgment, coercion, or manipulation. Just letting you know. Now and now and now.

Your job for living at the highest level you’re capable of RIGHT NOW is to respond to your own guidance system.

It’s never out there—it’s inside you. But the out-there stuff is part of your dance with consciousness. It’s full of symbols, signals, suggestions—all kinds of stuff you can respond to. More important, you can notice how you ARE responding—how anything registers for you in body, heart, head. What happens when that comes into your field?

Does it make you feel expansive, more on-course, more curious about life, more authentically you? Does it feel full of new possibility, growth, more fun, more freedom, more ease? MORE OF THAT.

Does it make you feel bad, like you’re doing it wrong and won’t ever get it right, like you have to bite some bullet or put in a bunch of time where nothing remotely matches what you want and who you know yourself to be (or, if. you’ve gotten away from yourself, from what you suspect and still get glimmers of)? To anything that just feels NOT HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL, please, LESS OF THAT.

And if you don’t follow your marvelous guidance system--that originates in you, that comes up from inside you; that has alllll the facts and stats about what’s going on now, what has been, and where you’d actually like to go next; that knows exactly what your obstacles and fears and limited beliefs are, AND IS EQUIPPED TO MOVE YOU THROUGH AND AROUND THOSE—if not that amazing guidance system, then what?

I asked a client that question rhetorically the other day, and then all of these answers wanted to pour in. So I wrote them down.
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You could let yourself choose any one thing and another and another and your whole entire life out of any of the following (instead of in response to your own guidance) (and of course, this is not an exhaustive list, so do open to what else wants to come to you):

• someone else's desires and expectations
• making others comfortable or sparing them some discomfort you predict (that may have no basis in current reality or that they’ll experience anyway)
• saying yes to others whatever they ask
• pandering to their egos, anger, sorrow, manipulations
• your fears and your declarations about what you can’t do or what isn’t accessible or available to you
• some image you're cultivating
• some fixed identity you’re sticking to
• some old concept that doesn't fit anymore (and how you know is that it makes you feel squeezed and out of sorts, like the clothes that chafe and pinch and don't allow freedom of movement and don’t even fall right or flow right)
• some clan mentality you’ve adopted and still operate out of (from family, a friend group, a work culture, any culture or subculture)
• concepts like what it means to be nice, what makes you a good person [or fill in roles--sibling, boss, spouse, etc], what someone your age should or can or can’t do
• obligation
• guilt
• shame
• safety
• habit (this is what I've been doing and always do, so this is what I'll do now despite the tug or impulse or spark to do something else)

To be clear, those things could be choosing your life.

And then there’s this crazy thing: what you promised or committed to before. You SAID, so you’re sticking to it. Never mind that by now, life has brought in a whole bunch of new information (and keeps persistently trying to bring it to your notice, because our guidance system NEVER gives up on us), information that you COULD hold up to the old promise in order to take in that it practically begs and screams for you to appropriately renegotiate and/or revise it—but you’re letting your past self and what they knew and decided and said decide today, against what your guidance system is bringing in today.

Against the fresh dynamic-NOW wisdom of your own marvelous guidance system, that’s actually tapped in to the evolution, to your becoming, to all that you keep stretching into (or at least would like to, at least at the soul level).

But let’s go back to that parenthetical in the above paragraph. Your guidance system is like an adoring dog whose loyalty will not budge. It will not give up on you. It will not punish you for ignoring it or talking back. It will not stop coming up with creative ways to get your attention.

And it will not stop using your EMOTIONS to help you really get and viscerally know: this is what I love and what feels good; this is what makes me feel terrible and what I need to adjust and/or move away from. Heart guidance will be the topic of a future mailing.

In the meantime, my work here is finished: consider what decides it for you if not your guidance system. And whatever you do or don’t see right now, consider more responding to and flowing with the nudges, tugs, flashes, zingy attention-getters, inspired ideas, impulses to act, random people dropping into your field or mind, dreams, persistent desires, and all the magic, synchronicity, and repeating echoing themes that keep coming in from the outside and bumping into your deep inner knowing and the truth of who you really are.

Love & blessings, Jaya