FINE HAS A BAD RAP.

Twelve-step folks use FINE as an acronym for fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. It’s common for anyone to plug in FINE for meh, or not much going on, nothing to say, business as usual.

By and large, people believe they don’t want to feel FINE. They typically want to feel something more pronounced or more ideal. They want to feel something essential to how they love moving through life.

Little SIDE TRIP FOR ENNEAGRAM LOVERS with how each type may want to feel (skip down to Who wants fine? above pic to skip it):

• powerful, in control, vibrantly alive
• deeply peaceful; maintaining a sense of solid well-being
• really connected to goodness; aligned; pleased with how things are progressing
• loving & warm; feeling the vibes with others
• noticeably successful; getting in there, getting it done, winning the prize
• wildly creative; immersed in the depth, the beauty, the meaning
• zinging with new ideas & knowledge; mentally clear; growing in the mastery of something super interesting or intellectually stimulating
• aware, on top of things, decisive; knowing what to do and moving through anything from that knowing
• joyfully alive, wide open, participatory; having a great time stirring up all kinds of energy and volleying it playfully with others

Note that he bullets above follow the essence qualities & preferences of 8, 9, 1 … and count sequentially from there to land at 7. As taught by Russ Hudson, I always begin with the three body types, hence 8 as the starting point.)

So … who wants FINE?

Photo of a person raking a lawn with German Shepherd dog looking on from Kübra Arslaner on Unsplash.

You do, I promise. Hear me out, if you will. I’ll make it worth your while.

Consider FINE to be synonymous with content. Just a baseline contentment that asks nothing of life, for right now, beyond what’s actually happening.

Equate FINE with satisfied. This works. It’s enough. It’s good enough. It’ll do for now.

In FINE, you’re in acceptance of what is. You’re not finding fault, you’re not squirming in your seat, you’re not resisting what is. You’re letting things be without giving up on what else you might want. You’re certainly not getting out the microscope to magnify some kind of discontent or pointing out the what’s not-quite-right to others.

Treat FINE like needs met. Okay. All right.

And here’s a little trick I played: Embedded in how I wrote the above is an example right off the bat of what I most want to invite you to do with fine—because this is the latest invitation from Abraham-Hicks in their amazing teachings on aligned living. Did you notice the lingering, the repetition?

​​Don’t just say it’s fine, you’re fine, things are fine. SUSTAIN IT.

Remember finding the feeling place? Find the feeling place of FINE and stay with it. Get a solid, strong, embodied sense of FINE. Believe it. Hold it. Know it. Intend it. Look for it. Speak it. Think it. Review it. Bring it to that visceral knowing, right into your bones.

For real: be FINE.

When you sustain that, guess what happens???

What happens from FINE is a lingering sense of a baseline well-being that feels pretty damn good. It’s reliable and real. You’re really fine—no bullshit.

As you SUSTAIN feeling FINE (loving me some repetition, as sustaining it is key), you can’t get stuck there! You truly cannot. You don’t sustain it forever, only long enough for it to take you to what you like even better.

And hey—as long as it takes. Stay with it!
​

​Remember, everything in the Universe gains momentum. It works both ways: build momentum from everything that annoys, upsets, and distresses you, or build momentum from feeling pretty good. Whatever you focus on will take you to the next level, up or down.

From FINE, or content, satisfied, and accepting, you could soon have easy access to optimistic, confident, sure. You could start feeling playful then bump into some (not so) serious fun, amusement, hilarity. You could shift into delight, head-shaking appreciation, pure awe. Those joy spikes could grab you anytime.

You know that strong connection to what matters, to the magic, the flow? That sense of being guided and in purposeful motion? Suddenly you’re inspired and taking inspired actions without overthinking things or needing to be sure of any outcome. You’re just catching the wave or riding the current right toward what you most want!

You know that feeling when life keeps taking you effortlessly round the next bend? I want you to know it and know that you know it. And let yourself get there from establishing a strong foundation of FINE.

Wait, why not just start with feeling fantastic? Let’s just follow our bliss and rev up the passion, no?

Um, no. For the simple reason that you don’t always have access to the highest and best. You may be nowhere in the vicinity, as Abraham says. You might fool yourself into thinking you should have access, and then get down on yourself, then plummet quickly from dissatisfaction to depression or even ongoing blah-malaise. So don’t even aspire to that. Aspire to fine.

You may have no access to higher emotions because of a (habitual and culturally sanctioned) way of focusing on what’s wrong, what bothers you, what isn’t up to par, what you haven’t gotten done yet, how you’re not healthier, more fit, or further along in your career. It becomes NORMAL for all kinds of NOT FINE things to take up your field of vision, your time, your energy. It’s not just your FOCUS, but also your life force.

Then you generate all kinds of unhappiness & unnecessary suffering from there, and you start to think that’s what life is, then all you see is more evidence of that. Momentum. (Aka, Law of Attraction.)

YOU HAVE EASY ACCESS TO FINE. You can walk yourself to fine and hang out there. Seriously, it’s okay. Be okay. Just be fine.

You won’t get stuck there. Fine is your gateway to all those larger feelings and ways of being that you live for. Call it in, give it your focus, and sustain it. I invite you to a grand experiment: collect the data of all that flows in from FINE.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Try SEGMENT INTENDING from Abraham-Hicks to point yourself toward FINE bit by bit all day long.

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

(Would you, could you believe that it’s supposed to be easy?)
I just found a little note I wrote for myself with an Abraham-Hicks quote that struck me: “The path of least resistance is also the path of greatest joy, greatest clarity, and the most fun!”
 
Abraham’s path of least resistance is a crazy-simple concept: You watch for and find the easiest, most effortless spot to next place your foot. Don’t see the whole picture? Don’t have a start-to-finish plan? No problem. Find your next step, knowing that’s enough. Take the easiest step you have access to.
 
You can do it tired, scared, confused. Point yourself roughly in the right direction (as I talk about in part 4 of Scooch!) and step forward, wherever your foot can land without some big leap or forceful stomping.
 
You can do it with curiosity instead of dread; you can stay tuned for the guidance rather than fear you’ll get it wrong. You can trust yourself to course-correct as you go.
 
It’s always okay to find you’re in resistance. Watch it dispassionately, compassionately. Then find your point of least resistance, and step there. Rinse and repeat; rinse and repeat. You’ll see and feel the resistance melt away. You’ll find the momentum builds as you go, often surprisingly swiftly.
 
To proceed along the path of least resistance, start by noticing when you’re in resistance.
 
In your body, resistance can feel like

• contraction/tension
• anxiety/adrenaline
• discomfort
• distress
• illness or disease or anything out of whack
• depression, procrastination, shut-down
• those gut feelings that something is off

You’re in resistance when you're

• second-guessing and what-iffing
• talking yourself into and out of things
• making excuses (even for others) or rationalizing your decisions
• treating someone else in the story like a victim that you have to be careful with
• declaring yourself to be a victim of what’s hard or going wrong (vs. getting curious and paying attention)
• wondering whether you're attracted or not; whether you really want to go somewhere or do something or not
• thinking you need to see the whole picture, have a whole plan, before you move
• thinking you need to gather more knowledge or garner more support before you start
• making it about money (no, in case you balk at that, I actually do personally and viscerally know what poverty looks like)
• giving yourself lectures on things like responsibility or commitment (when you haven’t failed to be responsible or to commit)
• telling yourself why you can’t have what you want, or why it won’t work
• calling yourself XYZ for wanting what you want or going for what you’re after (What do you call yourself to stop your right movement? Privileged, greedy, selfish?)
• calling yourself XYZ for being immobilized, instead of looking at fears (de)constructively and compassionately (Do you call yourself lazy, bad at follow-through, undeserving?)
• going in again and again after each next nosedive or shut door (I don’t mean appropriate persistence when you feel connected to your vision! I mean when you’re more like a bull in a china shop than a curious explorer picking your way through uncharted territory—hey, you get to choose the metaphor you want to play out!)

 
It also helps to be clear about the signs that you're on a path of least resistance:

• it often feels easy
• even where it’s hard, you’re having fun, you feel inspired
• you feel challenged in the good way
• where there’s actual effort needed, you feel equipped for that—not overwhelmed—so it’s effort worth exerting
• there's a sense of rightness (or, in romance/relationship, that you get each other, that you’re super curious about this individual, that you feel their genuine interest in you)
• you're able to be present, able to come back from wondering or worrying about the future
• you're not riding a yo-yo in a stay-or-go decision-making process
• there's more right than wrong
• you feel a series of obstacles as an interesting journey that’s building muscles you need (not as a string of defeating, demoralizing debacles)
• you often see that what comes up is your stuff and you're therefore able to process it at that level, not go after the situation or the other person requiring them to change (in dating or in working/living closely with others, you can process what comes up without necessarily involving the other, or you can process it first for yourself then bring them the short version; note you’re not asking them to fix it for you or adjust themselves for your well-being)

 
How to follow the path of least resistance:
All you need to do is gingerly pick your way along the unknown way, one step at a time, simply finding your next point of least resistance. What’s the easiest way to go that feels like it’s in the right direction? Forget the whole picture. Don’t call this one step a drop in the bucket. Your point of least resistance simply gives you access to movement. One step, and another, and the next, until you’re moving so well, you forget you didn’t know how to do this. You’ll course-correct as you go, so don’t worry about whether you’re heading just the right way. You’re meant to build and ride momentum.
 
Hey, it’s not just that the path of least resistance will get you to where you’re going in the most effortless way. Remember the quote I began with from Abraham-Hicks? “The path of least resistance is also the path of greatest joy, greatest clarity, and the most fun!” So when it feels like that … you’re on it!
 
Love & blessings, Jaya

Note that an earlier post on least resistance approaches these concepts from another angle.