Because You Are!

Blurry photo of people on a whirlwind amusement park ride from Lorenzo Fustaino on Unsplash.

It’s Not a Problem That It’s Never Done
Things are never done. Period. You know the old adage A woman’s work is never done—another reason to blow up the binary! No one’s work is ever done. Of course your work is never done! Stop treating this like a problem—or worse, a failure on your part.

Likewise, your play is never done, your pleasure is never done, your learning is never done, your creative impulses & ideas are never done, your adventures are never done. Not until you die. And then … something else. So if you’re alive in this form, there it is: everything is in flux and more is always lining up. Seriously, what if you saw that with zero pressure or stress—or with the capacity & commitment to soothe that and give yourself new messages when the old hold sway or reassert themselves?

You get to enjoy and be at ease with the thing you’re doing right now. More important, and more empowering: You can decide to enjoy & be at ease with each thing you’re doing NOW. Or not. What do you decide?

Unlearning & Retraining
On a day-to-day basis, noticing what’s NOT done (really, truly) does NOT need to be felt as pressure. If it registers as guilt or failure or any kind of problem that jars your system, PAUSE. Break the spell. Crack through the illusion. Breathe consciously for a few beats, and give yourself a reality check: actually, you ARE doing enough.

Going slower with lower energy today? That, too, is a human reality: you’re still doing enough. Breathe through it. Embody & appreciate each thing you do. Align with the energy of the day as the orchestration takes care of what’s obviously not yours to do, or won’t look the way it does on high-energy days.

Are you inefficient today? Still doing enough. Shift your energy, stretch, hydrate, take a break, take a walk, then see what you most want to give yourself to as best you can and as much as you want to here & now.

Have others shown up or failed to show up in ways that maximize flow & easy movement through necessary tasks (for whatever you’re up to together)? Um, that’s normal too. Unavoidable, in fact. Just do what’s yours to do (which may or may not include communicating with them), and you’re doing enough. (But if you’re spending a bunch of mental time on what’s wrong with them, you’re doing too much—of what won’t serve you at all to connect to higher intelligence, which never goes along with some assessment that you’re the victim of others’ character flaws or work ethics or whatever.)

Imagine a New Reality
What if you lived with an abiding sense of enough-ness (even fullness, wholeness) in the now? What if you kept FEELING into that and returning to that feeling and reaching for it again each time it slipped away? (And slip it will—no problem.) What if you ended each day with a sense of satisfied completeness?

Imagine savoring what’s happening now and gazing ahead with joyful anticipation (not frowning trepidation) for what’s coming next?

I’m always running on empty. I can’t get ahead. I’m working nonstop and it’s never enough. Beyond not accepting such statements as normal, how about being struck by their sheer absurdity? Speak again if you catch yourself thinking or saying such things. Do not concur when others do.

No doubt, life can feel intense, and in some realities that’s the status quo for some time (in certain jobs, parenting circumstances, health challenges; um, during certain waves of socio-political clusterfucks). Even if you’re on a roller coaster, you’re still existing in this one moment of the ride, right here, right now, and there’s nothing to be done (not by you) for or about the other moments. When life feels like a crazy carnival ride in perpetual motion, there’s still only now, now, now, now, now. And there’s still the orchestration holding what’s beyond this moment with an incredible & incredibly intelligent force. Your trouble and graceless navigating begin when you leave this moment mentally to worry, fret, tally, review, analyze, complain, predict—which means you’ve forgotten about or aren’t playing with the orchestration. Interrupt the mental departures and call yourself back to now. Release the stuff that doesn’t belong to now to that greater force.

Back to the (amazing) Orchestration
To bring it full circle in this writing and to cement it as a way of life:

• NOTICE & appreciate the orchestration.
• When you see that something moved forward without your doing, smile, laugh, play an invisible, internal kazoo or high-five your nearest person, cat, or dawg .
• Have a mini-awe-fest when the necessary resource drops in your lap or the right person just shows up as you round the bend. (Who or what called in this being to cocreate with, hire, date, adopt, start the book club with, meet at the gym—whatever it is? Yessssss, it’s the orchestration!)
• Wave a cheerful goodbye to the email you didn’t have to write because someone wrote you first with that next step in progress or in place.
• Do a little dance in the echoes of repeating book titles or supportive apps or programs or podcasts or whatever comes into your field to bring you greater ease & more fluid functionality.

I especially invite you to notice the moments you can simply act on a thought or an impulse NOW. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Guidance comes in now for now. Don’t talk back. Don’t wait for some greater readiness or further instructions or surety about right timing. Trust those impulses. That’s part of the orchestration. YOU’RE part of that vast intelligence. So flow with it now and now and now.

Love & blessings, Jaya

The Placemat Process from Abraham-Hicks is a great way to anchor yourself in an ongoing sense that it’s not all up to you. (Try it for a number days for it to bring more than relief for the day, though it’s good for that too. Used repeatedly, it’s a consciousness shifter.)

If you’d like more on doership (the idea that you’re NOT the doer), read here.​

New Thoughts about What It Means and How to Get Out of It

​From a recent Abraham-Hicks daily message: “The Universe is not punishing you or blessing you. The Universe is responding to the vibrational attitude that you are emitting. The more joyful you are, the more Well-being flows to you.”

Some of you have heard that in my current life with my elderly mother, I’m seeing lots of (bits of) Hallmark movies. Which has led me to coin the term Hallmark-movie wisdom. Can you guess how wise I consider these constant nuggets dispensed by vanilla characters who never offend?

Some of the scripts feature references to THE UNIVERSE, and I’m always fascinated by how this Universe is presented. Most recently, our protagonist was in (pretty) tears because it seemed that she and her friends were DOING THE RIGHT THING and while her friends were getting REWARDED (which meant, they were getting something they wanted and having fun in the process), she was being PUNISHED (or, not apparently getting the outcome she wanted and having less & less fun as she focused on that).

The Universe DOES work this way: You will tend to have increasingly less fun as you focus on all that’s not going just as you want it to. (Nailed that one, scriptwriter.)

The Universe, I daresay, DOES NOT work this way: You get rewarded for your goodness or doing it right by getting just the outcome you want (and perhaps even the desired journey on the way to that desired outcome).

And if you don’t get that, you’re being punished.

Factor in the sad predicament of thinking you’re doing the right thing but not being rewarded, then it also feels grossly unfair that the hoped-for outcome was withheld, and now you’re a victim of this cruel Universe that failed to notice what a good little vanilla girl you are (or whatever your flavor & gender identification).

​To get out of punishment/reward mentality:

Notice that this mindset was instilled in you when you were quite young, and perhaps your child self is interpreting events and getting stuck in feeling bad about things when you’re there. Call in your adult self who gets that shit happens and there’s no reward or punishment about it.

Call in your spiritual self who maybe gets or is starting to get or has experimented with getting that when you carry on believing you’re supported by life, and keep aiming the direction you’d like to go, then you don’t need to get tripped up on evaluating all the ups and downs in the journey.

In fact, you can treat open and shut doors as equally helpful—both offering good information to have, and letting you go where you are and aren’t going.

And you can treat hard or challenging things as building muscles for you that are currently still weaker than you might like. (Remember: muscles are appealing and make you feel strong and capable and badass and maybe even sexy, so build those muscles instead of sinking into a puddle of punishment mentality that just makes you want to give up & cry.)

Your spiritual self probably also knows (and can be called on to remind you) that the more we look away from outcomes while we’re on the journey, the more we benefit from the journey (which includes having fun, feeling good feels, and having wondrous & worthwhile encounters & adventures along the way), and the more PRESENT  we are—so we don’t miss the journey or get lost in a constant referencing of the future and what it’s going to bring in terms of outcomes.

Your chronologically aging self, whatever number of years you can put to that, almost certainly knows that outcomes are surprising. And that sometimes, in retrospect, what seemed like a bad outcome was a bullet dodged, or something invaluable learned or gained, or someone precious brought into the story, or a fantastic story to tell, or … or … or …

So here are some possible components of a reframe:

You don’t even need rewards to be happy.
You don’t need to label outcomes as good or bad.
You don’t need to be bothered by the ups and downs along the way.
You don’t need to assign meaning to whether things are going along to your liking or not or landing just as you thought you wanted.
Do not define anything as punishment, then you’ll get increasingly free of needing to evaluate whether you’re good or prove that you are.

Do focus on loving your life.
Aim toward what you want. (Look away more from what you don’t want.)
Have as much fun as possible along the way.
Gain from anything that does or doesn’t happen.
Carry on and watch for how life keeps supporting you in a million wonderful & often wonderfully unexpected ways.
Watch for how much well-being flows your way.
Watch for how much well-being you generate by living & loving your life and not seeing any of it as reward or punishment.

Love & blessings, Jaya

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​Want an even quicker read? Go through and just read the bold. That tells the whole story.


Pivoting is both a simple concept and a simple tool. It’s not even a process. It’s a quick mental adjustment you make and keep making to go from the unwanted to the wanted.

Use it while in motion or being still. Use it while working, walking, cooking--whenever you’re capable of having a thought and being aware of that thought. Use it while waking or dropping off to sleep. Anytime, just for a moment.

Yep, this is also from Abraham-Hicks.

Pivoting has 3 steps.
1) You notice something that’s not to your liking.
2) You consider what WANTED thing corresponds to this UNWANTED thing.
3) You shift your focus to the WANTED.

Examples:
1) You notice you’ve been getting sloppy with punctuality again.
2) You make a mental note that you prefer being a little early to be ready on time.
3) You feel great about that decision (instead of bad about the lapse) and you head out (or to the computer) early for the next appointment.

1) You notice you’re having an irritation response.
2) You pivot toward soothing what bothers you and toward accepting what is, as it is, here and now.
3) Right now, you breathe, relax the muscles that tensed up, tell yourself it’s really okay.

1) You notice you’ve been doing too much and things feel glutted.
2) You pivot toward doing less, finding pauses, making spaces.
3) You tell the story of increasing spaciousness and do every little thing you see to promote that—tidy up this corner of the cabinet, say no just to something between you & you (that shopping trip can actually wait, and today I stay home); say no to an invitation even if it has appeal—because it’s more appealing to do less right now.

Notice from the above examples that what brings the UNWANTED into focus, and thus the call to PIVOT, is simply that SOMETHING FEELS BAD.

When you become quickly responsive to the signals that something feels bad (these signals come from your own system—body, heart, head), then you pause with what you’re noticing and … PIVOT.

What’s so radical—or more to the point, HELPFUL--about this?

I recently heard this gem (during an Abraham Now program): “You can’t get around how you feel when you’re amplifying how you feel with sentences.”

Ever notice you put A LOT of language—even just words in thought, not necessarily spoken—to what you feel? Noticing you’re exhausted, you declare exhausted. You review what’s been exhausting in your life. You give lots of weight to what you can’t control that exhausts you (so now you’re a victim of and stuck in exhausting circumstances). You put much focus on how bad it feels in your body. In short, you tell the story of EXHAUSTED.

So when you have this PIVOT concept in view, noticing exhaustion, you pivot. You tell the story of rest and rejuvenation instead.

And then it’s not so hard to get around how you feel. Your (chosen) focus is now on rest and rejuvenation, you choose your inner and outer narratives accordingly, and you also make choices accordingly.
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​And that’s how you apply it as you go. So let’s go over those 3 ways to apply the pivot one more time:
1) You focus on whatever you’re pivoting toward (e.g., rest & rejuvenation).
2) You choose your inner and outer narratives accordingly.
3) You make ongoing choices to keep heading that way.

As always, it helps to BRING IT TO NOW. Just right now, I can let go of something and go to bed earlier. Now, I can slow down a bit and do an easier version of the task. Right now, I can pause for 15 minutes and meditate or lie down and rest.

You could make pivoting a way of life!

You could swiftly learn to shift …

• from forcing to allowing
• from defending to aligning with the truth of who you are
• from what scares you & makes you anxious to what you’re excited about
• from feeling annoyed with someone to getting okay with letting them be on their journey and do what they do
• from being bored to just being satisfied with what is and gently watching for what else is possible
• from … to …

Have you ever had some of the most satisfying change come from some simply concept you simply applied? I invite you to try that out with PIVOTING.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Start with believing you’re worthy of thriving. Your worthiness is not earned. You’re here, so you’re worthy to be here. Human beings can thrive, so as a human being, you’re worthy of thriving. You have this one brief life in this form, so what if you kept testing your worthiness to thrive, instead of collecting evidence you haven’t thrived, you’re not thriving, and you probably won’t thrive. Please interrupt that useless waste of your time and energy.

Let go completely of whether others are thriving or not. If part of your mission is to support other individuals or groups to thrive, you will do that, you can’t NOT do that, and you will do it best when you’re thriving.

Abraham-Hicks points out that you can’t get sick enough to help others be well, you can’t get poor enough to help others have more wealth. So how 'bout you thrive as much as you can and from there … the best of what you’ve got (which, BONUS, will keep evolving as you keep thriving) can bolster others to thrive.

Interrupt all comparisons to others. They’re neither here nor there—just a royal distraction that keeps you from walking yourself toward what you want to be, do, and have. All comparisons among human beings are apple-and-orange comparisons. Seriously, what does it matter what or how anyone else is or isn’t doing? What matters is what you’ve got, what wants to come through you, what you’re passionate about, where you trip yourself up, what you’d like to try next, what you can do right now to meet yourself kindly and walk yourself toward thriving.

Go ahead and make this all about you—because ultimately, you’re in charge of your own journey and your own thriving on that journey, and this has nothing to do with anyone else.

Catch any whiff of punitive mentality toward yourself and keep releasing it. If you’ve done something that feels off to you or that makes you disapprove of yourself or feel shame or go into self-castigation—pause with that. Be still with that. Breathe it. Let the part of you that still thinks it deserves to be punished come forth. Be with that one. Love them as they are. Love your own humanity. Love that you’re on a journey. Appreciate anything that makes you let go of idealized self-image, self-righteousness, or foolish thoughts that you should be beyond this.

I sat with someone recently who was being very hard on themself for something they’d done that violated their own ethic and shattered their sense of well-being and worthiness. I heard myself say, Well, unless you want to walk yourself now to some special little corner in hell that’s been rightfully reserved just for you, you could consider this too—and literally everything that unfolds in your life (even your missteps)--as your next opportunity to heal and evolve.

Your best and worst moments, and everything in between (especially if you’re not making identity of them) can all be part of the natural evolutionary thrust toward thriving. I believe that life wants to support you to thrive, constantly. Would you like to play with believing that? You do already? Cool, now what if you found the topic or realm of life that you keep excluding from that concept—because you tell yourself that here, in this special case, you really don’t deserve …?

Releasing identity will support you to thrive. Who are you anyway? What if you’re not the one who fucked up? Just like you’re not the one who’s right or who shouldn’t be talked to this way or the one who created that brilliant art or said those wise words or anything else. Practice being nobody more often.

(Hint: play with presence outside of thought. What is revealed to you right now by your five senses, and the grounded sense of being in a body, and the felt sense of your own breathing in this moment? Not much room in there to tell a lot of story and craft much image or make much identity. And not much room to keep yourself from thriving, either.)

I recently got thrown off by something that passed between me and another human beings. After a number of clarifying and clearing processes, it’s dissolving and releasing. It was one of those episodes that hit with a wallop, so every once in a while the ego-mind will grab it again and start to present a case for how mad I should be and what they violated and blah-blah-blah. It would go on ad nauseam, but I interrupt it. Lately I’ve been able to just look at it and say, This isn’t even real! And this has nothing to do with who I (really) am and who they (really) are. This doesn’t need my attention.

And giving it my attention does not promote my thriving. (To be clear, I gave it the attention of processes when that was needed, and will again as and if the need arises.) We think we’d thrive better if they didn’t do this or hadn’t done that, or if they did do XYZ. Nope, it’s all in our own hands—how we choose to make our interpretations, what we hold on to and release, what we choose to give our focus to. Want to give more focus to what makes you thrive, and to thriving itself?
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​Have more fun. Feel good more often. Laugh more. Focus on what’s fun, what’s easy, what feels good, what you’re proud of, what makes you laugh, what brings pleasure. Cultivate all of this. Make it a project. Oh wait—was the whole start of this paragraph in a recent mailing (on being your own best ally), exactly in those words? Um, yeah. Because that, my friend, is how we believe we’re thriving, want to thrive, practice thriving, get used to thriving, and call forth more thriving.

Love & blessings, Jaya