Note that BOLD TEXT is intentionally set up to help you scan & skim & scram.

Storytime, or Telling on Myself
I found myself unhappy with the choices I made one evening: I was too sedentary, resisted going out into nature when I still could have, then comforted myself by with a digital game that became the phone equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

When I came to for real (the inner tugs were happening all along, but no thanks), I was fascinated once again by how quickly the mind goes to making myself wrong, considering myself a loser, scolding myself for not doing better, accusing myself of being a fraud, and more of the stuff that matches that. Familiar?

None of this is loud or continuous in my current way of being, and typically may even have no words actually or consciously put to it. I do really value catching and practice catching the subtler stuff at earlier stages. And, as it happens for the typical humanoid, the subtle, quiet stuff gets more blaring and glaring as you keep ignoring the earlier stirrings of what feels off. Which I did, that evening, so yeah—glaring & blaring came along as my head started hurting and my eyes burning and actual sentences forming to attack my character.

Catching Yourself & Remembering or Reminding Yourself of a Few Things
I took in that I’d been feeling worse and worse and that I was in low-level self-loathing. I reminded myself of a few things that were within reach (and the more you practice this, the more you have within reach):

• If I’m seeing myself as bad or wrong, I’m not seeing myself through the eyes of Source.
• Feeling bad (according to Abraham-Hicks) means that I’m out of alignment with Source and that my Inner Being is holding the topic at hand in a different way than I’m now narrating it to myself—and it’s that disconnection from Source or Inner Being that makes me feel bad.
• There will always be contrast, and here I am in the midst of a contrasting experience, in that stuff I don’t like and don’t aspire to.
• This is not a punitive Universe unless I make it that way.
• Reconnecting now as best I can would represent my getting behind the idea I don’t deserve punishment. (Note that it doesn’t take much to believe you don’t deserve to sleep well, be happy, keep doing great work, be lovable, feel good in your body have a great life; if you think you don’t do this, I invite you to get more subtle and catch even a whiff of it.)

Refocusing
If I had refocused earlier, it would have been easier, taken less time, and allowed me a shift into an evening of acceptance and baseline contentment at the very least. (You’ll see an image of the Emotional Scale from Abraham-Hicks below, and contentment, at #7, is the last thing on the positive end of the scale before things head into what feels worse and worse. Sometimes they call that point satisfaction. I think of just accepting what is without judging it as being at that baseline as well.)

But no. I refocused at bedtime. I did go to bed ridiculously early, which was a very good idea. Especially since I hold a strong well-practiced credo of putting myself to bed kindly and releasing the day, whatever it did or didn’t hold, and declaring, Tomorrow, all things new, all things possible.

By refocusing, I mean reaching for the right process or soothing support here & now. Just reach for what might feel right. If you ever read what I write, you know I love me a good inquiry or focusing process. You can find the word process as a category tag on my blog to find the ones I’ve written up over time. There’s also stuff on my website under tools. A favorite process of mine is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping), and there’s now more than one playlist on my YouTube channel devoted to that. (And for now, I’m still offering free EFT for whoever shows up on a Saturday morning at 10 ET—see link on homepage of my website.)

Reach for the Easiest Process First
That night, I decided to listen to an Abraham audio in the dark while lying in bed. But first, I did a quick mental listing of what had gone right that day. Otherwise stated, I found easy existing matches for the idea that I did do some things right, or that the whole day wasn’t a bust. I generally recommend & practice doing such things in writing or at least speaking them aloud, but I DIDN’T WANNA. The mental review still helped a lot.

The fascinating thing was that I discovered or took in all over again that I’d actually had a great day. I’d felt good all day (till late afternoon); I’d gotten some things done I felt good about doing; I’d been a supportive and kind presence to my elderly parent I live with; I did that in ways that felt easy and genuine for me (not taxing, not sacrificial), including watching The Six Triple Eight together, which we’d both been wanting to see & were happy to watch; I’d had a sweet, fun conversation with my stepdaughter; and then some!

Side Note about Globalizing Bad Feelings
How quickly a bad feeling about one thing in life or one part of a day becomes the whole story! And it’s just not true—or it’s not an accurate assessment (a sure sign that it’s not time to assess). So make it a habit not to believe and take off running with any globalized sense that everything about you is wrong or bad—or everything about your life, your future, your relationship, your work, your finances, your anything. Please certainly do not accept it as a valid basis for beating yourself up (um, because nothing is that).

Reach for the Next Process that Could Help in Another Way, from Another Direction
Then I put on my headset and turned on the desired Abraham audio on my phone, with the intention of receiving good reminders and some soothing. Note that intention matters. I was not looking to find what I’d done wrong or how I could do better. This would have skewed what I heard into a warped process of figuring out what was wrong with me or what I’d done wrong or even how I got off-track.

Is the importance of that crystal clear? That kind of setup basically exacerbates the sense of being wrong and amplifies the feeling bad. Even more important, it doesn’t let in soothing in the fastest or most efficient way. (Kind of like piping water through tubing with kinks in it.)

Sometimes, looking for soothing is the only thing to do (and please don’t read or treat this as a last resort!). Abraham likes to say, Soothing is the solution. Or, Soothing is solving. Especially at the end of the day—and certainly any other time or area when or where you’re particularly vulnerable (too much happening at once, scary or super-hard things going on, experiencing physical or chemical imbalance, having a particular person or group of people in your field, being thrown off in some specific realm of life …).

​Keep Expanding into the Wanted Feeling State
A certain discipline is required to keep rejecting ugly thought forms that introduce themselves. Whether this means self-accusation or hating on someone else or making bleak predictions about the future (anything in the mental realm that feels bad!), just take these thoughts for what they are: concepts still trying to form as words and images to match the bad feelings that took hold. Basically, those feelings have a certain amount of momentum going, and they won’t just screech to a halt, even as you’ve consciously begun the pivot in the other direction.

Let’s say another defeating or self-critical thought creeps in. Give it a nod, or label it something simple--That’s just a thought. Or declare, That’s not completely true, or tell yourself, It’s really not time to evaluate. If you can just witness it and refocus, even better. How quickly can you notice mental activity or feel in your emotional body that you’ve gone off the soothing lane and onto the rumble strip—and simply head back to soothing?

Whenever you’re rejecting or moving away from something, see how clear you can be about what you’re embracing or moving toward. So that night as self-castigation tried to reassert itself, I kept releasing that and heading toward soothing by dropping in again with whatever the Abraham voice was saying in that moment. (And that, of course, was encouraging, not scolding me.)

SIDENOTE about emotional scale above.
I caught this screenshot of the emotional scale from Abraham-Hicks during an Abraham-Now Broadcast. These are amazing video programs you can sign up to receive live (which also gets you the replay to listen to again and again, one of which I was listening to in the story in this writing). They cost about $50 each. There’s a benefit I’m finding from hearing the most current transmission of Abraham wisdom, which is always fine-tuning and evolving, and from being part of the building dialogue as people from various parts of the planet bring questions and share experiences of applying the concepts from one broadcast to the next.


Noticing a Thing or Two for Future Reference
I find that most mental notes to do better next time don’t do much good. Practicing meeting yourself kindly wherever you are, over and over, sitch after sitch, day in and day out—that does all kinds of good. It sets up a new or ever-stronger tendency or habit pattern of walking yourself through anything well. So when I look ahead to a sort of doing it better next time, I like to focus it this way: What could actually help?

That night, I noticed that it helps when I remember that late (in this case not that late but later) in the day is a potentially vulnerable time for me, and it does me good to slow down at that time and check in if anything feels off.

I noticed that I hadn’t done any segment intending for that evening. I love segment intending, and had used it earlier in the day (back when things were going well!), but didn’t use it when hunger struck in the late afternoon … and Mom was ready for food too, and I’m the cook, and I told myself it was too late to go outside for a walk. (In fact, I could still have managed both simple food and simple outing.)

Segment intending sets up simple intentions for how you want to feel, or how you want to show up, in just the next one thing ahead. That could have supported my choices and their execution, as it usually does quite nicely. And, again, maybe using segment intending during or when facing the time I’m most likely to wobble (for me, late in the day) could be an excellent tactic to keep in view. (I like to literally post notes about things like that until they’re imprinted on my consciousness.)

Finally, Abraham said something in the audio reminding me to just feel better, and gently move up the emotional scale. I had lost track of that. I had been moving down that scale over the course of the evening! Look at the tipping point under #7, contentment, on the scale in the diagram above. I could have kept myself there if not headed upward, but I made a boring choice when I sat down to play a game and, from boredom, started feeling pessimistic while going more unconscious. Subtly and surely, then less subtly and super surely, down the scale I went. It didn’t look like much to the naked eye (no debauchery, no meanness, no money gambled or spent), but it felt bad, and my response was a numbing tactic (just onnnnnnnne more word game). I lost track of feeling better and simply CHOOSING into feeling better. Which is the simple and sure-fire way to move up the emotional scale instead of further down.

No Matter What’s Up: EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY
I slept well and woke up predisposed to reach for feeling better. In the past, going to bed in a bad state would have meant waking up in that state and expecting to have, then creating, a wretched day. This is why I remind myself at night, Tomorrow, all things new, all things possible.

I put on an audio first thing (which I typically do anyway as a great way to establish a desired set point quickly). I sat down to do a couple of processes to further establish myself in the focus I wanted for this new day. When I caught some color coming through the window, I stepped outside for one of the best sunrises I’ve seen in a while, with gold and peachy colors at the base and rising layers of violet and mauve, with a few blues peeking through. Bonus, a pair of robins were not only singing heartily nearby, but also doing some acrobatic flirting and frolicking. Spring in the air!

And that, my friends, is how to refocus so you create improvements from a better point of departure.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that trying to do better from the point of telling yourself all that you’ve done wrong and how you must really do better in fact does NOT move you along very quickly or very well? That it creates a miserable journey in conflict with the goal of getting you to a better place? I invite you to to keep finding, practicing, and coming back to simple ways to be your own best ally. Soothe yourself. Walk yourself toward the best version of yourself. But don’t expect yourself to be there all the time.

That last bit is literally a sentence Abraham said into my headset that night. And it was soothing: Of course I won’t be there all the time. There will always be contrast. And I can pay attention to how I feel and reach for feeling better whenever I notice I’m feeling bad. I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’re all in this together.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Hey, if you’ve ever read anything I send out, you know my intention is to inspire, soothe, support. I’m pointing you to what feels better, not worse.

That’s still true here, and I’m also seeking to meet you in any pain and distress you may already be feeling in the current American socio-political climate. If you’re not there now, you may want to come back to this when you are. Or engage with this now to get a strategy in place for next time you’re walloped by the hard stuff. Below, I offer three simple (one SUPER simple) strategies for BEING WITH what hurts about the state of the USA.

Maybe it comes into your field sometimes or often. Maybe you just don’t want to shut out the pain altogether. So this will give you ways to feel you can contain it when it’s active. You can experience soothing and even offer it out at the same time. There’s the possibility of not being wrecked by it (at least not in an ongoing way), or of feeling it without a sense that it’s unbearable.

Strategy #1: CONSCIOUS BREATHING AS SUPPORT IN THE MOMENT

How immigrants are treated at this time is one of the worst current issues for me. The photo above comes from the short live film A Lien, which clocks under 15 minutes and was one of the five nominees at this year’s Academy Award. The directors (brothers David and Sam Cutler-Kreutz) use a lot of close-up, even claustrophobic, cinematography to bring us right up against the pressing fear felt by immigrants and their families. In this story, we meet a family made up of a white American woman, a brown man originally from a Spanish-speaking country, and their little daughter. We watch the man getting arrested during their scheduled green-card interview, not because he’s done something wrong, but because he’s easy prey. Yes, these people are following the right legal protocols and he’s detained during that process like a guilty fugitive from the law. It’s an actual current practice that the filmmakers depicted with great skill in a few minutes.

Predictably enough, watching this felt devastating to me. Right? No surprise. I already find the whole issue, the whole reality, to be devastating. Remember, I’m offering strategies here for meeting the pain we’re already in, and being able to do that in the moment that pain strikes anew.

The breathing strategy I used is the super-easy one. I simply breathed through the film (the whole time) very, very consciously. I felt the pressure of the fear and was immersed in the wretchedness of what real human beings are subjected to for no good reason, so I breathed into that. I breathed around that. I breathed as fully and gently as I could. I made space for the pain inside my own body using the kind spaciousness of the breath.

Notice that this tactic doesn’t take you out of the reality or even out of the pain. It makes it bearable. It makes it containable. It gives you a way not to tense up against the pain (resistance). Instead, you’re acknowledging what hurts (here it is, this is reality right now), and you’re bringing in the breath to help you contain it.

Never force the breath when you do this. I once heard Marion Gilbert, a somatic Enneagram teacher, talk about how the breath will never force its way in anywhere, so we don’t need to force it into places that aren’t already open. We can gently direct breath that way and it will lap kindly up against any walls or shields we have up in resistance and self-protection. It will gently finds its way in through the cracks, forcing nothing. I don’t even know anymore what’s her language and what’s mine when I talk about this. It’s been with me and in my guided meditations since I heard her discuss this, because it struck me at once as truth and consistently matches what happens in my experience.

I used this tactic all through the film, on my drive home, and later when it grabbed me again, including in the wee hours. Very helpful.

Bonus breathing support
Find my playlist of soothing 3-centers meditations on YouTube.

Strategy #2: THE BUDDHIST MEDITATION PRACTICE OF TONGLEN TO SEND OUT COMPASSION AND EASE SUFFERING
If you click on the photo above, you will get a short video of Pema Chodron describing the practice of Tonglen. In a nutshell, you’re breathing in the pain of the world (or of one population or one sentient being), feeling its claustrophobic density, then breathing out a sense of spaciousness and relief. She lays it out clearly in four simple steps.

The Buddhist approach is typically very heady. And there’s a ton of HEART in Tonglen. It’s really very beautiful. When you can’t do something here and now in the physical world, you can use a meditative approach to offer goodness into the world and intend the release and removal of suffering.

A couple of tweaks
I don’t think Pema uses the word RELIEF. I invite you to feel the out-breath as relief (or even the intention of relief) for you and for those you’re focused on. She talks about exuding that from every pore of your body, and I’d like to invite you to then send it way out to the ethers, to space, so that you tap into infinite spaciousness and possibility. The Universe has room to contain this. The Universe (and time, evolution) can dissolve and dissipate the whole thing.

She also suggests using a word during that relief phase, during the out-breath that invites the release of suffering. Certainly, do use a word if that works for you. I prefer focusing the feeling and leaving language out of it. I like to use images that call me to spaciousness and relief, including a simple image of light-filled empty space radiating out, out, out, though and beyond that exhalation.

A structural support you might use
If you like Pema’s idea of using a gong at the beginning of the meditation as a way to access some semblance of clear mind, do you already know about Insight Timer? You can set up timed meditations using various sounds of bells, chimes, and gongs. So you might take Pema’s idea of 4 phases of tonglen and consider how long you’d like to spend on each one. Open with a gong and choose some other sounds to ring at specific intervals, calling you to each next phase. It’s not that hard to figure out and it will hold the structure for you while you simply move through the soothing and blessing experience of tonglen.

Here’s a shorter version of Pema describing tonglen. Under 5 minutes!

Strategy #3: REACHING FOR BETTER-FEELING THOUGHTS
Wait, I’m sorry. Did you think I wasn’t going to mention Abraham-Hicks this time? I must, because they teach a very simple process of stringing thoughts together, preferably out loud, reaching for one statement after another to soothe and soften anything that feels bad. Whatever you’re telling yourself that feels awful, however true or real it may be, you can counter with better-feeling thoughts. And later, when you want to give some conscious attention to what hurts, you can come back to it from a solid place.

Side note on staying with thoughts that hurt
Don’t stay in the pain of the world full time. I would even invite you to take whole days and other chunks of time off. No one is equipped for full-time focus on what feels terribly wrong. No one can function well steeping in the worst of it. No one can bring love and beauty and relief into the world from a steady focus on hate, pain, horrors. Please take that seriously.

Thoughts on how to reach for better-feeling thoughts
Better-feeling thoughts often involve what Abraham calls zooming out, or going general. Take yourself past the specificity of what’s problematic and painful. Take eagle view, or even satellite view. Look across the eons from geologic time if you need to.

A better-feeling thought is anything you can tell yourself that’s kinder, gentler, truer. Reach for what stirs hope. Doing this calls in or activates your intentions or greater values for yourself and others, for the entire world. In other words, it bring focus to the wanted, not the unwanted. Reaching for better-feeling thoughts shifts your focus to what feels more relaxed and in flow, or to downstream thoughts (not the upstream thoughts that push against the current).

Please do practice it for yourself and your smaller world, then you’ll have better access to this tactic for the big-ticket items. Honestly, this is probably hardest to do for things in the greater reality, the political realm, the global stuff. (Perhaps because you have less agency there.) And still, reaching for better-feeling thoughts can support you to walk yourself through harsh realities. For now, you may not be able to fix or change something. You can shift your focus and cultivate ways of thinking and talking to yourself that allow you to process the harshness, and perhaps to be part of the change.

An example of stringing together better-feeling thoughts
The day I watched the film, I started reaching for better-feeling thoughts as I got close to home and lingered in the car to find a few more before heading inside. The best I was able to do involved finding some statements of willingness and acceptance, and it actually did help. For me, it was a no-bullshit way to feel better.

I took off from hearing myself think, I don’t want to live in a world where this is happening. Right after that, I heard Barbara Kingsolver say (a character of hers says it to another in Animal Dreams), You do live in that world. So from there, I found my willingness to be in this world, as it is and as I am.

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

You can go on and on and on with this. Say whatever comes to you out loud and carrying on until you feel even a little different.

Reach AND tap to take it further
If you want to try this tactic while you tap (using the technique of EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique), that creates a sort of reaching-for-better-feeling-thoughts-ON-STEROIDS. I have a whole EFT playlist on YouTube geared to support political pain & anxiety. Check it out if drawn.

Reminder of an ongoing resource
Or come to a Monday-night drop-in group-coaching session (info below and on the home page of my website). People sometimes bring the topic of political pain, and we meet it together. Anything is allowed in the space, including the personal that may feel small by comparison. Anything anyone brings is the stuff of human reality, and I make sure we approach it in a way likely to benefit all present.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Photo of young person with dark skin, locs, and torn jeans dancing in the street pointing at the viewer. From Blake Cheek on Unsplash.

MAKE YOUR INTENTIONS ABOUT YOU AND, PRECISELY, HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL.
It doesn’t really work to intend that things will happen a certain way, or that you’ll get a certain outcome. (Universe’s business.) It’s pointless to intend how others will show up, because you have no agency there. (Their business.)

Just make intentions about how you want to feel. You can’t even control what you’ll do or how you’ll do it. So focus on calling in feeling states.

Side note: when you’re minding your own alignment, you may find—may have already found!—that you call forth more of the good stuff that others have to bring. But just let that happen. Your work (your business) is to tend to your own clear focus and the feeling state that focus brings. You can leave the rest to life, to others, to Source, to Law of Attraction (to whatever you want to call it).

EXAMPLES OF INTENTIONS FOR A SEGMENT
Let’s say you’re about to write something up for work that you’ve been thinking about. So your list of intentions could look like this:

• I feel relaxed
• I’m in the flow
• I’m enjoying my love of this topic
• I feel competent
• I feel good about how this builds on what I did before
• Sitting here writing in my own bubble, I already feel aligned with the people this will be going to
• I full fully here, happy to be here
• The writing is unforced—like I’m taking dictation
• I have that sense of nailing it, I know when that’s happening
• I sense when it’s not quite right and I love dropping in with it gently to see what wants to give, what else wants to come
• I’m detached from outcome or how long it takes, just content with dropping in for what might happen here

That’s it, folks. Then go on through the door into your next segment, and what’s there to meet you will be colored by all that you just set up, all that you’re consciously bringing with you. And as you string each segment of the day onto the whole, you end up with a thing of beauty and a sense of satisfaction.

You can find process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here.
Process #3, on the Abraham-Hicks concept of zoom in, zoom out, is the next post on this blog.
Reminder that no process you know about does any good unless you use it. I dare you to use one or more of these daily. (But really I want you to follow your curiosity about what’s possible to keep you aligned and feeling good as much as possible for your total well-being and fulfillment.)


Love & blessings, Jaya
​

(Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in these writings to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.)

Here, you’ll find the first of 5 FOCUSING & ALIGNMENT PROCESSES I want to offer you precisely because

1. they’re easy
2. they can be done quickly
3. they’re super effective for getting you feeling how you want to feel about yourself, your day, a relationship, a particular task (whatever!)

All of these processes come from Abraham-Hicks, where I’m getting most of my dynamic learning & input for feeling great about my evolving life these days!

These tools are especially wonderful to use first thing in the morning, so you establish for yourself how you want to feel. Don’t let others, your inbox, the news, the commute—DON’T LET ANYTHING ESTABLISH YOUR FEELING STATE FOR YOU. Don’t let something external tell you what to focus on. Don’t even let your habitual thoughts or feelings co-opt what’s possible for this brand-new day.

EASY EXISTING MATCHES
(You might write EEM at the top of your page)
This process has 3 easy steps, and the first 2 could take 30 seconds. Step #3 takes as long as you want to give it. Really drop in with it, whether you do that for 1 minute, 5, or until you have your own sense of completion. Most important, notice, when you’re ready to stop, that you feel different—you’ve shifted your feeling state. You’ve established yourself in feeling and believing you can feel HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL.

Step 1. Simply notice how you feel.
Let’s say you’re not so sure you feel fantastic today, or some dissatisfaction or hard feelings have already started to form. Perhaps they even grabbed you right when you woke up. You can feel the force of how they’re starting to call in other upsets & complaints. You can feel it in your body. Your mind has taken off without your go-ahead, and you can already feel the MOMENTUM of a line of thinking that’s self-defeating or just makes you feel bad. You know you could end up evaluating your whole life, right? And you’ll find it faulty or meh. (Funny how that works.)

Step 2. Identify and write down how you want to feel. This could be about a particular topic or an upcoming event today; or, in general, just how you’d like to feel right now and on this day.

Let’s say you establish that you want to feel like you love your life. You want to feel great.

Step 3. List Easy Existing Matches
All you’re doing here is writing down things already fully present in your life that match the feeling you’re after. This allows you to call it up, know it’s already yours, remember it’s alive for you. This isn’t something you need to strain or strive for. It’s not out of reach or unknown. It’s already yours!

Just list what’s right in reach that already fills the bill: easy existing matches.

On a very recent gray & frigid morning, I created an EEM list for feeling great. It included things like this:

• The flash sessions I did recently were so fun & fulfilling
• I’m so happy with my simple daily qigong practice that makes my body feel good and makes me feel good about tending it
• I keep loving that I stand up daily from a low squat without using my hands
• I’ve been eating good food and my digestion is amazing
• I’m warm & cozy inside with the gas fire in the chimney all lit up like the real thing
• I’m so excited about my qigong mentorship coming up with Mimi K-D
• I get to go back to the wildlife center next week and see Charlie, my favorite crow (this made me flash to our last meeting, when I handed him a silvery spoon and he took it from me and drifted over to his water bowl to wash it off)
• I love that I’ve been in low-key winter mode, more dreamy & less active, and I appreciate even more that, if even a whiff of should-be-doing-more comes in, I’m releasing it and finding that I feel aligned with this moment, this season
• The potential for getting a bunch of 3C meditations on my YouTube channel just makes me happy
• I feel great about feeling great that I live in KC KS with my mother, and every day there’s evidence I’m improving her life
• I have so many tools and so many ways to reach for feeling great when I don’t, and I’m using one right now
• …

Note that I did NOT feel great when I began, and I did when I stopped. I also didn’t feel horrible when I began (though I would have used this process just the same if I had). I like to catch things early, before they build momentum. I love to sit down first thing in the day and do some processes to head right away toward how I want to feel.

Bee tee dubs, one of my morning processes is free games on the New York Tiimes app. Which Abraham has never suggested, but they constantly remind us to judge nothing. Do what works. Follow what delights you. Mind your feeling state, because that’s minding your alignment. When you feel aligned, inspired thought comes in, right action grabs you, the thing to look up or reach for or attend to comes clearly into view. Try it, you’ll like it.

And, hey, you know this already. You’re doing it already on some level. So try it more. Early and often.

Abraham taught me: Care about how you feel. And when you feel bad, reach for what will make you feel better.

Process #2, on Segment Intending from Abraham Hicks, is the next blog post!

Love & blessings, Jaya

​For the quick version, scan the 11 points and drop in with the one or ones that calls to you. This stuff has the potential to make your life feel way better.)

As I move along in my journey, I become an ever greater fan of whatever gets you (and me!) down the road most effortlessly. I’m all about rewriting the old scripts about how hard you have to work to get to where you want to go, how nothing worth having doesn’t entail blood, sweat, and tears to get there, blah-blah-blabetty-hard-work-blah.

So here, I offer you 11 CRAZY-EASY WAYS to make a quick shift right here & now as you go along your way. Super-simple things to keep you moving with the greatest ease (and kindness!). Tiny ways to adjust or course-correct that cost you little—beyond keeping them in view and simply reaching for them as a practice.

If this idea of microshifts is hard to keep in view (which will only mean you need practice to recalibrate to a more you-friendly way of being), why not print out the 11 tactics that follow?

1. Simply notice that what you’re doing (thinking, speaking) right now doesn’t feel good! Take note. LET IN that information instead of plowing through it. Breathe a moment as you notice. This feels bad. This is worth my noticing. (Note that you were taught to plow through, not value feeling bad as part of what’s meant to guide you toward what feels better.)
2. Interrupt what feels bad. (This can mean, stop talking, put it down, take a break, leave …) Abraham-Hicks says that you have to VALUE feeling good—value it enough to keep interrupting feeling bad. That just makes simple, solid sense to me. Does it to you? How much do you value feeling good? How much do you expect to feel good? How much do you intend to feel good? How often do you interrupt what feels bad? I invite you to increase that. (It would make a valid & worthwhile experiment!)
3. Reach for what feels better: something to ease, nourish, or hydrate the body; new thoughts or some activity that would soothe or elevate emotion; better-feeling thoughts.
4. Notice when you’re talking about what you DON’T want. Switch to talking about what you DO want. (That’s so simple—and maybe the most important & powerful thing on this list in terms of creating the life you want.)
5. Notice & interrupt your fixation on what isn’t to your liking. Even if you’re really really right about how things should be. Shift your focus to (write down in list form, list to yourself out loud or mentally, say to other sentient beings around you) what’s going right. What’s good or good enough. What’s working, what’s here to support you & get you through the moment. That shift in fixation (as an ongoing practice, and just RIGHT NOW) supports living in appreciation and fosters a greater sense of well-being.
6. Laugh more. Be amused by life and the characters in it. Shift annoyance at someone to enjoying how well they play this caricature of themselves. Say funny things. Find people to play with you in fun repartee. If you need to, watch or listen to things that make you laugh. Ask a child to tell you a joke (their mirth could make you laugh even if the joke’s not that funny!) Find the humorous spin on what’s happening now. (Who is it you want to have around when things get hard and absurd? Those complaining & pointing out all that’s wrong? Or those making light of it and finding fun in the delay, the rerouting, the absurdly piss-poor customer service?)
7. Let go of what you’re insisting on if insisting feels bad. This is where you may get sucked into the illusion that you’ll feel better if … someone else acknowledges something, gets it, offers validation, apologizes, tells you you’re right—all the things you may well deserve and just may not get. So … let go, just for now. It’s ultimately an illusion that you must have these things to feel good. That puts you at someone else’s mercy, or at the mercy of events & circumstances beyond your control. You control how you feel, so let go of the thing you want to hold on to & insist upon that’s making you feel bad. (THAT’S what’s making you feel bad, not the outer stuff people & life are & aren’t doing.) For now, just let it be okay to let go. If some greater thing is needed later for a relationship or system to function better, you can have the conversations or take the actions toward change—later. Right now, just let go. Trust it’s okay. For now, it’s really okay, it’s really better, to let go.
8. Notice harsh or unkind self-talk—including subtle, mental, even pre-verbal instances of that--and speak again. Immediately. If you ask yourself, for example, what the fuck is wrong with you, pause. Let that feel jarring, not normal. Maybe say, Whoa, what’s this? Then speak again: There’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart. You’re fine. You’re doing great enough. What is it that this moment is asking for? You don’t need to evaluate what’s wrong with you. You just need to head toward what feels good [better, kind, aligned, ethical, loving, wise]. Always give yourself WAY MORE positive messages to counter the negative. Overwhelm the habitual old messages with a torrent of kinder, truer, more positive, soothing, empowering messages.
9. When something tugs at you, respond at once—even to just take a look if you don’t feel ready to act. What’s asking for your attention? What is your guidance system inviting you to move away from, step into, sit down with? What’s feeling bad now that felt good before (the show viewing, the game, even the cleaning or ordering or working)? Respond to those tugs because they’ll get you where you need to go. They’ll support you to notice & shift faster when things feel bad.
10. Right now, reach for your point of least resistance, especially when you’re stuck, stubbornly not budging, feeling contracted, calling yourself lazy, pushing against something (etc, etc). Just find an easy point of entry to just do one thing, to just begin it or move it forward a bit, the one next bit. What’s the easiest thing you can do toward the dreaded task? You can show up better if you shift in the moment out of contemplating (and resisting) the whole task and into considering just the one easiest next thing. Place your foot in the most reachable spot that points roughly in the right direction.
11. Feeling discouraged or bad about yourself or how you’re doing? Go back and look at how far you’ve come. Catalogue your accomplishments and refuse to dilute them by comparing them to those of others or by adding limiting qualifiers (e.g., For such a late bloomer, I did finally do this). Celebrate your small & any-sized triumphs more along the way. Gauge the evolution. You’re growing & evolving, so it’s unfair to yourself and to your ongoing growth trajectory to focus on what you haven’t done or aren’t seemingly nailing right this moment.

​Bring these things to the day-to-day—these and whatever comes to you in the now-moment you need something. What could help you respond in the moment with some small shift to make things feel better & easier? What you want is within reach!
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With this mentality of easy microadjustments in place, you can play with & master shifting quickly in any number of ways toward what feels & works better. What if you committed to making this journey you’re on feel better much more often (right now, and now, and now again)? Whatever is or isn’t happening, whatever you can or can’t do in the ideal here & now, you can keep yourself moving along in kinder, more relaxed, easier ways.

Love & blessings, Jaya