NO PENANCE, NO PUNISHMENT, NO PURGATORY

Your worthiness doesn’t fluctuate. That’s the main impression I’d love for this writing to make on you.

How deserving you are of happiness & well-being right now doesn’t change from one moment to the next.

Your worthiness is never contingent on what you have or haven’t done. Or how well you’ve done it. Or whether you’ve done enough.

The Universe is not evaluating & grading you at all times, so if you’re still living as if that’s what’s happening, if you’re still doing that to yourself, I invite you to play with another possibility.

I invite you to understand, fully embody, and live into your actual, inherent, unwavering worthiness.

Why you might think your worthiness fluctuates
You were raised by unhealed people who believed that worthiness varies based on all kinds of things. You grew up in a culture that still holds that as truth. You were subjected, often with the best of intentions, to constant evaluation, reward & punishment, and messages of what you should & shouldn’t do according to others (who didn’t even agree on all the particulars of right & wrong). It makes sense that you thus decided you had to earn your worthiness and that you were constantly at risk of losing it. You did whatever you needed to do in response to that—worked hard & harder, strove to be good, hid things, omitted information, lied outright, defended, rationalized, begged, charmed, fought, fawned, fled, froze. …

What (routinely) makes you feel undeserving
Whether you believe it a little or a lot, I’m inviting you to notice right now what makes you feel undeserving, what you think can strip you of your inherent deserving of all good things at all times—a worthiness that’s actually never in question and can neither be earned nor unearned.

You might think you no longer deserve to feel good, succeed, be loved, or experience well-being of any kind under some of the following conditions:

• You’re in a bad mood
• You snapped at someone or, worse, yelled (or, worse …)
• You lost it; you stopped behaving like everything is okay and you’ve got it handled
• You’re having judgy thoughts & you can’t get out of them
• You didn’t do the thing(s) you think you must do to be well (yoga, exercise, meditation, morning rituals, eating just right, whatever)
• You’re not dressed as you like to be dressed or you’re having a bad hair day
• Someone around you is in a bad mood or has disconnected from you so you walk around with the vague or acute feeling you’ve done something wrong or it’s your fault
• Someone you love is having a hard time and you think you should have somehow prevented this
• You’re all in a wrinkle about something that’s not your business and some part of you knows it’s not your business (and you make that a reason to feel bad about yourself and/or keep reiterating your position on the matter instead of making it a reason to come back to your business and reconnect to your inherent worthiness)
• You haven’t tamed some beasty thing you think you’re supposed to have all figured out and it’s crawling around in your mind
• You’re strapped financially and focused on what’s currently (and maybe historically) not pretty about money in your life
• In any or several realms of life, it looks to you like your life isn’t working and things definitely aren’t working out for you
• You acted in a way or did a thing that represents something you don’t like about yourself, and you wish you were or think you should be beyond it
• [fill in what else you see in your self-witnessing]

So what happens when you (inaccurately) think your worthiness has notched down?

What you do when you feel undeserving
It can look a lot of different ways to believe that here & now, you’ve lost your worthiness badge, you’re unworthy, you don’t deserve … Here are some typical ones:

• You stay sad, mad, or in any flavor of bad mood
• You move into each next segment of the day expecting things to feel bad or not go to your liking, thus having a whole bad day that you might carry into sleep and wake up with the next (& next & next) day
• You start mentally sabotaging what you say you want by reviewing why you can’t have it (and your reasons may be totally unrelated to your current self-perceived unworthiness, but they were launched by that & further reinforce it)
• You engage in more direct self-sabotage by taking or failing to take certain actions
• You start fights with others
• You push away connection with & comforts from people, animals, nature, music, water, good food, etc.
• You put yourself with people you don’t like, stay indoors, stay in bed, go ascetic or overindulgent
• You deprive yourself of fun, pleasure, creativity, whatever nourishes your soul
• You stay in situations & relationships that aren’t right for you in the name of working harder or somehow fully earning the right to leave
• [I invite you to add your favorite self-punishments or ways you stave off well-being or withhold it from yourself]

I don’t want you to live this way! Do you?

Purgatory pause or self-imposed limbo
In summary, you start believing in a punitive Universe again (Do you believe in a punitive Universe?), probably with yourself as the punisher-in-chief. You think you need to be in some sort of limbo for a while, as if you must undergo some purification before you deserve anything in life that rcould be heavenly (like ease, fun, money, fulfilling work; harmonious connections with other sentient beings; feeling healthy or at ease in your body, looking good, liking yourself; getting to work, play, love, and live with people you like and can be fully yourself with; and the list goes on).

Wait—is it true that your worthiness doesn’t go up and down?
I dunno, seems true to me. It’s a more empowering belief that I think brings out the best in us. And I can’t think of a graph where fluctuating worthiness actually gets charted except in our faulty unexamined belief systems where very old & inaccurate stuff prevails. More important & more relevant to you, I invite you to explore that for yourself. At the School for The Work of Byron Katie (which I attended seems-like-just-yesterday in 2006), Katie asked us, What if you could move without a trace from one moment to the next? She invited us to believe that we could. (And she has always invited folks to run their own experiments, saying, “Don’t just take my word for it.”)

You might ask yourself:

• Do I live in a punitive Universe? (I would say, only if you make it so.)
• What good comes of feeling unworthy so much of the time?
• What good comes of putting myself in some existential time-out instead of shifting quickly into what feels better?
• What is served (except reinforcing a false belief in unworthiness) by punishing myself instead of simply course-correcting & moving forward?

Note that moving forward could certainly include a well-placed apology, making amends, paying something back or forward. I’m not saying you need to go into denial about having moments when you don’t prefer how you just felt, behaved, chose, spoke, whatever. We will have such moments as long as we’re alive! I’m definitely saying that you might look at how long you hold yourself as wrong & undeserving and how much this results in your walking around feeling wrong & undeserving a good chunk of your life.

I’ve written about swift course-correction before (type it into the search bar on my website!). Given what you’ve observed about young humans:

• Are we supposed to get it all right from the start, or learn some things along the way, often through trial and error and a certain number of mistakes (and experiences of so-called failure)?
• Are we supposed to have it all figured out, or gather deeper understanding and better life skills as we go?
• Are we meant to be sweet [steady, polished, clear, patient, …] all the time? (Is that possible? Is that desirable?)
• Are we meant to know every right-thing-to-do and instantly decisive toward the right choice and easily follow through?

Isn’t all of this a life’s work? Is there a time limit on trial-and-error? Can’t we keep experimenting and keep growing and keep bumping into something that hits us as off and keep course-correcting toward what feels more aligned as we go? What if you trusted your inner guidance system and your own strong internal moral compass more than a belief you should never get it wrong, followed by punishment & purgatory and staking yourself deeper into the camp of unworthiness?

Another invitation to soothe yourself
I invite you to a grand experiment of soothing yourself when you feel bad. Not judging, not punishing, not analyzing, not trying to figure out where you went wrong, not seeking to justify your position, not allowing yourself to keep simmering in bad-mood sauce till you (somehow) earn getting to feel good again. When you feel bad, even if you’re sure you’ve done something wrong, disappointed yourself, fallen short of your idealized self, just feel better. 

Soothe yourself. Give yourself kind messages. Make choices about where to put your attention that would feel good to you now, not make you a good person (by your currently warped estimation of what that means when you’re in that bad space). Course-correct toward the wanted, starting with managing your feeling state and just going easy on yourself and others. Then take actions when you’re ready to take the ones that actually serve you.

You are inherently worthy!
If you’re alive, you are worthy of a wonderful life. You are worthy of a good day, any number of good segments throughout the day, a good NOW. You are worthy of love, health, a body you feel great in, work that deeply fulfills you, wonderful relationships with other sentient beings and rocks and things, time in your happy places, laughter, wealth, freedom & mobility. I could go on. I invite you to go on.

And move on quickly when you’re feeling bad about yourself. Refuse to live in a senseless illusion that’s robbing you of this moment and sometimes whole days, weeks, months, and years when you get stuck in false penitence.

Love & blessings, Jaya

As I was engaged in this writing, this daily message came in from Abraham-Hicks Publications:
Many believe that Source is outside of them and that you are separate from Source and being tested in some way. But only you can cause the feeling of separation from Source. That is what all negative emotion is.
  Source is never withholding from you. Source is always focused upon you, surrounding you with appreciation and unspeakable love.

You can sign up for daily inspiration & reminders from Abraham.
​
My favorite thing is to receive the ongoing live transmissions through Abraham Now programs, one to four times monthly.

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.​

​2 words to set you free: FIND IT
What I offer here will automatically support you to set yourself freer & freer if you play with it. It’s likely to help you do some (maybe all) of the following:

• Get out of right & wrong
• Release any lingering belief that you’re supposed to be perfect
• Stop even trying to get it right, and get on with living your best life (you’ll get plenty right, but … not the point)
• Quit wasting time & life force in self-castigation & shame eddies
• Find the way out of rabbit holes more quickly—before you hit existential NO-EXIT despair
• Drop superiority to others who (seen through your ugly glasses) aren’t managing things as well as you are
• Drop inferiority to others who (through same ugly glasses) are managing things better than you are
• Welcome yourself to the human race & know you can be happy there, and in good company

​
Context for the invitation to FIND IT
In 2006, I went to the School for The Work of Byron Katie to save my life. I was deeply immersed in suffering, and because I was a parent to two and step-parent to another, this meant that human beings cuter and more innocent than me were affected, sometimes intensely, by what I couldn’t shake myself free of. The stakes felt high. Also, I was pretty sick of myself.

Many things happened in the School’s psychic excavation that spanned 10 days. All of it centered around questioning our thoughts—any thought that felt bad. If some belief, even one we were convinced was right, good, and true caused any modicum of suffering (discomfort, anxiety, disempowerment, self-loathing, confusion, sense of being limited, etc, etc), we were invited to question it. I redefined what nice was, what no meant, what I owed others, what made me a good person, what I had to have in place to be okay, what I thought I couldn’t forgive, and on and on and on.

When someone (of the 250-ish international participants) stepped up to question something with Katie, they were bringing some superlative: worst fears, greatest pain, most debilitating shame … the stuff that keeps us most stuck. As soon as their bare-bones story was sufficiently stated to give us the them, Katie would turn to the room and say, FIND IT.

By which she meant, find this in your life, find it in you. Obviously, everyone present didn’t have a specific extreme story of the same nature, or even in that same realm of life. But the invitation (or injunction) was to find where that story was our own, to whatever degree, in any way, shape, or form. The invitation was NOT to declare:

• I don’t do such things
• I would never do that
• Their problem has nothing to do with me
• I’m above that
• Nope-nope-nope, not me

​

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

​(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.)

I meant to get this email 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