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A Foolproof Way to Freedom  Image of a distressed person holding their head as someone walking behind waves a hand as if seeking to reason with them. From Getty Images on Unsplash. Dear Modern Reader, I recognize this bit of writing is not brief. It is important, though. If you're drawn to check it out, you might use the headings and bold print to support skimming and dropping in where you like. Or, um, you could just read it. I keep noticing in conversations with clients how much suffering we human beings generate by wanting something from someone who isn’t producing it. Who may not have access to that wanted thing—at least not now. Not given whatever they’re believing & focused on now; not given whatever they have & haven’t faced or healed; not given any number of other factors! Self-Generated Suffering You (and only you) Can Undo Can you see how you create this unnecessary suffering for yourself and put it on them? What if you flipped the switch: instead of declaring what someone should do, what you want or need them to provide or offer, or how they don’t show up for you in the way you want them to, acknowledge instead that this is simply something you want and you currently want it from them. None of that makes it something they must or should do; it’s not something anyone owes you. They get to feel in and decide what they’re up for & willing to do—not you. They even get to be oblivious of this thing entirely as they focus elsewhere, and it’s not yours to manage their enlightenment or order their priorities. What’s most misplaced here is your idea of what causes your suffering. In short, not what someone else is or isn’t doing! Your suffering comes from your focus & insistence on getting what isn’t forthcoming, and especially on getting it in some particular way from some particular source. (A client tells me they say it this way in the 12-step world: Stop trying to get milk from the Hardware store.) Taking Total Responsibility It’s pretty radical to believe that anything you want is your responsibility, and yours only. When you place that responsibility on others, you will almost certainly, at some point & to some degree, feel helpless, frustrated, angry, or victimized—or all of that and then some. You will be at the mercy of whether they ever get it or not, and they may not! You’re preventing yourself (as opposed to, they’re preventing you) from getting what you really want because you’re the one waiting for someone you can’t control to come to and provide this thing. Speaking of control, have you noticed how controlling you can get as you insist & insist, justify & explain, have the temper tantrums or crying jags? Do you notice the sense of scarcity you’re in? This idea that you should get something from someone not providing it can only feel like a gaping hole in your existence, and perhaps in your heart. The Scarcity Is an Illusion This vast Universe is not, in fact, a place of scarcity (unless you focus on lack & fill your field of vision with that). ANYTHING you want can come to you through any number of different channels. There are so many available forms for all you wish for, want to get to, aspire to create. Plenty of these are well within reach, and others not that far away as you open your mind, eyes, and heart and … head that way. But in This Case They ARE the Only One to Provide It Here’s where someone may argue something like: But we’re in a monogamous relationship and they don’t ever want to have sex. Um, then maybe you need to change the agreements or redefine the relationship—not bully the other to do what you want & insist they owe you that. What you want is valid, and whatever they’ve got going is valid too. If you make peace with what is—the current state of affairs is as it is--then you can consider, Now what? Where might I or we go from here? (See button below for more on acceptance as the best foundation for change if it calls to you.)  Image of cat & dog nose-to-nose with seemingly different agendas, from jack1007 on Unsplash.
A Waste of Your Life Force Next, I invite you to consider how easy it is to use up a whole lot of time & energy justifying & arguing for why you should get some specific thing from some specific person. (Sooooo easy. People do it all the time, and sometimes keep doing it year after year as they get increasingly bitter and feel increasingly defeated & unmet by life. And as their well-meaning loved ones join them to reinforce that they have every right to …) Here are some general (and pretty universal) examples of how you might construct it. Please fully take in that these are provided NOT for you to judge yourself by, but for you to gain clarity that opens you to what else is possible—what would feel better. You may argue any of the following:
How That Focus on What’s Missing Dissolves the Valuing of What’s Here The last one I wrote highlights how much FOCUS you can give to what you’re not getting from someone--at the expense of noticing all that you do get. For the record—and if you drop in, you may feel in your very body how much this makes sense--it gets a lot easier to focus on what you get from someone when you don’t EXPECT to get anything from them—never mind the particular things that are decidedly NOT forthcoming. It really helps for you not be mad, sad, annoyed, resentful, outraged, or […] about what they’re not providing. (And you feel how you feel, so that in itself isn’t the problem. It’s a question of noticing & checking out the thinking behind the feelings that keeps you holding on to those feelings—which could be transmuted with a bit of clarity.) Consider where this person produces & provides so many things that benefit you, that feel good to you, that you savor, that mean something lovely to you (adoration, respect, fascination, fun, connection, stimulation, kindness, caring). It may also be worth noting that they offer such things sometimes without even trying, and sometimes through conscious choice because they’re paying attention and do sometimes choose into what you’ve told them about yourself. An example of the not-even-trying bit: they just happen to be someone who’s funny and whose sense of humor meshes well with yours. They make you laugh a lot, just by perceiving things and speaking about them as they do. No effort is required—it just happens because they are who they are and you like who they are! An example of the conscious-choice bit: They’ve come to understand how much acts of service, for you, mean love. Even though it’s not their primary or most comfortable love language, they look for things they might do that they know you like or that you’ve mentioned make you feel looked after, provided for, supported, comfortable, good about your environment [whatever it may be]. Examples in the professional realm: Let’s be real—we expect a lot from our supervisors, employees, co-workers, team members, HR workers (etc, etc). Someone might naturally be orderly & prompt & prepared, and you love that—it contributes to your thriving at work. Or someone might consciously learn to review those documents more carefully before turning them over to you because they’ve taken in how much you prefer that, and the harmony between you & in the work flow is better maintained when they do that. And When They Don’t Accommodate Your Wanting & Preferences? What if they don’t have or learn the traits you want in those you love, live with, and work with? What if they’re not fulfilling their job descriptions or the terms of the relationship as you understand them? That will always be part of the story. Can you accept that? No one in any realm of life will ever manage to provide every single thing you want. (If they do, RUN THE OTHER WAY. They aren’t living their own life, or they’re codependent AF, or they’re too self-contorting & too open to manipulation to participate as a full co-creator in genuine relationship.) Whatever anyone’s role or job description, however well or thoroughly they do or don’t do what you think they should--it’s not their job and not humanly possible for them to be all you want them to be and provide all you want from them (however sensible your desire). They will do things you don’t prefer. Things that make you uncomfortable. Things you’ve told them (or asked them politely) to do differently. Things that you claim drive you insane. Your Sanity Is Fully Yours to Manage & Maintain Um, your sanity or lack thereof is up to you. Entirely. Yours to notice and yours to manage and, ideally, yours to make some very empowered choices around. Rewire it so that nothing drives you crazy. Then, when you feel or hear yourself think or say that something or someone is driving you nuts or bananas or off the deep end, you can simply treat it as an invitation to look again, to clear it up between you & you--instead of continuing to believe they need to change for your comfort & sanity. I used to do a holiday program called If they drive you crazy, take the wheel. In other words, don’t put it on them that you have stuff, that you have preferences, that you like the way you’re wired better, that you value your ethics more than theirs. Don’t even put it on them that you’re right, that things would function better if only they (and maybe everyone on the planet) would … (Give yourself this: You could be right. And that doesn’t change anything I’ve written here.) Innocuous Example of How We Do This (all the time & think nothing of it—we just think we’re right) I recently laughed at myself because I caught myself not in road rage but in road condescension! I heard myself say aloud to someone, in a calm, even (I’m so sensible, you’re such a jerk) kind of voice: “Honey, you just pulled in front of me going more slowly than I’m going and that doesn’t work.” I wasn’t screaming or pounding the steering wheels or whipping out a gun. I was still being superior and annoyed and annoyingly patronizing. No one owes you making all the same driving choices that you make. Fill in anything in that sentence where I have driving choices, and it’s still true—even if you think it’s for their own good & well-being or the good of all concerned; even if you fear their choices will hasten their death and you really really want them to live; even if you think you can’t keep living or working with them if they keep up what you don’t like or keep not doing what you do like. Don’t Want Anything from Anyone Just want what you want. You get to. You don’t need justification to want anything you want. You can even enjoy your wanting and how it move you along your beautiful, fascinating, evolving path. Want what you want and find where it is. Open up & let it come to you in a million different ways & forms, from obvious or unexpected sources. As Abraham-Hicks loves to say, Look for it where it is, not where it isn’t. Then you can let every character in your life off the hook and stop organizing your communications around getting them to do what you want them to do. It’s certainly fine to ask for what you want (do!). Let others know your preferences. And then, release them to be themselves, to have their tendencies & preferences, to look through their chosen & unconscious lenses, to be on their journey as it is & as it unfolds (however much it intersects with yours), and so on. Take responsibility for your own happiness, your well-being, your sanity. Take responsibility for getting all fo your needs met & wants fulfilled. Then you’re free to want nothing from anyone. Then you’re free to ask for & get what you want in a million ways. Then you’re free. Love & blessings, Jaya 3 related posts: 1. Story in which I asked myself, What if I wanted nothing from them? 2. How fully accepting where you are now best supports you to change it 3. Easy Existing Matches is the best tool from Abraham-Hicks for focusing consciously on what you do like about someone, what you do get from them
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A Trick for Welcoming Yourself to the Human Race  Image of colorful clouds at sunrise or sunset reflected in water with silhouette of a seated human being looking on. From Niilo Isotalo on Unsplash. 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:
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:
 Image of person seated sideways on bench looking out contemplatively over ocean view with cloudy sky. From Mohamed hamdi on Unsplash. Find it meant, locate in yourself something like:
It didn’t matter if you had a thimbleful or a boatload of their oceanic issue. It didn’t matter if you had it in a house or with a mouse, in a box or with a fox. Katie pointed out that if we could find in ourselves no more than a drop of it (whatever the it of the moment), that drop was where our suffering was; that drop was where our work was. This also meant that the other person’s ocean had nothing to do with us. Nothing for us to judge, nothing for us to measure ourselves by for better or worse. And, BONUS, it meant that we could both look upon them with compassion, and see ourselves in the same kind light. Never did another participant bring in a problem or negative tendency that I couldn’t find in myself. Not once. Even when they offered something that no part of me wanted to find in myself, when I looked with some modicum of willingness & curiosity, I found it. I couldn’t have predicted the profound & enduring impact this would have on me. I didn’t realize the ease it would bring in over time, the clarity of self-awareness, and especially the RELAXING OF SELF-JUDGMENT (which inevitably goes hand-in-hand with a less judgy gaze upon others). FIND IT: A great way to shift judgments of others After the School, I kept looking for—and finding—anything in myself that I caught myself (critically) finding in others. Not always instantly, but it never took that long, either. Judging feels bad, and Katie’s inquiry process had calibrated me to QUESTION MY PERCEPTIONS anytime I felt bad. Before that, I just carried on (cheerfully or miserably, or in some weird combo of both) poring over thoughts that made me hate my life, myself, or humankind. I re-trained myself to catch my own judgments of others as mental intrusions (not normal stuff to think about)—which I often noticed precisely because they felt bad. I learned to redirect my attention from the judgee back to me by directing myself as Katie had: FIND IT. I would look to find in myself whatever I saw that I thought was wrong with them. I still always could. I still always can. Yes, I can be that rude, yes I can be that unfocused, yes, I can yell at my children, yes, I can forget that my agenda isn’t the only one, yes, I can give a cringy performance, yes, I can butt in where it’s not wanted, yes, I can stay quiet when someone voiceless could use a mouthpiece, yes, I can stir up a pointless war … Hey, if someone BOTHERS you, feel free to move away from them. That’s a very good idea. But if you persist in judging them, and try to control them, even with useless mental reviews of what they’ve obviously got wrong, you’ll just create suffering for yourself & others. Katie taught me that I can’t stop judging altogether. The mind judges. But I can
Sometimes, Abraham-Hicks taught me, course-correcting just means moving my attention to what makes me feel better. Locate what I value about someone I’m judging by cataloging Easy Existing Matches to focus on what I genuinely appreciate, enjoy, or value about them. Or ZOOM OUT and remember it all comes out in the wash and people shift and change over time, but maybe not today, and maybe not right away in the exact way I’d like. (Turns out I don’t manage anyone else’s growth process and it’s not my business!) It’s alway weirdly effective to get off the tricky topic completely and focus on what doesn’t churn up resistance, doesn’t make me feel superior or inferior, doesn’t involve evaluating others or myself--maybe get on a topic that just feels nice, fun, easy, satisfying, calming. That’s radical, and it makes for a better internal & external reality. Love & blessings, Jaya Or Rather, Feeling and THEN Doing  Image of back of human being facing gentle ocean with arms open wide. From Imdadul Hussain on Unsplash. WHY I’M STILL TALKING ABOUT HOW TO FEEL INSTEAD OF WHAT TO DO First, you’ll find good preludes to this new idea in these 3 topics I’ve already covered:
DO NOT BE DISMAYED: I do know my focus hasn’t been on what we can do and even must do—appropriate & necessary action steps needed to create the change we want, to get to where we’d like to be. I’m absolutely not denying that there are such actions to take. I even agree that they’re important. But DON’T START THERE. Don’t keep teaching yourself that it all hinges on what you do. (This is based on doership, a lovely illusion to dispel.) THE OLD WAY YOU WERE TAUGHT & THE NEW WAY I’M PROPOSING You were taught to focus there, weren’t you? They put on their most serious, even scolding faces, and said: Start in the realm of ACTION, and stay there, buckle down there, bite the bullet there, prioritize being there, finish what you start there, work very hard there, collect & demonstrate evidence of all you’re doing & all you’ve done ... I invite you to open to the possibility that ACTION is actually not your best point of departure. I learned this from Abraham-Hicks (and from practicing their teachings). Action FIRST is not best for the most ease, most efficiency, most flow, most satisfaction, most fun & well-being along the way, most success, or most anything else that you may want. It’s really only best for proving YOU ARE ON IT to those looking on (and maybe giving you money or taking you on guilt trips for what they gave you before or telling you what’s what because they always have known and still do know better than you). They strongly believe that your doing is the key. Leave them to it, and consider another way even for a moment. What if it’s truer that the key to your best life and the ideal point of departure is in minding your feeling state? In cultivating good feelings? Then when action comes out of that habitual way of being, it’s inspired action, it’s wanted action, it’s doable action, it’s satisfying action. (I’ll be writing more on that down the line.) GETTING SPECIFIC WITH THE FEELINGS YOU GENERATE Beyond the idea of feeling good in general as a way of being (see link #3 above for some goods on that), you can also cultivate super-specific feelings that match what you’re after by finding where you have them in your reality now and putting focus there. I know some of you have played with the Easy Existing Matches process I’ve written up from the teachings of Abraham-Hicks. This is truly a fabulous DAILY & super-simple process for keeping in view and living into this principle of finding where what you want, and especially how you want to feel, is available to you before you figure out how to create—or rather, LET IN, respond to, flow into—the change you want. So … what makes you feel loved that’s already in your world?  Photo of person with arms around two German Shepherds from Piermario Eva on Unsplash. Focus first on that—not on the ways the love you want is missing, and not on what to DO to go after the love you want! What makes you feel that abundant sense of finding treasures now, before your purchasing power changes?  Photo of someone rummaging through a vinyl records bin from Kevin Turcios on Unsplash. Focus on that, and play at finding within-reach treasures here & now before you focus on going after the wealth that eludes you. What makes you feel attractive that’s within easy reach already?  Photo of beautifully manicured nails from Bryony Elena on Unsplash. Yes, focus there. Let new actions come later, with ease, once you’ve got that feeling nicely established. You won’t truly embody it if you keep focusing on what’s missing and work hard to nail it in place with dense or frenetic energy. That will not put the swagger in your walk! What makes you feel at peace that’s accessible to you now?  Silhouetted photo of someone walking in woods with a small dog from Michael Kucharski on Unsplash. That’s where the real peace is, right here, already in place. You can only get now-peace now—not future peace. Note that your peace is certainly not in the stuff of your current reality that disrupts your sense of harmony & well-being [justice, goodness, unity, etc]. So don’t put your focus there! (Maybe less news-watching for some of you?) The peace disrupters are easy enough to find, aren’t they? Don’t even add something like in the current era or in the current political climate. In truth, it’s always been easy to find what’s not wanted in the current reality; it’s the easiest thing to focus on what’s missing. (You’ve experienced this to different degrees, and at different scales, but you’ve experienced it all your life!) And you will always find the unwanted when you’re focused on it. For a very long time, it’s probably been your default to TAKE ACTION to shape things up—or even to feel bad about yourself and accuse yourself of laziness, procrastination, or failure if you’re not motivated to act. Well … how about this instead? Get your feeling state lined up. Feel good way more often. Interrupt what feels bad to head for feeling good again. Live this way. Make it a grand experiment. (The biggest fool this can make of you is to turn you into the fool who feels good more often.) Once feeling good becomes a normal way of life, inspired action will too. (That’s the way of it. You can’t NOT act when you feel great and ideas are flowing in.) Much love & many blessings, Jaya New Thoughts about What It Means and How to Get Out of It  Image of a clay piggy bank from Markus Winkler on Unsplash. And by SCARCITY MENTALITY you mean …? You’ve certainly heard the phrase. You’ve likely used it in sentences that made sense. You may have accused yourself of having it; it could even be that you’ve made way too much identity of it. Let’s see if we can do something new with this topic here & now. We all know that scarcity entails small amounts of something, or a total lack thereof; it implies insufficiency. In scarcity mentality, we see NOT ENOUGH of whatever we’re measuring. Not enough food to fill the belly. Not enough health to feel vital and strong. Supplies that run out before more come in, or more money comes in to replenish them. Scarcity is often used with regard to money, but we have it with time (ah, do we have it with time!), love, freedom, good people, sex—any facet or version of well-being. Say SCARCITY out loud, and take note: it sounds like SCARE CITY. Apt enough, as a sense of lack almost inevitably generates fear & anxiety. It implies or even screams not being okay. My needs aren’t getting met (or I fear they won’t get met later). What I need (or want) isn’t anywhere in my vicinity and I don’t believe it’s heading my way. Sometimes scarcity mentality includes a disquieting sense of the unreachable: There’s some code for me to crack to get this thing I don’t have, and I’m not certain I’ll figure it out (or I’m pretty sure it’s a puzzle I can’t solve). Scarcity mentality is super self-defeating, emotionally demoralizing, and even destabilizing. It sets you up to lose track of what’s possible, to feel incapable of getting what you want, to feel bad about your potentially and already beautiful life! Here’s an important thing to understand: In a scarcity mindset, you’re focused on what’s missing, not on what’s already here or on what else is possible. You may be talking about what you want, but that’s really not where your focus is; you’re focused on the fact that what you want isn’t here. From there, it’s an easy segue to believing it won’t ever show up. Scarcity becomes a permanent condition, a chronic illness.  Photo of the inside of a fridge containing only one can on its side from Enrico Mantegazza on Unsplash. I love the teachings of Abraham-Hicks because they make some things crystal-clear to me that seemed hopelessly murky before. What Abraham teaches about scarcity is that anything wanted exists on “two ends of the stick.” On one end, there’s what you want, what you need, what your vision is, what you’re after. On the other end, there’s the lack of it. The fact that it’s missing. The (undeniable) fact that you don’t have it yet. Where you THINK you’re focused on what you want, I invite you to stay open to the possibility that you’re actually not. Of course, you mean well and you’ve done all that you’ve seen to do so far. You have your eyes on the prize. You’ve spoken the dream and written it down—it’s activated inside you, held clearly in view. You’ve set intentions or goals around it, you’ve written out steps to get there, you’ve made a vision board, everyone you’re close to knows what you’re up to—you must be heading in the right direction. Right? Wellllll … if you’re still frustrated about what’s not here, look again. You’re probably on the wrong end of the stick. You’re probably thinking more in terms of what’s missing or what’s NOT HERE YET than about what you want. If you’re focused on what you want, it feels good, not frustrating. It may feel inviting, exciting, or activating in the best way. It feels like you can taste it already. It feels inevitable. It feels worth the wait. Most important, you let yourself feel happy already, because you’re not waiting for that thing to happen to let in some version of happiness that depends on it. If you’re curious about which end of the stick you’re actually on, watch your language; hear how you talk about what you want. How many of your words are about lack? I’m not there yet, I don’t have what it takes to get it (whether you mean resources or connections or support or skills or qualities or anything else). It’s not happening. It’s taking forever. It’s still missing. Sometimes, just asserting (again) how very very much you want the thing puts you in a focus on not having it. You don’t need to long for things when you know your needs are met; when you know the next iteration that includes more of what you want is in the works, on the way, a sure thing. Usually, if you’re on the wrong end of the stick, it gets worse as you go (whether you rev it up in thought or speech or journaling or you name it). What’s not here becomes a character flaw or a failing: I can’t seem to … I’m not capable of … I’ve always and I’ll never … Your scarcity package could even include a victim theme, some catalog of advantages you’ve never had, or how the cards are stacked against you. (And, hey, I always invite my clients to find the victim vibe without judgment, because we all have it in some way or another. It’s just something to notice and move away from, not something to be horrified by!)  I sent this collage card I made to a client in Europe and the mail let us down—they never got it. So I’m sharing it with everyone whose eyes land here so that a whole bunch of us get the abundant vibe instead of no one.
I do believe that we can change anything, heal anything, rewire anything. You can most certainly get out of scarcity mentality if you’re in it. You can also take further any work you’ve aleady done, and get more & more subtle with this (as most of us are in it some of the time, to some degree). If you’ll permit me this one sentence of inviting you to my program, I teach tools to transcend scarcity mentality in my Manifestation & Magic groups (scroll down for information on that, with next week start dates to pay attention to); since these are COACHING groups, we actively apply the concepts to what’s up here & now in participants’ lives, thus optimizing for effective application. Speaking of here & now, a lot of the undoing, probably most of it, happens in the moment: you witness in real time where you find yourself to be (what you’re feeling, what you’re saying, what you’re doing), being or getting okay with wherever you find yourself, and stepping (speaking, choosing) into or toward where you’d prefer to be instead. Rinse and repeat, practice practice practice, and notice the gains: you catch yourself ever more quickly; you do it the old way (the wrong-end-of-the-stick way) less frequently; and at some point … a new default is in place. What if you lived with a sense of abundance (fullness, plenitude, enoughness; current needs well met, future needs not a concern, past scarcity just an old, distant story that needs no review or retelling)? How about an ongoing focus on what you want (your delicious next vision), with a surety that it’s on the way and the ability to feel great in the meantime, right now (not waiting for anything to show up or increase or upgrade in order for you to feel good). Once again, I invite you to BRING IT TO NOW. What you’re thinking, speaking, doing, and feeling here & now is what matters. As you know (and I’m inviting you to know it more fully), NOW is where your power lies—the power to change, the power to live into what you want, the power to create and feel the joy of life. Let’s move from scarcity to abundance, now and now and now and now and now … Love & blessings, Jaya You might take these ideas further with my post on focusing away from current conditions, another clear & super-helpful teaching from Abraham-Hicks. We keep ourselves from the rich, full life we might create by focusing on the lack we perceive in our reality here now.  Image of person’s face and shoulders bathed in glittery nightclub lights from Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash. Where do you stand toward where you stand right now? This is a bad idea: Focus on current conditions that are not to your liking—that need fixing, that bother you, that make your life feel like a grind, that stir up dread, that make you review history for what’s been wrong forever or what was lost, that pop you to a future with more of the same, etc, etc. (Follow that link if you want more on that.) This is a very good idea: Find what you already like about where you stand now, what your life is like right now, what feeds you and supports you and lights you up right now. These are bad and good ideas respectively not just in terms of determining how happy you are and how much you love or even appreciate your one wild and precious life. They also affect how and how quickly you get to where you’d prefer to be than where you find yourself right now. Feeling bad as a misguided motivator We don’t need to pathologize wanting change, wanting more, wanting things to be better. In fact, evolution and movement toward greater well-being are the way of this world, this Universe. That’s how it works. That will always be operative. We love taking things to the next level and improving on what we got to before. But in some weird, wobbly moment in time, human beings got it in their heads (and taught that idea to younger ones, and wrote it into books and scripts and songs, so that we all started to treat it as fact) that when we focus on what’s wrong, what’s missing, what needs to be fixed and improved, things will go better. Actually, when we focus on what feels bad to us, we feel bad. We cultivate dissatisfaction. We feel stuck and doubt our capacity to change things, or we notice factors that make change seem hard or complicated or unlikely. We lose track of what’s going well. We talk to others from that perspective and create vibes of complaining or criticism. It’s not pretty. That focus on WRONG actually doesn’t motivate us to move forward and create more of what we want. We do keep trying to make this warped tactic work, though. If you’re noticing now that you feel pretty married to that idea, or you’re pretty sure it’s a focus you’d better hang on to (I mean, it’s been really well-rehearsed and -reinforced), you might simply ask yourself whether there might be other and better motivators for creating the change you want and bettering things that aren’t as you want them to be. You don’t even need to locate and name the new motivators right away. Just open to the idea that kinder and more effective ones might actually exist, and they might serve you better.  Image of adult and baby gazing at each other in delight from Ben Iwara on Unsplash. Here’s what I know will serve you better
 Image of young person with hands and face informed by awe from Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash. Appreciate where you stand right now This is now. This is here. This is where you are. Notice what you like about this place. Notice how it serves you. Notice how much your needs are met. Notice that there’s laughter and beauty and functionality in every corner of the Universe, this one you’re in now included. Or as Abraham-Hicks says, there’s wanted and unwanted in every particle of the Universe—and they (A-H) constantly invite us to point toward or focus on the wanted. From feeling good about where you are, you can feel better still. From there, you can see what else is possible. You’ll be open to the inspired idea coming in, and you’ll have the wherewithal to follow the mental spark with physical action. From there, you’ve got enough of a good mood going and good energy stirring that you can notice one next simple thing to do to feel better better better, to like your life (job, relationship, home, kids, location, avocation) even more, to make this work a bit more smoothly, to help the dynamic ease with this person or that machine or this place. …  Image of cat luxuriating as human hand scratches under their chin from Yerlin Matu on Unsplash. I am not asking you to do anything I’m not doing myself. I live in the midwest right now, caring for my mom in the last phase of her life. I’m here until that’s no longer needed (unless I get different operating instructions as I go). I’ve believed I hate this part of the country, it’s landlocked and I love ocean, it’s conservative politically, it’s not the easiest place to be queer (Ithaca was that!), the topography is flat (boring). I could go on. But I don’t. Every day I love the birds I see. I gaze at the sky and remember that I’ve seen similar skies over the ocean, and think about how the ocean could be RIGHT THERE. I find dogs who want to greet me like a best friend. I visit nearby parks that feel great to me, and where I see not only dogs but blue and green herons, where I saw my first indigo bunting and first bright red summer tanager (and I’ve seen them more than once), where big ole turtles hang out on logs and cool snakes sometimes slither across the path. I’ve found some lovely and queer-friendly coffee shops with adorable baristas who remind me of my kids. I have fun making my mom laugh every day and getting involved with her in the convivial drama of The Great British Baking Show. I do my work by zoom and love it every day, every individual and group session. I play with art supplies daily. I listen to things that feel enlivening and elucidating, often in Spanish. Every day, I love my life. And every day, I believe it’s getting better. And one day, as I’ve done before, I’ll be writing you from somewhere I actually prefer, somewhere tropical, maybe, where English isn’t the first language. I’m on my way, I’m in my becoming, and where I am now is just fine. You’re on your way. You’re in your becoming. Where you are now is absolutely just fine. Love it, and love following any small thing you think of that would make things feel even better. That will INEVITABLY take you to larger such things. (The earlier Mary Oliver quote was … your one wild and precious life. It’s from The Summer Day. Did you get gold stars?) Love & blessings, Jaya |
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