Process #3 of 5 for quick & easy focus & alignment Up-close photo of part of an owl’s face from Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash. Feeling bad? Stop. What are you thinking about? You’re probably zoomed in on details that, simply put, stir up suffering. Unnecessary suffering. Seriously, just let any kind of feeling bad be cause to stop and check out what you’re thinking. Pause if you’re
If anything feels bad, INTERRUPT YOUR THOUGHTS AT ONCE AND CHECK THEM OUT. Let feeling good matter enough to you that you’re jolted to a halt when you notice you feel bad! Abraham-Hicks (whose processes I’m sharing with you here in this series of 5) often reminds us: CARE MORE ABOUT HOW YOU FEEL. So when you notice you feel bad, pause. And ask yourself … What are you focused on? Are you in the thorny details? In other words, are you ZOOMED IN to what feels bad? You’re getting lost in specific concerns you can’t fix or questions you can’t possibly have the answers to right now:
In all such lines of thought, you’re zoomed in on all manner of detail that can only make you feel some kind of bad. (Mostly because they’re not in your realm of control. Not your business, to use Byron Katie’s 3 kinds of business. They all belong to others or to the Universe—any timing, outcome, how-what-when-who.) And isn’t it easy to get entranced by the details? There’s nothing to judge when you catch yourself there, so catch yourself sweetly. And GET OUT. It will never serve you to hang out there. Please take in how simple this is:
And what do you do when you find yourself feeling bad & zoomed in on details?  Photo of owl in tree taken from afar from Shirish Suwal on Unsplash. Easy: ZOOM OUT. IS IT EVER USEFUL TO ZOOM IN? Yes! Zoom in to anything that feels good. If you notice you’re delighted by a child or a flower or a sky or a hilarious comment, zoom in! Stay with it. Do hang out in these details! Bask in the particulars of that joy-producing, awe-inspiring, heart-melting thing! Stay with it for a while if you’re feeling expansive, loving & trusting life, getting soothing or relief. Stay with what reminds you all is well and life is about love. HOW THIS APPLIES TO GETTING SHIT DONE Things we’re up to and fully choose to do may have thorny, problematic components and problems or how-to’s not yet solved. That applies to most every dream or vision we have, every work or home task we wish to complete & do well, every relationship event or issue that we want to show up for. So yes, show up to do the work. But when you’re feeling bad, zoom out! Later come back and zoom back in. Do that once you’ve moved away from thorny details that had your brow all furrowed. You properly responded to the signals of feeling bad, zoomed out, and now you feel good & relaxed again. Maybe you’ve even zoomed in on something totally different that got you back to where you like to be. You’re in love again (with life, with yourself, with other sentient beings). You’re back to can-do. NOW go back. Now, you’re ready to move the thing forward again, to face that challenging task, to consider what step you might actually be ready to take.  Photo of trees in woods from Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash.
EASY AS 1-2-3
You’ve got this. ZOOM IN OR ZOOM OUT This is a very recent thing Abraham’s been talking about. They used to simply emphasize the idea to GO GENERAL. This is a tweak to that. It emphasizes instead that sometimes it feels good to zoom in. So that. And sometimes, in order to feel good, you need to zoom out. Just let feeling good be your guide! THAT’S ALL FOLKS. Zoom in or zoom out. Notice that this process doesn’t even require writing anything down. (Though you can always use writing to focus.) What follows are some afterthoughts you may not even want. Skim or skip as drawn. WHAT MIGHT GET LOST when you permit yourself to stay zoomed in on details that make you feel bad. You may lose track of
In short, you lose track of your own belief system, whatever it is, and choosing to follow fearful thinking that’s falsely predicated on the wrong idea you need to keep thinking it through, figuring it out, redundantly reviewing details. It’s based on the false premise that you’re the doer and the one who needs to keep a vigilant watch on everything for things to be okay. Um, how bout not? You can find Abraham-Hicks process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #2, Segment intending, right here. Love & blessings, Jaya
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Process #2 of 5 for quick & easy focus & alignment Photo of a person sitting on a wood floor string a long thread of beads. From Natalia Blauth on Unsplash. You are aligned when you feel connected, serene, optimistic, excited, clear. In short, you’re aligned when you feel good. When you don’t feel good, you may want to reach for a tool that could make you feel better. This is how you mind your alignment. When you get up in the morning, you might reach for a tool that allows you to choose your own focus. How do you want to feel? These quick & easy processes I’m offering in a series of 5 come from Abraham-Hicks, where I’m getting most of my dynamic learning & input for feeling great about my evolving life these days! SEGMENT INTENDING This process has two steps, and the first is optional.
Multitasking version: If you can’t write your intentions down—maybe you’re driving or putting lunch together—speak your intentions out loud. Pen on paper is ideal, but segment intending is super helpful whether written or spoken. LET’S DEFINE SEGMENT Think of your day as a beaded necklace that you’re constructing or creating bead by bead as you move through the hours. Each bead represents the next activity. So a string of segments could look like this:
You can even treat sleep as a segment. Read the next paragraph if you could use a reminder about good ways to put yourself to bed. Segment-intend to declare how you want to drop in for sleep and how you’d like to feel waking up. Consider how this could change the tone of how you rest compared with what else you might carry into sleep. As you go to bed, do you evaluate yourself, your day, your success, your relationship? Or do you go over what’s not yet done and look anxiously ahead? How about clear, kind, restful intentions instead? Intend feeling satisfied, letting go, feeling held & supported (by the bed, by all of life, by what feels complete & lovely & good enough for this day)?  Photo of notebook, pen, and lit candle. From Mushaboom Studio on Unsplash. WHY INTEND FOR JUST ONE SEGMENT? This tool brings intentional living down to brass tacks (um, or necklace beads). All you’re doing is isolating one manageable next bit and defining how you want to feel in it. Then you can consciously aim for that. Intentions for just the next segment are powerful because they’re simple, their focus is narrow, they feel entirely doable. You’re gazing at and polishing the one next beautiful bead you’re about to string onto the necklace that is this wonderful day in progress. It’s unlikely you’ll want or need to set intentions for every single segment of a day. Use segment intending especially if you’re already noticing a wobble. Examples of wobbles you may feel acutely or get even a whiff of:
Note that you don’t have to feel even a little bit bad about what’s coming up to segment-intend. I zoom-met with a friend I adore the other day, and I used segment intending to imbibe up front how much I love being in their presence. That’s what I carried in with me, heart full and eyes already reflecting their brightness. Have you ever entered a meeting flustered or scattered or just barely catching up to yourself and this moment? I have. And when I segment-intend, I don’t do that. I come in clear, conscious, grounded. Ready or not, I am ready, and I’m willing. I’m present. Don’t you love getting more conscious in your dance with consciousness? More to the point—in this one next dance? Want to show up with sass, ease, attitude? You decide.  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:
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 Process #1 of 5 for quick & easy focus & alignment  Photo of red-and-white door on stone building with #1 on address placard. From Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash. (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
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.  Image of numbers 1-2-3 cropped from a photo by ISO10 on Unsplash. 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:
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  Photo of sunrise on a foggy Hudson River from Susan Meyer (https://www.susantarameyer.com) Scroll down to below the next pic for a few super-helpful resources. Headings are there to guide swift skimming! Almost everybody I work with or know in any context is deeply dismayed by the latest elections in the US. People are using words like devastated, shattered, and terrified, and are talking about grieving. There’s no problem with any absolutely & automatically valid reaction you’re having. More than anything, I invite you to look for soothing. See if you can stay away from ongoing focus on all that’s WRONG. AND I also want to invite you back to what is true, what abides, what is real, what we can actually count on, what matters, what will get us through, where we might put our focus to feel fully equipped to carry on with our intentions for our own lives and the greater good and the Earth itself. Scroll down for a number of resources to explore if & when you feel drawn. First, a story from someone else My friend & colleague Susan Meyer is a mindfulness meditation teacher and nature photographer. She already has a habit well in place, most every morning, to visit the river she lives next to in upstate New York. Via the practical magic of her kayak, she often gets right in it. Her relationship with this river represents a deep soul connection. Susan didn’t watch election results come in on the evening that was happening, and before she looked in the morning, she went out to meet the river—and to meet herself at the river—first of all. What happened was that she got a visceral sense of a sort of timeless view of what matters. Even going only as far back as the beginning of the story of the United States, she felt into how this river had seen the Revolutionary War and all that has taken place in the human realms from then to now. The river had flowed through it all; continued to provide water and take part in the water cycle; held and fed any number of beasts and fishes and birds, plants and trees; provided solace & peace & nourishment to any number of humans. This river was full of hope & love & an ongoing vote cast for life to continue in the healthiest possible way for all concerned. And from that awareness, Susan felt the time was right to check the election results. In that very moment, a two-word text that told all she needed to know popped in from her daughter: “Soooo….. Canada? 😭” What I’ve been doing & holding to Most of y’all know that I do EXTRA processes for soothing & clarity when something feels off, and I’ve been processing away to spend as much time as possible in alignment. (Note that you can click on the tag PROCESS on my blog to see specific tools there. There’s also a helpful tools tab on my website.) Prioritizing alignment and cultivating a sense of well-being includes more time in nature and more care with basic things like nutrition and sleep and qigong, in my case—substitute whatever you do that you know keeps your body feeling better and your breathing coming in more fully. I’m holding fast to all that I care about. All the intentions I had for myself and this country and various populations I care deeply about—these are unchanged and still with me. I’m committed. I’ve been thinking about how many people hold like beliefs and care just as deeply as I do, and we are united. I know the laws of the Universe are unchanged by election results, and I’m still tapping into all that keeps me creating & living into visions of what matters to me and allows me to support others on their journeys. I’m so clear that I cannot support people if I go into depression or deep freeze, things I did routinely in the past anytime the political landscape felt threatening and like it was just going in the wrong direction (seemingly counter to evolution and not aligned with the good of all concerned!). In fact, I believe the evolution is always underway, and it’s evident to me, looking back over time, that the process never looks linear. And still, we’ve evolved, and we will continue to do just that. Further resources, including from others, can be found below the next photo. Headings allow for quick skimming to see if anything calls to you.  Photo of a double rainbow over the Hudson River from Susan Meyer (https://www.susantarameyer.com) RESOURCES
A SONG Here is a song that makes me teary & goosebumpy, written & performed by singer-songwriter Kathleen Hannan of NC. She started writing this right before the election, finishing the recording just before the results started coming in. She wrote me that she wanted to create a song to tap into “what would still be here no matter which way the election went.” EFT I have created an EFT (emotional freedom technique, or tapping) playlist on my YouTube channel for political pain and anxiety. Some were drawn from pre-existing EFT sessions (e.g., EFT/tapping on big disappointments) and I keep adding new EFT sessions specific to this list as I support people bringing me the topic of how the political situation affects (and especially pains) them. A MEDITATION On the night of the American elections, I sent out a link to this mailing list to offer a 3-centers meditation. I had recorded it at noontime with no clue of how things would turn out. Here it is again, as you may still find it helpful in meeting your dread and soothing yourself in body, heart, and head. Find this election-soothing 3-centers meditation on YouTube. POWERFUL TEACHINGS FROM ABRAHAM-HICKS If you ALREADY know & love the work of Abraham-Hicks and want & feel able to invest 50 bucks in a spiritual perspective on the political scene, I strongly recommend purchasing the Abraham Now broadcast that took place a few days after the elections, on November 9. I found all that was said deeply healing, supportive, and full of wisdom, clarity, and encouragement to stay connected to what is always real, whatever may be going on politically for better or worse. If you aren’t already pretty connected to these teachings and to Abraham-speak, you may not vibe with how they talk about this or even get what they’re saying (because of their particular lingo and perhaps because a foundational understanding of what & how they teach would be needed). That said, if you feel drawn, go go go! DROP-IN GROUP COACHING Last Monday night, during drop-in group coaching, we did some beautiful work together to soothe election fears & woes. Please join anytime, including tonight. The topics we cover are set by what people bring forth. You’re always welcome to talk or participate in silence, you can insert a question in the chat, and you can be off-cam, if you prefer, even if you choose to offer a coaching topic. This information, along with very occasional cancellations, can always be found on the homepage of my website. Love & blessings, Jaya  Photo of view looking up at a white sky from underneath a cluster of fir trees. From James Wheeler on Unsplash. (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:
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.  Claymation-style image of a hand clicking a heart button on a phone. From Shubham Dhage on Unsplash.
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 |
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