Oops

I wonder what scientists do when they’re doing an experiment and they don’t take the daily actions they planned to take in the experiment.  What happens to the experiment when you screw up?

I guess in the case of my feel good experiment, the screwing up is part of it.  Is it really possible to feel consistently good when your circumstances aren’t so good?

It has to be, because if it isn’t, I’m in trouble.

Last night, before I went to sleep, I reread parts of the Abraham-Hicks book, Money and the Law of Attraction:  Learning to Attract Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Esther and Jerry Hicks.  It was a review of law of attraction concepts I know well, but it jazzed me up to continue to find reasons to feel good because it reminded me that when I am feeling good, it means I’m in alignment with my “inner self” or nonphysical part of me, and that alignment is what brings what I desire to me.  I went to sleep chanting, “Safe and secure.  Financially Free.”  I woke up feeling good and intending to find all kinds of reasons to keep feeling good.

As I’m getting up, I hear a siren.  Since my parents live down the street from me and have several health problems, I vaguely wonder if the siren is for them.  I recognize that as a not-feel-good thought and I move on.  But the siren reminds me of the firefighters who carried me into the house after I broke my ankle and leg.  Well, that doesn’t feel good.  NI!

Okay, moving on again.

I get up and go into the bathroom to weigh.  I’m excited about this.  I’ve been doing a three-week detox program, and the detox is over.  Because I have so much weight to lose and I cut back my consumption SO much, I expect to have dropped at least 15 pounds or more.  I step on the scale intending to see the number 285.  It’s 287.  I’ve actually gained a pound in the last two days (and I ate PERFECTLY those two days).  I’m disappointed and pissed.

Oops.  That doesn’t feel good.  Well, I tell myself, you’ve dropped 13 pounds.  That’s a good start.  You only need to drop two pounds a week to reach your year-end goal, and you can still do that.

I feel a little better.

I get ready for my morning walk, expecting Tim to come with me as usual.  His back is too stiff.  I’m pissed.  How does this SO ALIGNED man (he keeps telling me) get a stiff back.  Physical ailments are a sign of misalignment.

Oops.  His alignment is not my concern.

Okay, so I take Ducky to the forest.  We’re having a good walk.  She runs and leaps and pounces and prances, and I start to smile.  We run into my friend, Sandy, and her dog.  The dogs play.  We chat.  She asks me what we’ll do when we win a lottery.  I say we’ll move.  She says, “So would I.”  I tell her that I like our town but it didn’t treat Tim very well a few years ago.

Oops.  NI!

She tells me about the troubles she and her husband are having with the town now.  See how my thought and conversation attracted a match from her?  The conversation turns to selling houses.  We discuss the down market and how we wouldn’t get the money out of our houses that we need if we tried to sell now.  She asks a couple questions that lead me to say, “Our financial situation is dire.”

NI!  NI!  NI!

She tells me she’s sorry and starts making suggestions about aid I could get.  More helpful law of attraction action.

Okay, now I’m beating up on myself pretty well.  Why did I even bring up negative subjects?  I’ve had great, positive conversations with this woman.  Why did I get us started on complaining about our town and the housing market?

You keep telling the same story about your life and you’ll keep getting the same stuff in your life—this is Abraham 101—I know this stuff.

So my friend laments my financial troubles.  I tell her I know we’ll be okay.

And here’s where I finally find something good to think about.

I realize that when I tell her we’ll be okay, I really mean it.  Two weeks ago, I talked with another friend about our situation, and I bawled.  I was raw with fear and anger and frustration.

Today, when I talked to Sandy, I really was calm.  I could feel the difference in my vibration.  I feel optimism and belief, a significant improvement from where I was a couple weeks ago.  I could feel the difference in what Abraham calls the “point of attraction.”  I feel good about my future.  I have no idea why we’ll be okay, but I really feel like we will be okay.

Now I just have to get in the place of feeling great NOW.

So I managed to turn the conversation in a positive direction and I came home determined, once again, to find reasons to feel good.

The law of attraction had hooked into my negative stream, though.  I had a bunch of frustrations that if I talk about them now, I’ll have to yell NI!

So here I am again, working to find that feel good place, that everything-is-fine-now place.

I KNOW that I can change how I feel by changing my focus.  Now I just need to get a little tighter rein on my focus.  It likes to flop into negative places.  And once it does, the law of attraction brings me more negative thoughts to flop into.

So, oops.  Deciding to feel good and actually doing it are two different things.

So here I am recommitting to finding ways to feel good.

The Truth About Emotion

Maybe I’m just a little dense, but I think The Secret and other books on the law of attraction are a bit misleading.  Until I really started studying Abraham-Hicks materials, I thought that feeling good was what created good things in your life.

Not true.

So why am I in the middle of this feeling good experiment?

Here’s a recent Abraham quote of the day:

“The Universe does not know if the vibration you are offering is because of what you are imagining, or because of what you are observing.  In either case, it is responding.  Where emotion comes in is that emotion is your guidance or your response to your vibration.  Your emotion does not create.  Emotion is your indicator of what you are already creating.  As you think, you vibrate.  And it is your vibrational offering that equals your point of attraction.  So it’s always a match.  What you are thinking and what is coming back to you is always a vibrational match.  The emotion (your Guidance System) is telling you what’s coming.”

See?  The feeling good isn’t the creational force.  The thought that matches with what you want is the creational force.  Feelings simply tell you whether your thought is a match to what you want or not.

It’s a great system, really.  No more monitoring thoughts—asking yourself what you’re thinking this minute.  All you have to do is pay attention to how you feel.  Feel good, you’re thinking an aligned thought.  Feel bad, you’re thinking a nonaligned thought, which means you’re in the process of creating something you don’t want.

Now that I’m consciously using my guidance system, I find feeling good getting easier and easier.  I don’t stress about what I should be doing or not doing.  I just pay attention to how I’m feeling as I do what I do or contemplate doing something I’m about to do.  When it feels bad, I stop.  OR I find a different way to think about what I’m doing.

Emotion isn’t something that is true or immutable.  It’s something we can change, and when we do, we are in control of creating our reality.

And I can feel myself getting better at it every day.

Asking For Help From The Universal Manager

So I have this blog here.  I started writing it as a way to keep me on track when I embarked on my grand feel good experiment.  I was going to journal my way through it anyway, so why not do it online?

Of course, as soon as I started the blog, I began to wish I had actual readers for my blog.  Bless a new friend, a wonderful, upbeat woman who is a client of mine (I do writing coaching part time).  She started reading the blog regularly and even takes the time to comment.   And until today, I’d neglected to comment on her blog, mea culpa.  She takes great photos of New York.    

So I started getting the itch to go looking for readers of the blog.  Uh oh.  This feels like internet marketing or book promotion.  Been there, done that.

Abraham offers a bunch of what they call “processes” to help you find alignment with your nonphysical self (and thereby bring to you the experiences and things and feelings you want).  One of the processes is called the placemat process.  In this process, you make two columns on a piece of paper.  On the left hand side, write down all the things you’re absolutely going to do today.  On the right side, write down the things you’d like to have the universe take care of for you.  The idea of this process is to get you to remember all the help that the law of attraction has to offer.  By focusing only on the things you KNOW you can get done, you stay out of overwhelm and other bad feelings (which indicate a lack of alignment with your nonphysical self).

So as of now, promoting this blog goes on the right side of my lists.  If it’s meant to be that people find this blog, they’ll find it.  Actively trying to drive traffic to a site does NOT make me feel good.  I’ll comment on other blogs when I feel like it; I’m not going to turn into a blog whore, using comments to solicit traffic from another site.

Maybe the few people who read the blog will tell friends about it, who will tell friends, who will tell friends … if it’s meant to be.  Isn’t that how the common cold starts?  🙂  It sure seems to get around okay.