Shining Success

Shining Success

How would your life change if you felt successful every day? Would you carry yourself differently? Would you try new things? Would you step up for other  things than you do now?

The more we relax through and through; our bodies, our feelings, our thoughts, the more successful we become. Like so many other fun, comfy, exciting, rewarding things, being successful is one of the things that just happens when we relax into our natural life.

Why am I successful? How things go my way? What makes me see the good?

It’s a funny thing. When we feel like a failure, we can often find that, underneath the feeling, we are resisting success, bogging ourselves down with bad creative questions. Why am I a failure? Why am I unlucky? Bad creative questions like these  keep us stuck. We often find that we are so used to asking bad questions like these that we don’t even notice we are asking them.

When we ask questions like those, we will miss opportunities to be successful. We may sabotage our results, we may trip ourselves up, and even get ourselves in trouble.

Oops.

When we ask questions like those, we may find that we even sabotage our own success, or when we have it, we discount it. How sad is that.

It bears talking about a bit more, that tendency we have to discount the nice stuff. One of the best ways to practice enjoyment is to enjoy our moments. Savor the pleasures we encounter each day; the delicious breakfast beverage, how nice it feels to clean our teeth, the bird song, the smile from a random person on the street. Letting these little things in, taking an extra moment to enjoy them, to appreciate the little nice things that happen each day, helps us build our enjoyment muscles so that we can let in our successes, and really feel good about them.

Why do I savor? What makes me appreciative? How do I enjoy?

Practicing like this on the little stuff means that I get used to little successes, little pleasures, little enjoyments, and gradually they build until I can tolerate bliss. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true for a lot of us. I know if I had been thrown into bliss back in the dark ages, I would have just shut down. Now I can sit in bliss for ages. I love that.

Another thing that helps us in feeling more successful is relaxing around it. Sometimes we are striving so hard to achieve our idea of success that we miss it. We get ideas about what we want to accomplish, and as soon as we do, we are off planning the next campaign. We

never feel successful because we are always chasing that carrot on a stick, and assigning new values all the time. So we can have accomplished so much, and never feel it, never notice, and always feeling like we don’t quite measure up. Poor we.

The more I let myself get used to feeling successful, the easier it is to find places where that’s how I feel. I like feeling successful, and I will draw success to me, in that ol’ Law of Attraction way.

How have I changed from practicing failure to shining success?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07112014

Controversial Topic Ahead -- Open Mind Requested

Controversial Topic Ahead -- Open Mind Requested

Alive. Feeling the blood coursing through your veins. Feeling that lift of curiosity and interest. Feeling that tinge of excitement, that thrill of adventure.

Alive. Feeling your senses sharpen. Finding beauty in unlikely places. Appreciating your environment, your people, your activities.

How do I feel when I feel alive? What makes my spirit soar? Why am I engaged?

Like so many aspects of our growing up, feeling alive isn’t something that we just occasionally happen on, but is something we can cultivate.

So how do I practice feeling alive? Well, the fact of the matter is I don’t. Feeling alive is effortless, automatic, when I am relaxed, peaceful, present and aware.

Sometimes, we have situations in our lives that feel overwhelming. We may feel like the situation dooms us, that there is no solution, or it is just too much to contend with, and so we ask ourselves bad creative questions like, “how can I avoid dealing with this?” or “how can I escape my problem?” And we come up with answers like, “I can be sick,” or “I can die.” The tricky part is that it’s often all unconscious; we are completely unaware that we are having those thoughts.

And then we get stuff. I remember backs going out on moving day. I remember horrible colds or stomach flu showing up on test days. I even remember falling asleep at my desk just moments before I was supposed to take an exam I didn’t feel prepared for. Seriously. Talk about avoidance.

Why do I choose to address my topics? How have I changed from having problems to coping with my situations?

I understand that this is a delicate topic for many of us. As I was coming to terms with it, I had a lot of feelings. I felt angry and ashamed at the thought that I might be the one making me sick. Never mind that it isn’t “me” but rather unconscious thoughts and beliefs that don’t support me, it felt like blaming the victim.

As I learned to speak “body” language, it got easier for me to accept. Backs are all about feeling supported. Shoulders are about carrying burdens. Necks are about emotional flexibility. Back when I was diagnosed with that acute chronic nervous tension, it looks like I was feeling over-burdened, like I was carrying the weight of the world. Uh, check. I was feeling emotionally rigid, my way or the highway. Um, check that one, too. And I felt like I had no support. Okay, double check.

Lately, I’ve been having stomach stuff. My body is telling me that I “can’t stomach” what’s going on, that I’m holding onto old crap, uh, so to speak, and maybe letting go of old crap, again, so to speak. These symptoms tell me that I need to slow down inside, and let stuff process a bit more. I know I can cope, but maybe I need to make some changes, shift things around a bit. Have I taken on more responsibility than my system likes right now? Do I need to be taking care of me differently? What are the things I “can’t stomach?”

By slowing down enough to consider these questions, I will be able to calm my GI system. By addressing the topics I discover, my body will not need to send me these very specific messages, and I can go back to being symptom free. And to feeling alive.

How have I changed from feeling sick to feeling alive?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02052014

Webs of Trust

Webs of Trust

Fragile and powerfully strong, fundamental and elusive. Emanating from tiny creatures to help nourish them, to help them stay connected. No, I’m not talking about spider webbing. I’m talking about trust, and us.

What a weird thing that is. We all need trust as a building block for growing up. Or maybe it’s the mortar. Trust connects us to each other, to our world.

It is a curious phenomenon. When I trust, I am effectively giving you a pointy stick and telling you where it will hurt the most to poke me. If you are trustworthy, you will take the stick, and you won’t poke. Otherwise, ow!

In the dark ages, I got poked a lot. I trusted all the wrong people. I believed that everyone was untrustworthy, like the people I was choosing to trust, who seemed to relish every jab they gave me.

I don’t get jabbed much anymore. Seems like I can tell better who is likely to wield that pointy stick.

Trust is a belief, which is an idea, which is a thought, which we can choose, or unchoose, to think.

As I left the dark ages behind, I changed the way I thought about trust. I started over in a lot of ways, and Creative Questions really helped me focus that by focusing on the result, the outcome, I wanted.

Bad creative questions had been my norm, “Why do people always hurt me? Why don’t things ever go my way? Why do I always get the short end of the stick?”

Now, I could start asking good Creative Questions, “Why do things go my way? What makes me successful? Why am I intimate? Why am I happy?”

By making little shifts in my beliefs, I started making changing the quality of my days. And I started to expect that things would be nice. When I believe my loved ones will be kind to me and support me, instead of believing that they will always, eventually, let me down, I change my behavior. And if they do let me down, it has somehow shifted from a personal poke to just a thing. Although sometimes it may take a bit for me to remember that.

When I started to believe that the Universe is here to support me, that my environment is here to support me, that the whole of my existence is here to support me, everything changed, just a bit, then gradually more and more. I started to look for silver linings, opportunities, lessons for my spiritual growth.

When I remember that you can’t disappoint me, only my expectations of your behavior can disappoint me, I can take responsibility for my feelings about you. If you are constantly not meeting my expectations, I get to change them. If I remember that you can change your behavior, just as I can, I give you a lot more latitude.

How have I changed from putting my trust in stinky bad places, to trusting it is all for my benefit?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01062014

Ad Hoc Happiness

Ad Hoc Happiness

Doing without. The spirit of thrift. Making do. Reuse, repurpose, recycle. Jury rigging.

I pulled the Why am I Happy? card this morning, and surprisingly found myself considering some of what makes me feel happy.

As I made that list, I found myself thinking about how much fun I have figuring out how to make things work, what to do with leftovers, how to stretch stuff, how to be thrifty. It’s fun for me to find ways to save money without making sacrifices, because one thing I’ve learned about me is that, when I feel like I’m sacrificing, I feel resentful, not happy. But that’s just me.

One reason I like to come up with new life for things, or foods, is because then I feel resourceful and creative.  I like knowing how to fold paper into useful objects; a chopstick stand from it’s own wrapper, a cup from a sheet of paper when I am thirsty, or a fan when I am hot.

Feeling resourceful and creative are elements of happiness for me.

Loving and feeling loved are other elements. Feeling useful and productive, feeling spiritual, feeling like I am taking good care of me, and you, being generous, and kind; these are things that are part of feeling happy for me.

On the other hand, there is happiness that is just feeling light inside, uplifted, fluffy. When I talk about changing feelings as easily as changing your mind, this is the feeling I’m talking about. This feeling is simple, easy to get to; basically, yours for the taking.

Why do I choose to feel happy? What makes me feel light? Why do I choose uplifted?

So turn off the sad music right now, get some light on you, and let’s get started.

First step, relax. That’s the first step for a lot of stuff. It’s not just our muscles that need to relax, but our thoughts and feelings. If I am not feeling peaceful, something is clenched somewhere within me, and practicing relaxing when I feel good or okay is wonderful practice for getting back to peaceful quickly and easily when it’s something bigger.

Step two, start asking those good Creative Questions. Chances are better than not that I am all frothy with bad creative questions; Why is it so hard? Why do I feel so bad? What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I ever do X? Why does X always happen to me? Well, you know what your favorites are, and if you don’t, now is the perfect time to start noticing. One of my favorites is What’s wrong with me? with the quick answer, I suck. Identifying your question makes it much easier to flip it into a Creative Question.

Step three, change your posture and facial expression. A very nice rule of thumb is this, if you want to feel blue, slump and frown. Cave in your chest, shorten your breathing, and droop the corners of your mouth. If you want to feel light, sit up and smile, at least crinkle the corners of your eyes, ask your good Creative Questions, and breathe some good, refreshing deep breaths.

When I choose happy, everything gets easier. It’s easier to dump my negative emotional judgments, my resentments, my sense of betrayal over little things. It’s easier to let my emotions flow when I know I can chose how I want to feel. And it’s easier for you to be around me. Practice makes the happiness groove easier and easier to get into. Nice when something beyond the normal daily drivel happens.

How have I changed from feeling like happiness is a mysterious thing randomly bestowed and snatched away to getting that I am in charge of my own happiness?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12012013