Regardless of what happens “out there”, 2022 is in your hands.
Success or failure. Lessons or a loop. Growth or stagnation. Joy or suffering. Hit or miss. It’s the way we approach the year that will make all of the difference, because when we’re aligned to what we want to experience, it shows up for us. Our external world is simply a reflection of how we are, not just what we do.
Practice presence
When you live in each moment and are truly present you won’t have anxiety (which is fear about the future or what might happen and a desire to control it) nor will you experience depression (which is regret, shame, guilt or sadness over the past). It sounds so cliched though: live in the now, but really it’s all we’ve got. We can only be where we are in any given moment, yet we humans seem to be wired for living in our minds anywhere but where we are! And that’s what creates disharmony with our internal sense of peace, satisfaction and externals. When we take care of each moment by bringing our best selves, the future takes care of itself, and so does the past for that matter. And the great news is we can press the reset button any time throughout our day should we start to straddle the present to dwell on the future or the past and return ourselves to where we are and how we are.
Set intentions
What do you intend for your day? Setting intentions around how you want to be in the world is a powerful radiant message of thought energy to put out into the world and begins to align your subconscious mind to align with those intentions and as a result, the world will reflect those intentions. Here’s a peak behind the curtain into a couple I set for myself on waking each morning (I visualise them too):
To radiate unconditional love and joy into the world
To be present
To know the universe has my back and is guiding my thoughts words and actions…
There are others but you get the idea…And they can be anything. Being deliberate is the key. Otherwise we’re running the operating system that was programmed into us as children and added to during our lives…to reprogram that requires accessing our subconscious and this is one way to do that. You’re welcome.
Raise your energy
Exercise, meditation, dancing, laughing, good conversation with someone loving, a hug are all ways to begin our days (or to do at any time during the day) that raise our vibration or energy output. They emit the positive chemicals of dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and oxytocin. Watching the sunrise or even seeing the risen sun in the morning can help set our natural body clocks, our circadian rhythm, so that when it comes to the other side of the day, we’re more able to get to sleep. It all affects our energy. And when we feel rested, grounded, happy, fit and healthy, connected, we show up differently to others who will in turn reflect this back to us. In all, it’s an upward spiral. What’s not to love?
Choose love
In any given moment, our internal programming will tell us what feels natural for us to “feel” and that unfortunately may not be in our best interests. For example, when we have a difficult conversation with another person, especially someone we value and care for a great deal, someone we respect or admire or both, we can have a fear-based response that we then give meaning to. It might be something like: “I’m not good enough”, “they don’t like me”, “they’re judging me, I don’t need that in my life”, or something similar. All of these are simply your programming telling you to protect yourself or to beat yourself up. And depending on how long you’ve been running the program, it’s why those feelings and meanings feel truthful and natural to us – we’re so used to them. When we are aware enough to notice a fear based programming response come up we can instead ask ourselves: “what would love do/say/think/feel?” So instead of saying “I’m not good enough” we may say instead “Wow that was tough…what can I learn from that?” Instead of saying: “They don’t like me”, saying instead: “Breathe…let me take a moment to work through this”, or instead of saying: “they’re judging me, I don’t need that in my life”, ask ourselves: “I wonder what else might be going on here that has nothing to do with me? I’ll send them love because they might need that”. It’s empowering and begins to set up new files to install in the operating system to access instead. Like anything, it takes action and reinforcement. And so much of this relies on our abilities to be present in order to be aware of our first thought. Trying not to take action on the first thought stops us from reacting, so that we have a greater chance of responding and choosing love instead.
From here on..
In “The Courage to be Happy”, Kashimi and Koga outline Adler’s triangle of “poor me” on one side, “that bad person” on another and “from here on” on the base. When we see a situation from either of the first two perspectives, we’re stuck. They keep us in a perspective that might make us feel righteous and justify behaviour that we’d otherwise not be too proud of, but neither helps us to move forward resourcefully. Taking the perspective of “From here on” draws a line under whatever has happened and enables us to take action deliberately that is forward facing. It “unsticks” us and enables us to do something different in order to experience something different. When we see our situation as happening to us, we’re passive. Taking responsibility for what happens now is based on choice and steps us into our own power: we’re the ones happening to life. Simple, but powerful. For in this perspective, there are no excuses, no returns to what happened, just what we’re going to do now.
Let’s take the example of the difficult conversation again. We could say: “poor me, it’s not my fault the order got there late. Why am I getting the heat for it? I’m doing my best”. Or I could say: “that person is looking for a scape goat for that delivery. They need to accept that sometimes orders get lost – especially in the middle of no staff. They should know we’re all doing the best we can”…What’s more helpful is to say to myself: “Okay, so what is the best thing I can do from here to be part of the solution? Clearly this order has gone astray, so let’s see what we can do to find what happened and rectify it asap so the customer has their product.”
Choice is a reality when people know an alternative. Otherwise there is no choice: we simply run the same program and if that’s all we know, it’s all we do and it’s all we experience. Now you have 5 different tools to incorporate so you have choice. It’s up to you of course, but knowing isn’t the same as doing, and as I say to my clients: “I’m not interested in what you know; I’m interested in what you do with what you know”.