Vision Keeping

January 30th, 2010:  The Next Thing?

According to dear Louise (see side bar) all you have to do is what is before you and the Universe will guide you.  Do the next thing she says.  Just do the next thing.  That has been my mantra lately.

So, my other favorite teachers, Abraham (see side bar), say when you’re feeling good then your stream begins flowing faster and you will notice things beginning to happen.  I’m looking, favorite readers, I’m being attentive.  (Gayle King, on O Radio XM Radio, constantly calls her audience her favorite listeners and and I just had a flash of my favorite readers.  And so it is.  While I like Gayle, I recently sent her a message that I thought she would do herself and her readers a service if she commented less on other people’s personal business.  Not that my opinion counts in the least…I digress.)

So I’m watching for “the next thing.”  I had breakfast with a friend yesterday and I was telling her about the curriculum I’m writing.  It’s a teaching curriculum that takes the notion of creating the life you want and using the principle ideas of Louise, Abraham, and the Law of Attraction and puts these into an 8 session curriculum.  Out of this basic curriculum could come may different spin-offs…the one session overview, the weekend workshop, etc.  You are getting many of the ideas expressed in that curriculum in this column.

So my friend reminds me that her husband is a publisher and that I could meet with him to get his ideas on how to proceed.  Great! 

I realized, hey, that’s the next thing…maybe.   I’ll meet with him…maybe that will lead to other things or maybe it won’t but I will get some good information and it is a “next thing”.  I feel it.

With love, Connie

January 28, 2010:  I get it!

For three days I’ve been intending to sit down and write about keeping a gratitude journal as a way of opening up your world to a whole new level of appreciation.  But each time I sat down to write another subject was pressing at the time…my Oprah ticket drama.

But nothing is a coincidence and all has a reason.  This time I get the bigger picture of the delay.  I need to rename the gratitude journal and call it instead an appreciation journal.  Abraham (see side bar) talks about the difference between appreciation and gratitude.  They have very different vibrations and if you carefully stop to listen you can feel the difference.  Appreciation vibrates at the same rate as love and carries a very pure high vibration.  Gratitude carries the idea of having overcome a struggle and is a lower vibration.  So in that light appreciation does feel better to me.  I knew this but was going to call it a gratitude journal because that’s the more common name and more may identify with that.

But in the two days that I was writing about Oprah drama I came to know that I would write about appreciation rather than gratitude because it’s the best I can offer.  So keeping an appreciation journal will change how you perceive the world if you commit to doing it for at least 6 months but I would recommend one year.  If you have the resources get a blank book that appeals to you as well as a pen.  Actually any paper will do but I’m really into paper and like office supplies I guess.

I strongly suggest picking the same time every day to write in your journal so it can become a practice that is built into your daily schedule.  Hopefully you will look forward to it.  The idea is to write five new things every day for which you are appreciative.  The key word is “new” here.  The first day or two it is easier to find 5 things to be appreciative of but then after that  you have to begin to look more closely to your days to find things that you enjoyed or noticed that you appreciated.  Now are you getting the idea.  After 6 months or one year of 5 new things every day you get to go deeper into your life and put a magnifying glass on to see of the texture of your days.  It really does shift your view and awareness.

For example to day I’m appreciative of:

• I’m appreciative of a meeting with a friend and we shared a lot of good talk and ideas
• I really appreciate his dog who is so sweet and loving and I loved him in my lap
• I’m appreciative of an opportunity my daughter has for a shift in her future job situation and that she called to tell me about it
• I loved coming back to my loft/home this evening and feeling grounded and truly “at home”
• I’m appreciative of the taste of dark chocolate with chili flavoring because it is so unusual and tickled my taste buds

That’s a sampling.  Of course everyone’s will be different.  Sometimes when I was beginning I felt so badly some days that I was just appreciative that the day was over, appreciative of sleep, of darkness.  Whatever.

I’ve talked with a lot of people who enjoy doing this and it shifts your focus to more of what you like rather that what you dislike.  Remember, what you focus upon brings you more of that.  So if you focus on things that feel good to you you get more of that.  If you are a complainer, you will notice more things to complain about.  That’s the way of the Law of Attraction.

With Love, Connie

January 26th, 2010:  A O F U  …or…After Oprah Fuck Up

Yesterday evening I checked my email prior to writing my very perky, no doubt, blog.  It was there I discovered I had been given 4 tickets to attend a taping of the Oprah Show only to look at the next email from obviously my good friend, Oprah, to learn that I no longer had tickets because I didn’t confirm within the deadline.

I think they are running a sweatshop at Harpo keeping people chained to their desks 24/7 because I was not expecting to hear from them until at least today but they responded to me Saturday afternoon.  C’mon, where’s the Best Life in working on weekends?  I truly had no idea the hive would be buzzing on Saturday.  And not only that but we were given 42 hours to respond or lose the tickets.  It’s the ticket Nazi’s.  I’m telling you.  I emailed them practically begging.   Okay, I really was begging them to reconsider, but after my heart felt outpouring this morning I got a form note back…”due to the large response”….blah, blah.  I had a flashback of my executive director days getting a rejection letter from a foundation.  “Due to the large response…”

This morning I woke up and immediately remembered that I SCREWED UP MY OPRAH TICKETS!  I felt crappy and my feet hadn’t hit the floor but, and this is a big but, I knew I could work myself out of feeling that way.  I was ready to let go.  I didn’t want to carry it any more.  So I got my focus wheel paper and began to draw and write the wheel.  If you don’t know about the focus wheel, look up my entry about the focus wheel so you can know what I’m doing if you want.  I began by stating with writing what I was actually feeling at the moment.  At 1 o’clock on the paper I write “I’m feeling like I fucked up the tickets and feel bad about it and am angry and frustrated.”  Then in my circle in the middle I wrote the opposite idea/feelings of what I wanted to feel at the end of the exercise and I wrote, “I know the Universe has my back and that I can create the feelings I want.  I’m feeling confident and know the future hold my heart’s desire…blah, blah.”  That’s pretty close.  Then I go back to 2 o’clock and write “I know that my loss of the tickets was not a personal one, that Harpo and Connie have very different points of view.  Then at 3 o’clock I write “I know my feelings can change quickly and as I write I’m already feeling a bit better” and so on and so on to 12 o’clock and feeling good again matching the feelings I wrote in the middle of the circle.  It’s a way to inch your way up the emotional scale.

What was amazing about this whole episode is that I realized that my feeling crappy the night before felt totally off and wrong for me.  I didn’t revert to that old worn overcoat of self loathing that was so familiar in a suckie sort of way.  It just felt wrong and “not me”.  Realizing that was big!  For the first time in my life, literally, feeling good is becoming a set point, a normal, and not feeling really good just wasn’t me any more. 

And learning that was well worth my Oprah tickets!

With Love, Connie

January 25th, 2010:  I need help!

I have just momentarily lost it!  For years I’ve been trying to get tickets to the Oprah Show.  Last week I went on line and discovered the window was open for all of February’s tapings.  So, I applied for all 22 tapings.

I just opened my email and discovered that my request was accepted!  Yes!!  Except that the deadline for confimation was this morning at 9 a.m.  OMG!!!  I”m in shock and emailed them directly.  They sent out the confirmation on Saturday afternoon.  I had already checked my email.  In the confirmation email they said that I had 42 hours to respond, which was not explained when placing my request.  Nor did they say they worked on the damn weekends.  Don’t those people ever go home?  I was not expecting to hear from them until tomorrow at the earliest.  Shit.

I am devastated and all my ability at the current moment to use all of my wonderful tools to feel better has flown out the window.  I just want to cry and pound my fist on something.

I promised myself I would make an entry today because I wanted to and wanted to do it before going to bed.  The entry was about a tool to feel better but I think I just want to feel pissed off for a minute or two.

Besides you know I’m human too and sometimes there is just nothing to do but let the feelings pass before I can move on.

Send some good thoughts to Harpo for me!

With Love, Connie

January 24th, 2010:  Tuning Up

OMG, feeling good is so important.  Feeling good means you are in sync for other good feeling things, people, events to come to you.  Feeling good means you are on the way to your dreams and really isn’t feeling good so much more preferable to feeling crappy or feeling blah.  Actually we have become used to feeling “blah” much of the time thinking that it’s just the way it is…..NOT.  Or at least it doesn’t have to be.  Some people just seem to pop from the womb feeling good.  There are those people in my life who are always up, always expect to find the parking spot and they DO!  It’s all about expectation.  But most of us have to learn to expect those good feelings and learn to expect those parking spaces.  I know.  I’m one of those people and I’ve done it.

So, there are several things you can do to amp up your feeling good vibrations and I practice all of them, some more than others.  I’ve already explained the focus wheel which is probably the single most powerful tool for me.  If you haven’t read that entry I invite you to do so.  Another thing I do almost daily is writing affirmations.  If I’m having a negative thought that is pestering me I can take that thought and turn it around 180 degrees and express that thought in a positive way.  If I’m fearful about an upcoming situation I can say to myself, “I know that the outcome of this meeting will be what is intended and I can relax and allow the Universe to be in charge.”  If I’m worried about my daughter I can say, “I know that she has a brilliant spirit and she will become who she is meant to be.”

There are endless ways to express affirmations and you will know if the affirmation is working for you literally by how it feels to you as you say it.  It will just speak to you if you get the right words.  Play with the words.  Words are very powerful in expressing energy and play with them until you get the feeling you are looking for of clarity and of knowing.  Louise Hay (see side bar) is the Queen of Affirmations and I encourage you to look at her material for further information and support regarding the use of affirmations.

The most important thing about affirmations other than it must be a “fit” for you, it must feel right, is that you must use the affirmation like a mantra.  When I began to use affirmations to reprogram some negative thinking I would say the affirmation over and over.  While I was walking my dog I would say a particular affirmation perhaps one hundred times.  Write it down and put it in a place you will see it over and over during the day.  Sing it in the shower.  Shout it in your car.  Say it in different rythms.  Affirmations are powerful, they do work, but they must become a part of you.

I have so much more to share with you and look for them beginning in the next entry. 

As I look back at even the past two months when I began this memoir I feel so much better.  I continue to have greater confidence in knowing that tomorrow may be even better than today.  And I promise you this did not come out of the blue.  I used the tools I’m giving you.

With Love, Connie

January 22, 2010:  It’s good to feel good

Isn’t it wonderful when you know that the absolutely best thing that you can do for yourself is to feel good!  We are so used to feeling so-so a lot of the time that we take it as “that’s the way it is.”  Well, it’s NOT, people, it’s just not.  For most of my life I experienced being happy or really feeling great as something that just happened to me and if I was looking for a reason it came from something outside of myself.  And then when that reason became diluted over hours or days then the good feelings went as well.  Feeling really good was always elusive to me.

From Louise Hay and Abraham (see side bar) I learned the important of my thoughts in creating my life and then began to see that feeling good was more than feeling good, it was a way to bring me my heart’s desire.  Law of Attraction shows us the energy we are putting out by simply looking at our current experience.   If we are putting out positive energy then we are likely to have cars that work, uplifting clerks, meet interesting people, etc.   If we are putting out a complaining, angry energy, a depressed energy then our lives will likely be unhappy as well.  Angry energy, depressed energy brings us traffic jams, people angry with us, crabby clerks, lost, keys, etc.  Being in sync with our dreams brings us the parking place we need, the friends we want, interesting people, great food, green lights.  And it brings us this on our way to showing us our dreams.  I’m sure you can think of examples of your own.

For me, daughter of a depression mother, a bible belt mother, feeling good was not really high on the list of what was important in life.  She literally said to me and I’m sure this sounds common, “Life isn’t a bowl of cherries.”  Plus the fun thing just sounds too close to sin.  So, for me to finally get it that feeling good is important was big. 

I remember the specific moment when I had that ah-ha moment about the importance of enjoying myself and having fun connected at a deep level with having my soul’s desire.  I felt tears on my face in the recognition of truth and of the love in the Universe.

I’ve reached a point in my journey from depression where I’m much more confident in my ability to feel good.  I have used the focus wheel (see yesterday’s entry) to get myself to a good feeling place every morning and am finally waking up actually looking forward to doing the focus wheel to feel even better!  Practicing on feeling good has kept me in the feel good place long enough that I know good things are in my future and feeling good is the best way for my path to emerge.  The better it gets the better it gets.  That was my path emerging this week.  I’ve come a long way.

In my next entry I’ll share with you some of the tools I use to keep myself feeling good.

With Love, Connie

January 20, 2010:  Focus into the day

The single most important thing we can do to create the lives we want is to begin to focus.  Focus on the positive rather than the negative.  Focus on what we want rather that what we don’t want.  Focus rather that let just anything going on around us to steer our attention for us.

Trouble is, most of us aren’t used to focusing.  It’s a muscle we learn to use and, like most people, we need a really good reason to change if we are going to do anything different.  Change can be uncomfortable, takes effort, blah, blah.  Yuk. 

I began to focus in earnest about 3 years ago when I had had all the therapy any human being could tolerate and still was unhappy.  I knew therapy was not the answer and at about the same time, knowing I was looking for some help, the Universe led me to Louise Hay in a book display at a spa I was visiting.  I got the message, said thanks Universe and took Louise home with me.  If you don’t know about Louise look at her website through the side bar on this page.  She is very big on changing how you think to change your life.  I began “reprogramming” my brain and changing the messages I was sending to myself.  In short, I found her methods very effective.  Through her web site I found Jerry and Esther Hicks and the teachings of Abraham and learned more about how important it is to feel good and also gathered tools to help me feel better.  The focus wheel is one of them.

During the past months when I was so very depressed about no longer having my job of 32 years and feeling totally lost, I began doing daily focus wheels.  I found them a grounding mechanism for beginning my day and now I use them as a ritual along with meditation to begin my day feeling as good as I can.  Please refer to yesterday’s entry for how to construct a focus wheel. 

Every morning I use a blank artist’s sketchbook and using it horizontally I draw a circle in the middle of the page.  In that circle I write how I want to feel.  It usually goes something like, “I enter my day with a sense of growing freedom.  My joy increases in finding new ways to being richly in the moment and embracing the Now.  I’m more eager, more positive, more confident that the year ahead is awesome and I can excitedly watch my path emerge.  My path is beginning to rise to the surface.”  This was my entry for January 16th.  The statements of what you want need not be that lengthy. 

Then I draw a line to 1 o’clock and write how I’m actually feeling in the moment.  I wrote, “I wake feeling blank but ready to “rise”.  My line to 2 o’clock says, “I’m more confident of my ability to enter my body and find good feelings.”  3 o’clock says “I’m beginning to know that good feelings are becoming more normal for me.”  With every line I stretch into more statements of how I’m feeling better and then my last statement is, “It’s fun to wake knowing I can get to a place of freedom and jou and also know that that in my natural state of Being.”

Remember that each statement has to ring true in order to be helpful.  Clearly I’m feeling much better now but my focus wheels two months ago were from my going from being very empty tearful and afraid at 1 0’clock to finally arriving at being willing to accept my feelings and being tender with myself believing but not knowing yet that things would get better for me…and they did.

Why is it important to feel good.  Ahhhh, that’s next.

With Love, Connie

January 19th, 2010:  Focus on What is Wanted

I don’t know what I would have done these past months to get me to a better feeling place if I hadn’t used the focus wheel daily.  It’s still how I begin each day and remains a central way I use to ramp of energy to a feel good place or to change my feelings to a better feeling place.

If you are feeling depressed using the focus wheel is not about feeling great but it is about experiencing some relief and once you have the experience of having a bit of control that can be a big deal if it has not seemed to you that you have control over the way you feel.  Learning to change the way you feel is a powerful tool and can feel liberating as well.

Each subject is really two subjects, that which is wanted and that which is not wanted.  So if  you are not feeling good and would like to feel better it is crucial to first identify the feeling and what the feeling is about. 

For example I notice after I have just had lunch with my daughter that I’m feeling a bit anxious.   I connect my anxiety with worrying about my daughter not having enough money, not seeming to be taking good care of the money she has and not  feeling happy with her current situation.   So then I’m worried if she is going to get herself “launched” and be self supporting.  And I wonder if I somehow messed up my job as mother by not teaching her better  about money management.   You get the picture and it is a real one for me.

I can do a focus wheel to get myself to a better feeling place.  The most important part of the exercise is to identify what you are feeling and why.  Then figure out how you want to feel instead.  Remember, you are not fixing the situation.  You are only wanting to feel better about what is.  

Take a blank piece of paper, printer copier paper is excellent and using the paper horizontally  draw a 3-4 inch circle in the middle.  Inside the circle write what is wanted.  In this case what I write is “I know that Meredith (daughter) can find her way in the world and that she is very talented and I’m very proud of her. ”

There are any number of things that could go into this center circle but the important thing is to write what is wanted and what you actually have control over and this is your feelings.  

Next make a line from the center of the circle straight up to a 1 o’clock position and at 1 o’clock write what you are actually feeling now.   Like, “I’m worried that Meredith is never going to be able to support herself and be happy and I’ve failed as a Mother”…or something like that, whatever fits.  Then draw a line to 2 o’clock and write something that feels just a little better.  The crucial thing here is that it really has to ring true to you and really feel better.   Something like, “I have had this feeling before and the situation with Meredith will change and we will both feel better.”  Now that is true and I’ve found just a bit of relief. 

Then, draw a line to 3 o’clock and write something which will inch you up the emotional ladder a bit more.  Like, “She doesn’t handle her money like I do but she is a responsible person and she has done pretty well for herself so far.”  Then I draw another line to 4 o’clock and inch a bit further with “I know she is a very talented young woman and will find herself because she wants that for herself even more that I want it for her and I know she will do just that.”   And so on. 

Your sheet will look like a sunburst clock with better and better feeling statements around the outside of the wheel as you inch yourself forward.   My last statement may look something like, “I feel really good now and I know that as her mother to feel good myself is the very best that I can do to help her as well as hold her in the light that I truly see her, a bright spirit who is on her way to discovering who she is.

I hope this is helpful.  It takes practice.  Leave me a comment or question and I will do my best to answer.  In my next entry I will give you another example, a wheel that I do every day for myself when I wake in the morning.

With Love, Connie

January 17, 2010:  It’s all about focusing

Most of us don’t understand the power of our thoughts in a creative sense.   Most of us don’t give a lot of thought about where we are giving our attention and just allow whatever happens around us to set our feeling state for us.  We just kind of expect to feel so-so a lot of the time and if things are good then great and if we don’t feel so hot we just wait to allow something else to come along to feed us something better.  How we feel seems many times like it is dependent on things/events/people outside of ourselves.  In that way we create by default and not purposefully.

I’ve believed for a long time in the power of focus and to be aware of what I am giving my attention.  When I was still employed as a non profit executive director I was in contact with many bureaucracies and many of these contacts carried varying degrees of negative energy and frustration on my part.   I did what I could to mediate the consequences by taking walks during the day, taking time to meditate at my desk and even going to the gym but I knew I didn’t have the time I needed to really do the kind of focus work I thought I was needing.  I would daydream about being a cloistered nun for awhile or staying in an ashram.  Just get me out of here!

And then wonder of wonders my asking was answered and I was given the opportunity to create a new life.  The details of how this came about while interesting, are not on point here.  The point being I had lots of time and I simply had to learn to focus because I was in a very dark place and very much wanted to feel better.  I knew that some of that feeling better would just require time and grieving but I also knew that everything I could do to focus my energy into a better feeling place would be the best use of that energy.

Paying attention to how I feel and feeling the very best that I can has become my #1 priority.  I finally get how powerful this is and how crucial to what comes into my life.  On days I feel shitty I notice that Dudie (bff dog) and I meet the aggressive dog in a muzzle on the elevator, have near misses in traffic, seem to get the crabby check out clerks, can’t find the parking spot.  When I’m feeling good, things just roll better, I get the green lights, the person to open the door at the elevator when I’m loaded down with groceries, the most friendly people on the street.  Law of Attraction in action.

One guy said to Abraham (see side bar),  “but when I focus it doesn’t feel good.”  Abraham explained that when we are not used to focussing then our base line beliefs have created a strong point of attraction that holds us at a certain point and when we attempt to focus away from that point we feel the pull and it can be challenging.  It just takes practice.  I can attest to that.  If you look back at my blog entries I was waking up in fear and emptiness consistently for months until I began to grow away from that pattern.  Our brains need to literally create new thought pathways so our neurons can fire in different directions creating different feelings in the wake.  Our brain chemistry can become addicted to firing in certain set patterns that feel “normal” to us even if it leaves us feeling crappy.

I’m going to share with you what I do and have done to help create these new pathways and tools to use in learning to focus.  I’ll begin with the
Focus Wheel next time.

With Love, Connie

January 15th, 2010:  Happy Birthday

Today is the 25th Birthday of my daughter.  She has been the greatest single teacher of my life.  This week there is much to celebrate because she is taking steps towards manifesting her dreams and that makes a mom happy.

I remember being terrified in my early twenties because I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life.  She has had her share of anxiety about her future.  In a way things have been more easy and more difficult for her.  More easy because she has parents who are willing to be patient and trusting in her process even when she doesn’t and providing a safety net for her.  More difficult because there are many more choices for her than there appeared to be for me.

It was assumed that I would go to college, perhaps graduate school and find a ‘professional career.  There was never any doubt about my education.  Daughter Meredith was a different story.  She had about 2 and 1/2 years of art school before calling it quits and then time working at non traditional jobs where she felt she could keep her sanity.

She taught me to be patient and to trust that she could and would figure out what her passion was and allow it to lay a course for her.  There were times when I had fears about my parenting…should I have kicked her out?  Was I making it too easy on her?   All fear based thoughts and feelings on my part.  I watched as my friend’s children finished college, found great, well paying jobs and are standing firmly on their own.  My baby was at home still germinating.

I continued to remind myself what I believe.  And that was that my path as well as her path would reveal itself as we are ready.   I had to keep telling myself that she was not the only hold out in the Universe that would prove this wrong.

And so let the celebration roll today, the day of the 25th anniversary of her entrance into this world.  Her pathis lighting up for her.  She’s happy.  Mom sure is happy too.  We will both create the lives we want.  2010 is looking good.

With Love, Connie