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