I’ve decided to stop starting my day with a news commentary and instead turn on my dance playlist, while I jog. As I continued to feel anger, discontent, anxiety, again I had to get back to basics. Listening to my playlist, instead of the news, was my first step. These are other thoughts I had.
When confronted with someone I don’t agree with, silently wish them well.
When I focus on what I want, I see more of it. Why dwell on what ticks me off? All it does is keep me stuck in my anger.
Why are we sharing the fear, rage, indignation on social media? Do we really think we are going to change someone’s mind? All it does is give more power and attention to the rage. And what we are upset about, grows because we have given it so much power.
Instead of engaging in arguments, pray for peace. Send love to yourself, to others, to the world.
I had a wonderful Zoom call with two of my closest friends, Mary and Kate. Kate reminded me that the Ho’oponopono practice for forgiveness and reconciliation is powerful. I started practicing again. It made me think about this wonderful story about how a Doctor healed an entire ward of the criminally insane. This story was told to me years ago but I found information on this page, if interested. http://healingearth.info/hooponopono/
We talked about how the more we dig our heels in, the more WE continue the divide. Division is a lower vibration and things will only get worse.
Mary reminded me of a happy memory we shared. I have shared this often and feel the need to share it again. Doing the activity taught me, by direct experience, the power of our attention.
We were taking a Foundations for Living class. We had an amazing teacher, Maureen, who told us to go out that week and see how many Mercedes cars we noticed. Those were her only instructions.
The following week, during our next class, she asked us how many Mercedes cars we saw. We both shared with her that we saw tons! She then looked at us and asked us how many junk cars did we see. We couldn’t remember seeing any.
Our next assignment for the week was to count how many junk cars we saw.
As you might imagine, she wanted to know how many junk cars we saw. Again, we both shared that we saw a lot! When asked how many Mercedes cars we saw, Mary and I didn’t recall seeing any.
For the two of us, this lesson was powerful and life changing. With practice, I realized that many times it was as simple as a snap of a finger. I would make a decision to change my focus and my perspective and happiness greatly improved. I once started going down a dark tunnel because I went to see a “healer” but the person gave me bad information. I allowed her words to affect me and it was all I could think about. It was Maureen who reminded me that, because of my focus on it, I was picking up all of this energy surrounding the issue. That night, I completely changed my focus, disregarded the “healer” experience, and affirmed my happiness and joy in my present moment. Like a flip of the switch.
It starts with us and it can then spread. But we need to rise up and be love. What does love look like for me? For you? We are ALL in this together – all of us.
These are just some ideas. What are yours?