It’s almost Thanksgiving and this time of year, as we gather close to our families and friends, we focus our attention on the expression of gratitude.
This year I want to add a new twist to Gratitude.
Gratitude is defined as:
“a feeling of thankful appreciation for favors or benefits received; thankfulness”
Almost all the definitions of gratitude I found had the same quality of expressing thanks for things received or for blessings. Gratitude implies being thankful for something “good”.
Sometimes we are faced with circumstances that seem truly terrible and we struggle to find the “good” in the situation. It’s hard to imagine feeling grateful for an icky boss, financial worries or even the loss or illness of a child.
When you look for the “good” in a situation it implies that there is good and bad and you have to sort through the “bad” to find the “good”.
Today I invite you to think about this powerful question:
What if it is all good?
We are infinitely wise beings.
When we choose to incarnate as people on this planet, most of us perceive only a portion of our soul essence in our incarnated form. But, even though we perceive ourselves to be “only human”, we are expanded Beings of Light, here on this planet to serve God by being on the leading edge of consciousness.
What does that mean?
You are a large, wise being whose job it is to serve God by thinking, desiring and creating. As you think, desire and create, you are helping God.
Everything in your life, you created to help yourself grow and evolve. Your Bigger You, your Higher Self, as we sometimes call it, is working with your human self to help you create experiences that further your growth and consciousness expansion. Your Higher Self is always “talking” to you using the Language of Emotions.
Learning to use your Mind and listen to your emotions (The language of your Higher Self) to create a life you truly desire is a skill that can help you radically create experiences that are in alignment with what you truly desire. Your focus, deliberate thoughts and intentions allow you to co-create your reality with your Higher Self, instead of feeling like a hapless victim of your reality.
So, think about this for a minute. If your life is being directed and co-created by Big You and Human You with the purpose of helping you grow and expand, every situation you are creating is, by nature “good”, because it is helping you grow.
Now I know, both from deep personal experience and from hearing your stories, it is very easy to question the “wisdom” of your Higher Self who is working with you to further your evolution. I mean, why would you intentionally create painful situations, health challenges, financial struggles, etc.? It’s easy to wonder if your Higher Self has lost its mind!
The secret to understanding the infinite wisdom of the Higher Self is to stop placing a value judgment on an experience or circumstance. If we can stop thinking of things as “good” or “bad”, it makes it easier for us to find the lesson and the importance of the experience.
Remember, it’s all good!
In Prosperity Boot Camp, I teach the Law of Focused Success:
“Where You Put Your Energy And Attention Is Where You Get Growth”
When you embrace all of life’s experiences and focus on the intention of growth and expansion, by the Law of Focused Success, you get more growth and expansion.
When you resist the experience and spend your time and energy on hating all the aspects of your life circumstances, unconsciously, you are growing more resistance and experiencing more aspects of your “problem” that you hate.
Now think about this for a moment. Emotions are simply different vibrational levels. Joyful emotions are faster and therefore lighter and more expansive by nature. Sadness, anger and grief are slower vibrations and are felt as being dense and heavy.
When we are feeling joyful, we vibrate so quickly and expansively that we want to “dance for joy” and we feel light on our feet.
When we feel sad, we feel “heavy” with sorrow and our energy goes away.
Joy causes an expansion (growth) of our essence and sadness manifests as a contraction (decrease) of our essence.
If the purpose of life is growth and expansion (our service to God), then our goal is to move more closely to the fullest expression of our joy. That takes a little attitudinal adjustment sometimes!
It’s Okay To Feel “Bad”
I want to make one important point here. One of the things I see happening in the “New Thought” or “New Age” consciousness movement is this strong focus on positive thinking and happy thoughts. What I have witnessed and even sometimes have felt myself is the belief that it is not “okay” to feel bad or sad or even to struggle.
Working towards the fullest expression of joy is our goal. Please note that I am not in any way suggesting that this is not true. But, we are where we are. And, like it or not, life will do what it does and sometimes we get curve balls like unexpected illnesses, tragedies and even deaths we didn’t anticipate.
Sometimes you will feel frustrated, angry, stuck, despairing. If it’s all good, then feeling “bad” is also all totally okay. It is all too easy to get into a terrible emotional rut when you feel bad and walk around focusing on your “stuckness” and just create more sadness, anger, frustration, etc.
Remember, where you put your energy and attention is where you get results.
If you are resisting where you are at the moment, you will really struggle with moving towards joyful expression. Allow yourself to feel what you feel. Recognize that those feelings are telling you that you want something different than what you are experiencing and allow yourself to begin to think about what you would like to be experiencing instead.
Our “bad” feelings are simply our Higher Self communicating with us and helping us clarify what we really want.
If you are in a situation you hate, it is important to identify the fact that you don’t feel good in the situation. Noticing that you are feeling dense feelings will allow yourself to get really clear about what you don’t want to be experiencing and also, hopefully, start getting more clarity about what you do want to be experiencing.
Just shifting your focus toward what you do want will begin the process of moving yourself closer to your growth and expansion and consequently, you will begin to feel better.
It is hard to change a situation you hate. When you hate your conditions, you are focusing on all the things you don’t like and don’t want. According to the Law of Focused Success, the only thing you are growing when you are focusing on how “bad” things are and how much you hate them, is more “bad” and hateful experiences.
And you know you don’t want more of that, right?
So, if you are in the middle of a situation you hate, the key to catapulting yourself out of it and into a different reality and experience is to begin to appreciate the conditions you are in.
When you are focusing on all the things you appreciate about your circumstances, you are putting your attention and energy into growing more opportunities to experience that which you appreciate, instead of icky stuff you hate.
So how does this look in real life?
Let’s say you are in the middle of transitioning out of a job you hate. Maybe you inherited this business from your father when he passed away and you felt obligated to carry on.
You have informed your employees and clients that you are closing the business and several of your key employees have left. Your clients are freaking out and pressuring you to close out their contracts because they are afraid you will bail on them, even though you intend to honor your commitments.
You are overworked, tired, frustrated and hate the situation you are in. But, you feel strongly that you have to honor your agreements and fulfill your contracts as part of closing your business.
If you are resisting the process and focusing on all the aspects of the situation you hate, you will only create more tension, stress and unpleasantness for yourself and maybe even for the few employees who are still hanging out with you.
When you go home, you might feel over-stimulated and grouchy and you snap at your kids and your partner, who in turn react by treating you in ways that don’t feel supportive.
You stop taking care of your body (too busy), smoke a lot (stress), sleep fitfully (more stress) and the situation just gets more and more intense as you grow in your hatred of the situation.
You can see how difficult it is to change the experience of the situation when the focus is on what you don’t want. And, by the Law of Focused Success you might even create more struggle, stress and hardship by really directing energy and attention to all the things you really hate about your circumstances.
Imagine how different your experience might be if your focus was here instead:
“How wonderful that I have had this wonderful employment that has created the financial resources that helped me buy a nice home and provide for my children.”
“As I pay these bills, I am so grateful to have been served by all of these wonderful vendors who have helped me grow my business.”
“What wonderful employees I have. They have stayed with me even through the darkest moments of my business.”
“I really appreciate my clients. They have given me years of opportunities to share my wisdom and knowledge. I truly appreciate their deep commitment to detail and how they always ask me for more information to make sure that our project works beautifully as it serves others.”
“What a great desk chair! It has molded itself to my body and holds me up so comfortably…”
“I really appreciate my Higher Self. He has created a wonderful opportunity for me to grow and expand my experience here in this life. I am so clever to create this growth for myself!”
Can you see how when your focus is on all things that are working and finding aspects of appreciation, even in the things that seem challenging, how your focus is on creating more experiences that you appreciate?
If you are in a situation you hate and struggling to find your way out, shift your focus on all the things you appreciate about the situation. It isn’t until you fall in love with your situation that you will see real change. The more you focus on what you appreciate and love about your situation, the more you will create opportunities for yourself to experience more and more joy, growth and expansion.
Remember, it’s all good!
Love,
Karen
