So many times in our life we are distracted by life itself.  We are busy running around and “getting things done” and soon, without realizing what has happened, we have allowed our attitudes and our feelings to be dictated to us by our situation.  Now, there are times when tremendous growth can happen in these circumstances. Nevertheless, if we allow ourselves to remain stuck, we hinder our progress towards the life we want to experience.  Essentially, we lose our power because we forget we have it.

There are many people each day who provide us with regular reminders of how we should be living our lives.  For most of us, family members, friends and authority figures (such as parents, bosses, teachers, and group leaders) are of course the ones that are the most frequent and vocal.  They tell us what we should do, how we should look, what we should value and a whole host of other programming that is not always in our best interest.  There is a great deal of emphasis placed upon conforming to the norms of the group (e.g. family, social group, workplace, church, community organization) or society at large (through various advertisements and media).  Limiting the pursuit of our desires and remaining in our comfort zone by conforming can leave us feeling empty, alone and unfulfilled even though our actions are completely approved by “the group”.

One of the best things we can do for our selves to “weather the storm” is to re-focus our energy and attention on what we want.
As was mentioned in the post about Spiritual Resolutions “energy flows where attention goes” yet so often our focus is in the wrong direction or on the wrong things.  If we are so overwhelmed with all that is going “wrong” in our lives, we will simply attract more of that.

If we feel like we never have enough money, we never will.

if we feel like we just can’t have the body we want we can get close but not achieve our goal.

If we feel like we’re never going to find that one person who we were meant to share our life with, we’ll have some good relationships but we’ll always feel like there is something missing.

If we are to experience the life we want to live our desire has to be more powerful than any guilt we feel about it.  It’s not difficult to understand why we might feel guilty.  So often we are taught that having individual wants and needs make us “selfish” or “self-centered.”  We are scolded for putting our needs ahead of others and not sacrificing ourselves so that others close to us can feel more comfortable or so that we are not ‘making waves’ for the group.  The conflict or contrast we feel in these situations causes us to feel that things are not right in our world when in fact it is only our perspective of the situation that has us upset; our perspective is the only thing that causes us to delay the realization of our desires.

Much of our incorrect perspective comes from our programming.  This is very similar to what we experience when using a computer or a smart phone.  Although we may see on the screen the particular thing we are doing (e.g. browsing the internet, checking email) this is only the conscious part of the electronic device.  Behind what we see on the screen, in the “background” or subconscious, are many other programs running that determine how quickly the computer responds, how our work is being saved and recorded, and how we connected through the internet to the webpage or email server that is providing the information we view on the screen.  We work in exactly the same way and our background programming (our subconscious) is doing a lot to affect our experience even if we are not aware of it.  When we become aware and adjust that background programming, our experience changes.

Something recently happened with my girlfriend and I that demonstrates this principle perfectly.  She was trying to make some flight arrangements on-line and the total bill was going to be just over $2,000 for all the tickets.  She was panicking.  We had expected the total to be around $1,500 to stay within the amount we had budgeted for that trip.  We discussed several options about ways we could reduce the other costs associated with the trip to get us back to our budget.  Every idea we had made her more uncomfortable because it was less than what she desired.  In fact, the way she was reacting would be interpreted by most people as being self-centered or selfish or even stubborn.

And then, something very cool happened; we took our focus off the details, committed our energy to getting what we wanted, and then let it go.  The next day she sent me a text message and asked me to purchase the tickets.  When I sat down to do it, I thought of a new way to arrange the flights we needed that was a bit “out of the box” but elegantly solved some logistical issues we were trying to overcome.  The final bill for the trip?  Just over $1,400.

These types of results in “stressful” situations happen in our lives all the time – we just don’t notice them if we are not aware of our surroundings.  Sometimes we see them as small victories like finding that front row parking spot in the pouring rain.  Other times we see them as big victories like recovering from a debilitating illness with no clear medical explanation.  To the universe, our desires have no magnitude; we can have anything and everything we want if our intention…our desire…is clear.

When we get to the point of “giving up” on what we want out of frustration, we sometimes have what I call the Rubber Band Effect: we snap back into a  huge surge of desire for what we think we’ve lost.  We are able to focus completely on how it feels to have what we want and not on the details of how it’s going to happen.   This is what happened for my girlfriend and I with the plane tickets and it is the true power of our co-creative ability.  Having that laser type focus on what we want without allowing doubts to cloud our vision makes our message to the universe abundantly clear and it responds in kind providing our desires sometimes in ways much better than we imagined they would manifest.

So the next time things do not go as we hoped or expected in our lives it is important that we slow down and “check in” on our awareness.  Is there a lesson we need to learn?  Do we have more work to do to clear some of our hindering beliefs or previous programming?  Are we being clear and standing in our truth about what we desire in spite of what others say?

Being aware of ourselves is the key to progressing in our journey and, every time we are aware, we realize that All Is Well.