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Peace, Love and Increase (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Which world will you live in today? The one that tempts you to enter and create through negative thoughts, fear and doubt or the  one that quietly beckons you toward peace, love, happiness and joy?

Commit just for today to gently watch your inner world and softly shift it each time a negative or fear filled thought or feeling arises. Breathe, let go, choose love, appreciation, gratitude—just for one moment and then the next and the next.

Commit to building a resonance of inner  peace and happiness through each moment, just for today. Decide to paint an inner landscape of hope, love, peace and ease—-breathe, let go into a world that YOU choose.

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Image by aivas14 via Flickr

As the pace of the holiday busyness picks up, remember to take steps to replenish your energy so you can enjoy all there is to experience… fully in the present moment… building new memories to store in your heart.

• Breathe feelings of gratitude through your heart.
• Intentionally drop out of your head into your heart often today.
• Remember a happy time, feel the feelings of that time.

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Image via Wikipedia

Many people have commented to me that they find it hard to know where to begin to focus on gratitude or appreciation when there is so much stress in the world. So if you are in a dark or stressful time how can you begin?

Some simple questions can begin to help you turn the corner to feeling more gratitude and to get a positive flow of energy coursing through you being!

What or who can I be grateful for?

What or who in my life can I really appreciate?

Remember to think broadly. We live life moment by moment; the huge awards, recognition, and great ‘deals’ are not daily fare. While it is wonderful to celebrate those and enjoy them, there is something about feeling the emotions of gratitude and appreciation that connects you to the deeper rhythms of life and offers more juice, feeling and vitality—the real stuff of being human — a source of a different type of meaning, satisfaction and fulfillment. That it not to say that material success is wrong, or to be turned away from, only that too much attention in that direction can result in dissonance that leaves a person empty and longing rather than fulfilled.

So find something wonderful about the moment you are in …the warmth of the sun, the crispness of the air, the beauty of the sky. Where can you find beauty today? Where can you find the touch of peace? What do you see that warms your heart? Do you have a favorite memory that brings feelings of love, peace or happiness to your heart?

Before you go to sleep tonight identify five things that made you happy, feel complete or that you appreciated. Remember to count yourself … things you value about YOU!   Use your memory to call up images of times when you felt grateful…play those over and over instead of the wouldas, couldas, shouldas that tend to rumble around in our minds!

Lack anywhere in your life is a reflection of the state of your vital life force and how you are managing it. Energy flows where your attention goes.  So, focusing on feeling appreciation for what you do have, including the special people in your life and
expressing gratitude for your blessings regularly, builds healthy energy and paves the way for more good to come to you.  The same thing happens with stress, frustration, anxiety, worry, anger, etc.  Whatever you focus on is what shows up.  It’s similar to the glass half-full/half-empty concept.  We can choose to consciously focus on the beneficial things that are happening and create a way for more of them to come or we can dwell on all of the things that aren’t perfect and encourage a negative stream of events.

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Image by Hendie Dijkman via Flickr

At this time of the year we begin to turn our attention to the upcoming holidays and all that they mean. Of course there is the busyness, shopping and increased social commitments. But there is also a deeper current available at this time of year. It seems that many of us feel that current and yearn to connect with it as it seems to promise a more fulfilling state of being than the one we generally get caught up in during this time.

At the first of these holidays, Thanksgiving, our thoughts turn to menu planning, travel and seating arrangements, invitations and how to get it all done in the midst of an already busy life! The deeper feelings of gratitude and appreciation symbolized by this
day get a passing nod in media hype, a brief grace said at the dinner table or in a lament about not having the time to pay attention to those aspects of life!  There are many reasons for this but perhaps the key issue is a lack of understanding regarding the real influence of these feelings.

Gratitude and appreciation are emotions, feeling states that have been studied at length and have been shown to profoundly impact our physical, spiritual and emotional health. When you experience them your heart rhythms change, your nervous system becomes more coherent and your whole physiology behaves differently—all in the direction of health and more efficient functioning. Why would you not want to engage in an activity that is so simple, pleasant and easy and promises to provide such benefit? There are no gym fees, heavy sweating or big chunks of time taken out of your schedule. It merely requires a desire to take charge of your own mind, learn how it functions and point it in the direction you wish instead of allowing it to run amok in its conditioned default patterns. The feelings of gratitude and appreciation set up a vibration within you that are worth the price of admission to make them the standard instead of a sometime event!

How can you make time to center in gratitude and appreciation throughout your day?

A Halloween sign, from a shop in Northern London. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the latest challenges was the October Nor’easter that swept through New England last weekend. I (Peg) happened to be in NYC and was caught off-guard. Following a gorgeous late October Friday, the wet and heavy snow felt a bit surreal as we were suddenly plunged into winter. Sloshing through city streets with umbrellas blowing and wearing shoes instead of boots was not fun. The next day was gorgeous again: a clear blue and sun glistening through foliage. As we traveled north, however, a different picture emerged. Abandoned cars on snowy roadways and fallen trees soon gave way to long gas lines that reminded me of the 1970’s energy crisis. We knew something more had happened. Power was out throughout parts of NY, CT, MA and NH. Luckily we were able to fill the gas tank just when we needed it.

We arrived home to no power and an hour’s light left. Since our town felt like a war zone with extensive damage to trees and power lines, we decided to pack our bags for a Tuesday trip to CA and head further north where things were operating fine. I spent Monday with a client near the NH seacoast. By mid-day the snow had melted and everyone was preparing for Halloween. Simultaneously, Halloween was quickly being rescheduled in areas hard hit by the storm. Very early Tuesday morning we traveled back home and emptied our refrigerator by flashlight. Three days without power were beginning to take its toll on the refrigerator. Later in the day we arrived in San Diego, a world apart from the one we left behind, where five days later the power remains out in many areas. Along the way, our connecting flight was cancelled due to a maintenance issue. The two-hour delay gave us time to slow down, enjoy a meal and people-watch in Phoenix.

It’s been a whirlwind week with many experiences of energy extremes: calm vs. stormy weather, cool vs. warm temperatures, East vs. West coast, city energy vs. country vs. seacoast, the generosity of friends and neighbors, and more. I used much of the time to observe and study energy …energy of the environment, the weather, people, and people’s reactions to events, as well as my own feelings and reactions to the circumstances and events around me. I consciously pulled my energy in while riding the NYC subway and allowed it to expand and soak up the energy of the NH seacoast as well as the coastline of southern CA. I was grateful to one neighbor for clearing our driveway of fallen tree branches before we returned home on Sunday and for another driving us to the airport Tuesday morning. I was also grateful that we found gas exactly when we needed it on our return trip from NYC and to the airline customer service rep for rescheduling us on the next flight to San Diego after the cancelled flight. We were delighted to find our luggage waiting for us when we arrived and now look forward to visiting our West Coast family and friends.

We are clearly living through changing times. An effective response is to be flexible and adaptable. Know that plans may change at any time. Be open to the unexpected and maintain a sense of curiosity about what it may bring. Notice your reactions and feelings. If you find yourself getting tense or feeling stressed, breathe. Take a step back, reflect about what is going on and more importantly, notice your reaction to what is occurring. You may not be able to change what is happening, but you are in charge of your reaction to it. Use these changing times to practice going with the flow. Be flexible, kind, compassionate, and patient. Adapt to each situation at hand based on what is happening in the moment. You may find it’s an easier way to live.

I have heard many times that emotional imbalances are the root of all illness. It follows that when we dissolve or heal the emotional trigger, we heal ourselves. It sounds easy. In my opinion, however, it is a life-long process. Learning to heal our emotional wounds is what our lives are all about. Every event, interaction and relationship provides ample opportunity for practice.

One of the dilemmas is that the root causes of the triggers are often held in our subconscious, out of our awareness. So how can we deal with something that we aren’t even aware of? This is the Catch 22, the ago-old dilemma. After all, if we were aware of what needed to change, we could choose to change it. Correct? We could also save ourselves a lot of anguish, money, time and energy along the way.

Perhaps one of the problems is that we are using the wrong approach and incorrect tools. Rather than try to continually “do” something or “fix” yourself, maybe the solution is really to simply “be” who you really are. Being who you really are begins with accepting wherever you’re at right now. Accept and acknowledge how you are truly feeling. Once you accept things as they are, resistance falls away and a shift toward wholeness begins.

Accepting things as they are requires accepting personal responsibility for your role in it. This includes your perception of what is happening as well as your reaction to the world around you, particularly judgment of others. Play with the concept that others around you mirror what is happening and provide clues about what you need to accept, acknowledge, shift or change. Play with the concept that no one does anything to you. Those around you are merely a catalyst for things you are doing to yourself or aspects of yourself that you have hidden away. Acceptance and forgiveness provide the way out.

Play with the concept of softening your heart; practice being aware of your experiences and your feelings. Your feelings provide the clues. Any negative, low, tense or dense feelings indicate opportunities for change. Lighter, higher, and happier feelings move you up the scale towards unconditional love.

Healing our hearts in not about always being happy though. We are human. We will have ups and downs throughout our lives. If you can genuinely experience three times as many ups as downs, though, you will be well on your way to healing your heart.

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Deutsch: Phrenologie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our conscious mind habitually tends to focus on what is not going well, what is NOT present in our lives that we desire, or what is outwardly not contributing to our health, happiness and harmony.   The result is preoccupations anchored in fear, misdirected passion, power struggles, relationship and identity problems.

Practicing gratitude and appreciation opens our hearts, restructures our inner landscape and provides the means to develop self love and self acceptance, as well as to embrace the duality of life rather than be caught in the separatism of the ego with its judgments of good and bad, black and white. As a result, we become much more capable of having a direct, full, rich experience of all of life from a place of strength.Expanding the innate power of our heart’s capacity provides us with the ability to move beyond the stress and fatigue born of judgment and analysis into the ease and pleasure of acceptance, compassion and wisdom.

Cover via Amazon

“My message is always the same: to cultivate and practice love, kindness, compassion and tolerance.” Dalai Lama

This timely quote from the Dalai Lama came to me this morning through HeartMath.

Have you heard the phrase “thoughts create things?” I am a firm believer that words create things too. Tune into the words all around you … your words, others’ words, the words you see and hear.  Notice the messages being conveyed. More importantly, observe how the words both reflect and amplify what is happening. Do the words give power to what we want or are they strengthening the circumstances we wish to change?

Expressing oneself authentically can be a tricky process. How do we consciously choose words that reflect good feelings when our experience is so different?  This is where the cultivation and practice of love, kindness, compassion and tolerance can make a difference. And it begins deep within oneself. One way to begin is to omit the “no’s.” One friend recently lamented: “No job, no prospects, no income.” Well this will probably continue to be the case until this person consciously shifts her energy. A way to express this with more self compassion might be: I’m ready for a job, job prospects and income! Instead of saying “I’m not …,” began to say “I AM …”

Like anything new, there’s a learning curve. Observe everyone and imitate people who communicate effectively in a loving and compassionate manner. Each day provides ample opportunities to learn from others … your family and friends, your workplace, the supermarket and retail centers, public events, community gatherings, the media. Listen with open ears and an open heart. What feels genuine? How can you empathize with others without joining them in a spiral-down conversation? What new ways can you communicate without complaining? There are lots of ways to go about this and there are some wonderful role models. Look for them and I guarantee you will find them. Learn some new approaches and become a role model for others. Two people I admire are Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer. Both have a way of being truly present with people, feeling their pain and conveying their experience with kindness, love and compassion.

Like everything, words carry energy and are quite powerful. Choose your words consciously to cultivate and practice love, kindness, compassion and tolerance. Each day brings an opportunity to develop your skill and get a little better at it. Before long it will be a habit. As your habit strengthens it will become a belief. Once it is a belief, it will become imprinted in your cells and be automatically reflected in your words and actions.

Language is an amazing tool that can change the world and we can all participate. BE the change you wish to see in the world and eventually it will be reflected in your life.

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Heart-shaped cloud (Photo credit: aivas14)

The pulsations of our hearts are an intelligent language that influences how we perceive and react to the world. When we focus in the heart and produce coherent rhythms we see more clearly, are less influenced by the primitive brain and are more open to receiving input from our higher centers. This input has wisdom and creativity that our lower brain centers are not capable of. We can consciously develop the wisdom of the heart to help create more meaningful, satisfying and loving lives.