How do you increase love in your life? Well, if you believe, as I do, that love is an actiona and a choice, then you can choose to have more love. Now I will reaffirm my belief that you cannot receive love if you don't already have it within you. So the first element is to realize that you can coose to love yourself. Provide yourself with love. How do you do this? Change your thinking. Thoughts are a choice. Emotions are based on our thoughts. Because some thoughts have been repeated so often in our minds, we tend to believe that some thoughts are automatic. This is simply not true. Yes, it may take effort to change your thoughts, however, with conviction, your thoughts can be a choice.
How do you choose loving thoughts about yourself? Start with the fact that scripture says that God is in each one of us. Think about loving yourself because God dwells within you. When you are tempted to criticize yourself, stop, and think first of addressing the God that is within you. It will be much harder to criticize yourself after addressing the God within you, knowing that he created all things perfectly. To criticize or judge yourself will feel like you are attacking the work of God. This belief and the constant acknowledgement of it, will enable you to love yourself and act in more loving ways toward yourself.
With this change in thinking about how to love yourself, comes acting as if you love yourself. Even while your are practicing loving the God in you, and then thinking lovingly of yourself, you can be showing love to yourself (because love is an action,) by things that you do. Give yourself the luxury of 8 hours of sleep; turn your phone off to spend 30 minutes or an hour of uninterrupted time to do exactly what you want; buy yourself flowers or send yourself a nice card in the mail; make time or money for keeping you healthy (whatever makes you feel like you are loving yourself, whether it be for a gym membership, a manicure, healthful foods, fixing poor eyesight, or getting surgery on a bad knee, having a checkup, etc.). Think about a person you love and how you would show them you love them or what you would say to let them know you love them. Then do this for yourself. The more you treat yourself with love, the easier it will be to really see that you are worthy of love.
When you believe that you are worthy of love and give love to yourself through thoughts and actions, then you will be able to give away love and in return, receive love back. The more love you have and give in your life, the closer to peace you will move.
As we all know, some people are easier to show love to than others. So how do we love those who are harder to love? First, use the same principle you used to change you thoughts about loving yourself, which is to address the God that dwells within others first. When you look at a complaining customer, God is dwelling in that pesrson and so you foucs on and acknowledge God first. Then, it will be easier to show love to the person.
Again, following this first step, act as if you love the person by your actions. Even if you are still not "feeling" love towards the person, act as though you do. The very act of "pretending" to love that person will open the door for you to be able to love that person. You can say to yourself or through prayer, that you forgive this person for his actions or works, or you can send them a note or card of a loving, well-wishing nature, or you can say what you appreciate about him or her. When you perform these actions of love you are giving out a certain energy. It is much harder for that person to respond with negative enery because like attracts like (and love is a higher energy and will overcome the lower energies you are wishing to negate). Even if you don't get a loving response back at the moment, you have raised the other person's energy and minimized the affects of their very low energy and emotions.
Do you feel as though you still need more tools to enable you to show, become, or remain loving in a challenging situation? One thing to remember is that 'people do the best they can at the moment, with what they have learned and they would do better if they could'. This is a principle I learned through various readings although I cannot place the author, but the principle has stuck with me. We all grow up in different environments, with different values and importance placed on different things. We can't possibly know why someone yells at us on the highway because we go the speed limit. They may have been taught that 10 mph over the speed limit is okay and more acceptable than driving the speed limit. They may have seen in their family, how yelling and anger got results, whereas, calm communication produced nothing. Yes, when we become adults, we alone are responsible for our belief system and our acceptance or rejection of all the beliefs that encompasses. So, why don't we learn what is "normal" or "right"? Because most things in this world are subjective and who is to be the authority on what is normal? However, we can change our response to our beliefs when they are not functioning for us any longer. Rather than getting upset at other "slow" drivers, our example can choose to recognize and appreciate that others have different values and beliefs.
The plethora of faulty belief systems out there means that most people have numerous erroneaous beliefs to overcome. You and I don't know where they are in their self-development. But just believe that they are doing the best they can at the moment, with what they've learned. Be a tool to help them see a different (loving) response by acting as if you loved that person.
When the urge to respond to anger, hate, irritation, jeolousy, etc. is to give the same, stop yourself, and make a choice not to accept their "lower energy gift" as it has been described in teachings on peace and personal development. You are not required to accept another's 'gift' (in this case, a not very desirable one). Let them keep their lower energy emotions, and choose not to accept it. Choose to maintain your higher energy of calmness, love, respect, etc.
Finally, many people behave in negative ways out of fear: fear of losing what they have, fear of losing or being out of control, fear of losing social status, etc. If you can keep this in mind when dealing with someone in a negative emotional state, it will help you to empathize with them because you will see the fear behind the action, and will more easily be able to act in a loving way towards them.
With practice and conviction, you will expereince an abundance of love, even from people you never expected. And when love increases, peace also increases.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
What You Believe Is What You Attract
A similar theme has emerged as I have read more and more about success principles, finding peace, and living a fulfilling life, (books by John Canfield, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Tulane Miedener, and others). The common theme is "where you place your focus is what you will attract to your life".
All matter is energy (or vibrations), and like energy attracts like energy. When you hold a certain belief about yourself or your circumstances, you will attract to you what you believe the outcome is inevitably going to be. In order to change or overcome this outcome, you must change your belief. To begin that change, at the moment of the lower energy (or negative thought), shift your focus to other higher energy, positive thoughts, regardless of its relevance to the negative thought. By immediately stopping the negative thought, you break the pattern and insert a new behavior- positive or higher energy thinking. This will begin the process of learning to think in higher energy patterns on a more consistent basis, elevating your overall life experience by attracting more positive people, circumstances, and emotions to you.
You can use this technique to change negative habits. For example, an alcoholic wishing to stop drinking typically focuses on how to change his desire for a drink. Where is his focus? On drinking. Will he be able to change with this thought process? Likely not. An alcoholic who wishes to stop drinking will have more success by shifting his focus away from drinking, and on to thoughts of love, forgiveness and strengths. These are higher energy thoughts and higher energy always overtakes lower energy.
Problems arise when we won't allow ourselves to have or experience negative thoughts without condemnation. When negative thoughts do creep in, as they will through the growth and healing process, we feel failure, and begin to focus on that feeling of failure, which in turn lowers our energy making it more likely we will attract exactly what we have been working to eliminate from our lives.
Shifting focus to positive energies and beliefs takes practice just as mastering any other skill does. It is important to realize that in the beginning of this process, you will have to frequently remind yourself to focus on positive beliefs and energies, and have conviction that your life will contain everything you desire just by focusing on success. Start acting as if positive things are coming to you. One way to do this is to start appreciating what you already have in your life, from freedom, food, safety, health and shelter, to eternal life, skills and abilities, intuition, love and relationships.
When you focus on being grateful for what you have, you realize that what you are most grateful for is usually not "things" but relationships, skills, safety, security, love and peace. This can be eye-opening, because many people in this country of abundance believe their happiness is based on having more, and the ability to acquire more. As we shift our thinking to appreciation, we realize how much we already have; we realize that it is less important to acquire "more" than to develp a greater apprecation for what we already have; we also start seeing how others could benefit from our excess by just providing for their basics (food, shelter, health). We realize how very little it costs to provide this but what an enormous reward it provides to our souls to meet someone else's needs.
It is so important to always remember that you are what you think. If you think that you are stuck in a deadend job- you will always attract dead-end jobs. If you believe that people will always try to take your wealth from you, you will attract problems that involve losing part of your wealth; if you believe that your marriage is doomed to fail, you will attract the negative aspects that lead to turmoil; if you believe there are no 'dateable' singles out there, you will only attract those you find 'undateable'. At the same time, if you focus on appreciating the positive in your life and see how that will enable you to attract what you want, those things will be attracted to you. You must believe your wants are going to be fulfilled and act as if you are already living that life. Dress the part, surround yourself with those you want to emulate, learn what needs to be learned, and remove negative beliefs, thoughts and energies from you mind. The life you want is in your mind!
All matter is energy (or vibrations), and like energy attracts like energy. When you hold a certain belief about yourself or your circumstances, you will attract to you what you believe the outcome is inevitably going to be. In order to change or overcome this outcome, you must change your belief. To begin that change, at the moment of the lower energy (or negative thought), shift your focus to other higher energy, positive thoughts, regardless of its relevance to the negative thought. By immediately stopping the negative thought, you break the pattern and insert a new behavior- positive or higher energy thinking. This will begin the process of learning to think in higher energy patterns on a more consistent basis, elevating your overall life experience by attracting more positive people, circumstances, and emotions to you.
You can use this technique to change negative habits. For example, an alcoholic wishing to stop drinking typically focuses on how to change his desire for a drink. Where is his focus? On drinking. Will he be able to change with this thought process? Likely not. An alcoholic who wishes to stop drinking will have more success by shifting his focus away from drinking, and on to thoughts of love, forgiveness and strengths. These are higher energy thoughts and higher energy always overtakes lower energy.
Problems arise when we won't allow ourselves to have or experience negative thoughts without condemnation. When negative thoughts do creep in, as they will through the growth and healing process, we feel failure, and begin to focus on that feeling of failure, which in turn lowers our energy making it more likely we will attract exactly what we have been working to eliminate from our lives.
Shifting focus to positive energies and beliefs takes practice just as mastering any other skill does. It is important to realize that in the beginning of this process, you will have to frequently remind yourself to focus on positive beliefs and energies, and have conviction that your life will contain everything you desire just by focusing on success. Start acting as if positive things are coming to you. One way to do this is to start appreciating what you already have in your life, from freedom, food, safety, health and shelter, to eternal life, skills and abilities, intuition, love and relationships.
When you focus on being grateful for what you have, you realize that what you are most grateful for is usually not "things" but relationships, skills, safety, security, love and peace. This can be eye-opening, because many people in this country of abundance believe their happiness is based on having more, and the ability to acquire more. As we shift our thinking to appreciation, we realize how much we already have; we realize that it is less important to acquire "more" than to develp a greater apprecation for what we already have; we also start seeing how others could benefit from our excess by just providing for their basics (food, shelter, health). We realize how very little it costs to provide this but what an enormous reward it provides to our souls to meet someone else's needs.
It is so important to always remember that you are what you think. If you think that you are stuck in a deadend job- you will always attract dead-end jobs. If you believe that people will always try to take your wealth from you, you will attract problems that involve losing part of your wealth; if you believe that your marriage is doomed to fail, you will attract the negative aspects that lead to turmoil; if you believe there are no 'dateable' singles out there, you will only attract those you find 'undateable'. At the same time, if you focus on appreciating the positive in your life and see how that will enable you to attract what you want, those things will be attracted to you. You must believe your wants are going to be fulfilled and act as if you are already living that life. Dress the part, surround yourself with those you want to emulate, learn what needs to be learned, and remove negative beliefs, thoughts and energies from you mind. The life you want is in your mind!
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