I know what I want, when I get it, makes me happy. I also know when I’m happy I set up more future happy moments.
But since every time I get what I want, I am happy, I can just be happy, even when I’m not getting what I want.
I can be happy now, no matter what is happening.
This is the basis of our work at Positively Focused. I know when I put my happiness first, by telling stories about my life that make me happy, I put myself on a path to living a happy life. That’s because a happy life looks like feeling happy in every moment.
What happens in my life, when I’m not deliberate about choosing happiness, determines how I feel. But life doesn’t have to be that way. I can turn it around. I can choose to be happy, no matter what I’m experiencing, then experience good things always.
I know when I do that my life fills with happy experiences. I know this because I’ve tried it and it has always worked out that way. I also know this because my Positively Focused clients get exactly the same results.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, but in a short while, I’ve created a life filled with happy experiences. So have my clients.
So this holiday season, I appreciate what I’ve realized: That life is happy when I am happy. And the happier I am, the more my life shapes to my happiness. In my happiness, I don’t need my life to change. But because I’m not focused on my life needing to change, because I’m not telling stories about how bad my life is, my life changes.
It’s a paradox, but it’s true.
I’m grateful for what I’ve discovered. And I’m loving seeing people who have come to me seeking relief from anxiety, insecurities, shame and other life problems, find relief and more, simply by telling better stories.
I appreciate knowing life is supposed to be fun, joyful and filled with fulfilled desires. I appreciating having such a life. And I appreciate sharing what I know with others, then seeing their life turn out that way too.
Usually when one attacks another’s comprehension, or anything else, they are attacking their own inability in that area. An attack is always self-inflicted.
Positive focus creates positive experiences. Consistent positive focus triggers momentum, both in focus and in more positive experiences.
Simple tests prove this. One need not understand or believe metaphysical explanations. It happens anyway. The more I focus on positive things, the more positive things happen.
So why do many people focus negatively? I’m not going to answer that question, although I know the answer.
Instead let’s look at this one: Why does positive focus work?
When positive focus becomes chronic, human senses filter out anything not consistent with that focus. Our senses filter experience all day every day, allowing only experiences consistent with our persistent beliefs.
The reason people experience things they would say are “negative” AND “positive” too is usually they have both positive and negative beliefs in their Belief Constellations. So their filters allow in evidence of both.
Random negative experiences, such as getting robbed or raped or hit by a bus, aren’t random. They come from long-term focus, specific focus that feels like “fear”, “insecurity”, “worry” or “victimhood”. Often such feelings get past one’s perception because one focuses too much on what’s happening outside their head.
Focus works best when it predominantly focuses on what’s happening inside one’s head first, since everything happening outside one’s head springs from what happens inside one’s head.
Negativity owes itself to positivity
Very few people are chronically positive. There are many chronically negative people though. Everyone’s life matches their chronic focus.
But even negative people from time to time experience positive experiences. They do because a little positivity overwhelms tons of negativity. Negative “energy” isn’t an energy. Negative “energy” is what happens when positive energy diminishes.
In other words, negative “energy” owes its existence to its relativity to positive energy. It has no substance, no independent existence of its own. It is defined by a lack of positivity.
What’s more, a chronically negative person still is, at the core, pure positive energy. That energy, no matter how obscured it may be by negative focus, still overcomes negative focus when from time to time negative-focused people drop their guards.
When daydreaming, asleep or doing something “mindless” such as driving, taking a shower or experiencing something fun, positive focus’ power eeks through. That’s why a negative person can sometimes experience positive experiences.
Positive benefits feel fun
When I’m positive and excited by positive things, when I’m enthusiastic and eager about what I’m up to (or planning), I open up.
I’m open to possibility, I see things consistently-negative people can’t. The world reveals its delights. When I stay positive, I produce results effortlessly. What I want happens easier and faster. More important, on the way to those outcomes, I enjoy life more. Life experience becomes more entertaining, more fun, more positive.
While Positively Focused, “happy accidents” some people call “luck”, happen often. It’s not luck, but who cares what it’s called? Such events include problems solving themselves quickly and easily compared to focusing on the problem, trying to find a solution, or trying make a solution work.
When negative, one sees more negativity. Such focus turns things into “intractable problems.” When someone filters life through negative beliefs, the sheer enormity of bad things in the world overwhelms awareness.
Standing in overwhelm, feeling hopeless, helpless, anxiety and even despair seems normal, even though those feelings should never happen.
Overwhelming problems such as climate change, institutional racism, pandemics, wildfires, etc. can be and are harbingers of enormous opportunity, not signs of how fucked up the world is. To one who only sees problems, these seemingly insolvable situations become species-ending phenomena, even though they aren’t.
That’s incredibly naive
Someone reading this may not believe what they just read. The majority of people believe these things are overwhelming, species-ending problems.
I know though that one person with enough positive focus momentum is more powerful than millions without that momentum. Such a person births solutions before now unheard of, even while not involving themselves in the solution process.
Evidence in my life proves my Positively Focused practice creates the Charmed Life I describe in this blog.
Yes, many will disagree with this post’s premise. The Positively Focused person, however, doesn’t need or care about other people’s opinions, nor does such a person need others’ validation or agreement.
So disagreement is irrelevant to one who creates reality. She knows her life experience springs ongoingly from her, not others. So she focuses on the one thing that really matters: her focus, not what others say, do or believe.
Here’s the critical thing about being negative: It’s very hard to turn that train around. A life-long “realistic”, pessimistic or negative person may feel right about the world they experience. And they will be right.
They’ll be right because life experience springs from their beliefs. That doesn’t mean an alternative experience, one contrary to everything a pessimistic person believes, doesn’t exist or can’t become that person’s reality.
Momentum is momentum though. It takes a lot of work initially reversing negative-focus momentum. Since Charmed Lives are possible for everyone, that work pales in comparison to benefits derived, making the effort worth it.
Desires fulfilling themselves.It’s a life available to anyone, because everyone at their core is Positively Focused. It’s worth it. It’s fun and it’s everyone’s birthright.
Not living one’s birthright, in my opinion, is living. But just barely.
This is the series called “journal entries” for when I experience something I write about in my journal I think others might benefit from reading. This is a continuation of that series.
From my journal – Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020
Enjoying my full plate. Enjoying guidance pointing to fulfilled desires. Enjoying seeing fulfilled desires emerge into awareness, on their own volition, eager, anticipating the delight I’ll feel when they blossom full-blown into reality.
Anticipating joyful experiences today like yesterday, only better because my life gets better and better day by day.
Fulfillment, joy, fun and adventure know no bounds. Each day seduces my attention, for my attention is each day’s origin, and my days appreciate my attention as a child appreciates its mother. Love courses between my creation and me like mother’s milk, me nurturing the unfolding, the unfolding delighting me, all in the context of the mind and eyes of God: pure bliss, joy, love and honor, watching my creation expand All That Is.
Now, I recognize I create my reality. Since the past is just another reality, I also re-create my past. That’s what happened this holiday season.
I’m sharing this for the many people who, like me, struggle with holidays. I know now “struggle” is optional. No matter how bad I used to feel, this year, I’m having the best Thanksgiving ever, in large part thanks to my house mate, who I’ll call Kimberly.
I’m going to relate how I transformed my holiday experience while interspersing some theory. If you want to know how all this works as a cohesive living approach I call Positively Focused, please visit my website. There you can schedule a free 30-minute 1:1 in which I’ll answer any questions at no cost to you.
How I transformed the Thanksgiving holiday in less than 15 minutes.
My house mate Kimberly is a manifestation I created after a wonderful ordeal involving previous house mates. In January I’ll tell that story.
Kimberly’s arrival fulfilled many desires. I know though that all fulfilled desires contain within them seeds for more consciousness expansion. That usually looks like “negative” experiences, although they aren’t that. Indeed, what happened Thanksgiving morning was perfect.
My potato au gratin. Yum!
Excitement filled our little home the night before. We bought an enormous turkey, planned several decadent side dishes and even went in together on a new projector to watch Killing Eve and Uncle Frank, Amazon’s new feel-good holiday movie.
Settled in for the night, we anticipated a wonderful morning cooking food, listening to music and generally enjoying time together.
That’s not what happened, at first
I’m an early riser. Kimberly usually wakes later. I got up eager for our culinary adventure. But as I got things ready, I noticed she had made a bag of popcorn late last night. That meant, I realized, that she might not get up early enough.
Little did I know she had planned on joining me. She even set an alarm. But something went wrong. Little did I know how “going wrong” presents enormous gifts.
For hours I relished the morning, preparing our dishes. As turkey dressing time neared though, Kimberly’s absence loomed large. Where was she?
My veggie medley and the au gratin all ready to eat. Ignore the sponge on the range 😂
It was a passing thought at first. Then it turned into worry. Then it turned into resentment. Kimberly wasn’t meeting my expectations, expectations I thought we shared.
That’s not her purpose though
Kimberly need not meet my expectations. No one lives to meet my expectations. When I got that a while ago, I mostly stopped resenting people when they did their own thing.
Everyone comes into reality pursuing their fulfillment, whatever that looks like. The paradox is, when a person shows up in my reality, pursuing their fulfillment, I know now they aren’t real, objective people. Instead, they reflect back to me beliefs I hold in my Belief Constellation even while they pursue individual self-fulfillment.
Other people (as well as everything else in my reality) are physicalized versions of beliefs active in me. I tested this over several years. Improving my beliefs always changed people’s behavior, especially the way they treated me.
Today, people in my life are angels. They show me active beliefs in my Moment of Becoming on their way to becoming my tangible reality. Realities I want I welcome. Realities I don’t want I know I can do something about.
Our turkey cooking its patutti off. LOL
Here’s what that looks like
I knew from years of Positively Focused practice that resentment and worry had nothing to do with Kimberly. Instead they indicated beliefs active that drew into my now, an experience I preferred not having.
Realizing that I did something about it. First, I looked inside to see what thoughts/beliefs I activated. After all, I had enjoyed, up to that moment, being in the kitchen by myself, making all this food my way, without having to compromise anything about what I was doing. It was fun!
My exploration showed old beliefs I created as a kid active in my now. They were about my parents, my family and holidays with them. That’s when Kimberly offered an amazing opportunity. I could clean up those old beliefs and, simultaneously, clean up how I experienced my now, create better future experiences and transform the past too!
Once I got that I stopped preparing meals. I went to my room, set a 15 minute timer, then went into deliberate focus. In that focus I realized/remembered the following:
Kimberly is a manifestation. She is not real.
Kimberly is a manifestation of my entire Belief Constellation embodied in an apparition in my evolving now consciousness.
As such, constructively using realizations represents allows stronger connections with my Personal Trinity. Reacting any other way creates unwanted futures.
Kimberly’s choices are hers and those acts aren’t about me. But make them about me when I interpret them as such!
Such a wonderful gift.
Circumstances in life do this all day every day. People, objects, experiences all are physical representations of my ongoing beliefs.
For better or worse, most people don’t know this, so they interact with their reality as though it is separate, an objective reality apart from who they are, what they are and what they’re believing.
Even among those who know physical reality is a mirror of one’s internal reality, few know what to do with that information.
Those who don’t know struggle with all kinds of mental and emotional traumas, with few remedies other than iffy mental health therapies which often stretch over years and produce scant lasting results.
Rather than taking these wonderful gifts evidenced in people, places, objects and events, for granted, humans can use them for personal transformation. Done diligently, such transformation also transforms ordinary life into the Charmed Life I share with my clients.
Seeing Kimberly as a transformational opportunity also let’s her off the hook. She can be how she’s being and in the absence of me making her wrong, she becomes the angel she is, but only when I see her from my Inner Being perspective, my Broader Perspective which sees everything in reality as blessed, perfectly unfolding and beneficial to all the Universe.
Creating awesome from ordinary
The moment I tuned into my Inner Being, the discomfort, angst and resentment lifted. It was crazy how fast and complete it was! One moment it was there, the next POOF! Totally abscent.
What flowed in its place were thoughts about how wonderful this experience turned out to be, how good realizing that felt, and how remarkable I was as a deliberate creator creating this experience. I felt compelled to voice these thoughts:
Wow, I feel much better.
This is so much better than how I felt before.
Those old beliefs soothed in my awareness placed on more empowering thoughts.
I am having a good time creating a new reality with just my awareness.
I get that my reality is my creation, including other people in my reality.
Then I started thinking about the meal I’m preparing:
This meal is going to be really good!
The au gratin smells delicious!
So do the roasted veggies!
The stuffing is going to be good too!
Then came the extraordinary convergence of reality matching my new perspective: At that exact point in time, Kimberly came bounding down the stairs. I heard her walk into the kitchen from inside my basement space. Then she sent me a text:
Trippy! The very moment I tuned into these better-feeling thoughts, my experience of Kimberly shifted. A new reality showed up including a different Kimberly!
Nevertheless I wanted to amplify how good I felt. It felt so good. These thoughts flowed next…
That’s so cool what just happened.
I shifted my reality!
And my apparitions shifted too.
What I’m discovering is so accurate.
I love my Inner Being relationship!
I felt waaaay better by now.
In that moment I returned to my original bliss. I realized too my old beliefs transformed as well: I see them now as having created experiences long ago that, I was destined to shift, in my now, my current Thanksgiving; and in doing so transforming my past holiday experiences, my present one and all future ones.
I have wonderful new memories about the holidays. Memories made more powerful because they sprung from enlightened consciousness. I know thoughts born from enlightened consciousness are far more powerful than those born out of it.
I also now know that I’ve transformed past, present and future in one fell swoop. I know it because I feel it.
What does it feel like? It feels like Joyful invincibility.
Yesterday I went on a bike ride while listening to inspirational words from my mentor. I rode up Lief Erickson Drive to the bike/hike trail, then ventured six miles in.
Delight and clarity about life experience filled me as my bike jostled and jiggered over rocks, ruts and mud along the trail. It was hard going, mostly uphill, but I didn’t experience “hard”. Instead, I felt appreciation, fun and good times. I sought this, so “hard” felt “fun”.
I literally laughed at some points when tire and trail disagreed, which sent me and my bike in random directions, but never off-trail.
The farther I ascended this rocky, shaky, bumpy trail, the more exhilaration, joy and clarity filled me, and the less I felt the trail itself. My body and bike merged with every rock, every rut, while my attention focused, softly taking in All That Is – trees, birds, water puddle, bike, legs pumping…
At mile three I took a break during which sensations along my arms and shoulders caught my attention. I thought something bit me, yet no evidence of bites presented themselves. I scratched and rubbed, but the sensations persisted. Seeing no signs of insect attack, I ignored the itching, remounted and rode on.
After mile six I turned around. Going in, it’s uphill mostly, so going down presented an added challenge: more speed. I swooshed down trail, twisting and turning my narrow-tired bike through puddles, slippery rocks and even slipperier mud.
An Awakening Moment Lay Ahead
Extraordinary moments happen all the time. The question is, do I see them? Photo by Omkar Jadhav on Unsplash
I came to a sun-drenched clearing just as the itching on my shoulders and arms got worse. I stopped to scratch but again, saw no evidence of irritation…no bites or bumps.
Suddenly, sunlight, colors in the trees, the sky, wind song, bird song…everything I perceived occurred at volume 10. Everything got brighter, clearer. My head got light, goose bumps covered my arms and neck. I understood then, the itching wasn’t skin-related. It was energy-related.
It indicated in-tune-ness with my Broader Perspective, my body releasing resistance yielded to pleasure and power born of pure positive focus. I straddled my bike, stunned in appreciation…
When I started riding again, I felt super-present, loving life and the world around me.
Far from the trail, in one of Portland’s remaining industrial areas, it struck me again! Beauty, oneness, harmony…the elegance of all that is filled me so much, I pulled my bike over, dismounted and sat on the sidewalk against the wall of a local brewery. I couldn’t ride any farther.
Everything I saw, humming birds flittering by, blue sky, white wisps of clouds, bright yellow sun, and yes, roads, buildings, litter along the road, homeless people sleeping in their cars… everything around me amplified themselves.
I saw it all connected. I saw it all beautiful.
Nearly every day since, I feel this way coming out of sleep, this oneness, this peace, this connected-to-All-That-Is-ness. I feel God’s happiness with creation filling me so completely, physical reality experience becomes an ecstatic experience. It’s the feeling I feel filled with the being of me: A God in human form.
I’ve added yet another running series “Q/A” to my blog. It’s…well…about answering questions I get through the internets and sharing those answers with others as they may help others feel inspired and more connected to the God they are.
What is enlightenment, and why should someone try to achieve it?
Someone shouldn’t try to achieve it.
Enlightenment, contrary to what many think, is not something one “achieves”. It is what one is underneath beliefs masking that state. One doesn’t “achieve” eternal life, one is already eternal. One doesn’t “achieve” being human. One already is human. One doesn’t “try to achieve” enlightenment, one already is.
Enlightenment, by the way is not a steady state. It’s not something that, once achieved, remains in place, like a college degree. You don’t get it and keep it. Enlightenment awareness is constantly expanding because the essence of being constantly expands, just like everything in All That Is.
So once a person reveals to herself her enlightened state in one moment, the next moment she may “lose” it as old beliefs masking the state, reassert themselves.
In a separate example, an enlightened state may happen in one moment, then the person sees something they want, realizes they don’t have it (yet) and in that realization obscures their enlightened state through focused desire for that thing they want.
That is NOT to say desire is bad. The process of birthed desire moving to fulfilled desire is the process by with All That Is becomes more. So desires are extremely good. Losing touch with one’s enlightened state from time to time serves in the same way. But it is possible to be in a state of perpetual enlightenment – I know, this sounds contradictory – where one realizes, while at the same time standing within an unfulfilled desire, their enlightened state.
The enlightened state is nothing extraordinary. It is clarity, awareness and the presence in one’s knowing that one is eternal, invincible and creator of their reality, ongoingly, including ALL their realities, not just this physical one. There is more to it, but this is the basic nature.
It’s worth living from that place. But it’s not something one “achieves”.
I love how abundant abundance is. I see it everywhere.
Abundant entertainment options, abundant rest options, abundant enjoyment options, abundant things to do, an abundance of wonderful thoughts to ponder, an abundance of fabulous feelings to feel…
All these swaddling me in soft folds of eternal reality and knowing: I am surrounded by love. And that love often reveals itself as abundance.