What's making me happy now.

I've been pretty busy these past two weeks. I started work, which was great, but stressful. I did some visualization before my shifts (I'm an emergency social worker at night) that they would go well and I wouldn't be too overwhelmed and it worked. I feel very blessed because it was a busy weekend, yet during my shifts things remained relatively calm. 

It was also my birthday, and my kids gave me the best present ever- they cleaned their bedrooms and the loft upstairs. I have been asking for them to clean for me for years (really!) and this year they came through!

 The big story about my birthday is that I also got a pair of boots I have been admiring for years, but never really thought they would be mine because of the $369 price tag (yikes!) They are Frye boots, and there was one last pair at Dillard's on display, in my size, and they were 50% off. They were still expensive, but it was two days before my birthday so I had extra money from my mom and dad, just burning a hole in my pocket! That was definitely a case of visualizing then letting go. I have wanted these boots for several years, and even put them on a vision board on my iphone at one time. But I never spent time concentrating or stressing about them. I just basically really liked them and that was it. Being patient is such a big part of practicing LOA and positive thinking. 

I also read about a game on a blog I read a lot. The author is really into board games, and posted about his game collection, which started a whole conversation about these German board games I had never heard of. They're the kind of games you buy at the specialty game store, which is a place I thought was not for me, but for role playing gamers, like D&D fanatics. 

Anyway, I went to the store and got the game Ticket to Ride, and I am so glad I did. (By the way, when I post a link to amazon or anywhere else, it is just to be helpful. I live in a state that does not participate in the amazon/google program, so I make no money from anyone clicking on my link.) It is fun and the whole family enjoyed it. I'm glad I ventured a bit out of my comfort zone and tried something new It was a great way to spend the evening of my birthday. 

"Quotes?"

I have a facebook friend who posts a quote every day. I used to find the practice, and many of the quotes somewhat trite and inauthentic. However, I couldn't help but notice (as well as respect) that the different quotes were obviously meaningful to people. The comments people posted when a quote resonated with them were proof of this. 


My attitude has really changed from one of annoyance to one of appreciation. Now I enjoy thinking about what he's posted and what type of situation the person who comments that they love it is in. It's really an example to me of the saying (or quote) "Wehn the student is ready, the teacher will come." 


I would love to hear some quotes that people have found helpful and meaningful, and what was happening that made the timing so serendipitous.


Thank you!

Just my luck!

This past Sunday my husband's car broke down. He drove it to the store to buy yours truly a bottle of wine, and when he came out of the store it wouldn't start. I felt a teeny bit bad that this happened when he was doing me a favor, but luckily the wine helped numb my guilty conscience :)


Anyhow, after I picked him up (he was only about a mile away), we did some google research on the symptoms, and were a little discouraged as a fairly expensive problem seemed to keep getting mentioned as the probable culprit. However, I decided I wouldn't worry about it. My car is newer, under warranty and runs great. If this turned out to be something we could not afford to fix right away, thank goodness for my vehicle. I also decided to feel grateful for his car and the good fortune we have had with it- It was a gift from my mother and father in law. It's ten years old, but has only 65,000 miles on it. We have not had any repair costs on it, just oil changes, etc.. in the two years we have had it. I told myself these things a few times, then tossed the whole thing out of my mind.


Monday morning we had it towed (which was covered by insurance, and another pleasant surprise as we didn't think we had this coverage) and were told that afternoon that it was a small part and our bill was $128 total.  We were both happy and grateful.


This situation could be just as easily looked at in a negative light. We could have chosen to be upset that it happened to us, especially when our finances are not great, but what good would that do?


I've decided that this was "just my luck" and that's a good thing!

Honoring feelings, both bad and good.

I've been spending time thinking about feelings (mostly ones of fear, but sometimes anger, etc..) when I am trying to manifest or simply be positive. When I first started to consciously practice the law of attraction and positive thinking, I would drive myself nuts worrying about feelings that didn't match what I was trying to manifest. 

After reading a few more books on the subject, I feel I've really got a better handle on what to do when feelings of stress, fear, negativity come up. I now know I need to acknowledge them, honor them and deal with them rationally. For example, I have a goal right now to have a certain amount of money in our bank/savings accounts. I want this not just to have money, but to have the freedom that having a financial "cushion" can provide us. When I visualize this, sometimes the thought comes up "how are you going to do this?" or "what if you don't accomplish this?" In the past I would have admonished myself for thinking that, and tried my hardest to start thinking of something positive, but that caused me a bit of anxiety in itself, and then I felt like I was in a terrible cycle of feeling bad. 


Now, when this happens, I've been working on recognizing it right when it starts. I tell myself that I am nervous about things, but I have a good plan and  a positive outlook. I also tell myself that a little fear, anger, etc is natural and part of the adventure. For some reason I love the word adventure, and this always works with me. When I have an internal dialogue that is respectful to myself and my feelings, I feel better, and naturally start to feel positive again. I really like this approach and it's worked well for me. I also tell myself that I've been nervous about things before and they have worked out, then I list the times this has happened. By doing this I've actually found that I'm remembering or discovering things that were manifestations but I didn't think they were. 


If I'm really feeling down, I try to go to a different place, even just a different room in the house. A lot of times I go online and look at cooking blogs for ideas on new things to make. My favorite thing to do now that I've discovered them, is to go on positive thinking forums and blogs. This works wonders. 


I also think it's important to honor good feelings. Sometimes I think about something good and I don't really appreciate it and enjoy it. If you make a note of something that's making you happy, it makes that feeling last just a little longer, and that's only a good thing!


Does anyone else have any ideas about what to do when yucky feelings creep up? I'd love to hear them. 

The importance of being grateful.

Manifesting wealth is an interesting activity to me. I've got a troubled relationship with money. I'm sure this stems from hearing so much about how we couldn't afford things when I was young. What's funny is that while we didn't have a ton of money, we were probably just fine. I know we were never on public assistance, I don't remember once eating horrible cheap meat. I never ate ramen (unless I wanted to :)) We still went on vacations, albeit we had to go to places where my dad had a business convention so we could stay in the hotel for free. Had our attitude been one of thankfulness for what we did have, as opposed to concentrating on our lack of extras, my relationship with money might be very different.


People who believe that money should be in their lives somehow manage to allow it in no matter what.  Have you ever known someone who declared bankruptcy or had a business go under, yet they still seemed to live in a nice house? I know one family who filed bankruptcy and lost their house, only to move into another really nice house, but this time they lived in a neighborhood instead of on horse property. Even their "broke" house was better than mine!


I've been working really hard on changing my relationship with money. I have always been taught or perhaps just always felt, that longing for money is greedy, sad, and shallow.  I am realizing now that if I see myself as someone who is good with money and someone who deserves to have a lot of it, that's okay.


Working on manifesting wealth at this time in my life is extra challenging. My husband's career is very unstable, but he is passionate about it. I want to support him in his dream, and while we certainly haven't become rich, his jobs in this field have afforded us many other benefits- living in different parts of the country, meeting so many interesting and varied people, traveling and living all over the world.  Unfortunately, it is common for him to be between jobs, which is where we currently are.


I know that a big part of LOA is visualizing yourself having wealth and pretending and acting as though you have it. Really though, I cannot pretend we have the money for me to just go to the mall and buy some new shoes (one of my favorite things to do, by the way.) Going to the mall right now would cause me to have a lot of negative and stressful vibrations going out.  What I can do is use a combination of gratitude, hard work and faith that good things will come to me. I think that often times people are discouraged with the Law of Attraction because they will visualize and wish for things, yet those things do not manifest.  You know the old saying "God helps those who help themselves?" You can replace the word "God" with the phrase "law of attraction" and it still holds true.


Every day, throughout the day, I look  around me and say thank you for all the things I have that I enjoy.  I've been doing this so much that it's really become so easy to find things. While I was folding laundry the other night, without even blinking an eye, I noticed how many nice clothes my daughter has, and was thankful that she has such nice clothes. I have no need to shop for her right now. I REALLY hate folding clothes, so for me to find a way to be thankful for anything during this dreary task is quite a testament to my gratitude skills.  I've been thankful the grocery store had the kind of chips I like on sale, thankful for my ipad, thankful for my computer.


In the summer of 2009 I was working in my field (social work), and my job was terrible. I was so depressed. People were quitting, getting fired, I was in trouble for a decision I made about a child that I did not believe was wrong. At the time my husband didn't have a job, so I really couldn't quit without finding something else first. Every day in my gratitude journal (an iphone app) I listed my job as something I was thankful for. It actually made me depressed to be thankful for it, but I was trying my best to like my job. It was a mix of "if I say I love it, maybe I will", and true gratitude because we really needed that job.


Anyway- fast forward to December 2009, my husband gets a great job overseas, in March of 2010 I quit my job and was thrilled. Then, this last December comes and my good friend from work emails me that they've made changes to our unit, and it has been going really well and I should consider coming back and picking up some shifts when I come back to America (which I thought was going to be in March or April of this year.)  A few weeks later I'm home, and I have a job again (start February 1st!), doing the same thing, but this time it's better. I really believe it was my being thankful for  the job in the first place, and being thankful for what I have that made me able to go back to this job so easily. I'm super grateful to have this job without having to interview or anything. That is LOA for sure.

LOA when you're sick is no fun...

Every member of my family has come down with the flu one after the other for the past week.  I was really excited to start journaling and doing the exercises from "The Attraction Distraction", but it's had to wait. I was able to find some awesome forums and message boards. One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging my journey was because most of the LOA and positive thinking blogs out there are written by people who have already become "experts" at LOA and are now life coaches. They are wonderful blogs, and I'm following several, but I would love to read about others who are still novices, trying to figure out how to become true practitioners.

I thought I would share a small success story regarding LOA. When we were in Asia last month and found out we were coming home, we also found out that our team was not going to honor our contract, which included a severance package. I had just read most of Rhonda Byrnes book, The Power, which goes into detail about gratitude for what one does have. She stresses the importance of being grateful for everything we have and not getting into a place of focusing on our lack of things or want of things.

I made the decision that we would not stress about what we did not have. I looked at the money we had earned and declared my gratitude for it. As soon as we got back to the States, I began to go through our mail from the past few months. In the large pile were two insurance checks, which were dividends from some class action lawsuit. There was also our reminder that our vehicle registration was due at the end of this month. I do believe this is the law of attraction at work. Getting the vehicle registration bill was certain to have given me anxiety, but those two checks, even though they were not huge, they helped offset the cost of the registration renewal, and why wouldn't I be grateful for that?

We had two other positive financial LOA examples that I will post about later. Right now I need to get some sleep. I'm hoping this flu goes easy on me. I want to get to work on manifesting good things.

The attitude of having enough instead of not having enough.

I came across a blog I had never heard of today written by Danielle LaPorte. She had a great post listing her money perspectives and practices.  I am really trying to figure out and fix my relationship with money, and this helped. I do not practice everything she does, but several items on her list really spoke to me-


From Danielle LaPorte:

"When you get it, don’t spend it right away. Wait to cash your cheque. Hold on to the savings as long as you can. It sends a message to your psyche that you always have enough, that there is no need to be desperate, and that you have something to look forward to. Restraint makes for good foreplay which makes for good...release.

This one helps me to realize that just because you can spend it, you don't need to. You can keep money not based on fear that you will lose it someday, but because you have plenty and you are picky about what you want and can wait to get it. 

"I pay my bills as soon as they arrive and I say thank you to every bill, even the whopping dental expenses just had, "I'm so glad I have the means to take care of this."

I do try to be thankful I can afford health insurance and car insurance, a nice car that is reliable and smells new(ish). 

" I rarely think of money as lost or wasted – a less than stellar meal, a broken gadget that didn't last long, bad business debt...it's all feeding someone somewhere, the money will come back again, and complaining keeps you stuck."

I take this one a bit further and always try to find the lesson. If I have a bad meal somewhere, I have learned that I can cross that place of my list of restaurants. If  I buy an item that breaks, I have learned that I won't buy that brand again, and can narrow down my choices in the future. 

" I never, ever say I can't afford it. Rather, "Buying a yacht is just not what I want to do with my money, darling." Focus on priorities, not limitations. And I never say to my kid that we can't afford things. I tell him we're rich in love and life, and we can afford to be generous. When he wants to buy crappy overpriced plastic toys, I say, "That's not the best use of our good money, we'll find something that's better for you and the planet." He gets it, (that said, he has enough Lego to build a large condo.)"

I like this one as well. It goes back to being picky. There is nothing wrong with being picky so you make sure you get what you want. I like to ask myself the following: "If I could afford this, would I want this?" and the answer is often no.