Tuning in to the Opposite Channel

So you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by the unwanted circumstances in your life again?  Negative experiences are constantly jumping in front of you, knocking you down and sometimes laying on top of you like the rotting carcass of all you once were.  The sky is grey.  You are stepping in puddles up to your thighs because there seems to be no way around them.   People around you are demanding and uncaring as you trudge along with the heavy load upon your shoulders and the even heavier load within your heart?  You are feeling sick, feeling miserable and unsure of how long you can keep going like this? You think you deserve a break from life, some good fortune after all you have been through...but Nooooo life has different plans for you...it just throws more of the same old negativity in front of you for you to climb over again and again...more bills you can't pay; more illness; more troubles in the family, work issues, money issues, the cat gets sick; the babysitter calls and says she can't make it;  the car won't start and you stupidly leave  your fingers in the door when you slam in shut.   Is this your scenario?  I think it is something all humans experience from time to time...what is referred to as "suffering".

When we "suffer" it seems that we get ourselves caught up in a never ending cycle of more suffering.  One unwanted thing appears in our life after the other.  The rain doesn't want to let up. Suffering perpetuates more suffering. Why is that? 

To understand this phenomenon better we must first recognize a few things:

•  Suffering is a perception... a way of seeing that exists only in the mind because of our attachment to an idea of how things "should" be. If things are not going the way we think they should...then life is wrong, hard, bad, difficult.  We cannot accept it for the way it is.  Suffering is caused by mental resistance to what is. 

•  What we resist persists.  It is a given fact...the more you say no to something, the more it keeps demanding a yes.  Try this experiment, the next time your teen asks for the car.  Say No.  Watch what happens.  Unless your teen is abnormally compliant...she or he will ask again and again and again, drowning out the news casters voice that you are trying to focus on from your flat screen TV while you squirm in your chair and the  steam builds up inside of you, possibly creating a crater of a hole in your stomach lining.  You turn the volume up but their pleas just become louder and louder. They will keep demanding that you give them what they want until you can't concentrate on anything else but their "Please!  Please!  Pretty Please!" and the awful way it is making you feel.  What we resist persists.  What we focus on becomes our reality getting louder and more consuming drowning out the rest. 

• When we focus on negative things, negative things are all we see.  When we focus on the things we do not want in our lives we end up with a life of unwanted things. In order to make sense of our world, our selective attention narrows to match our preconceived perceptions.  If I  am tuned in to the "negative channel" because of a couple of less than pleasant experiences, negativity is what my mind will pick up from my environment. If I am focused on the things I do not want in my life...guess what happens?   More unwanted things will show up.  Not because I am being punished or because "life sucks" but because I am watching the wrong channel.  I don't have to stay on this channel!  I can press the button on the remote at any time. 

• Feelings are energy .  As a powerful energy force, they can make our lives great or they can make our lives suck.  How we feel will determine what kind of life we have. 

So how do we walk away from the lives we are watching on the negativity channel to the lives we really want? No...I am not going to tell you to say yes to your teen whenever they ask for something .  (No's are good things for all of us to hear every now again).  Nor am I going to tell you to say no to the less than positive things in your life right now  but I am going to suggest that you do not have to wiggle and squirm as the peptic ulcer grows in your gut because of them either. 

This is what you can do to make it better:

Step one: Accept what is.  Look about you and see what is going on.  Do not deny  or resist the parts of your life you are not happy with.  Instead accept what is, as it is.  If there is money trouble : say to self I accept that the money situation is not what I want right now.  The key components in that affirmation are  I accept and right now.   I accept that my health is not to the point that I want it right now.  I accept that my job does not fulfill me right now.  I accept that my fingers are broken from slamming them in the door right now :) I accept that my life is not exactly the way I think it should be right now.

Become completely aware of the things that are happening in your life that you do not want.  Know that you do not want them.  Writing them down on a piece of paper in list form might help. This is the first and most important step.  To recognize and accept the things you do not want in your life...the things that are  making you squirm, angry, sad, anxious will you lead you away from them eventually.  At first it may be overwhelming as more and more of these things show up to get added to your list.... all because you are putting your attention in that area.... but it will pass....especially if you realize that these circumstances are temporary.  That is why we use "right now".     Once you recognize what you don't want you can advance to the next crucial steps.

Step Two: Do not stay focused on the things you don't want. Do not give them any more attention and emotional power than you already have. The Law of attraction purports that what you put your attention on is what you will attract in to your life.  If you focus on negative things, you will bring negative things into your physical world.  Even if you do not subscribe to this belief system...thinking about these things is diminishing your precious life and making you miserable.  Why feel miserable when you do not have to?  Recognize them accept them, write them down but that's it. Keep the list but let them go emotionally.  Recognizing and accepting the negative things in your life does not mean being consumed by them.  Your intention is to go beyond them.

Step Three: Change the channel. Switch your focus to the opposites of those things on your list.    Many times we do not know what we want in our lives especially if we have been feeling negative for a while.  We know what makes us feel like crap but we really can't remember what things make us feel good.  We may have stuffed our dreams under the weights of the burdens we perceive we are carrying.  Yet we can recognize when something makes us feel less than happy right? It is sometimes easier to know what we don't want than it is what we want.  Say, you sit down one Saturday night and you are bored enough to watch TV.  You are not sure what you are in the mood for  so you randomly surf through the channels.  You can click through those channels pretty fast because you immediately recognize what you don't want...what doesn't "feel right" at that moment even though you may not know what it is you are looking for.  Think of the things on your list as channels you no longer want to watch. If it doesn't make you feel good..  switch the channel. 

Yeah but to what channel?  Focus on the opposite of the don't wants.  That is what we can use those "don't wants" for.  They can be guides to what we want.  If I know I don't want to be broke that can take me to the opposite of being broke, I want four digit numbers in my account; I want to be able to pay my bills; I want to be able to sleep at night without worrying about how I am going to pay the mortgage.  If I am feeling lonely and tired of being alone that can take me to, I want to build healthy, happy relationships with others etc.  Focus...put all your mental energy onto imagining what you want.  What you want is often the opposite of what you don't want. Tune in to the opposite channel and stay there!

Step Four: Give yourself permission to want it.   A few hard punches from life ...the kind that knock a fighter down can sometimes leave us a little punch drunk.  We may settle into our roles as the loser rather than the contender and find a certain peace on the floor of the ring.  We may stop wanting more, expecting more.  We may stop dreaming of more.  We need to remind ourselves that it is okay to want...We have a right to expect more from life as we pull our selves up.  We need to get back up into the wanting game. There is no guarantee we will not get knocked down again but we will never have more than bruises if we stop wanting. 

Step Five: Once you know what you want.... Feel it.  Feel it, breathe it, live it like it is already something you have. This is the most crucial step.  Living is all about feeling.  Life is all it is meant to be when we feel love,  joy, bliss, peace and hope.  It is not about the things we mistakenly assume make us happy.  It is simply about being happy.  Yet if you feel happy when you think about something you want...than think about something you want.  Imagine what it will feel like to have it and live like you do.   It is almost given that that thing, that event, that circumstance, or that person you are focusing on will materialize in your life when you do this.  But even if it doesn't...if you are happy...you are on the right channel. This is the life you really want, isn't it? You can put the remote down.

All is well in my world.