Shifting to Harmony

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandi

My coach Gil McIff would say the cause of suffering is man's lack of awareness of his true nature.  It isn't an obvious point at first, but that is essentially the same thing Gandi was saying here.  In other words, due to our lack of understanding, what we think, say and do can never quite be in harmony.  Abraham-Hicks would say we feel discomfort because we are not in alignment with our source.  We are not in alignment with our true nature.

From childhood to current day, I have been a lot of different Angela(s.)  Angry Angela(s.)  Sad Angela(s.)  Happy Angela(s.)  Each generation of Angela is more loving, more confident and happier.  I am so grateful I am the sort of person who embraces the opportunities to grow and change as well as a person who navigates through the harder changes always emerging better for having ridden out the storm.

More so than at any other time in my life, I know who I am and I know what I need to do.  For years I have compared myself to others.  Even after the years where I let myself emotionally fall short, I compared thinking others would benefit from the things I was learning.  I have transitioned from evangelist to coach to a fully realized individual continually on the path of being.  More and more what I think, what I say and what I do are in harmony.

From a score of philosophical teachings and teachers, I have discovered a few principles to guide me along my path:

1.  As much as possible, follow a path of least resistance.  One of the things that always shook my life up in a bad way was my need to take action, particularly in the forum of needing to speak up, explain or defend myself.  A lot of poorly advised phone and email conversations happened even though it might have been a technical struggle to complete them.  It was like I was given dozens of tiny little chances to change my mind and yet I still pushed through them full steam nearly always to my later regret.

I don't do that anymore.

Back when I was a darkroom photographer, I noticed that some days photographic printing was a struggle.  The harder I tried to fight through; the deeper the pile of wasted photographic paper that ended up in the trash.  I learned that sometimes the answer was to pack it up, go home, and try again tomorrow.  The path of least resistance is found by grounding yourself in the present moment, being open to the opportunities, but not forcing anything.  I have realized that even no action is essentially an action and that I really can't do anything wrong.  What I once would have considered a mistake that impacted my life in a detrimental way, I now consider an opportunity for learning and growth.  I am not the underdog struggling to keep up.  In a very real sense I am the creator of my world and my personal existence and I have adapted the creative lessons of my "real world" writing and photography.  Creations struggled over remain less satisfying because if nothing else, it is hard to determine when to stop.  The best creations are effortless, flowing out of you as easily as your own personal scent.

2.  I have learned, rather than troubleshooting my life and continually looking for potential problems, I am the creator of my existence.  What I look for I will see.

I'm a big fan of the Walt Disney Company and I have been to their parks many times.  In a very real way, Disneyland is a microcosm of the larger world.  Here is a place that exists to entertain, to kindle the fading embers of your childlike joy.  Yet all around you there are people troubleshooting the problems.  Complaining about the crowds or expense.  I have never heard it better addressed than the cast member I witnessed who was trying to direct a large traffic of people through an already congested area, who said:

"Remember why you came here."

I have come to believe I didn't come here to look for holes in the dykes in which to stick my finger.  I didn't come here to tell any emperor(s) they had been hoodwinked into wearing nudity.  I came here to live a human lifetime.  I came here to be alive.  

All that troubleshooting and complaining we think protects us from danger, simply draws that which we don't want to us.  At the same time it delivers a numbing sameness which may feel protective in times of struggle, but which dulls vibrancy and blocks us from joy.  We freeze out our own potential for happiness in our attempts to protect ourselves from pain.  

If what I see is what I look for, I have decided to saturate my environment with textures I find enriching and beautiful.  If what I see is what I look for, I have decided to look for the silver lining in every cloud.

3.  "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" I have come to understand as a byproduct of the Law of Attraction.  If we believe we are rich in abundance and things come to us easily, we are and they do.  If we believe we are poor and in competition for scarcity and that life is hard, we are and it is.  

I need to show some gratitude to my mother on this point.  No matter her personal struggles, she always told me "things always work out for you."  Even before I understood the mechanics of why it is so, I found comfort in the awareness.  I found comfort in hearing it and in telling it to myself.  We believe the stories we tell ourselves.  We believe them and our belief causes them to be true.  My understanding of this has forever transitioned my self talk from one of "Life sucks and then you die" sarcasms to one of self soothing pep talks.  I can be and have so much more than I ever knew because I have already witnessed it time and time again.  

4.  I have learned that trying to siphon self esteem and confidence from other people's praise and opinions is like trying to use it to fill a gas tank with a hole in it.  No amount can ever fill it and unless or until I find its source within myself, it will remain empty.  

Near the time of my divorce, I saw Albert Brooks' movie "Defending Your Life."  I recognized the main character's fear-driven life struggles as not being dissimilar to my own.  Not liking the picture that painted for my future, I decided to be brave.  The first thing I did was go with some friends to a place called Moaning Cave in Vallecito, California.  Today they have more things you can do there than then, but at the time, you could choose to either descend a staircase or rappel down into the cave.  I went there with the very specific purpose of rappelling. 

After overcoming the fear based sensations of needing to use the toilet and worrying I may throw up, I found myself dangling by a rope in a huge cavern in full view of the optional staircase.  I was completely over my fear and I was sort of wishing the rope ride down moved a little faster when I heard someone on the staircase notice me and say, "I could never do that."  In that moment, I could remember feeling the same.  Simultaneously, I knew how little effort it took to do it and inwardly I revelled at the awareness I had extended that effort and was doing it.  I had transitioned from the Angela who couldn't do it to the Angela who could.  

Self confidence comes from achievements.  It comes from being able to look at something and tell yourself, "I did that."  

My beginning path as a coach was the same as the rest of my life.  I looked for the pitfalls and tried to troubleshoot clients' lives.  I have come to understand, by simply observing and assessing a client's life status and determining that he/she needs to make some changes does us both a disservice.  It is the equivalent of viewing them in a negative way.  In my portion of our co-creation of existence I am seeing them as coming from a position of lack and having made mistakes.  I cannot drag them to my higher position in that way.  Worse, by simply viewing and focusing on the negative, I am far more likely to fall back myself.  Tread once again through waters in which I have already been.  

That's where I find myself today.  

It is time to no longer tell you the stories of where I have been and what I have overcome.  I am and always will be the woman who wants to share her successes with you.  I am and always will be the woman who wants to drag everybody into the lifeboat with her.  The difference is I am no longer willing to see my words as some sort of lifeboat of advice, I am no longer willing to see you as being in any sort of distress or struggle, and I am no longer willing to dive down into the murkiness of my past or my past unhappiness to try and achieve the unachievable.  If I am going to lead, let it be by example.  

It is time to embrace who I am deep inside, a sort of cheerleader of life.  With that in mind, I am crafting a new blog*.  I want it to be exhilarating with stories of rappelling, zip lining, sled dog racing, and perhaps even scuba diving.  I want it to be stories of joy and appreciation.  I want it to be stories that catch the attention of those people walking down the stairs rather than rappelling.  

Maybe, just maybe .... if I share the stories where I take pleasure in being alive .... I can get just one of them to whisper ...

"maybe"

*New blog is already in construction and should begin the first or second week of July 2015.  

A Little Self Knowledge

It's Tuesday and time for me to try to make sense of the lessons I've learned this week and the whirlwind of accompanying thoughts.  This week I have been reading four books.

Dying to Be Me:  My Journey from Cancer to Near Death, to True Healing by Anita Moorjani

What if It All Goes Right?  by Mindy Audlin

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

Cat Fear No Evil by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Go ahead and think it.  "Four books!  What are you, crazy?  Aren't they meant to be consumed one at a time?"  I used to think that too.  It came to the point where, instead of reading several books at once, I read no books at all.  A foolish solution because reading has to be one of the top ten things I enjoy doing.

My coaching coach, Gil McIff, frequently says, "The cause of suffering is ignorance of our true nature."  In my experience, it is a somewhat uniquely Buddhist concept and is referring to our attachment to what Eckhart Tolle would call "The World of Form."  While we wear this suit of flesh, we forget that we are more than this suit of flesh.

I think that is actually limiting things a bit.

This week, I would say that the cause of all suffering with a capital "S," the life and death questions, is because of our ignorance of our true spiritual nature.  The cause of the "every day" sufferings, the mere annoyances that give us road rage and petty grievances at least some of the time, might just be our ignorance of our true nature while living in that suit of flesh.  In other words, not knowing who we truly are.  Like forcing ourselves to read one book at a time, when our mind wants to juggle four.  It turns out there is a moment in each of the books that illustrates just what I'm saying.  Well, except for "Cat Fear No Evil."  Cats, whether they are real living breathing ones, or fictional talking ones, always seem to know who they are.

In "Dying to Be Me" cancer survivor Anita Moorjani tells us of her multicultural upbringing and how she tried to force herself to comply with the expectations of her own culture despite having a personality which thrived on much fewer limitations.

In "What If It All Goes Right?" Mindy Audlin describes a moment I recognized as very similar to ones I myself have had, where she makes assumptions about a person based on her own beliefs of shortcomings or limitations.  In other words, she judges someone as being guilty of judging her.  What does she think the person is judging her about?  She doesn't say it outright, but all of the things would seem to be the big bad ugly things she sometimes tells herself or hears in her head.

In A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin gives us poor Theon Greyjoy.  Born a Greyjoy, but raised by his father's enemy Eddard Stark, Theon has no idea who he is or what he thinks.  Desperate for love and acceptance, to the Starks he will always be a Greyjoy and to the Greyjoys, he seems uncomfortably indoctrinated as a Stark.

In my coaching studies, I've learned that negative emotions are good indicators that you are resisting "what is."  Eckhart Tolle sees it as a special sort of madness, resisting "what is" and wanting it to be something else.  These moments of mad negative resistance are also good signposts to limiting beliefs.  In my case, one of them is "others will see and understand things the same way I do."  

Have you ever found yourself doubting a romantic partner because "if he/she really loved me" he or she would behave in a certain way?  I had the opportunity to talk with a partner I had formerly questioned like that.  Before my coaching studies, I found him very aggravating and compared talking to him with talking to a dog.  (As Mindy Audlin, who suggests if we are making assumptions about others, we should always make good ones, would say, it wasn't a very empowering way to view him.)

Specifically, there were times when we were together where I would have preferred he spent the night at my house or showered there instead of going home.  When I mentioned it to him at the time, we both would behave as if we felt our own opinion and approach was the more sensible one. Since learning about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming,) I've come to understand that he and I have very different reference maps as to how the world works.  That's at the core of why we see things differently.

At the same time, if it was just a question of different maps, why did the misunderstanding strike me as a lack of love on his part?  As it happens sometimes, asking myself that question was like finding a corner piece in a jigsaw puzzle.  Things suddenly made a lot more sense.  You see, one of my favorite things to do in most of my relationships, has been to spend some quality time, frequently by myself, in a partner's living space.  Not to do any snooping.  I have never once searched a partner's drawers.  For me, there is something deliciously intimate and special about sleeping where my partner sleeps or showering where he takes a shower.  Every time I offered my living space to my partner, I was offering intimacy.  Every time he rationally chose to go home instead, "because that's where my stuff is," I felt rejected and unloved.

My aha! takeaway?  Those moments of resistance and disappointment?  What if, instead of using them to judge partners as to whether or not they are a comfortable fit, we used them to better understand ourselves?  After all, if we all have different maps of how the world works, how can your partner begin to understand yours if you don't understand it yourself?

At the same time, we are told that before we can truly love someone else, we have to love ourself.  I don't necessarily agree with that.  You see, my "self love" has always been there.  It's a stubborn persistent sort of thing.  I know it's there because I never really give up on myself.  At the same time, I have had an instance where I was willing to sacrifice myself nearly completely for someone else because I loved him.  It was a futile exercise, pointless, misguided and doomed to fail.  Totally resisting "what is," in other words "mad," but that doesn't mean it wasn't "love" and it has given me a blueprint for what I need to do.  With that same intensity and detailed emotion, I need to sacrifice my Theon Lovejoy-esque need for love and acceptance nearly completely.   For me.  Because I love me.

I think we fall in love by meeting someone, noticing things about him/her and telling ourselves stories as to who that person is.  We fall in love with our own stories.  This week I got to know Angela a little better.  She likes to read four books at once and sleep in a bed or with a pillow scented by someone she deeply cares about.  Isn't she great?  I just love her.

In Search of "Happy"

This week I've been reading The Ultimate Introduction to NLP:  How to Build a Successful Life by Richard Bandler.  Although I already had the first pieces to the puzzle, it gave me a bit of an Aha! moment.

In a typical NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) fashion, I ask you to think of something fun.  Think of a time when you were wildly happy.  If the moment doesn't make you feel like giggling right now as you're thinking about it, you probably need another moment.  Think of one of the best feelings you've had.  Maybe something so good, you would be embarrassed to share it.

Got it?

Now notice where you feel the emotion in your body.  Where does it start?  What part of you?  Where does it move to?  Play with the movement of the emotion.  See if it has a color associated with it and see if you can move it through your body.  Visualize a lever named "Fun" in your mind and picture moving the feeling throughout your body by moving the lever.

Congratulations.  You have just created a lever in the control panel of your mind where you can access "fun" or "happiness" whenever you want.

I've mentioned the Law of Attraction before in this blog.  Step 4 of the Law of Attraction is to "Nevellize" (a term coined by Joe Vitale honoring Neville Goddard, an earlier pioneer in the field of the Law of Attraction.)  To "Nevellize" is to feel as if you are already living the life of your dreams.  If you were living your dream life, you'd probably feel pretty happy, huh?  You just built a lever to help you Nevellize.  At the same time, we tend to attract people and events that broadcast at our same frequency.  There's a very good argument that, if you flipped your switch to "fun" every morning before you went to work or whatever else you did during your day, you would attract only more fun and happiness to you.  Even if you didn't believe in the Law of Attraction, couldn't you argue that, by choosing to be happy, your days would be happy?

Now that was not my Aha! moment.  I had already learned that if a person can control his mind and choose to be happy, he/she will be happier.  It had been a slow realization that came from Eckhart Tolle's quote that I no longer con recall well enough to quote.  Basically it was addressing the need to go find yourself and was something like "it takes no time to be you."  It also came from witnessing other people who had the belief that you could simply choose to be happy and their subsequent successes and failures.

Now maybe some of you, when I told you to think of a time when you were wildly happy, were faced with an empty head completely silent of any suggestions.  Maybe you were left with a big, "hmmmm let me think about this a moment."  If so, you're not alone.  I was in that exact same place the first time I was ever approached to do this exercise.  First, my mind was a big empty black hole.  Then, I had a few memories of good times but they were irrevocably intertwined with bad things that happened later.  In fact, a good portion of my life has been lived in search of "happy."  At times it has been a little embarrassing.  My search has come up in conversations with other people.  Friends, who invariably would say, "What about when we did this?  You had fun.  You certainly laughed a lot."  It was embarrassing because I lacked the skills to explain that, while their memories seemed vivid and fully detailed, mine were weak and pale, lacking any real substance.  That was my Aha! moment.  I can explain now because I understand what was happening to me and I know what to do about it.

As Richard Bandler asks in the book:  Have you ever had an argument and then replayed it in your memory afterwards?  Have you ever replayed an argument for what added up to be much more time than the actual argument lasted?  How about this.  Have you ever played an argument in your mind, which hasn't happened, but you anticipate it might?  You might imagine that my answers were yes, yes and yes!  And you'd be right.  In the book, Bandler refers to a client who has replayed arguments she had with her mother for years after her mother has died.

How much of the present moment do you think you experience when you're mentally in the audience for an argument that happened years ago?  As a child, I learned to constantly troubleshoot my environment.  I was always watching my mother's mood, desperate to keep it from switching, but wanting to be aware the instant it did.

Have you ever put a very dry sponge into water?  A sponge so dry that it took it a moment to actually be able to absorb anything?  That was me and "happy."  Basically, I pursued being happy.  I did "happy things."  But I did them like I was the Universe's Secret Service and I was always on the job.

I attracted a lot of other people like me into my life too.  I once went on a trip to Walt Disney World with a man who later told me his every day "base" emotion was anger.  Now that was a fun trip.  He spent his trip being angry about the lines, how much things cost, and the fact the rides emptied into gift shops and I spent my trip micro-managing how to keep him from getting angry.

It's funny.  I got that way because I had been hurt and scared a few times and I wanted to protect myself from it happening again.   What I really did to myself, though, was lock myself in a mental prison of worrying about all the worst things that could happen and I very nearly threw away the key.

But I didn't.  If you can relate to what I've said and have problems naming a time you were "happy" too.  You can retrieve the key as well.

1.  Practice being in the present moment.  Life happens in the present moment.  It is the only moment we actually have.  The past is passed and the future is just an idea.  Be here now.  One excellent tool for doing that is Gil Mciff's Three Step Clearing Method.  I mentioned it in a previous blog entry ("The Law of Attraction and What You Resist, Persists" October 7, 2014.)  But here it is again.

Three Step Clearing Method by Gil Mciff

Feeding what you want is natural and easy, you are already doing this in many ways.

The emphasis of this practice is focused on starving what you don't want by simply observing your emotions and thereby dis-identifying from being them.

Your habitual state of consciousness is the number one determinant of your personal circumstances.  The quality of your consciousness in this moment is the primary determinant of your future.  And what determines the quality of your consciousness is your degree of presence.  

Check in 10x a day with the question: "How am I feeling emotionally in my body right now?"

You can use a reminder app or alarm on your phone, sticky notes placed in random places, paint one fingernail different from the rest, wear your watch on the opposite wrist or upside down, or put a bandaid on your finger.  Every time this catches your attention, ask yourself, "Emotionally, how do I feel in my body right now?"

(A further suggestion my fellow coaching student told me was to do it every time you needed to use the toilet or took a drink of water.)

If there is ANY kind of negativity or if it is simply a lower emotion than you would like to be feeling, the fact is you did not choose it.  It's based on conditioned interpretation and is simply an old program running and it is time to do the following 3 steps:

(If you are feeling what you would like to be feeling then start with step 2.)

1.  Say These Specific Words - There it is.  That's not me.  That's a program.  

2.  Observe it deeply.  What physical and emotional sensations do I feel?  Where do I feel them?  Or simply I feel it (here,) it feels like (this.)  Realize who is doing this inquiring?

3.  Thank you for checking in.  I love you, I love you, I love you.  Thank you for no longer feeding the program.  Thank you for dis-identifying from the program, thank you for catching yourself and for no longer losing energy here.  Thank you for whatever you want to say thank you for.  I love you, I love you, I love you!

There it is.  That's not me.  That's a program.
I feel it here (location,) it feels like this (characteristics.)
Thank you for checking in, I love you I love you I love you.

These steps are not for the purpose of getting rid of the negative feeling (i.e. resisting and therefore feeding what we don't want.  That benefit may sometimes come with it, but this practice is more about implementing a new habit/program.  So every time you observe the emotion, it's an opportunity to do this practice without judgement.  It doesn't matter what emotion is there, what matters is that you simply observe it without giving it any meaning.  When this becomes habit you will have successfully reprogrammed the unconscious perpetuation of the old reaction with the automatic newly programmed conscious response.

It takes less than 30 seconds to do this practice.  30 seconds at 10x a day = 5 minutes
How many days will it take before this healthy response has become a new program for you?

2.  Actively choose to be happy.  Do the "Fun" lever exercise and build a control panel in your head that helps you select how you want to feel rather than being on a treadmill of worry or negativity.  Start each day with a happy frame of mind.  When you are in the midst of a happy experience, really feel it.  Take in all of the sensory details.

The Law of Attraction and What You Resist, Persists

It is early Tuesday morning.  I should be asleep.  I haven't written my "regular Tuesday blog" yet and the idea I want to talk about keeps writing me awake.  In other words, I toss and turn, telling myself, "you'll be tired tomorrow, if you get up now."  At the same time, I'm afraid I'll forget my chain of thought, so my mind keeps fashioning the sentences and words.  It keeps writing the blog I would like to wait until tomorrow to say.

As Carl Jung said, "What you resist, persists."

Which is exactly the thought that keeps praying on my mind this morning.  In this blog, I've talked a lot about the Law of Attraction, which was recently made a popular concept by a book and movie called "The Secret."  At the time, a lot of people watched the movie seeing only desire and avarice and they resisted its message.  Other people watched with desire, if not avarice, and saw only a way to achieve their goals.  Both missed grasping a very large point.  In science, a law is defined as "a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present."  When we talk about the Law of Attraction, we are not talking about that other kind of law, "the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members," we are speaking of a scientific law.  A statement based on repeated experimental observations that describes some aspect of the universe.  Why is this an important distinction?  We may focus on attempting to attract the happiness and wealth we would like to see in our lifetimes, but the truth is, we are always attracting our life's outcomes to us whether we are attempting a desirable one or not.

Part of the beauty of the five step method of working with the Law of Attraction is that it encourages taking responsibility for the type of life you have attracted yourself into and gives you tools with which to try and improve your outcomes.

We humans tend to resist pain.  Not only pain, but very individualized pain based on our versions of hell.

It happens roughly like this:

We are born
Things happen to us
Eventually we begin to judge those things as pleasant or unpleasant
We begin to resist the unpleasant things

What we resist, persists.

In other words, our personal Law of Attraction outcome gets stuck on negative.  That's because resistance requires a whole lot of energy and attention.  We attract what we give energy and attention.  So by resisting what we don't want, we actually receive more of it rather than less.

Why do we experience pain?  Frequently it is a lesson or warning that we are in danger.  Touch fire and you will get burned.  That painful sensation prevents us from being seriously damaged by fire when we are in a position to avoid it.  The popular definition of karma is basically the same as "what goes around comes around" or "we reap what we sow," but another, if less well known interpretation is that the lessons we need to learn throughout our lives, will repeat until we have learned them.

Someone asked me recently, "That means I attracted the men who cheated on me intentionally.  Why did I want that?"  

I couldn't answer.  The things we resist on an emotional level aren't the same as brussels sprouts or liver.  We don't tend to itemize them in our conscious mind.  The best I could do is tell her to focus on how it had made her feel.  In other words, the "why" component to the first step of the five steps to the Law of Attraction.  The first step is to be "crystal clear about what you don't want and why."  It not only shines a light on what we DO want, it also illuminates those unpleasant things and feelings we are likely to resist.  Combine those feelings you resist with the limiting beliefs you are trying to clear in step three, "identify and clear limiting beliefs," and you will uncover a very likely scenario of your own personal treadmill of bad relationships, limited funds or whatever you would like to overcome.

Honestly, I've been studying stuff like this for years, but huge bits snapped into place for me the other day when I was talking with another one of the coach-elect students.  As usual, I can explain everything a little bit more clearly, if I simply explain my situation to you.

Many of my limiting beliefs have tended to surround the notion of not being capable, not knowing what I'm doing, being incompetent, that sort of thing.  They stem from being asked to be responsible for things that were a little too grownup for me to be asked to handle when I was a child, combined with being mocked about my performance or told I hadn't done a good job.  At the same time, I realized that my most recent former ex had been a catalyst for some growth on that issue.  Some of the things he said during the break up were direct hits on that level, but it was only talking to this other person that I connected the notion of "how did that make me feel?"  After all, so what if I'm incapable?  What will happen if I don't know what I'm doing?

The emotion was fear of rejection.  If I don't know what I'm doing, I will be rejected.  Which, of course, as that relationship ended, I was.  And I resisted it big time.  So much so, I pretty much pushed him away.  I had let myself be open and vulnerable to someone, which was not something I had done very much in my life, and it ended with my own personal version of hell.  In other words, the thing I had resisted my entire life:  rejection.  I have been a people pleaser.  I have settled for less than I wanted in relationships.  I have sculpted myself into other people just to avoid being rejected.

For many of you reading this, it isn't new territory.  You already knew it.  Really, so did I, but sometimes it takes putting the pieces together and voicing them aloud to really understand.  But some of you haven't figured this out yet.  Humans are motivated by pain.  We will do anything to avoid it.  Once emotional pain has been triggered, we become automatons who run a program we have learned over time about how to handle it.  Perhaps we pick up a bottle or inject something in our veins.  Maybe we bully other people.  Maybe we sacrifice bits of our own uniqueness to simply make the discomfort go away.  Maybe we stuff ourselves with food until we have no more empty spaces to shove it into.

Ask yourself, "what don't I want, and why don't I want it?"  You will discover the negative carrots your destructive behavior feeds upon.  In the meantime, you can use another Achieve Today coach, Gil Mciff's Three Step Clearing Method to avoid becoming a slave to your emotions.  The principle is that our emotions take us out of the present moment and we run programs based on what we are feeling.  If we are running a program, we have become a victim and cannot make choices.

Three Step Clearing Method by Gil Mciff

Feeding what you want is natural and easy, you are already doing this in many ways.

The emphasis of this practice is focused on starving what you don't want by simply observing your emotions and thereby dis-identifying from being them.

Your habitual state of consciousness is the number one determinant of your personal circumstances.  The quality of your consciousness in this moment is the primary determinant of your future.  And what determines the quality of your consciousness is your degree of presence.  

Check in 10x a day with the question: "How am I feeling emotionally in my body right now?"

You can use a reminder app or alarm on your phone, sticky notes placed in random places, paint one fingernail different from the rest, wear your watch on the opposite wrist or upside down, or put a bandaid on your finger.  Every time this catches your attention, ask yourself, "Emotionally, how do I feel in my body right now?"

(A further suggestion my fellow coaching student told me was to do it every time you needed to use the toilet or took a drink of water.)

If there is ANY kind of negativity or if it is simply a lower emotion than you would like to be feeling, the fact is you did not choose it.  It's based on conditioned interpretation and is simply an old program running and it is time to do the following 3 steps:

(If you are feeling what you would like to be feeling then start with step 2.)

1.  Say These Specific Words - There it is.  That's not me.  That's a program.  

2.  Observe it deeply.  What physical and emotional sensations do I feel?  Where do I feel them?  Or simply I feel it (here,) it feels like (this.)  Realize who is doing this inquiring?

3.  Thank you for checking in.  I love you, I love you, I love you.  Thank you for no longer feeding the program.  Thank you for dis-identifying from the program, thank you for catching yourself and for no longer losing energy here.  Thank you for whatever you want to say thank you for.  I love you, I love you, I love you!

There it is.  That's not me.  That's a program.
I feel it here (location,) it feels like this (characteristics.)
Thank you for checking in, I love you I love you I love you.

These steps are not for the purpose of getting rid of the negative feeling (i.e. resisting and therefore feeding what we don't want.  That benefit may sometimes come with it, but this practice is more about implementing a new habit/program.  So every time you observe the emotion, it's an opportunity to do this practice without judgement.  It doesn't matter what emotion is there, what matters is that you simply observe it without giving it any meaning.  When this becomes habit you will have successfully reprogrammed the unconscious perpetuation of the old reaction with the automatic newly programmed conscious response.

It takes less than 30 seconds to do this practice.  30 seconds at 10x a day = 5 minutes
How many days will it take before this healthy response has become a new program for you?