During the past few weeks, coincidentally (or not), while I was on vacation I reconnected with that feeling that everything in my life is coming together in perfect harmony.

What a relief!

When I relax, when I let go of how my desired outcome should happen, when I start focusing on what I have that makes me feel happy and joyful and grateful, AND, when I stop focusing on what is missing, when I stop feeling like a victim of circumstances out of my control (on both a small scale, say a traffic light going red when I’m late…or a much larger scale), when I focus on imagining the ways in which life could work out for me and then I back it up with the ways in which life has already worked out for me…

Then “miraculous” things start happening.

Funny that! 🙂

These past few weeks have been filled with small and large miracles in my life. And I was once again noticing, and more importantly delighting in, these lovely moments.

It’s easy when I’m tired, overworked, stressed, or just plain feeling uninspired by everything around me, to see my outside world as a hostile place.

What really occurs in that time I believe is that I’ve made my inside world a hostile place.

How do I ever forget that what I’m feeling inside creates what I’m experiencing outside?

Good question!

It would be easy in reflection to feel like a failure for continuing to find myself in the “same” cycle of: disconnection into connection and back again. It certainly feels like a failure sometimes when my eyes are opened once more to the beautiful way in which we can harmonize with life (the Universe, God, Source, whatever you want to call it, etc…). The question of how did I get here again is one that makes me feel foolish for ever falling out of place.

But perhaps these are not the exact same places each time, perhaps these cycles are not like a racetrack that goes round and round and round, perhaps they are more like a never ending spiral that continues to move forward even when it feels as though I’m standing still.

Ahhh… there…see, that thought feels better!

When I went on vacation this time, I was so relieved to be away from work and so terrified of returning, the thought of going back there to continue working enormous amounts of overtime just to keep ahead of the workload was not at all appealing. There was genuine fear in the way I was feeling, and it was affecting everything in my life.

About five days into my vacation I started to relax, my shoulders visibly dropped, the dark circles under my eyes started to fade, and I felt myself begin to enjoy my days. Each time I remembered that it was temporary, I would remind myself to breathe, enjoy this time off, let it all go, and not think about going back for another “fill in the blank” days.

Seeing and feeling those visible changes was surprising even though I knew I was stressed, even though I’d felt at the end of my rope – still it surprised me how much the feeling of stress and overwhelm had affected everything in my life, not just work.

This will be good to remember when I become a mom. Not only for myself to monitor and take every opportunity to release tension and stress from my life, but also to understand how stress and overwhelm will affect my children in their daily interaction with life too.

There were moments where a tantrum would have felt delicious to me during the high stress days at work… I can completely relate to a child who is feeling confined, scared, overwhelmed, or just plain angry at what is happening around them. My hope is that I remember this when I’m faced with an overwhelmed child and my response will be one of compassion and understanding (watch this space!).

During my time off I did my best in every moment to remind myself “right now you are free… enjoy.”

I breathed deep, I walked in nature, I did yoga every day, I meditated, I wrote hundreds of pages of thoughts until those thoughts turned positive (like running an old tap until the water runs clear). The whole time I shed piece by piece the feelings of confinement, entrapment, fear, lack of control, and in their place I exposed hope, joy, laughter, and light.

It was interesting to me too that I didn’t have to find those things, or seek them, they were already there within me… they’d just been covered, blanketed, by all the muck I’d been focussed on.

And little by little things started to happen that bedazzled me.

Love it when life bedazzles!

All day long I was starting – again – to see the correlation between what I’m feeling, thinking, and imagining, and what was turning up in my experience. (Note: this happens whether my feelings, thoughts, and imaginings are good or bad, but it’s harder to accept that I’m attracting them when they are bad!)

None of that was new to me, its law of attraction and even before I knew it by that name I have had moments of experiencing it in a tangible way all of my life.

We all have, right?

Those moments where you are thinking of someone and they call, feeling happy and singing in your car and you catch every green light in town, imagining a conversation and it happens almost word for word (had one of those moments two weeks ago that blew me away!), feeling good and good things come into your life to match those feelings. Feeling crappy and… same-same!

Intellectually I know this, always, but emotionally, spiritually if you will, I sometimes get turned around and I’m unable to connect with it in a way that proves to me that all is well.

Being “turned around” is also part of the way law of attraction works, if I’m focussed on what isn’t working, what feels bad, what feels scary, what feels uncomfortable, or what is missing, then more of that comes into my experience to prove to me I’m right for feeling this way – so I don’t feel completely crazy! The same goes when I let go of those feelings and start to feel a little hope, and a little more, and a little more, until everything that comes into my experience is matching that. So I don’t feel completely crazy!

There really is nothing magical about it, though I prefer to see it as magical because that’s the image that makes me personally feel happy… magic, fairy tales, unicorns, happy endings, I like a little mystical about it all.

One magical thing that happened is that the job that I returned to was not quite the same as the one I left, and I am feeling hopeful that the work will now be manageable for at least the next 6 months. This happened in a way I would never have imagined – it literally wouldn’t have crossed my mind as a solution – and yet, the result is one that has removed the drowning sensation from my job, at least temporarily.

This gives me time to find a job that will be in harmony with becoming a single mom, and that will allow us to still have a living space that is comfortable. In the meantime, I can keep saving like I have been from the wage I’m currently earning, and breathe a little easier.

Now that I’m feeling back in the game of life and I’m seeing that I don’t need to know how it works out, my job is only to stay in the feeling place of everything working out…no matter what is unfolding around me.

How this looks for me:

• Trust my intuition.
  Act on those impulses that say this is a good direction to go, and trust in it – even if it doesn’t pay off immediately (that’s the tough part isn’t it?!) know that it will.
• Trust myself to know what is right for me.
  If something feels bad to me, don’t do it, if it feels good, do it.
• Building on that one, trust my emotions and the way they demonstrate themselves in my body… when I start to feel sick about something LISTEN to that!
• Say “No” and give myself space.
  I recharge best when I’m alone and quiet (at home, in nature, in yoga or meditation, or driving somewhere), and if I need to say “No” to something on my calendar to give myself that time then I need to do it.
  This is also known as put myself first. If I’m not recharged and feeling good, I really have nothing to give anyone else anyway.
• Dream.
  Not that I need much encouragement in this department… I identified more than anyone will know with The Secret Life of Walter Mitty…except that I don’t need to stand stock-still to have those internal movies play out as I go about my day! (Lucky me!)
• Allow myself the time to write every day, and to do anything else that feeds my creative soul.
  Again, I don’t need much encouragement for this, especially when I’m in a good feeling place… sometimes when I’m in a not so good feeling place though a little reminder to create would be helpful.
• Let go.
  Wooo-boy, this is the tough one. The trick of course, is letting go when things are not going so great! When I’m feeling out of sorts then my instinct is to try to hold on tighter and control more. I also definitely feel more comfortable when I know what is going to happen. The thing about that is, when I’m feeling good then I know that what is going to happen will work out in the end and I’m able to let go and be okay with however that happens.
• Focus on the positive things in my experience right now.
  I have so many wonderful things to feel grateful for in my life. I have the most amazing friends a person could ever have – I’m not kidding, I am so incredibly blessed in the friend department. I am also one of my favourite people in the world, and I feel blessed that I get to be me. Plus, I live in one of the most beautiful places anyone has ever seen.
  OK… so I could go on and on here, and the point is I should – every day – take stock of the ways in which I am blessed to be living my life as me.

Years ago when I was travelling, I had two very distinct mottos:

“We don’t have to think about that right now.”

• for anything that concerned me about the future, and

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

• for anything that was uncomfortable in my now.

Those two statements helped so much.

Saying to myself, “it doesn’t have to be this way,”  reminded me that there was more than one way to see any given thing and that if I took the time, I could find a way to see something in a light that pleased me, or if it felt impossible to do that, then I could find another point of focus that did feel good. And eventually that unpleasant thing would start to dissipate.

Both of these statements served me well as pivot statements.

As I started to feel myself slide into a negative thought or negative place, I would say either of those statements to myself and be able to hit the brakes and chose another path.

This is not to say I had no bad days because I stopped myself on the downward track each time… nuh-uh… there were still days where I dissolved into a puddle of tears and despair. But these statements really helped bring me back by consciously choosing – once my tears were spent – to take a step into a better feeling place.

It’s time to put these statements back into my daily repertoire

I recently had a revelation in my life, and when I became conscious of it – I said out loud to myself: “Something learned cannot be unlearned.”

Just as I’m not really running around in circles, because with each turn of emotions I am coming to a new place – I can’t unlearn something learned, and I can’t really go backward or be in the exact place again because I’m always growing and every moment is new.

Cheers to new moments! Cheers to Magic, Miracles, and other Wonders!

I hope that today you too find a little magic in your life, and if you are in a place where the magic seems to be absent, then I hope you have the opportunity to take a few moments to consciously breathe deep and let go…

Warm smiles and Love,

Ali Jayne 🙂