“I would love to be an optimist, but I don’t think it’s going to work out.” — Anonymous

As Sarah Ban Breathnach reminds us in Simple Abundance, “Optimism, like the happiness habit, can be learned.” Well, that is good news for everyone. All we have to do is to let go of our thoughts of lack, our thoughts of suffering, our thoughts of failure. We must also realize that it may not all happen over night.

We must allow ourselves the grace to make these Real Life Changes day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. They may seem like baby steps at first, but even a baby learns how to run if you give it the freedom try and to make mistakes along the way and learn from those very mistakes.

Begin the change to optimism today by smiling at those that cross your path. Believe in yourself no matter what task you plan to accomplish. If there are clouds in the sky, realize that they too will pass and the sun will shine again. It always does. And love will shine in your soul if you give yourself a friendly nudge in the right direction.

“My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds. My harvest will be either flowers or weeds.”
— Mel Weldon

What are the seeds you are planting in your garden every day? Are they thoughts based on fear, lack, or anger? These types of thoughts planted on a daily basis will most likely result in a garden of weeds. Thoughts based on acceptance, abundance, and love tend to grow a beautiful garden of flowers. More likely, we get a mixture of the two.

I am an avid gardener and when I look out on my garden, I can usually spot at least a weed or two doing its best to sneak in between a bunch of flowers. If I want to maintain my garden with all its blooms, I have to remove the weed quickly, while it is still small, and before it has a chance to spread throughout. Weeds are a tougher species, too. They don’t require you to water and care for them and yet they will still grow and spread. In fact, during the droughts they tend to be the only things to remain in your garden.

Our thoughts are the same. It is normal to have a negative thought now and then attempt to plant itself in our brain. If we are not careful and diligent to remove the negative thought, it will grow bigger and stronger and even start to spread to the rest of our thoughts.

Be the expert gardener of your thoughts and you can ensure a beautiful garden full of flowers and free of weeds. It’s your choice.

“The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”
—Henry L. Stimson (1867 - 1950)

The power of your thoughts can influence trusting another person. As Henry Stimson points out, the more you believe and treat someone as trustworthy, the more trustworthy they become to you. Conversely, if you put all your energy into not trusting someone, they will turn out to be untrustworthy. You create your own reality with your thoughts and beliefs.

But I would also encourage you to discover what is the true nature of your distrust. Is it based on present facts or future fears or past traumas? From personal experience, I have found that trusting someone has more to do with allowing yourself to open up to possible vulnerabilities. And therefore it has not so much to do with the other’s actions or behavior, but more to do with your own fear of being hurt.

In order to trust someone else, it is vital that you begin to trust yourself. You must trust that you are a strong enough person to handle whatever comes your way. You must trust that you are able to open your heart up and allow others in. In doing so you face your fear of getting hurt. And as Shakti Gawain reminds us, “When I’m trusting and being myself… everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.”

“The next level then, is the awareness that now is all there is. Today is the only day of your life. You do not have to be imprisoned or restricted by your personal history.”
— Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Your Sacred Self

Memories. We all have them: How we grew up, the friends we have made, the jobs we have done, the relationships we have created. These memories make us who we are, correct? Most of us would say, yes. However, by allowing our memories of the past to define who we are in the present, we are allowing ourselves to be imprisoned by labels and past events that may not be appropriate or accurate for your present state of being.

Today, free yourself from your past. Let go of all the limiting beliefs, roles, and expectations that you and others have placed on yourself. They may have served a purpose up to this moment, but you can now open up to all the other possibilities for your life. Rely on the way things are, the way you feel, the way your act, right now in this very moment. A New Day. A New You.

“Think of cause and effect like watching a video. Imagine that you rented a video, and it was terrible. You just hated it! Would you take a hammer and smash your television or would you change the video tape? If you smashed the screen, you would be dealing with effect. If you changed the video, you would be dealing with cause.” — James Arthur Ray

How many things in our life we attempt to change at the “effect” level of being instead of the “causal” level?

What does this mean really? Well, a lot of it has to do with our thoughts to begin with. What are we focusing on when we want to create change? Are we thinking of the undesired outcome? Or are we focusing on what we want?

It’s like wanting to move to a new apartment that has no cockroaches, no loud neighbors, and is not expensive. When really what we want is a clean apartment with good neighbors, and affordable rent.

Here’s a bit of “tough love” for you. I am simply going to quote Dr. Robert Anthony completely for today’s inspiration because he says it so well.

“If you feel that you were off to a good start but are currently stalled, you need to admit to yourself that you have probably slipped back into your comfort zone.

More than likely you have been deceiving yourself that you are making progress, but at the same time you are really not getting anywhere.

What you need to do is take action. Even if it is a very small action.

Nothing you can tell yourself, nothing you can say to others, nothing you can think or feel or imagine is going to get you out of the mental bog you’re mired in.

The only thing that can rescue you is - to take that next step.

Maybe you know what that is. If you know exactly what it is, DO IT!

If you don’t know, or aren’t sure, allow you intuition to guide you. Do whatever you feel compelled to do, but do it NOW to get yourself going again — even if it means entering. . .

. . . your discomfort zone.

– Dr. Robert Anthony

“In order to grow spiritually, feelings must be communicated. Otherwise, they build up inside and the energy gets denser and lower, denser and lower, until a person is only half-conscious.”
— Marian Eileen Charlton, Life on the Causal Plane, A Glimpse of Heaven

Have you ever had something or someone really bother you, but instead of dealing with the issue, you let it slide by? It could be because you don’t like confrontation. It could be out of politeness that you don’t want to voice it. Whatever the reason, you feel it is better left unsaid. Then something else adds to the pile. Then something else. Before you know it you are full of these past issues and you don’t even know why you are feeling so terrible.

What’s worse is that by this time the slightest irritating thing will, out of the blue, make you either explode or bring you into complete depression. One person explained it to me by comparing it to a bucket. Eventually the bucket gets full and when things keep getting added to it they begin to overflow.

By expressing your feelings you can actually help yourself to heal. Honor yourself and your health by living through honest communication. Just remember to communicate your feelings to the right person — it’s not about taking it out on innocent bystanders either. And you don’t have to be nasty about the things that bug you or get you down. But being honest with others is also being honest to yourself.

“The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, reality, to something more positive… and begin to act accordingly.”
— Shakti Gawain, Creative Visualization

You’ve heard it before, and you will hear it again, and again — you have the power to change the world starting with you. As Wayne Dyer points out, “There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts and then acting on them.” This is a powerful concept, but even more powerful is the reality that you don’t need to live in that stressful world.

Start changing your own beliefs and thoughts to something more positive and act on those thoughts. Right there, at that very moment, the world just changed.

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
— Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

When you say what you fear out loud, you will often find how ridiculous, or inaccurate, or inappropriate it is for your life. I had a talk a while back with my husband about one of the fears holding me back from making some simple phone calls. I had to call some people that I didn’t know in order to set up an interview time with them. In my mind I knew that this was no big deal for me to do. I have definitely done more challenging tasks or assignments. So what was holding me back? Why was I so afraid to just make these calls? I had been procrastinating for over two weeks now, coming up with excuse after excuse as to why I should put it off until the next day.

Well, with a little self-probing I realized that it wasn’t making the phone calls that was posing the problem, but making the phone calls with my husband within earshot. I was fearing his judgment or criticism of me and my ability to call up strangers to book an interview. No wait, take it a step further, I was afraid he would think that I am not as competent as I always lead him to believe. I wanted to make the calls when he wasn’t around, so that if I said something “stupid”, he wouldn’t know about it and couldn’t criticize me. So really, I was fearing being criticized by someone who I really respect and value their opinion. (more…)

“Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.”
— Robert Graves

Be in your body because it is where intuition lives. In our busy lives, many of us typically function only with our heads. This is actually very counterintuitive and tends to cut off our vital energy flow and may not lead us in the right direction.

Take a moment to reconnect with yourself, with your body. Your body has wisdom and sends you messages regularly. Your mind is important, but sometimes it is so busy it forgets to check in and see how the body is responding.

When making a decision, notice your body’s signals. Do you feel energized? Comfortable? Is your breathing effortless? Your gut calm? Are your shoulders loose? Or do you have a sick feeling in your stomach? A lump in your throat? In all your choices, tuning in to what your body says is a naturally given gift for keeping on track with your higher self.