“Think about what you want, not what you don’t want. Guard your thoughts carefully, because they create your experiences.”
— Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.

When you are sitting there innocently and a thought pops into your head, do you think the thought chose you or did you choose it? Even if it doesn’t seem so, our thoughts never choose us. We always choose our thoughts every moment of the day. And there are no neutral thoughts because each thought triggers an emotion. Thoughts are energy and emotions are energy in motion and they will have an effect on your world one way or another.

With practice you can learn to monitor and choose not to hold a thought that begins to form. Before long you will be able to focus your mind at will on only loving thoughts that will create the world around you just as you wish.

In The Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, Gregg Braden was invited by a Native American friend to meet him in a place where they had gone to pray rain for as long as anyone could remember. He was not prepared for what he was about to see as he was expecting dancing or chanting at the very least. The gentleman removed his shoes, stepped into a stone circle, turned his back to Gregg, honored his ancestors and the elements. He held his hands in a prayer position and about 20 seconds later said he said he was hungry.

“I thought you were going to pray for rain?” And he said, “No. If I prayed FOR rain, rain could never happen because the moment we ask for something to occur, we have just acknowledged and empowered the fact that it is not there.” So what did he do? He said he felt the feeling of what it feels like when they have the rain in his village. He smelled the smells of the rain. He felt the feeling of the mud on his naked feet.

Focus on the rain, not the lack of it.

“For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don’t want to learn — much.”
— W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, And Now All This (1932) introduction

How many of you want to grow? And what is growing? Is staying the same a part of growing? Or does the actual word “growing” imply change? The thing is, you are only going to grow if you are uncomfortable — by stepping out of your comfort zone and doing things that are different from what you are doing right now.

So what is holding you back from growing? The number one phrase that will keep you exactly the way you are is, “I know that”. But do you really “know” it? Or have you heard about it, talked about it, read about it. You only really “know” it if you are living it.

I repeat, you only know it if you are living it.

So take a look. Are you living what you say you know? Be open to learning. At at the same time, be open to UN-learning all that doesn’t serve you in your quest to grow.

“Nothing is more tragic than someone who has sight, but no vision.”
— Helen Keller

What is the vision of your future? If you were to project yourself into the future, say five years from now, on the current path you are heading, what do you see? Are you happy, are you living to your fullest potential?

Now, take this one step further. If you were to make some changes in your life that you have been contemplating but haven’t quite made the leap in that direction — see yourself in five years from that point with these changes influencing your path. What’s different? What’s better?

I had help projecting myself into the future and was pleased and motivated by the second level of being. If I were to leave my inhibitions behind and just go for it, what a difference it would make in my life, even five years down the road.

Sometimes even the most logical changes to be made are difficult to commit to since they are not immediately rewarded. Quitting smoking, losing weight, building a successful business, to name but a few goals, these take time and considerable effort to achieve and then maintain. A month or even a year down the road doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the goal or the complete rewards for your efforts. But five years, ten years, twenty years will definitely see the mark of these positive changes.

“Karma: from the root kri, “to do”, is the means by which you become the architect of your own destiny.”
— Definition

At this very moment we are creating — we are creating our Karma whether it is good or bad, by habit or by purpose. It is not something that lives in our pasts waiting to reward or punish us, but is something that we are dealing with daily, in every moment.

So take a good look at your design, your layout, your building that you are creating each moment. Are you building a castle or a dungeon? Our thoughts actually create our destiny by building with the bricks of our mind.

If you don’t really like what you have built so far, there is always time to remodel, renovate, and redesign. Take away the walls of fear and doubt and put in some big picture windows to see the beautiful view before you. Become the best architect you could ever hope for your home, your life.

“The divine flow is like the flow of a river, however many rivers nowadays are polluted, full of junk or simply stagnating. It is time to take care of them - meaning it is time to take care of our emotional bodies and to look at them as rivers, where stuff got thrown in over the years. For some, there is so much built up, that it works like a big dam which does not allow any flow of energy. You can easily recognize the flow of energy, by looking at how much love is flowing in your life, how much happiness, how much time do you have available, how much money is flowing etc.”
— Quantum Angel

It may be time to ask yourself how polluted is your river of emotions? Has there been some junk and pollution thrown in there when you weren’t paying attention? Are my emotions contaminated and perhaps poisoning others that come in contact with them?

One quick way to figure out the answers is to look at how much discomfort or pain you have in your life. Is it all the time, only in certain situations, only dealing with certain people? We are like our planet, and over the years of use and misuse the environment now needs our protection.

Science shows us that we do release chemicals in response to our emotions. Over time, if these chemicals are not cleared out, they build up and can become toxic to us. So take action and break down the dams that are restricting the flow of energy in your emotional river and get the vitality of living back on track.

“Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”
—John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), speech at The American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963

I recently heard an “internet-marketing guru” give some advice on the best way to create a successful business. The first step is identifying what an existing problem is and then figuring out how to solve that problem. Once you find the solution, you sell it and help others who have the same problem.

This made me think how this could apply to our lives as well. When we are trying to change our lives for the better, the first step would also be identifying what the problem areas are in our life.

This awareness of the problem is the beginning of finding the solution. To truly change you need to learn from the problem. Learning, in turn, involves doing something new with your life. And success is selling yourself on the answer.

“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.