This week is about shifting your frequency to a higher vibration – because you can!
And when you do, you tune your inner radio to the station that matches the perspectives, insights, and knowing of your inner Being, Higher Self, still small voice of God, Goddess within, divine guidance, or whatever you like to call that higher Essence available to each of us.

Here’s one reason to care about that. Whatever heart’s desires you have been feeling – they have the ability to grow into reality. Really! As soon as a desire “hatches,” our Divine Essence is all over it and says, “Alright, let’s begin to move toward that! Here’s what to do (or not do) to get started.” The only issue is, often we can’t hear those inner messages because we don’t believe they’re available to us, or maybe we don’t believe we’re worthy of that much good, or perhaps we’re just not in the habit of listening for our powerful inner guidance system.

But regardless – that guidance is always there, always available, and always projecting information and ideas to us! In order to access that guidance, all we need to do is lift ourselves into higher vibrations of energy. One way to do that is to shift away from negative or draining emotions – which are lower energies/frequencies – and into positive or uplifting emotions – which are higher frequency.

Now, I don’t want you to think I’m saying that negative emotions are bad, or that we shouldn’t have them, because I’m not saying that at all! All emotions add to the richness and depth of our lives. It’s only a problem if we make a habit of staying in negative emotions. It’s a problem because not only do negative emotions deplete us, but they also make it harder to hear our inner guidance. 

So, what can you do if you’ve been feeling stressed or overdone? You can make the shift to a positive or uplifting emotion, which is a practical way to tune your inner radio to “hear” the powerful intuition of your Higher Self. That voice is always radiating ideas and guidance about living a grander version of yourself.

How do we do it? We take the effort – and sometimes it is effort – to shift ourselves out of stressful emotions like frustration, anxiety, self-criticism, guilt, or anything else that drains us, and reach for a positive or uplifting emotion. Did you know we don’t have to wait around for something good to happen before we feel positive emotions? Instead, we can take the time and focus to experience an uplifting feeling “on demand”! How cool is that?! And that’s how we can line up with our more intelligent, higher perspectives.
Feel the positive shift that happens as you read slowly through the below questions and let your answers emerge. When an answer comes up, just bask in it for a few moments before you move on to the next question.

• Think of a person or pet that you love or appreciate. What’s something that makes them special to you?

• Remember a positive or fun time in your life. Whether recently or long ago, what made it such a good experience?

• Do you remember a time when you laughed really hard? Try to re-experience some of what made it so funny.

• Think about a time when you felt proud of yourself or completed something important.

• Do you have a place that you love to be? Remember the specifics about it using memories of all your senses; try to do it enough to re-experience it.

• Are there songs that make you feel really good when you hear them? Listen to one of them.

• Bring to mind a challenging time you had and thank your younger self for the courage and strength s/he had to get you safely through.

• Remember a time when you were supportive or kind to someone who was in need. How did that feel to get to help?

• Was there someone who profoundly changed your life for the better? Bring them to mind; now radiate gratitude from your heart to theirs.

• Who or what matters to your heart? Feel your natural inclination to want them to experience happiness and health and well-being. Imagine sending them love and your wish for them to experience their highest good. 

Stay with it until you feel a positive or uplifting emotion. Some days it might take several minutes; other days you might feel an uplifting, happy, or peaceful feeling quite quickly. Either way it’s worth the effort and it shifts you toward your higher, spiritually tuned vibration!

Take good care of yourself this week – just because you deserve to!

So, here is an odd question for you…
What important part of you do you have tied up somewhere? I was at lunch with a friend the other day. As we were talking, I remembered a weird dream I had. There was someone on a horse dragging a baby kangaroo behind it; the kangaroo’s feet were tied up with a lasso thing – which is what the person on the horse was using to pull it with. Sounds really mean now, but I wasn’t hugely disturbed as I was recounting it because the feeling in the dream wasn’t about hurting the kangaroo. It was just about making it not be able to do its “kangaroo-y” thing. Aren’t dreams weird (and cool)?

The dream didn’t make much sense to me, nor did it feel very impactful. But I clearly thought it was weird enough to want to tell her. When I finished my brief description my friend said, “Don’t just blow it off. What does a baby kangaroo represent to you?” “Uh…I don’t know…?”

Silence from her with a look that said, “That’s okay, I’ll wait.” So, I thought it over enough and responded, “Well, I guess to me a baby kangaroo represents things like being childlike, playful… not worried about the way things are supposed be. Romping and basking in each moment.” She then asked me if there are any areas in my life where I am needing more of those qualities? Wow, cool. Yes, there are.

As she asked me that question, I could feel this rush of realization that I hadn’t been letting in much playfulness lately; instead, I had been letting my mind run the show. You know the bright, sometimes beautiful mind that can spew an incessant barrage of things like, “Do it this way; no, this way; what about that; plan this; try this; you need to do more of this; stop doing that; organize this; think about that; worry about this; remember to look at this; are you sure about that? etc.” Can you relate?

The truth is, I love our bright, strong minds. But it’s really important to balance our mental aspects with other qualities as well. I was missing my playful side. How about you? What qualities have you been keeping at bay?
Here’s your provocation for the week. Simply ask yourself what is an aspect or quality that you have been keeping metaphorically “tied up,” one that might be helpful with something you are working on. The patient part of you? A gentle or vulnerable part? A playful quality? A powerful aspect of you? How about a trusting one? A loving or forgiving side? A part of you with strong, confident qualities? How about an aspect of you that is decisive and sure? Or soft and kind?

Whatever part you find, have a gentle willingness to express more of that quality this week. It’s okay even if you don’t really know how to use or express that quality. Willingness and intention are powerful beyond what our minds can grasp. This week begin opening to an aspect that has been metaphorically “tied up” or forgotten. Have fun and just see if anything begins to shift for you.

Take good care of you – you deserve a life of great good!

“Love heals all things.”

Spiritual texts and sages have been giving us that message for a long time. But what if it wasn’t just the stuff of religious writings and poets, of ancient philosophers, famous quotes, and songs? What if the wisdom and potential of love – today, in this moment – was much more present and much more powerful than we have yet let ourselves understand?

Julia Dennis, an exceptionally talented healer friend of mine, has a favorite quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. The quote says, “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness [for God] the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” Isn’t that awesome? Sometimes I get this exciting chill that goes right through me when I think for a moment about that actually being true. That really… with our day-to-day things like our bodies and money and relationships and jobs and personal challenges right here and right now…what if, perhaps, love could heal it all?

What if you had the capability to access love and then do beautiful things with it? What if I did too? And people everywhere as well. I think we do have that capability.

So, that’s your provocation for the week. Act like it’s true that love can heal all things and that you can access love’s healing power. So first, decide what you will work on healing. My gentle suggestion is to work on something meaningful enough to matter (i.e. not the paper-cut you got yesterday) but not so big (i.e. world peace or deep resentment that’s been around for decades) that your belief says, “Not possible.” You can work on those later!

The next step is to surround the situation with love. There are many ways to access love. If you already have a process that works to help you feel the emotion of love, compassion, caring or appreciation – go for it (prayer, meditation, and practicing gratitude are all quite beautiful and effective)!

Or feel free to try this simple but beautiful process: Give yourself 5-10 minutes somewhere quiet where you won’t be bothered, and where you feel comfortable closing your eyes. Breathe gently, with a few long, slow inhales…and long, slow exhales. Next, bring to mind the situation, experience, body part, or person that you want to heal, and silently say something like, “It is my intention to bring love to this, with the desire to heal it for the highest and best for all concerned.” Then finally, give a sincere attempt to access a positive emotion like love or appreciation or compassion or peace or ease or kindness or caring. When you get to that heart feeling, imagine radiating it to the person (whether to yourself or another) or situation you are working on healing. Continue for 5-10 minutes.
We are each more powerful for affecting good than we think we are. What if all of us did this practice all over the world – intentionally accessed love to heal – even just for one day? Wow…. Treat yourself, today, like you have the healing power of love within you… because you do!

“Love heals all things.”

Spiritual texts and sages have been giving us that message for a long time. But what if it wasn’t just the stuff of religious writings and poets, of ancient philosophers, famous quotes, and songs? What if the wisdom and potential of love – today, in this moment – was much more present and much more powerful than we have yet let ourselves understand?

Julia Dennis, an exceptionally talented healer friend of mine, has a favorite quote by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. The quote says, “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness [for God] the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” Isn’t that awesome? Sometimes I get this exciting chill that goes right through me when I think for a moment about that actually being true. That really… with our day-to-day things like our bodies and money and relationships and jobs and personal challenges right here and right now…what if, perhaps, love could heal it all?
What if you had the capability to access love and then do beautiful things with it? What if I did too? And people everywhere as well. I think we do have that capability.

So, that’s your provocation for the week. Act like it’s true that love can heal all things and that you can access love’s healing power. So first, decide what you will work on healing. My gentle suggestion is to work on something meaningful enough to matter (i.e. not the paper-cut you got yesterday) but not so big (i.e. world peace or deep resentment that’s been around for decades) that your belief says, “Not possible.” You can work on those later!

The next step is to surround the situation with love. There are many ways to access love. If you already have a process that works to help you feel the emotion of love, compassion, caring or appreciation – go for it (prayer, meditation, and practicing gratitude are all quite beautiful and effective)!

Or feel free to try this simple but beautiful process: Give yourself 5-10 minutes somewhere quiet where you won’t be bothered, and where you feel comfortable closing your eyes. Breathe gently, with a few long, slow inhales…and long, slow exhales. Next, bring to mind the situation, experience, body part, or person that you want to heal, and silently say something like, “It is my intention to bring love to this, with the desire to heal it for the highest and best for all concerned.” Then finally, give a sincere attempt to access a positive emotion like love or appreciation or compassion or peace or ease or kindness or caring. When you get to that heart feeling, imagine radiating it to the person (whether to yourself or another) or situation you are working on healing. Continue for 5-10 minutes.
We are each more powerful for affecting good than we think we are. What if all of us did this practice all over the world – intentionally accessed love to heal – even just for one day? Wow…. Treat yourself, today, like you have the healing power of love within you… because you do!

I keep learning this thing… and then forgetting it… and then remembering it again.

I wonder if you can relate. Doesn’t it seem like in order to get action accomplished that we’d need to be motivated first? And because of that, isn’t it easy to just wait around to do anything until you feel motivated to do it…? Yeah, I know, not very effective in the long run is it? Even though sometimes we do that, I think somewhere within us we know it’s totally backwards – or at least not helpful.

I’ve been helping people with shifting perspectives and making behavior changes for a long time, and I continue learning and using the same things that help my audiences and clients – including this topic. A few years ago I heard this idea spelled out really clearly when I was auditing a weight loss program called Naturally Slim. I was supposed to help decide if we were going to bring it to the group I was working with (which we did – great program).

As I was watching one of the videos, I heard the Founder (Marcia Upson) say something in a way that felt like a great “Aha!” for me. It was about the connection between being motivated and taking actions. She said that when it comes to making positive changes, she often hears people say they just aren’t motivated anymore; they say they only stay motivated for a short time. Sounds familiar, right? But instead of her trying to coerce people back into being motivated – instead of her giving ways to magically hatch more motivation – she was way more pragmatic. She suggested that when we lose our motivation – which happens to everyone, by the way – that we try taking some positive action anyway… and that the process of taking an action can start up the motivation again – brilliant (annoying… in a perfectly effective and empowering way – but brilliant)!

Think about something you’ve wanted to change, start, or complete – weight loss, healing a part of your body, forgiving someone from your past, making more money, interacting more positively with your favorite people, finishing a project, etc.

For me right now it’s growing my business. Do you remember a time – usually when you first began – when you felt really motivated to make the change(s)? How exciting! I love that – when things feel fresh and frisky, and I’m excited and know I can do it!

But then… a few weeks go by (or sometimes only days), and it’s like my motivation dries up. It must because I stop taking positive actions. And when one day of non-action turns into a string of days not taking any positive steps, then it feels overwhelming to begin again… especially if it’s an important project or big goal.

Here’s what I often do at those times – and I think it’s what a lot of us do: we wait for the motivation to come back before we start up our action steps again. Motivation first then action, right? Not so much. The truth is, not only is that completely backwards, it’s also soul squishing. Yes, I mean that this clearly: waiting until motivation comes back upon us can be soul squishing… because the longer we don’t do anything (with our projects or goals or changes) the more unmotivated we feel. Bluck…

This week, let’s turn it back around as Marcia suggested – and as we already know in our hearts is the real way to reach positive outcomes.

On that note, here is your provocation for the week.

Call to mind something you’ve been wanting to make progress with. What change or project or life goal has been calling you? This week, the plan isn’t to light up the whole planet with huge, important, gigantic progress! But neither is it to wait until you are graced with motivation “coming back upon you.” Instead, take one simple action – even a tiny one – toward the change you are wanting. Just one action. Then choose to be happy that you did it.

Choose to be proud of the action you took. Let’s all do that. Then let’s do it again tomorrow – one small conscious action. Then perhaps – after our actions – motivation may light upon us once again. Let’s all do that for just one week and see what happens to our sense of aliveness and motivation! You deserve to be wildly, wonderfully happy!