The Resolution Solution

This year, I'm not making any resolutions.  I only have one goal: to enjoy life more. That’s it. It’s how I focused on finishing writing projects this year, even while my brain hollered about music. Focused presence feels finer than anything I've tried.

I know what it takes to feel fit: morning pages and 15 minute meditations before work. After work, exercise before Netflix.  In between I juggle writing projects, monthly collage calendars, learning Instagram, connecting with friends, and reading. Lately, I've been reading about writing and reading great writing.

Here's an image that keeps my heart on the lighter side of goal-tending. When a pilot sets his course, the plane doesn’t fly in a straight line. Instead, it constantly makes adjustments. In this way, it reaches its intended target. 

Detail from 2019 October Calendar collage

I’ve set my heart on presence. Emotional guidance is my auto-pilot.

Esther Hicks describes it this way. This thought makes me feel a little better. This thought feels a little worse. Thought by thought, action by action, I show up for my sweet California life.

Where are you headed in 2020? 

Creative Journaling and the Ladder of Affirmations

Before I discovered the Creative Journal method, I was run ragged by my emotions. It was often difficult to distinguish what I really felt from what I should feel and near impossible to deal with conflicting feelings.

            I was also born a right-brainer and latched on to the feel-good practice of affirmations before I understood the principle behind them. I believed that simply repeating an affirmation was the way to move out of sadness. Instead of staying with the emotion of sad, I tried talking myself out of being sad by masking sad with positive slogans.

Esther and Jerry Hicks, authors of Ask and It is Given, say that this is like putting a happy face sticker over your car’s empty gas gauge. The Hicks teach that our feelings are indicators of our emotional guidance system: they are simply there to tell us where we are on the emotional ladder. The reason why we want to know this is because of the Law of Attraction. Remember? Sad begets sad, anger begets anger, joy begets joy. An extremely simplified version of the Law of Attraction states that the primary feelings that we are living in this moment will attract feelings of vibrational equality in our future moments. So yes, we want to feel the sadness as it comes up, but we don’t want to be stuck there! 

It is one thing to feel and honor our emotions, it is quite another to become a victim of our emotions. Picture a ladder where the top rung is joy, and the bottom rung is depression or hopelessness. If I’m starting at depression and want to reach joy, there are several rungs that I need to reach in between. And each time I move up the ladder, I will not only release my feeling of depression, but I’ll also be closer to joy. But each step needs to be felt, honored and released.

Before the Creative Journal process, I didn’t realize there was an emotional ladder of feeling vibrations, much less where I was on that ladder. But now that I understand that being with and accepting my feelings helps release the emotional energy, I am better equipped to enjoy life and all of its thrilling and contrary loveliness. 

Excerpt from My Body, My Car: How to Coach Yourself Through Life's little Accidents by Dorothy Segovia. www.writeinside.com.

My Body, My Car: It's all about the journey.

So I finished the text of my workbook/cd combo called My Body/My Car, handed it off to my mentor to do the 1st read through and I'm still waiting for the elation. After all, I'd been working on the project - off and on - for 3 years.

I was musing about this while I listened to an Esther and Jerry Hicks workshop CD. Esther stated that reason is that when what we want manifests, it's like taking the next logical step. That is:

first we spend our energy dreaming of a goal,
then launching the goal,
overcoming the obstacles,
grinding out the finish touches
and then finally the finish line.

No wonder that by the time we reach our dream - we are often over it.

That's why BIG projects are often a let down. Sometimes even a down down.
All of this - plus the fact that living in our goal-driven society it is easy to forget that the point of any dream - is really the journey.

Celebrating the steps along the way ends those finishing-a-project blues.
I also make sure I've launched another dream about 2/3 of the way through.

This way I always a passion project to look forward to. After all, it's all about the journey.

Thanks, Hank!

When I first moved to SLO from LA I worked at a temporary staffing service in San Luis Obispo. One day, a co-worker and I went with a group of people from a radio station to a concert in Tulare. It was hot, the opening band’s lead vocals were impossible to hear, we didn’t like Hank Williams, Jr. tunes anyway and a fight broke out a few rows ahead of where we were sitting. It stopped when one of the sales reps from the bus ride decked the guy who started the whole thing.

Just before Sherrie and I headed back to the bus where the drinks were hopefully still on ice, I whispered, “Just think for the rest of our lives all we have to do to be happy is realize that we could be at the Hank Williams. Jr. concert instead.”

Sort of like the motivational speaker Anthony Robbins shouting to himself, “Thank God my feet don’t stink today!” Anything to stop the negative thought.

The point is to pivot away from what you don’t want and head for what you want. And humor releases energy even in grim circumstances. That’s not to say don’t feel what you are feeling or try to slap a happy saying on a sad experience.

Everyday I have the same goal: to feel good. Humor helps me let go of whatever thought that is creating the internal drama-rama that my Monkey Mind is so fond of creating.

Today’s my day off. First I woke up at 2am, then 4am, then 5am and finally got up at 6am. I started out tired and grumpy but thanks to Hank, I feel tired but good.

What will you do to feel good today? I really want to know – so please Comment.

May you pivot towards what you love today,

Dot

PS: For more information on pivoting, check out www.Abraham-Hicks.com.