The Antidote to Worry
During these challenging times, even those who usually don’t worry are confessing to bouts of anxiety. In a world where the media is doing everything in its power to keep us focused on the problem you would have to be both deaf and blind to escape the pall.
Unfortunately, because the Law of Attraction dictates that you get more of what you focus on, this media attention only succeeds in delaying the world from finding a solution. So what is the antidote for this poisonous focus?
APPRECIATION
When you worry, you are disallowing. When you blame you are disallowing. When you complain you are disallowing. When you appreciate you are allowing.
Allowing what?
When you are appreciating and feeling positive, you are attracting more circumstances that match how you feel. There are many people who will be fine throughout this time in our history. Will you be one of them? You will if you appreciate the good things in your life and count your blessings.
I participated in a workshop once where the Instructor claimed that he could make us forget about all of our problems, no matter how dire, in a split second. To prove it, he asked a young woman if she would volunteer to come up on stage. She was asked to place her right arm, elbow down, on a high table he had placed there. The instructor then looked out at us and asked, “If I were to pull out a hatchet and cut off her lower arm, would she forget about all her existing problems?”
As my teenage nephew might say, “Well, d-uh!” Of course she’d forget because now she has a much BIGGER problem to deal with which, as it turned out, was his point. If you want your problems to disappear, get a bigger one like feeding the poor, saving the whales or helping keep children safe.
When you appreciate what you have in life, things get better for you. At first, it may just seem that way because you’re not complaining anymore or focusing on what upsets you. Eventually they actually will get better.
Haven’t you noticed that negative people seem to attract a lot to be negative about? They have problems on the job. They get over-charged by car mechanics, their household appliances break down at the worst possible time. The more negative they are, the more rotten their luck. This is no accident.
In the book The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman, PhD, he argues that only 10 percent of life is truly random. The remaining 90 percent is “actually defined by the way you think.”
Wiseman believes that lucky people have a relaxed attitude about life which makes them receptive to chance encounters and opportunities. Unlucky people run into the same opportunities but their negative mindset ensures they won’t notice them. This is critical in today’s challenging times because the “luckier” you are, the better you’ll do.
Please don’t be like Melanie, who was both my client and a friend. I last saw her in August. At the time, she was wrestling with a big problem – whether to retire early because, “I hate this job.” As it turned out, she never had to decide. On a Tuesday in September she went to the doctor because of a cold that wouldn’t go away. They discovered she was riddled with cancer and by Friday of the same week she was gone.
Melanie spent what turned out to be the last precious months of her life focused on everything she hated about her job. I knew her well and I can tell you she had lots to appreciate if she had simply shifted the lens a bit. Imagine if she’d spent those final months fully appreciating the wonderful people and circumstances of her life. How peaceful might she have been at the end?
Focus on what you appreciate. Don’t waste precious time on negativity. And watch how your luck improves.
