Do you feel trapped? Anywhere. In your body? Your job? Your life?
Perhaps that’s because all too often, we focus on what is wrong. Our thighs are too thick, our eyelashes too short, our boss too demanding, our house too small.
If this is what we fill our minds with, where will we be in six months? You probably recognize that often, you’re having the same thoughts, unbidden. That’s because, every time we think them, we actually wire our brains to think them again, and eventually, the loop becomes endless.
That loop is the reason we bring about what we think about. As Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. The good news is, we can change the currently engraved pattern.
How?
Start a new pattern. And then practice. Anne Cushman, writing in The Yoga Journal, says she focuses on the good things every day, first thing. “This little [morning] ritual sets the tone for an asana practice in which I’m tuned in to countless blessings that I might otherwise have overlooked: The complex, effortless coordination of muscles in the simplest forward bend; the peace that comes in the pause after a full exhalation; the release of the knot in my spine just behind my heart as I twist. Instead of looking for what feels wrong in a posture, I seek out what feels right and invite that action to expand.”
We can do this. It’s easy. Seek out what’s good, and ask it to expand.
For example, I assume if you are reading this that your house will not be bombed tonight. You can turn a knob and clean-HOT-water comes out of a faucet. You will definitely eat dinner today. And breakfast, tomorrow. You sleep in a bed.
How many billions of hard-working people on the planet today cannot assume any of that?
Would you like to expand your good? Cultivate your innate quality of mudita, or “joy”-a boundless capacity to savor life’s blessings, regardless of whether they’re showered on you or on others. The Dalai Lama, someone who radiates joy despite the horrors he has lived through, explains the benefits of cultivating mudita: “It’s only logical,” he said. “If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy for other people, billions more chances to be happy!”
Would you like to increase your chances to be happy for others and to invite joy into your own life? Join our group KICK START and learn to gratefully nourish your body with the food you are blessed with. Join our next KICK START HERE. Ask about our KICKSTART Early Bird! We can do this if we count our blessings.
Feel the joy.
Ask it to expand.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat!
