Tag Archives: Lynn Grabhorn

Same city – Different outlook – Totally different experiences

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Peace and quiet in the middle of the hustle and bussle

It’s day 12 since I started my 30-day “happy no matter what challenge” – and I’ve decided to write an update because it was earlier today that I noticed something was different in my life.  While writing this, I’m mindful that my progress report might disappointment some.  For those of you who were expecting to read that I’ve found it easier to find parking spots, nope, the Law of Attraction has yet to solve that for me.  In fact, I just come from spending 30 minutes feeling very frustrated while looking for a place to leave my car for all of 5 minutes so I could grab some lunch.  In that regards, I can’t say that I’ve been better at keeping my cool when those small things get in my way.  As far as becoming a billionaire, I feel that I’m getting close, but I haven’t had a call from a rich relative to let me know that I’ll be getting a big chunk in advance.

So if it’s not the small stuff that I’m attracting and it’s not the big stuff either, then what is it that I’ve noticed is different in my life?  By minding my feelings and aiming to feel happy even if it means tickling myself in public, I’ve noticed a significant shift in my outlook on things.  That may sound minor in comparison to what you were expecting me to attract – convenience and instant wealth.  But based on the experiences that I’ve had in the last few days, that is no small thing for me. 

Let me explain.

Last week, while I was in Hong Kong (HK), I had the benefit of meeting someone who clearly needs to, as Lynn Grabhorn says in her book Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, “open the valve” to let some happy in.  One night, while sitting outside of my hotel room so that I could work without waking up my husband, a very chatty neighbor approached me.  I let him interrupt because I was curious as to what the universe would bring to my door-step at that time of the night. (you can relax because I’m not a murder-mystery writer so you don’t have to worry about my safety)

The universe brought me a very important life lesson.  My neighbor, a pearl farmer from Seychelles (East Africa), was in HK attending the jewellery exhibition that was taking place in town.  Soon after we met, he went on to speak his mind about how he thought that HK was one of the most rotten places on earth.  He complained about the pollution, the frivolity of the people, the traffic and on and on and on he went.  I let him go on because I found his rant quite amuzing.  Like an anthropologist doing an ethnography on an indigenous tribe in Africa, there I was, doing a study on the power of perspective (on an African just as well).  Clearly, my neighbor and I were experiencing the same exact city.  Yet he was spending most of his free time cooped up in his hotel room, looking to avoid what he saw as overcrowded, polluted and noisy city streets, while I was busy seeing, tasting, and feeling new things.

Of course there was traffic and pollution and noise 24/7, but there was also a world of experiences to be lived.  On most mornings before work, I went for a walk through Victoria Park where I watched locals practice their daily Tai-Chi ritual, while others danced Abba (with a straight face) and others swam laps. I experienced new and unusual flavors at one of the city’s oldest vegetarian restaurants – which happened to be just 3 blocks away from my hotel (Tung Fong Siu Kee Yuen at 111 Wan Chai Road).  If you’re a vegan – like me – or a vegetarian and you’ve been to HK, you would know that such a spot would feel like an oasis in the midst of all the dead ducks, pig’s body parts and who knows what that are hanging from almost every other restaurant window.  On the week-end, I met a friendly local who drove me around the art galleries and antique shops on Upper Lascar Row – in a hip convertible mini-cooper.  And the greatest highlight of all was spending a morning meditating at the Chi Lin Nunnery.  Founded in the 1930s, this monastery was built in the Tang Dynasty style.  It’s all made out of wood and no nails where used in its construction.  The energy in this quiet place – which happens to be in a busy neighborhood – is both intense and calming – like nothing I’d experienced before. 

It’s questionable and hard to prove whether I attracted these experiences into my life.  But I can say that I did not go looking for any of this, because like my neighbor, I did not know that all this existed in HK.  Like him, I too could’ve stayed locked up in my hotel room during my free time.  But I found that somehow, these flavors, sights and sounds flowed into my life – quite effortlessly.

Now that I’m back in Sydney, feeling energized and fulfilled from my trip, I plan to do exactly what I’ve been doing – feeeling happy no matter what.  

Stay tuned.

Happy days (NO matter what!)

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Here’s the deal.  At 19 I thought I was doing my mom a favor whenever I worked up a smile on my face.  (look ma’ I can smile!)  Later on I thought I was humoring my life-coach by being a good client and following her advice to look for the positive side of things.  (look coach, I can reframe!)  But after reading Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting and learning about the Law of Attraction, I now know that I am the one who stands to benefit the most – not my mom or my coach – from looking for ways to feel happy, no matter what. 

WHAT in the universe is the Law of Attraction?

Note: for some this might take some mind-bending.

My intention in sharing this with you is not to question any scientific theory or to support Quantum Physics.  Instead I intend to make your life (and mine) better by applying some simple logic.

According to the Law of Attraction, like attracts like.  Which means that positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative.  Yes, I know, according to my 9th grade physics teacher, and to Coulomb’s Law, it’s opposites that attract.  So that would mean that negative attracts positive and vice versa.  But open your mind (and put your physics book down) and think about the following.  Have you, when you’ve been in a positive mood, feeling great, willingly sought to be with a negative person?  For example at a party, when you’ve been having a blast, have you gone to hang-out with the party pooper in the corner?  My guess is that your answer will be a resounding NO WAY because you much rather be with your friends who are also jumping up and down feeling great just like you.  I’ll make this more relevant to your work-life.  If you look close enough at how your colleagues at work gather at lunch-time, it’s very likely that you’ll notice that all the complainers and whiners tend to sit at the same table.  I can speak for myself that when I was working within an organization in corporate Australia, I made it a point to avoid negative people as if they were a plague.

Now do you see what I mean?  Negative people definitely repel positive ones and positive ones attract positive ones.

Following that same logic, in order to attract more positive into our lives, we MUST feel positive.  Simply put, according to the Law of Attraction, we emit energy of the physical kind through how we feel.  Positive feelings, like when we’re feeling excited and happy, emit positive energy.  Negative feelings, like when we’re feeling frustrated or bummed, emit negative energy.  It follows that based on how we feel, positively or negatively, we attract either type of energy into our lives.  Got it? (read that one more time if you’re like me and need to know how things work before you jump into action)

And that’s exactly why it’s in your best interest (and mine) to feeel* positive – to attract positive things. 

I’m not suggesting that we need to be fake – and pretend to feel happy even when the going gets tough.  To begin with there’s a time to feel down.  Like when a parent passes away or when s*** happens, of the real kind. Feeling down at times means that you’re human – and that’s a great thing.  But also, pretending, according to the Law of Attraction will not do the trick simply because to emit the energy you must feel it.  On the other hand, intending to feel a certain way will in fact get you to shift your energy. Based on that, the key is to allow yourself to be in that down state for as little as you possibly can because quite simply, being down, although is part of the human condition, doesn’t solve anything.  Worse yet, it attracts more negative things.  In other words, when we remain in a negative state, emitting negative energy, we run the great risk of attracting into our lives more of what is making us feel sad, frustrated, angry. 

So the trick is to say to yourself – “fine, it’s okay for me to feel down, but how can I get out of this state ASAP?”

Inspired by my new-found knowledge and determined to attract all the good that the universe has stored for me, I’ve decided to spend the next 30 days (okay 27 cause I started on Saturday) feeeling happy NO matter what!

Because I’d LOVE for you to join me, here I share with you exactly what I’ve been doing.

How in the universe can you feeel happy NO matter what!?

Since I started trying to keep up my positive feeling, I’ve noticed that I’m really good at focusing on what I don’t want in life.  For example, while I was driving to the gym this morning, a driver turned unexpectedly into my lane and bam, I felt my anger rising.  And just like that, at the snap of a finger, my energy went from positive to negative.

So step 1 in getting rid of negative energy in my life is to shift my focus from what I DON’T want to what I DO want.  To do that, whenever I feel a negative emotion, like anger or frustration or anxiety, I simply observe myself get angry, frustrated or anxious and then when my temper tantrum is over, I ask myself: “What is it that I do want from this?”

In this all too common situation in my life, here’s my wish list:  I’d like for my driving not to be interrupted by clueless drivers!  I’d like for the world to be free of clueless drivers!  And I’d like the flow of positive energy to continue in my life, uninterrupted by clueless drivers.  So I see, I want to feel good.  Aha! There it is. That’s my clue.

If I want to feel good, then why don’t I just feel good?  Duh! (I can almost hear you saying).  Because a clueless driver just crossed my lane, right?  Fair enough.  But what if I could learn to somehow feel good regardless of what just happened?  I know, it’s so hard.  Believe me, I know.  I’m there with you all the time.  I’ve only being doing this for 3 days so I’m no pro. 

Thankfully there is a way for us all to shift feelings. Here are the set of techniques that have helped me survive the past three days. (thanks Lynn Grabhorn)

I hope that they enlighten you too:

1. Plan A:  Smile. To get me warmed up, I try, as hard as I can to make myself smile.  I can’t say that this is an easy thing to do.  Frankly, the last thing I feel like doing when I’m feeling angry or down is smiling.  Somehow my facial muscles don’t work.  But because I’m determined to feel happy no matter what for the next 28 days, I’ve been fighting gravity and hard.  And you know what?  I’ve been getting good results.  Whenever I force my cheeks to move up, I feel a minor rush of happiness.  And that gets me going on my way to shifting my energy.  I’m quite surprised by this finding because even though I’ve read research papers that show that when we smile, our body releases certain chemicals that make us feel good, I hadn’t experienced it first-hand.  Which simply tells me that I hadn’t tried hard enough.  And I must be smiling quite a bit lately because more than once my husband has asked me what I’m smiling about!

2. Plan B:  Ask myself if ANYTHING is worth risking attracting negative stuff into my life.  My second ammunition against negative feelings is to tell myself: “So what if (fill in with negative event such as: ‘that clueless driver cut across my lane’)? Is that event worth risking attracting negative stuff into my life – by allowing it to shift the energy that I’m emitting?” Of course not. 

3. Plan C:  Flip the switch.  In case plans A or B don’t work, I’ve developed a mental list of things that make me feel happy.  Lynn calls this technique ‘flipping the switch’.  To flip my switch back to positive, I refer to my mental list to remind myself of all the good things in my life.  And I have no doubt that if you look hard enough at your own life, that you’ll also find things to be happy about.  Do you have a trip coming up?  Did you recently win a bet?  Do you have cute nieces and nephews?  Did you recently get a gift from someone?  Did someone cute poke you on facebook?  I promise you that if you look close enough, you’ll find that you have plenty of things to feel good about.  To get me through my 30-day challenge, I developed a list of 30 things that make me feel a tingle, one for each day.

What do you say? Are you feeling up for feeling happy- no matter what for the next 30 days – and attracting all the positive things that the universe has stored for you?

(Stay tuned for another post where I’ll share with you the positive things that come into my life after I complete my 30-day challenge)

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*thanks Lynn Grabhorn – spelling it that way just feeels much better

For yu’ my friend: If you’d like to learn more about the Law of Attraction, I suggest that you read one or all of the following: The Law of Attraction by Esther Hicks, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (available in DVD too), and Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting by Lynn Grabhorn.