• I started with my morning meditation, which includes scriptures and other good, inspirational books, journaling, and prayer.
• I found some of my favorite music, went down into my basement, and I danced. I got my blood pumping in a way that’s fun for me—not force, just free fun.
• I gave my husband a really big hug and thought of all the reasons I am grateful to have him in my life.

By finding all the reasons that I could have energy today, I also found reasons that I could feel excited about the day–even with all the things on my to-do list– without needing to feel tired or overwhelmed about it.

It’s so cool how that works, isn’t it?

To some it may seem like it could be coincidence or a “fluke thing,” but I’m going to tell you why it works. Basically, it’s because our brains are cool! Our brains are programmed to only see the things we look for.  According to Darren Hardy in the Compound Effect:

“We are bombarded with billions of sensory bites of information each day. To keep ourselves from going insane, we ignore 99.9 percent of them, only really seeing, hearing, or experiencing those upon which our mind focuses.”

And thank goodness!! Think about it, if we had to notice and process every single piece of information that came our way, we would be overwhelmed with information! There are sights, sounds, smells, and life going on around us all the time! There’s always something coming at us and wanting our attention, so our brains are wired to ignore a lot of things. I don’t have to notice every time I need to take a breath, I don’t need to tell my body how to move. My brain does that habitually, and it also shuts out information habitually. Yours does too!

• If you’re a parent and you’ve ever been in a room full of kids making all kinds of noise and the only sound you notice is your own child’s cry, it’s because you’ve been trained to only listen for the noises that you need to hear.
• If you’ve ever bought a new car or learned a new word and suddenly you notice them everywhere, was it a serendipitous coincidence that all of a sudden everyone has learned the word or bought the car? I mean, maybe—but most likely, it’s just you didn’t notice it before; it wasn’t in your awareness.

Incredible, right?!

Just imagine! if we understand just this little piece about how our brains work, we could program it to notice more of the things we want to see!

Which brings up another important point: do you know what you want to see?

If we could know for sure what we value–things that are virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, of good report, perhaps–then we can choose to see those things.
When I woke up this morning, I could have chosen to focus on all I had to do. I could have chosen to focus on all the reasons why I deserved to be tired; I could have focused on the fog on my brain, I could have focused on my eyes being heavy—and, to be honest, Sometimes I DO! Today, however, I didn’t want to. So I chose to focus on reasons to be excited and to have energy, and it really made all the difference.
How do you want to feel today? What if you could choose to live the life that you value every single day?
 

The post The Power of Awareness: How to attract more of what you want first appeared on Cary MacArthur.

The post The Power of Awareness: How to attract more of what you want appeared first on Cary MacArthur.

—  to which someone commented, “Understanding HOW to do that and keep surviving is the issue for me…I desperately want to get out of my head, but I am always in survival mode.”
While it is impossible to share all of my experiences that have lead me to understand what this statement means and how to incorporate it into my life, I realize that without all of the step-by-steps, such a statement is much easier said than done.

I get it. I have been in there, and it wasn’t that long ago. 

To tell you the truth, that very statement “You attract who you’re being” used to tick me off so much! My coach said it to me repeatedly, and it made no sense!!! “IF I KNEW HOW TO BE IT, I WOULD BE IT!!” Sound familiar? Let me tell you the simple version of what I did to connect the dots until this idea didn’t only make sense, it became my life!

1. Pay attention to your feelings and your thoughts. In that order. Thoughts precede feelings, and since so many of us run on auto pilot trying to keep up with life’s to-do lists, our thoughts are often on auto pilot as well. To notice your thoughts, you must first notice your feelings. Stop what your are doing and intentionally ask yourself “What am I feeling right now?” and then listening to your body to tell you how it feels. Many people laugh at me when I tell them this first step because they think they know how they feel. Try it anyway. Chances are that if you are frustrated with your life, living in survival mode, you are likely quite numb to your feelings. Pay attention. Your body will tell you. Then, once you have identified how you feel, ask yourself “What am I thinking?” and once you are aware of the thoughts happening underneath the to-do list, ask “Why?” Set an alarm on your phone and do this several times a day for at least 30 days (I still do it after 4 years) and journal what you find. You will find you are much more aware of how your thoughts really do affect your emotions, which makes it easier to switch your thoughts to something much better aligned with how you want to feel.
2. Move your body. Get your heart rate up for 30 consecutive minutes 3-5 times a week. I think we all have at least heard about the power of endorphins. I know that when I’m in survival mode, endorphin talk doesn’t motivate me much past telling all the exercise junkies what they can do with their endorphins… (am I the only one who has felt that way?) So first, again, I’ll say–I get it! And then I’ll say, find a reason to do it anyway. If you truly want to live your life, you must start by feeling alive. Much more that creating feel good chemicals, exercise lets you know that you are alive. If you are feeling resistance because you know you should exercise but you really don’t enjoy it, I challenge you to try something new–and keep trying until you find something you love to do. Personally, I didn’t believe it was possible for me to really enjoy any kind of body movement. I argued “BUT I’m NOT an athlete,” until finally, I decided to prove to my coach that I could never love any kind of exercise… can you guess where I’m going with this??? Trust me. Move your body.
3. Do something that scares you–every day. I used to think I wasn’t afraid of anything. Wow! Was I ever wrong! When I finally allowed myself to say yes to letting someone nudge me just a little bit (or a lot-a-bit) out of my comfort zone, I found that I was pretty much afraid of everything. I also found that once I allowed myself to “feel the fear and do it anyway,” I could breathe much more deeply. The world around me was suddenly brighter, and I got a glimpse of what it means to “be in the now.” I craved to feel that feeling again–and again. I can honestly say that I am addicted to that feeling on the other side of fear. How do I know what to do? where to start? You can start by saying Yes! to more of the things you want to say NO to.
4. Laugh. Look for reasons to laugh every day, and if you can’t find them, make them! I’ll be the first to admit that this did not come naturally to me, so I created a “100 Days of Laughter” challenge to help me be intentional about it and to hold myself accountable. The only way that I can really describe how these 100 days changed me is to ask you to try it for yourself. It’s like tinker bell came with her wand and sprinkled me with fairy dust. It’s that magic!

Of course, I could go on. There is no end, and that excites me!

There are so many little integral pieces to the puzzle of life, and the pieces don’t put themselves together. We have to do the work if we want to see the masterpiece.
The work is hard sometimes, and it is also SO MUCH FUN! 

The post You Attract What You’re Being: How to Live Life NOW first appeared on Cary MacArthur.

The post You Attract What You’re Being: How to Live Life NOW appeared first on Cary MacArthur.