I don’t know what is going on. I have never experienced a cash flow challenge like this – ever!

He sits across from me in the coffee shop, a picture of abject misery. All his creativity shut down, all his drive gone; hopeless, powerless. So what am I going to do? What would you do?

Whoa safari! I respond, breaking the negative spiral that is beginning to form. Tell me about last month.

Last month was better. There was at least enough cash to pay the bills, but this month I don’t even know how I am going to pay my staff. OK, I respond, refusing to be drawn into his problem, How about the previous month? The previous month was OK. Good, how about next month? Next month will be good he says beginning to rise from his gloomy bog. There are some good deals coming through and the money will begin to flow again.

So, I said, this is not a Permanent situation. No he says pensively, I guess not.

Tell me about the rest of your life? What do you mean? Well, how is your relationship going? Oh, that is going so cool. We talk all the time … she is so great. It’s like we already know what the other is going to say. So that area of your life is working, that’s’ great. Yes, and I am training to swim the ‘Midmar Mile’ and feeling pretty strong.

So it is just the business that is troubling you right now. Yes, but I have built up a pretty strong show here. What do you mean? Well I have some great developers and all my guys are loyal. We have not lost a person this whole year, despite the cash flow crunch. Great … so it’s just your finance department? No, not really. My bookkeeper is top notch. I mean she is so on the ball that I can leave all of that stuff to her and know that it will get done.

Great so your problem is not Permanent, nor is it Pervasive. What do you mean? Well, the problem is not your whole life, just your business? Yes. And it is not your whole business, just your finances? Yes. And it is not your whole finance department; it is just your cash flow? Yes. And it is just this month. Yeesss – this time with some enthusiasm!

So tell me, how did this happen? What do you mean? Well, you called up all your customers and told them not to pay you this month because you were choosing to experience a cash flow challenge? No why would I do that? OK, then you must have goofed off this entire year and not brought in any new business? No, I told you, I have some good deals starting to roll in.

OK, so it must be because you are too stupid to run your own business! How can you say that, I have successfully grown this business for twelve years now?

So it is not Personal then. What do you mean? Well you are still responsible for sorting out the problem, but you are not to blame for the problem. The problem has not come about because you are too stupid, too fat, too unlovable, too undeserving … it is not Personal. That’s right!

So this situation is not Permanent … its going to get better, and soon? Yes!
Neither is it pervasive across your entire life. It is localized to your cash flow? Yes!
Nor is it Personal … the situation did not arise because of something that you are or are not? NO, but I am still responsible for sorting it out!

Right … so what is your plan?

Martin Seligman, a psychologist in the US and author of “Learned Helplessness” is one of the good guys because he sells hope and not more of the problem. He tells us that because of our conditioning, we end up “P’ing/” all over ourselves. We become helpless and powerless because we perceive our problems to be permanent; pervasive and personal. From this emotional state, we feel powerless to act.

You see, no problem is bigger than you are, but we shut ourselves down because we feel that it is hopeless. The situation is here to stay and is never going to improve. We feel powerless because it seems that nothing in our lives is working and what ever we are doing will not change the situation. We feel useless because the situation seems to remind us of all the old conditioning that tells us that we are useless, not-good-enough, unlovable; undeserving and worse.

From this emotional state, we are shut down to any solutions. Our creativity is rock bottom, our resourcefulness is buried deep under a plummeting negative downward spiral and we feel powerless to stop it.

The key? Challenge the status quo. Challenge your assumptions about the permanence, the pervasiveness and how you are personally to blame for the situation.

From this new state of taking back his power, my client has not yet solved his problem … the cash flow challenge is still very real, but he has now reclaimed his creativity and is now in a much better place to find a resourceful solution.

I can ask my suppliers for some leeway! I can ask my customers for a 50% deposit before I start work! I can ask the bank for some short term bridging support! I can … the possibilities are out there!

How about You? What assumptions are keeping you stuck…

Amongst the horse culture of the North American Plains Indians there is a curious culture which on the face of it seems totally alien to our western minds.

When a warrior, Chief or Leader achieves something truly significant in their lives, they assemble the tribe and physically give away everything that they own. Understand what I am saying here … this is not just a superficial token giveaway-feel-good-check-out-how-cool-I-am party: clothes, blankets, food, cooking and eating utensils; weapons; horses; packs … even the lodge skins and precious lodge poles of their teepee homes are freely given away to whomever they deem fit to receive them. Every individual in the tribe gets something.

To our western culture of accumulation of as much as we can, as fast as we can, often at the cost of relationships, family, and our own physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing, this practice has to be as remote and unfathomable as the man in the moon.

For the Plains Indian however the practice has a profound significance: for the giver as well as for the receiver. It is all about trust…

For the giver it is a statement of his trust in the Creator, in the cyclical nature of things, in his tribe and in himself. Simplistically, he is saying I have achieved all this within the great circle of life, with the help of the Creator, with the guidance of my spirit helper or totem, with the support of my tribe and with the strength of my own two hands. With the guidance of my teachers and elders, with the comradeship of my fellow warriors, with my courage in battle, with my skill as a hunter and warrior I have achieved this. I did it, but without the circle I could not have done it.

He is making a statement of his acceptance of his role as a provider and protector of his family and his tribe and his trust in the reciprocal protection and providence from his fellow warriors.

He is also making a statement of faith: If I can achieve it once, then I can achieve it again, and so to affirm this I will give away all that I have, firm in the knowledge that so long as I am part of the great circle of life, it will come back to me.

To your average western materialist the concept conjures up a dread so palpable that (s)he feels physically ill. The scarcity and lack consciousness that has made up the conditioning of our culture tells us that this system might work for them but for us it is utterly impractical. If I give away all I that I have then how will I get it all back again and how will I survive and who will look after me and more important than all this … what will people say?

Sure, on the surface we are comparing pemmican with biltong but at a deeper level there is a longing for the simplicity of a lifestyle where trust in ourselves and in each other and in something bigger than ourselves is a fundamental way of being.

With such a fundamental belief fear would be instantly banished from our psyche. Not the fear of fifteen thugs with AK 47’s in a shopping mall, but the fear that we are alone, that we have no value, that we might lose all we have in this or the next recession.

With such a belief we might just dare to dream the unimaginable. We might just risk it all on our journey to the achievement of that dream and we might just become all that we can in the process … which is after all the fulfillment of our purpose here.

How about You? Are you willing to risk losing just a little to have it all…

Have you ever looked at a tree in winter: stark against the sky with spiky branches and twigs sticking out all over like a “hip” (does that date me?) teenager. Chaos is the word that comes to mind. Chilling!

The most natural human tendency is to want to control all of the myriad details of our frenetic lives. We crave certainty. Even the most free spirited of us needs to know with some degree of security that tomorrow will be similar to today and that the day after will follow on as expected.

Look again at the tree. Look closely for long enough and you will see some pattern begin to emerge from the chaos. A self-similar theme begins to emerge. Usually, depending on the tree, a ‘Y’ shaped fork is repeated over and over in ever diminishing size and proportion adding a complexity to the tree that is scary to the uninitiated eye.

Chaos theorists refer to this phenomenon as a fractal: a self-similar theme or pattern that re-occurs, in growing complexity no matter how many times you magnify selected portions of the graphical representation of any mathematical formula.

Our lives are similar. From an alien perspective, observing the ant-like chaos of typical human activity that epitomizes the human condition, the overall impression is one of chaos. Most of us suffer from overwhelm: desperately trying to control all the loose ends and details that make up our complex lives.

In our quest for certainty, predictability and security we try to control the very things over which we cannot and will never have total and lasting control. In an attempt to control the events of our lives, we try to control the reactions, actions, choices and opinions of other people: husbands, wives, children, relations, colleagues, service providers, prospects, customers and fellow road users.

Denial, confusion, anger, frustration and depression inevitably follow in a downward spiral of hopelessness, helplessness and powerlessness. In truth, the only thing we have total and definitive control over is ourselves. Our reactions, responses, thoughts, decisions, beliefs, emotions, words and actions are the root cause of the results, experiences, lessons and consequences of our lives.

Your thoughts are the fractals directing the chaotic complexity of your life. The secret to controlling your life lies not in controlling the myriad, ever shifting details of your life but in controlling their root cause – your thoughts, decisions, beliefs and assumptions which spark your emotions which spark your attitudes which influence your behaviours and actions which ultimately define your results – positive or negative, good or bad. These results in turn influence your thinking which sets the spiral in perpetual motion … going up or going down. Your choice!

Your life and the way that you are experiencing it right now have everything to do with the assumptions that you have made about yourself, the world and your perception of your ability to make a meaningful difference in your world, for yourself and for those who rely on you.

How about You? Which way is your spiral taking you…

The bills are piling up; the Vat is overdue; the creditors are slow payers… if they pay at all, stuck at the end of the long cash flow queue as we are; the ex wants more money… we’re living hand to mouth as it is, more unnecessary legal bills; prices sky rocket and salaries stay the same with disposable income being squeezed in between; petrol’s coming down but for how long and it’s impossible to get credit … for anything, from anyone…

All day long as I work with people as a life and Business Coach out there I hear people lament. The apathy is crippling, the hopelessness overpowering and the desperation mounting … where will it end. Never mind the Lotto, one person confided in me that never before had she seriously considered crime as a solution… one little ATM… boom … problem solved. Or is it?

More millionaires are made in times of recession than in boom times; they say (whoever they are). Yes but you need money to make money … Maybe so. But without hope, no matter how much money you have, nothing will change. In fact it will probably get worse.

Why? Because everything you have started from the inside-out. From the career you find yourself stuck in to the style of clothes you wear to the way you wear your hair, to the area you live in and the type of dwelling you live in – flat, townhouse or house came from within. You chose it, perhaps a combination of choices, but your choice nonetheless. Sure, maybe you chose by deciding not to choose, but choosing not to choose is still your choice and the outcome is your responsibility nonetheless.

There is that word again… responsibility. Responsibility is different to blame. Blame shuts you down in patterns of victim thinking, feeling and actions. Blame is about whose fault it is and who is guilty. Guilt is another of those words that shuts you down in patterns of hopelessness, helplessness and more victim stuff. Blame and guilt are designed to keep you stuck.

Responsibility is designed to liberate you. Responsibility is all about your ability to respond.

Ultimately, you have the choice to respond destructively and make your situation more hopeless or to respond constructively and begin to heal your situation. To skip blame and guilt and address what needs to be addressed. To examine the patterns that are causing the situation and heal them at their source … within you: your beliefs about yourself, the world and your capacity to operate meaningfully in the world, your emotions – disempowering or empowering, and the resultant behaviours or misbehaviours, actions or inactions that are causing your current results.

So why are you abdicating your responsibility? On the surface it may be laziness, it may be lethargy, it may be a desire to keep the peace and not rock the boat, but don’t kid yourself… deep down it’s about fear.

Fear of rejection; fear of catastrophic events; fear of failure; fear of success; fear of fear itself are underpinned by two fundamental fears, the fear of not being loved and the fear of being alone. So we set up coping mechanisms to prevent us from being hurt; we don’t confront; we don’t participate; we don’t compete; we don’t take risks, because if we do … then we might just get ‘found out’. We might just have to face the fact that that sabotaging childhood decision is true and that we really are not good enough, that we are undeserving and unlovable. The secret lurking fear that people will not like us anymore and that we might end up alone.

So it’s easier to go along until all hell breaks loose and we are left bewilderedly wondering what happened… Not so easy to pick up the pieces now though.

It starts with you.
Are you the victim of your situation or are you the creator of your own solutions…

I was reading an article earlier this week by Steve Pavlina on courage as a vital ingredient to engaging the flow of the Law of Attraction. He was saying that many of us naively think that once we have identified what we want and put it out there to the Universe, we think that all that now remains for that red Ferrari, ideal job, loving new relationships or big Lotto score to manifest is to sit back, think happy thoughts and blithely wait for our desire to magically drop from the sky or miraculously appear in our driveway, on our doorstep or in our bank account.

Not so … nothing actually happens until we do something to engage the flow. This takes courage because in order to have something different in our lives, not only must we BE different, but also DO something different.

Going on the premise that if we continue to do what we have always done, we will get more of what we already have: that doing different more often than not calls for us to step outside of our comfort zone and face our fears.

If we can do that, then we more fully engage the Law of Attraction and as we reach up by believing AND doing like a stalagmite from the cave floor, we will eventually meet the stalactite growing from the cave roof as the Universe elegantly orchestrates opportunities to bring to us that which we have asked for.

The when has everything to do with the concentration of the core ingredients of belief, gratitude, focus and focused action.

What do you think?

I don’t know what is going on. I have never experienced a cash flow challenge like this – ever!

He sits across from me in the coffee shop, a picture of abject misery. All his creativity shut down, all his drive gone; hopeless, powerless. So what am I going to do? What would you do?

Whoa safari! I respond, breaking the negative spiral that is beginning to form. Tell me about last month.

Last month was better. There was at least enough cash to pay the bills, but this month I don’t even know how I am going to pay my staff. OK, I respond, refusing to be drawn into his problem, How about the previous month? The previous month was OK. Good, how about next month? Next month will be good he says beginning to rise from his gloomy bog. There are some good deals coming through and the money will begin to flow again.

So, I said, this is not a Permanent situation. No he says pensively, I guess not.

Tell me about the rest of your life? What do you mean? Well, how is your relationship going? Oh, that is going so cool. We talk all the time … she is so great. It’s like we already know what the other is going to say. So that area of your life is working, that’s’ great. Yes, and I am training to swim the ‘Midmar Mile’ and feeling pretty strong.

So it is just the business that is troubling you right now. Yes, but I have built up a pretty strong show here. What do you mean? Well I have some great developers and all my guys are loyal. We have not lost a person this whole year, despite the cash flow crunch. Great … so it’s just your finance department? No, not really. My bookkeeper is top notch. I mean she is so on the ball that I can leave all of that stuff to her and know that it will get done.

Great so your problem is not Permanent, nor is it Pervasive. What do you mean? Well, the problem is not your whole life, just your business? Yes. And it is not your whole business, just your finances? Yes. And it is not your whole finance department; it is just your cash flow? Yes. And it is just this month. Yeesss – this time with some enthusiasm!

So tell me, how did this happen? What do you mean? Well, you called up all your customers and told them not to pay you this month because you were choosing to experience a cash flow challenge? No why would I do that? OK, then you must have goofed off this entire year and not brought in any new business? No, I told you, I have some good deals starting to roll in.

OK, so it must be because you are too stupid to run your own business! How can you say that, I have successfully grown this business for twelve years now?

So it is not Personal then. What do you mean? Well you are still responsible for sorting out the problem, but you are not to blame for the problem. The problem has not come about because you are too stupid, too fat, too unlovable, too undeserving … it is not Personal. That’s right!

So this situation is not Permanent … its going to get better, and soon? Yes!
Neither is it pervasive across your entire life. It is localized to your cash flow? Yes!
Nor is it Personal … the situation did not arise because of something that you are or are not? NO, but I am still responsible for sorting it out!

Right … so what is your plan?
Martin Seligman, a psychologist in the US and author of “Learned Helplessness” is one of the good guys because he sells hope and not more of the problem. He tells us that because of our conditioning, we end up “P’ing/” all over ourselves. We become helpless and powerless because we perceive our problems to be permanent; pervasive and personal. From this emotional state, we feel powerless to act.

You see, no problem is bigger than you are, but we shut ourselves down because we feel that it is hopeless. The situation is here to stay and is never going to improve. We feel powerless because it seems that nothing in our lives is working and what ever we are doing will not change the situation. We feel useless because the situation seems to remind us of all the old conditioning that tells us that we are useless, not-good-enough, unlovable; undeserving and worse.

From this emotional state, we are shut down to any solutions. Our creativity is rock bottom, our resourcefulness is buried deep under a plummeting negative downward spiral and we feel powerless to stop it.

The key? Challenge the status quo. Challenge your assumptions about the permanence, the pervasiveness and how you are personally to blame for the situation.

From this new state of taking back his power, my client has not yet solved his problem … the cash flow challenge is still very real, but he has now reclaimed his creativity and is now in a much better place to find a resourceful solution.

I can ask my suppliers for some leeway! I can ask my customers for a 50% deposit before I start work! I can ask the bank for some short term bridging support! I can … the possibilities are out there!

How about You? Are you stuck - what is your plan?

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

During the 1800’s the United States adopted an aggressive expansionist policy which hid behind the theory of “Manifest Destiny” – the right of the stronger to take from the weaker. This policy was aimed at Mexico, the Native American peoples, Hawaii and anyone else who had what they wanted, needed or lusted after.

Don’t get me wrong – they were not the only nation adopting this colonial ideal. Europe had long used the same ideology to expand their empires in Africa, Australia, Asia and the Americas. The United States were arguably the most blatant about it in the name of ‘Progress’, especially with regard to the Native American question.

Perhaps the lessons of the past play a part in the perceptions of today.

The concept of ‘Having’ today often conjures up the spectres of greed, selfishness and guilt. Consequently many people are afraid to ask for abundance, prosperity or even comfort in their lives.

The study of economics teaches us the science of managing ’scarce resources’, therefore if I ‘have’ then you will ‘not have’ – there cannot be enough for both of us. if I want more, then I am greedy and selfish. If I have less then I am virtuous – poor but virtuous.

Interestingly enough this perception is most often ascribed to by ‘Light workers” – healers, alternative practitioners, social workers and counsellors. As if struggle and lack is a prerequisite for working for God.

Money of course sits at the centre of this controversy. Ironically the very concept which at its heart is a facilitator of prosperity has become a smother-er of prosperity. Money is a man-made concept. Nature has no need for money or the idea of money. Nature gives and takes with a free abundance, providing all that is necessary for abundant life, as it is necessary.

Sadly money, the one thing at our current level of economic evolution which should facilitate abundance and prosperity for all of us, has acquired the reputation as ‘the root of all evil’ (a misquotation from the original by the way) and filthy (as in filthy lucre), and rich people as being greedy, mean and stinking (as in stinking rich).

I don’t know about you but I personally would prefer not to be evil or stinking or greedy, How about you?

All this is exacerbated by our own personal relationship with money, or the idea of money. The wisdom of our parents manifesting as well meant but outdated and often limiting advice; our first experiences with money; our feelings of self worth and value and of course good old peer group pressure.

Money, or rather the idea of money, was created to facilitate the varied needs and wants of mankind. Money is not about currency it is about freeing up the flow of abundance and prosperity from all of us, to all of us, for all of us.

So where did this go wrong? Without meaning to sound like a … gasp, communist, why does six percent of the world’s population control more money than the other ninety four percent combined?

I don’t mean to sound like a proponent of conspiracy theories with lizard people controlling every aspect of our existence through sport, electronic banking and the ever rising oil price. But the simple answer is – because we let them!

The point is that by most of us being reluctant to ‘have’, we actively choose not to have. So if we don’t have it somebody else has to have it – shame!

We are, each of us born with the God given power to choose and manifest our own destiny.

Most us  of work this magic in the negative – deciding that we are not good enough and then setting up our lives to experience this decision, manifesting what we do not want in the process.

The good news is – look how good we are at it.

Why not manifest your own destiny?

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

“Anxiety is fear of ones self”- Wilhelm Stekel

Amongst the Cheyenne Indians who once proudly roamed the great American plains but who are now mostly situated on reservations there remains a custom which is profound in its significance yet eloquent in its simplicity.

At the age of puberty boys and girls are taken away to undergo an initiation rite. Part of this rite is the creation of their own unique dance. Each young adult is tasked with the creation, choreography and performance of a dance which is unique unto themselves. Once completed they will then perform their dance publicly for the very first time at a special ceremony.

Throughout their lives their dance will evolve yet never be complete. Significant events, achievements and adversities will be interwoven into the dance as they develop through the stages of life from young adulthood to maturity to old age and eventual transition to the spirit world.

Although similar, each dance is uniquely different and specific to that individual. As they perform the dance they are mindful that they cannot perform the dance of the one in front of them, nor can they perform the dance of the one behind them. They can only perform their own dance.

Symbolically the dance is an expression of their unique evolving individuality.

Unless we know who we truly are we cannot be whole in any relationship – romantic, family, friendship, business or casual, without merging with the other and losing part of who we are in the process. Boundaries become blurred, values become diluted and principles become compromised. We cannot become who we are not. We can only live who we are.

Each is a unique individual who interdependently interacts within the tribe in a symbiotic harmony. Rights and responsibilities are clear cut. Each has a part to play in the shifting interrelationships of the tribe. Each will serve the tribe in his or her unique fashion as each will enjoy the protection of the tribe.

Yet each will remain a unique individual not bound by the decisions of the tribe unless they are present for the making of that decision. Each will choose to remain part of the tribe for as long as it serves both tribe and individual. Freedom of choice is paramount and no one can tell another what to do, yet refusal to live by the customs of the tribe places one outside the protection of the tribe.

Contrast this harmonic freedom with our western civilization where rites of passage are largely a thing of the past. Rights are demanded but responsibility is shirked. Individuality is ego based and our sense of self is largely based on inadequacy and fear.

Ask almost anyone you know the simple question “Who are you?” and you will be met by a terrified vacant look followed by a recitation of the roles habitually performed by that person, mostly based on what they do for a living, where they live and what car they drive.

By and large we are taught to conform. Different is wrong and the opinions of others are far more important than our own opinions – particularly their opinions about who we are, what we should or should not do and what we are worth.

Most of us do not possess a real sense of who we are which leads to relationships based on need. Fear is often the driving force behind much that we do and say. The fear of not being loved and of being alone is often so terrifying that we are willing to compromise the little we do know about ourselves just to maintain the status quo of our largely co-dependent relationships.

Self worth for most people I meet resonates at around 20% and is oriented around a sense that somehow we are not good enough.
What would it be like to truly know who you are and to enjoy the freedom of passionately and unashamedly expressing who you are in a dance designed to celebrate life – your life?

Whose dance are you dancing? Are you even dancing?

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

What have you got to lose?

Contact me now online to set up a Complimentary Meeting to discuss your current situation and explore how I can personally help you to Shift your Stuff.
Regards,
Graham

I’ve been having some fun with the people I’ve met with this week…

One simple question: Where were you on this day forty years ago?

On Monday this week forty years ago (20th July 1969), Neil Armstrong made his paradigm altering walk on the moon. I was seven years old at the time, sitting with my Mom, my Gran and my two younger brothers in a tea room – fast food outlets were a thing of the future then, garages hadn’t yet come up the idea of the Quick store and everybody called the café a tea room. We were on our way from Johannesburg to Durban, a long, long way for us kids before those DVD gadgets on the back of the front seat headrests, and we had stopped off, I can’t remember quite where, for a quick meal.

The radio (TV only blessed / cursed us in South Africa in the mid 1970’s) was broadcasting the moon landing; we were listening in wonder as Neil made his iconic speech “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind”. Thrilling stuff!

The moon, that glowing object in our night sky that man has worshipped to, sacrificed to, dreamed about, wondered about, romanced to and used as a measure of time since first we looked up into the night sky.

In 1969, with less technology than what today goes Into one Smartphone, NASA sent a radio controlled tin can with some experimental lab-people in it across the chilly unknown void of space to land safely on a chunk of rock, allowed those lab-people to get out and raise a flag, play golf and then brought them all safely home again plus some souvenir moon rocks for the folks back home.

If we can do that as a race, what is possible for us as individuals with access to all of what they had then and so much more in the forty years since?

So I’ve been asking the question … and getting mixed responses. Nostalgia, excitement, surprise (has it been forty years already?), wistfulness, nonchalance, boredom (yawn) … some of you guys weren’t even born in 1969 and some of you have never known life without personalized handheld technology.

Then follows the big question: Forty years have shot by. Forty years and counting – perhaps less for you, forty years of your life, what kind of a leap have you made? How happy are you with what you’ve achieved in those forty years?

That part stumps them. Some have mixed feelings, some nod unconvincingly, some have tears of regret welling up in the corners of their eyes, some don’t really know. This last one is the saddest because if you don’t even know if you are happy with your forty-year leap then who should know?

What have you done with what is available to you? Are you happy with your leap?

Is it too late?

“Aah man! What else can go wrong?”

First the lawnmower dies on me; then the fridge packs up; then the geyser blows; you can’t rely on the electricity; petrol goes up again next week … another 34c per liter and now, to crown it all some guy in his 4×4 rear ends me on the highway! I stopped in time, why can’t he?

Why does everything happen to me? I have the worst luck on the planet! If there is an asteroid out there and it’s going to hit the earth, you can be sure that it will land on my house. I hope I’m inside, and then I won’t have to worry about more bad stuff happening to me …

The sad lament of the unlucky victim; you can hear it at any table in any coffee shop, around any corporate water cooler, in any hairdressing salon, or overhear it in any telephone conversation or in any queue anywhere, anytime. Perhaps it’s even in your own home?

Now follows a flurry of frantic activity to fix the stuff. We talk to people, ostensibly to get advice, but really to let them know the full extent how bad it really is going for us. We listen to advice which more often than not originates from a line that begins: “That’s nothing … do you know what happened to me …” Eventually we act: we get on the phone to the insurance company, we call the service department, we take the offending appliance to the dealer, or we haul out our trusty tool box and go to work.

But that doesn’t work does it?
We get shunted around from person to person, department to department on the phone. We hold on in long queues with auto-operators whispering sweet platitudes into our increasingly irate ears about how special we are and how valuable or business is, before cutting us off so that we have to begin again. The dealer blithely tells us that the warranty has expired… just yesterday in fact. If only you had come in last week. The Insurance company that gladly accepted our premiums every month for the last ten years ‘no questions asked’, now has lots of questions and then smugly tells us that we really should have read the small print. An act of God you know! Doing it ourselves is no less fraught with complications … from well meaning advice from the loved ones, to rusty bolts from before the rinderpest, to parts that even Noah had only one of in his ark. And the damn thing still doesn’t work and now I have all these odd pieces left over after reassembling it.

What am I doing wrong? How do I fix this? Why am I attracting all this negative stuff?

All the stuff that we ‘Don’t Want’ streams to us in unbroken streams of predictability, while the stuff that we ‘Do Want’ comes in maddeningly slow surges, if it comes at all

The key word here is attracting! We are walking, talking, feeling, and thinking antennas that not only receive but also transmit. Forget broadband, you are literally your own satellite dish and decoder.

We get what we focus on, a habit that we have perfected from early childhood because we had really good teachers in Mom & Dad and all the other adults from whom we took our example. Don’t blame them, they too were following the example set for them.

Not only do we get what we focus on, but we magnify if through our feelings. That’s right we magnify it through our feelings. As a result of the stream of ‘Don’t Want’ stuff we feel irritated, mad, frustrated, angry, vindictive, and resentful and many more negative emotions.

According to Lynn Grabhorn in her amazing book “Excuse me, your life is waiting” these strongly felt negative emotions magnify whatever we are focusing on and set up an energy field to attract more of the same. We transmit the object of our focus; our terrible job, our jerk of a boss, our clapped out car, our mingy salary, our toxic relationship or our cellulite thighs, and then we amplify, magnify and broadcast these ‘Don’t Wants’ through our negative feelings and pretty soon back comes some more of the same. So we focus on that and feel negatively about that and broadcast that and, you guessed it, back comes some more of the same in a self inflicted downward spiral of predictably attracted ‘Don’t Wants”.

It’s a plot, a cosmic plot. The Universe is out to get me. How can I win when the odds are so unfairly stacked against me?

Simple answer! Don’t fix it, heal it.
Change your focus to what you ‘Do Want” and feeeeeeel positively about that!
Overcoming a lifetime of conditioning? That’s more difficult!