Monday, in the middle of office work, I had a random impulse to call the lawn guys. Sprinklers needed fixing, and my front tree was overdue for a trim. “Coincidentally,” they were available and showed up at my house within minutes. I walked out to see a gentleman standing on a six-inch limb with huge trimmers, artfully sculpting the branches! This man, who usually mows lawns told his boss that very day that he knew he could do a great job trimming trees. I was his first client, and as a result, I have a gorgeous and happy tree in my front yard.
The goodness didn’t stop there. Bulk trash “just happened” to come the next day and hauled away the giant pile of branches. Of course, the synchronicities were not coincidence. They were the result of pruning my negative thoughts and keeping attuned to the constant heavenly broadcast of love and guidance.
It has been a week of trimming, both external and internal. After a long, hot summer, I cut my garden back, and my dear generous eggplant, who struggled through the heat, sprouted new fruits within days. New peppers are growing, and I will soon have to make my yearly supply of pesto (Mm!). The roses are blooming once again, and the birds delight me every morning, flitting about the sunflowers that a storm bent over, so the blossoms sit just perfectly outside my kitchen window.
Cutting away the old dead branches allows the life force to flow to the healthy ones. Whether blocked or not, life always wants to expand, grow, give, and share.
Our lives are part of nature, too. As we trim away the thoughts that don’t serve our growth and evolution, the life force flows lovingly toward our healthy, happy desires and bears “fruit” in our own future. The practice of focusing on better-feeling thoughts is one of pruning the dead branches from our minds. We weed out thoughts that choke off love’s ability to flow and grow in our lives and nourish ones that do.
The practice of reaching for better feelings and attuning to love is infinitely practical. This week, my mail email address was not sending, my internet went down before a full day of Zoom clients, a friend had severe health challenges, and a family member had a life-threatening condition that flared up. I am working full time, and still enjoying a steep learning curve for my new Etsy shop.
Instead of reacting, my number one priority has been to prune away the negative thoughts and worries by reaching for good feelings. Keeping my vibe high allowed me to flow through the challenges instead of creating struggle. Before I jumped into action, I sat, breathed, received, and reached for good feeling thoughts. “This is easy. The universe has my back. It is a beautiful day…” As I attune to love, the guidance and support flow into my life gracefully and easily.
As a result, I’ve worked around the email issue and am progressing toward a solution. The modem miraculously started working when I focused myself into a state of pure presence. I helped my friend open to her own healing, and my dear one with the health challenges is in a state of wondrous surrender, getting good help, and knowing how deeply they are loved. I’ve been fully present for clients, and guided to all I need to learn so I could get back to the fun work of designing t-shirts.
In the past, any one of these challenges would have upset me and driven me crazy. I would have stalled out on forward progress by spinning around in worry or ineffective action. Now, I see life’s challenges as reminders to trim the dead wood of past thinking and refine my focus so I can create better moving forward.
Admittedly, reaching for good feelings is easy when life is easy. It is much more difficult when things aren’t working, and people you love are hurting. Nonetheless, if you practice often, attuning to love will eventually become habit. The moment I feel unpleasant, I stop and breathe. If I can, I sit and receive the angels’ love. If I don’t have time for that, I pick the first thing I see and appreciate it until I feel love’s flow. It often feels silly, but it works!Guidance is accessible. Challenges get resolved. We become tuning forks for others to open to grace.
This is one of the most beautiful things the angels do for us. They can’t make us tune into loving feelings or good thoughts. Nonetheless, they hold such a strong vibration of love that if we’re willing to breathe and receive or tune into any tiny good feeling on our own, we can easily resonate into their loving vibration where we are open to all manner of good. If we have a single self-loving thought, we can resonate with their vibration of pure, unconditional love for who we truly are.
Without the “dead wood” of old dense energy, the life force and love from the creator are free to flow in more positive directions in our lives. We become tuning forks for that light, confidence, and grace for others, too, as we maintain our own good-feeling vibration.
So, if you want to help the world, keep the world within you in the best feeling space possible. Pray for the world. Imagine a world at peace—clean, harmonious, and beautiful. Then be patient as you look for this good in small ways. Focus on the kind people, the ones starting companies to clean up carbon emissions and get the junk out of the oceans. Obsess about the people who don’t see race, creed, or color and treat each other as beautiful humans. Look at the creativity, kindness, and love that is offered if you’re willing to look. As we collectively focus on goodness, we enjoy and empower it, in our own lives and in the world.
Here are a few ways to help you trim the “dead wood” of old thinking and align with love, life, grace, guidance, and ease:
1. Be kind to yourself first
Don’t beat yourself up when you can’t reach a good mental space. Just go for a little better feeling. You can appreciate the sunlight or the rain. You can enjoy a piece of chocolate or a crunchy little cucumber (my favorite end-of-summer snack!). You can cozy up under a soft blanket or read a few sentences from an inspiring book.
These mini movements towards love count. They are moments of grace. They allow love to flow into our hearts and lives. Each builds on the next. As we look for the good, we find it more often. We contribute to the greater good.
2. When you feel stuck in worry, distract
We do not have to make ourselves feel good about everything in this moment. Sometimes we can’t. Sometimes the breakup is too fresh or too emotionally charged. Sometimes the financial worries are too great. Sometimes a news story haunts you.
We can’t make ourselves feel good about something that does not, any more than we can enjoy the taste of bad food. It isn’t always worth trying. Instead, distract. Find something better to focus on. It may not make human sense, but vibrationally, it is sound wisdom.
Years ago, I was worked up over a problem when the angels strongly suggested I get a pedicure. I thought they were nuts. What good would that do? Later, I understood. Once nurtured, relaxed, and peaceful, I was open to guidance. Solutions flowed. I let go of the problem and therefore, became open to the solution.
You might have a very serious challenge in your life, but if you pay attention, you realize you feel like napping, cleaning out a drawer, taking a walk, or grabbing a cup of coffee. You are being guided to focus on something that feels better so you vibrate closer to the eternal broadcast of love. You are being guided into a space where you will be open to receive the help that is contanty flowing.
3. When you’re upset, own it, move through it, and go past it
When you’re angry or upset, a force of nature is trying to propel you beyond an unpleasant situation. The first step to releasing it is to let it move through you in a healthy way. Acknowledge it. Share it with your angels while they burn it off in the light of love. Rant in a journal or vent out loud in private. Walk swiftly or vacuum vehemently!
Then, start to design your future. How do you want to be treated moving forward? Will you listen to your own heart more? Speak up or move on if something isn’t working? Shift your attitude toward more compassion?
Once you empower yourself, the anger will dissipate into the light of love. As you burn off the steam with self-acceptance and self-love, you can harness the raw power of the energy moving through you to move toward what you do desire. Don’t judge your upsets. The universe doesn’t. Just move through them into your deeper desires for a better, kinder, and easier life.
4. Look for the good
The glass is truly half full or half empty, depending on how you look at things. Life is either a beach or a b!#ch. There are wonderful people and nasty lost souls. They’re all out there. We get to sift and sort through reality and focus on what we want to experience.
I remember watching two bears at a wildlife center get their layered lunch bucket salads. In the bucket were layers of bear food – berries, nuts, treats, fruit, veggies, greens, etc. One bear was a very compliant and neat little girl. She daintily picked through everything in the “proper order,” eating layer by layer! The other one sat firmly on the ground, spread her big back legs, and dumped the entire contents of the bucket between them. She then proceeded to pick through the “tossed” salad and eat only her favorite foods!
While it is good practice to accept what is right in front of us, like bear number one, the angels urge us to pick through our thoughts as if we were bear number two! Look at life as your bucket, dump it all out in front of you, and then sift and sort to find what you enjoy and want to focus upon. Next time you’re in a crowd, think of it like that “dumped bucket salad” and look for what you like!
We live in wild, wonderful, and wacky times. Wild because there is a fast-moving flow. Wonderful because even despite the bumps and apparent insanity, we are no longer complacent, and we are growing. It’s wacky because while there is a calling for love, there’s still a great deal of moment-to-moment resistance to feeling good.
It is going to be bumpy for a while, but the more you tune into the peaceful, calm, loving vibration of spirit, simply by looking for things in the bucket to feel good about, the more you rise above the chaos and open to the love and support that always flow in the higher frequencies.
Leave A Comment