Holly Hildreth
  • Welcome
  • Contract with a Guardian
  • Short Stories
  • E-Books
  • Blog
  • EFT
  • Goddess: Seven Rings of the Heart

Blog

Redirecting Anxiety

1/13/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
With the advent of events in Washington DC, and all that is going on in our world, my balance has been sorely tried. I’ve been feeling anxious and that anxiety has trickled down into even our daily routines.

My husband and I went for our morning walk with our dog Goldie on her leash and the two neighboring, golden retrievers who often accompany us. Along the way, one of the dogs grabbed for Goldie’s leash over and over. He just couldn’t stop himself. I struggled with him, telling him to, “Drop it,” grasping his muzzle and pulling the leash out. He just kept grabbing at the leash. 
I've been through a number of dog training (really, owner training) classes. I know the fundamentals of dog training. But I quickly ran through my repertoire. In desperation, I finally told him to “Sit!” trying to give him something else to do. Much to my amazement, he obediently sat and looked up at me expectantly. I patted him and effusively told him what a good boy he was. That was all he needed. He stood up, Goldie’s leash forgotten, and trotted off to look for other adventure. I stared after him, bemused. 
​
Still feeling anxious and irritable when I got back home, I went upstairs to my office, thinking that I needed to do something to fix my feelings. (Wouldn’t you think I’d know better by now?) I sat for a moment gathering myself and realized what I needed was not to fix or struggle against my feelings, but to redirect my ego fears. Just like with that young dog who couldn’t stop grabbing the leash, I needed to give my ego something else to do, to distract myself from continually grabbing onto anxiety. I needed to change my focus and place my attention on love, telling my ego to, “Sit!”

The easiest way for me to do that was by listening to Dr. Joe Dispenza’s short meditation, GoLov-20.
 
After that, I felt calmer and more balanced. I was able to appreciate the lesson offered me by a young golden retriever. He reminded me that struggling against anything becomes an energy loop, attracting more of the same. Redirection into positive action, positive thought, appreciation and love, is what resolves the issue. This works with anxious, irritable blog writers as well as with young dogs.
It also works with young children. The best way to handle my five-year-old grandson when he just can’t seem to stop himself from doing something he has been asked not to do, is to redirect him into something positive. Because he doesn’t really want to misbehave, he’s just stuck in a loop, he takes the cue and throws his considerable energy into the redirected positive activity. Then, both he and his harried grandmother (me) feel better, and the negative thought cycle we both participated in is redirected into a positive thought loop. That positive thought loop attracts more positive thought.

I can tell which loop I’m participating in by the way I feel inside. I’ve tried the negative thought loop on for size for a couple of days now, and I don’t like the fit. It’s uncomfortable, and just keeps getting tighter and tighter. I’m going to try on a positive thought loop for a while and see how that feels.

This idea has bigger implications as well. Our nation has been in a collective, negative thought cycle since the inception of the pandemic, perhaps even longer. This negative cycle has rapidly escalated with recent events. Each of us has the choice now, whether to continue to participate in this collective negativity by struggling against it and worrying about it, feeling more and more anxious, or we can redirect our thinking into more positive thought loops. As each of us redirects our focus into positive channels we attract additional positivity. In time that will ripple outward, and the collective will be able to respond with more positive thought, creating more and more positive action.
My inside is smiling now.  


​
Photo by Julieta Simone on Unsplash
0 Comments

Uplifting Thought for the New Year

1/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Most of us are glad to see 2020 relegated to the history books as a year best viewed in hindsight. It was a year fraught with concerns about health, personal and collective, even the health of our government and our nation. Here’s to a fresh start in 2021! 

Just one problem, much of what we faced in 2020 is still with us in this first winter of 2021. Yes, the presidential election is over, well almost…  But the pandemic is still raging about. Shortages and stay at home orders are happening. Individuals and businesses are struggling economically.
Where do we look for the exit from this spinning hamster wheel of survival fear? There must be a way we can we make 2021 different, more positive than 2020.
 
As individuals we may not be able to do much about the world events swirling about our lives, but we can look to our inner environment. That’s where we can create a 2021 that feels and lives on a different, more positive level than we may have in 2020. We can hop off this hamster wheel, open the door to the cage and step out into the fresh air, one appreciative moment at a time.
 
The other day I was enjoying our backyard. It is bordered by trees, standing like sentinels at the edge of a grassy field. The tallest are the black locust, their bare black-brown branches reaching high into the sky. In front of them stand the junipers, dusty green and full. As I gazed at the treetops high above, branches outlined against the sky, I saw two squirrels chase each other up the trunk of a black locust, all the way out onto the twiggy ends of the uppermost branches that just barely supported their weight. Then they leapt into the air, one after another. The grey forms seemed to hang suspended in midair, their agile bodies curved like commas in a sentence, heads, tails, and paws reaching for the juniper branches below. Then the juniper caught them like a loving parent, in branches that bent and swayed beneath the aerialists, breaking their fall. The squirrel chase continued on down into the thick foliage of the juniper and I saw no more of them.
 
The image of that leap stayed with me. Later that day, this quote from Abraham-Hicks showed up in my email inbox. I had to laugh. The message was clear.

“By thinking and speaking more of how you really want your life to be, you allow what you are currently living to be the jumping-off place for so much more. But if you speak predominantly of what-is, then you still jump off —but you jump off into more of the same.”
-Abraham-Hicks

2020 was our jumping off place, the twiggy ends just barely supporting us as we leapt off into 2021. The question is what are we jumping off into? Will it be more of the same?
 
As I type, a fire crackles in the woodstove beside where I sit, embraced by our once white, leather barrel chair. The chair is marked and speckled with years of laughing, spinning grandchildren and territorial felines. Golden flames dance above the dark shadow of wood in the hearth and the fire warms me as I turn to look out the wood-framed bay window of our living room. A wintry mix of rain, snow and sleet is decorating the branches of the crabapple which shelters the front of our home. Frozen droplets of rain hang like twinkle lights strung along every branch. Tiny, burgundy red crabapples dangle below, each one encased in ice. A slate sky hangs above, contributing an increasing supply of much-needed moisture to branch, berry and ground. The usual community of birds who frequent the crabapple are nowhere to be seen. No doubt they are hunkered down within the sheltering branches of the junipers.
 
It feels good to hunker down myself, safe, warm and dry, and consider this transition time in which we now find ourselves.
 
The biggest lesson for me from this passing year is that of letting go of how I think things should be and appreciating what is. Throughout the year, unexpected and unwelcome events kept piling up and it became clear that I couldn’t anticipate what the next month or even the next week would look like. I had to let go of my ideas of what was, and allow what is and what could be. Most of all, I had to learn to take pleasure in the positive parts of my life that I might have taken for granted, but do no longer.
 
I learned at a whole new level, how to enjoy the little things, spread over the branches of my life, like berries from a tree, waiting for me to savor and appreciate. A warm fire, a good roof over my head, the beauty of nature just outside the window, the antics of my grandchildren as posted on Facebook with riotous subtitles by their Dad, the love and health of family and friends, my own health, learning how to use Zoom, my small yellow-lab, dancing and twirling on the end of her leash, hip-checking the neighbor’s huge, young golden, plenty of toilet paper, paper towels, and food to eat. And did I mention toilet paper? I have a whole new appreciation for that humble roll of white. Everyday life, so easy to take for granted just because it is always there.
 
Until it’s not.
 
We are lucky here in the Midwest. The shortages of supplies have been short-lived. The pandemic has been survivable for most. The political situation hasn’t affected our everyday lives too, too much. Yet, as each thing threatened from the outer world, the little everyday things we depend on became that much more precious.
 
I look out the window once again and a single robin, harbinger of hope, alights in the crabapple and helps herself to the frozen crabapple banquet spread before her. 2021 stands before us, a banquet of tiny, delicious moments awaiting us. May we be as the robin, hope-filled, braving the storm, and appreciative of each moment of happiness and enjoyment spread before us in 2021. May we be as the squirrels, leaping off into a new year that supports and holds us in loving embrace.
 
Happy New Year to you, dear friends. 
Photo by Silje Roseneng on Unsplash
0 Comments

    Life Lessons

    Life is full of spiritual lessons. Some feel good, some not so good. All support us to grow. This blog is about my life lessons. Perhaps you'll find yourself within these stories.

    Archives

    January 2021
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020

    Categories

    All
    2020
    2021
    Abraham Hicks
    Abraham-Hicks
    Abraham Mazlow
    Acceptance
    Affirmations
    Aligned
    Alignment
    Allowing
    Anger
    Anxiety
    Appreciation
    Balance
    Basement
    Bashar
    Beauty
    Belief
    Belonging
    Between Time
    Birds
    Breath
    Brene Brown
    Buddha
    Builders
    Carl Jung
    Car Repair
    Celebration
    Centered
    Change
    Choice
    Cleaning
    Coherence
    Comfort Zone
    Community
    Control
    Creation
    Current
    Declutter
    Devotee
    Displacement Activity
    Dogs
    Dr. Joe Dispenza
    Dr. Rollin McCraty
    Dr. Wayne Dyer
    EFT
    Ego
    Emotional Body
    Emotions
    Eye Of The Storm
    Fall
    Faster EFT
    Fear
    Feeling Great
    Feelings
    Flood
    Flow
    Foundation
    Full Heart
    God
    God/Goddess
    God Self
    Grandchildren
    Gratitude
    Gregg Braden
    Guidance
    Guided Meditation
    Guru
    Halloween
    Hands
    Happiness
    Heart
    Heart Coherence
    Heart Coherence Meditation
    HeartMath
    HeartMath Institute
    Heraclitus
    Higher Self
    Home
    Hope
    Humor
    Impatience
    Inner Child
    Inner Search
    Intention
    Joy
    Lessons
    Lighten Up
    Louise Hay
    Love
    Magic
    Manifest
    Mantra
    Mantras
    Meditation
    Moment
    Moments
    Morning Routine
    Moving Meditation
    Nature
    Negative Thinking
    Negativity
    New Year
    Not Enough
    Now
    Nukua
    Organizing
    Owls
    Patience
    Peace
    Perspective
    Physical Body
    Positive Thinking
    Positivity
    Present
    Present Moment
    Prime The Pump
    Psychophysiological Coherence
    Rebuilding
    Reconstruction
    Resistance
    Roll
    Rumi
    Sacred Cleaning
    Seasons
    Service
    Singing
    Soul Self
    Spirit
    Spiritual Journey
    Spiritual Support Team
    St. Francis Of Assisi
    Storm
    Stress
    Test
    Thanksgiving
    Trust
    Uplifting
    Waiting
    Walk

    RSS Feed

    Join My Mailing List

     And never miss a blog post! Your personal information will not be shared. 
Submit


​All materials provided on www.hollyhildreth.com are provided for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only and are not intended to be, or serve as a substitute for, professional medical/psychological advice, examination, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or psychological condition.
​

© Holly Hildreth
  • Welcome
  • Contract with a Guardian
  • Short Stories
  • E-Books
  • Blog
  • EFT
  • Goddess: Seven Rings of the Heart