​“A state of appreciation is pure Connection to Source where there is no perception of lack.”
-Abraham-Hicks

Have you ever received a compliment from someone and deflected it? It might have sounded like this,

A co-worker says, “That was a great presentation!” You answer, “Thanks, but I totally messed up the last part.”

Just as it is possible to deflect a compliment so that you don’t receive the good feeling it might give you, it is possible to deflect the good feelings of an evening, a day, a month, or a lifetime thereby putting a limit on your happiness.

We do it out of habit, out of training from childhood, or maybe because we think we don’t deserve to feel so good.

We do this by focusing our attention on negative thoughts, thoughts of denial, thoughts of judgment towards ourselves or others, thoughts of criticism of self or others, thoughts of what went wrong, what should have happened, all the things that should have been different.

What we accomplish when we do this is to bring ourselves back to our habitual emotional set-point that feels more comfortable.

In his book, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks describes this behavior as hitting our Upper Limit for feeling good. Check out my post, “Is Bliss Too Scary?” for more detail about Gay Hendrick’s Upper Limit Problem and an example of how I  hit my Upper Limit for feeling good just recently.

How is it possible that feeling negative, feeling bad about yourself or others or the situation you find yourself in, could be more comfortable than feeling good?

The answer is that comfort in this case is about a familiar and seemingly safe emotional set-point.

We are used to feeling a certain way. At some point in our past, we came to associate feeling like this with safety. This became our emotional set point, our comfort zone. So, we make sure to always return to this same emotional set-point.

If we get to feeling too good, we come up with worries, judgments, criticisms, fights, arguments, and negative events to bring us down emotionally and bring us back to our set-point, all so that we will feel safe. Seems contradictory doesn’t it?

Yet we do it.

What can we do to change this?

Awareness of our Upper Limit for happiness is the first step to change. Once we become aware that we are falling into the pattern of critical and judgmental thoughts, or irritable, argumentative behavior we can choose a different focus of thought. We can choose to focus on gratitude and appreciation.

We can remind ourselves of all that we are grateful for and appreciate in whatever situation we are in.

For example, you and your spouse or friend had a wonderful day out together yesterday. Today you find yourself getting irritable and argumentative with them. 

Why? You hit your Upper Limit for happiness.

Instead of allowing the negativity to escalate, stop. Catch yourself and refocus your thoughts on the good stuff.
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Think of the enjoyment of your lunch out yesterday, the sweetness of your laughter together. Look out the window at the cloudless, blue sky and listen to the bird song drifting in through the window. Feel the goodness of your life as it is right now. Breathe in those feelings of appreciation.  
 
Regularly focusing your attention on gratitude and appreciation will reset your emotional set-point to that of positivity and feeling good, allowing happiness to be your default setting.

Appreciation is a tremendously effective tool for lifting your energy out of negativity into positivity and raising your happiness limit. Today's Spiritual Toolbox can show you how.

“Let go of the idea that life is hard work and see that it is soft. You are just surrendering and allowing.”
-Red Feather
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Why is it that life often just feels like hard work? Why do we make it so? Does life have to be hard work?

We can be grateful for our hard work because it goes hand in hand with a sense of accomplishment. It is that for which we strive not the hard work itself. It is so that we can look back and say, “This is what I did.” It feels good, and in the process we learn valuable spiritual lessons. There is purpose in this path.

It is not the only path however. For it is possible to grow through play. How else do children learn so well and so easily? It is only when learning becomes hard work for them that they bog down and struggle, just like adults.

What’s the difference? The difference is that sense of ‘have to’, ‘should’, ‘must’. The difference is the element of fear around whatever it is not getting done. “If I don’t do this, I won’t get paid. If I don’t do this, I won’t be able to pay my bills. If I don’t do this my house won’t be clean and what will my guests think? If I don’t do this, I’m not a good parent, employee, person.”

There are so many ways that fear can enter into why we choose to do or not do. Yet fear creates that sense of struggle and hard work. In contrast, anything done from love, with love, becomes ease and flow. Either way we learn, we grow. It is just a matter of choosing how we want to go about it.

But how will we ever get anything done if we just do what we want?

The truth is that we do what we want anyway. We just like to complain about it, to ourselves and to others. We want to clean the house because we want to feel good, or we want others to think well of us, or whatever other reason we have. We want to work to pay our bills, because we want to get paid, we want to live in our homes, we want to eat and buy things. We are doing what we want. It just feels like hard work.

Now what would it look like if we flipped the switch, like changing the voltage of our electrical current from 110 to 220? What would it look like if we raised our vibration enough so that we do what we do guided by thoughts of love and appreciation?

Then it would look like this, “I really appreciate this ability I have to earn a living.” “I'm glad I have this vacuum cleaner that makes cleaning the mess on my floor easier.” “I am grateful for the people I love in my life.”  “I so appreciate the blue sky, the wind, the sun on my face.”

The more we can do this, finding something to appreciate about whatever we are doing, whatever circumstances we find ourselves involved in, the more and more we will have to appreciate in our lives. Circumstances around us will change and become more and more pleasing.

Even finding the littlest things to appreciate matters and makes the difference because it is the attitude of appreciation, that love expressed, that will make the difference. We become motivated by love rather than fear. We are expressing love rather than fear into our lives. The Universe will respond by reflecting that love back to us, in small ways and in large. Life will no longer feel like such hard work. A life filled with an attitude of appreciation is a life filled with grace and with flow. 

When you feel gratitude, you are the closest to the natural state you were born to live in.”
Abraham - Hicks
 
How do we make inspired, guided choices in our lives in full alignment with our higher-selves? How best do we answer the questions in our lives, big and small?
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These are the questions I have been asking myself for several days now. I wanted a specific formula, a structure to work with for asking and getting answers from my higher-self and from my spiritual support team.

I knew that it began with asking the question. I knew the next step was to take it into meditation and wait for the answer. This is where I bogged down. My mind would keep worrying at the question, even as I tried to meditate. I’d see a fleeting visual image and wonder, is that my answer? Then I’d bring myself back to quiet and have a thought about something unrelated. Maybe that’s my answer, I’d think, and so on. Letting go and allowing was hard work.

The answers are all there for us, accompanied by such LOVE. You have only to ask and allow. But how do we allow?

Today, I began again. I asked my question out loud to focus my subconscious on my intention. I closed my eyes and quieted my mind, thinking ‘allow.’

But, how do I allow? 

A feeling of deep gratitude filled me. Gratitude for the love of Spirit. Gratitude for the asking and the answering. Gratitude for connection. I breathed deeply of that feeling of gratitude and said internally, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Love filled me tingling right down my legs, tears filling my eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Breathing in gratitude and love. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

I got it. Gratitude opens the door to allowing. Gratitude is the magic, the path opener. Gratitude opens the floodgates of inspiration.

Imagine if you will an enormous spiral, a vortex of loving energy with the tip surrounding your whole body, and the wider part extending high above your head stretching upward into the heavens. This is YOU, in alignment with your higher self.

As you allow, through gratitude, all that is your higher self, all the energy, knowledge, inspiration and guidance funnels downward to and through you, allowing you to live in clarity, inspired action and the daily joy of gratitude.

Gratitude opens the door to allowing and guidance because it raises your vibration, to the level where you are able to connect with the energy of your higher self and your spiritual support team. They cannot come down in energy to you, you must raise your energy to meet theirs to receive guidance and the answers to your questions. Your higher-self and your spiritual support team are as delighted to communicate with you as you are to communicate with them, but you must make yourself energetically available.

Your higher self and spiritual support team are always with you, offering support and guidance, but as much as we want answers when we are feeling sad, angry, hurt, depressed or any of the negative emotions, the energy with which we are vibrating when we are feeling that way closes the door to receiving communication from loving Spirit.
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We must raise our energy first, and one way to do that is through gratitude. Gratitude for even the simplest things is a place to start. Then work your way up from there. Gratitude tunes your radio dial to receive guidance from loving Spirit through your higher self.  


Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplash window door

“One thing about trains: It doesn't matter where they're goin'. What matters is deciding to get on.”
The Polar Express, directed by Robert Zemeckis, book by Chris VanAllsburg

What inspires you today?
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I’ve felt inspired by the bright, blue sky this morning, the sun shining off new fallen snow. I’ve felt inspired by the woodstove, fire crackling warmly within. I’ve felt inspired to create Christmas decorations, hanging our wreath and stockings, putting up the little tree in our front hall.  I’ve felt inspired listening to Christmas music,  and that magical Christmas movie, The Polar Express.

Inspiration follows the energy of the day. It is not always linked to the same activities or ideas. It comes and goes on its own schedule. If we’re lucky we get on for the ride and are carried along delighting in the flow.

Can we do this intentionally? Like waiting at the train station for the train and leaping aboard as it comes rumbling, steaming and puffing to a stop just long enough for us to get on?

I think we can. I think we are meant to allow our lives to follow our inspiration, that small, shining gem hidden within the layers of the every day sameness. Magic is found within our inspiration.

The Christmas season is all about magic. The magic of the twinkling lights, the mystery of the presents under the tree, the Spirit of Christmas, the time of year when love and giving is the theme, and everywhere you look there are representations of magical beings, beautiful decorations and sparkling colors.

No matter what holidays you celebrate, the child within us longs for magic, the magic that is Spirit. Feeling and following our inspiration from within is our connection to that magic. That’s where the real magic is in this 3D world we live in. The magic lives within each one of us.

The train of your inspiration is stopping at your station. All aboard! 

Photo by Bill Anderson on Unsplash

 “Despite my extreme skepticism, practicing gratitude changed my life. It didn’t turn me into some happy-go-lucky person I was never meant to be (or, frankly, wanted to be). But I developed a fundamentally different way of thinking and moving through life, one in which I stopped taking for granted all the tiny good moments that were already part of it. I stopped looking for happiness out there and learned to find it right here.”
— Nataly Kogan
 
In this season of Thanksgiving how do you feel grateful when things in your life are going wrong? What if the people you love are suffering? What if you are upset about the environmental situation? What if things are not going well in your life? Your world? How then do you feel grateful?

The answer is in the understanding that how you feel is not about what is happening in your outside world. Though we are conditioned to believe that it is. Rather gratitude comes from the inside. It is a matter of where you choose to focus your attention.
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“Gratitude should not be just a reaction to getting what you want, but an all-the-time gratitude, the kind where you notice the little things and where you constantly look for the good even in unpleasant situations.”
— Marelisa Fabrega

Sometimes the best way to attain that state of gratitude is to focus not on what you are worried about but upon what is right in your world. You can feel grateful for the commonplace things, the things you usually take for granted. You can look for the silver lining within the clouds. As you do so you create alignment. There is nothing that is going on in your outside world that is not supported by your inner alignment.  

That is why gratitude is such a powerful spiritual tool.

Your Higher Self and Spirit know what you are worried about. Your Higher Self and Spirit know what are the best actions you can take to create healing, improvement, betterment of whatever the situation is. Your Higher Self and Spirit need your permission given through prayer, to intervene and set the spiritual ball of healing rolling.

As you release worry and focus upon what you are grateful for, you move back into alignment. As you do that you will be inspired into what will truly support the situations you are concerned about. From that centered place you will be able to connect with, hear and feel inspiration.

Gratitude is the tool that can move you from worried wheel spinning to inspired action. 


Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“Be with me today Lord, guide and support me as I unwrap this gift you have given me. May the beginning, middle, end and all the minutes of this day be filled with gratitude and awareness of your loving presence. Speak to me constantly this day, Lord, that I may ever have you in my consciousness, that I may ever be open to your love.”

-Author Unknown
 
As I searched the internet, looking for quotes and stories that inspired me I was particularly delighted with the following story. Happiness is a choice, made minute by minute every day. It is an intention decided upon beforehand, and lived in the present. Happiness comes from the inside out, and this dear lady is a perfect example.
 
“The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.
 
Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.
 
​"I love it," she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. "Mrs. Jones, you haven't seen the room ....just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," she replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged, it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it." It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away just for this time in my life.”
 
-Author Unknown 

Photo by Jixiao Huang on Unsplash