By Dr. Sandy Islands for Conch Color
As I was inching my way out of Key West today in a long line of traffic, the default setting in my brain wanted to complain about how crowded our town is right now, then I remembered that we’re really on two journeys through life. The horizontal one is the story, the events, encounters, experiences, relationships and outcomes. The vertical journey is what’s going on inside, our reactions, feelings and perceptions. Life is less about what we’re doing and more about how we’re doing it. At that moment, I looked out to the moon light sparkling on the water, and enjoyed the warm breeze through my open windows. I felt grateful for all the business tourism brings to our town and became a creator of my waiting experience instead of a victim. Whenever we find ourselves bumping into undesirable situations, we can withdraw our attention from what’s not working and reinvest it into what we’d like to happen.
We live in an abundant universe, no matter what the media may say. The universe recycles what’s not used and it shows up in a different form later. The first step to building a wealthy bank account is to build a wealthy mind. Most wealthy people dwell in the consciousness of enough-ness. All of our thinking falls into two streams of energy- enough and not enough. When we observe and affirm that what we have or what’s happening is enough, we attract more than enough. When we focus on what’s not enough, we attract more of exactly that. When we celebrate what we have, the universe gives us more to celebrate. Our prosperity expands as we focus on the riches that we have. Wealthy people think rich thoughts and the poor people think poor thoughts. Alan Cohen in his book, Relax into Wealth, says, “Energy goes where attention flows.” It’s not so much what we have but how we view what we have.
Contentment doesn’t mean we stop desiring more. Let’s appreciate what we have and enjoy the adventure of expanding our world. We stretch and strive for better not because we’re greedy or needy, but because it’s our nature to believe in growing and improving our lives. Being where we are and accepting things as they are is one of the keys to achieving struggle-free wealth. Every situation we encounter is a blank slate that we project our beliefs onto. When we hold a clear mental picture of our desired results, we are active creators of our lives. When we feel tired of the “rat race,” we can reframe our difficulties into opportunities. It’s easier to go with the flow than to fight the current and paddle upstream. Success is less about getting good things to happen and more about letting them happen.
We fear that following our joy is a sign of selfishness. The truth is that when enthusiasm is a prerequisite for action, our joy and success in business and relationships expand. We’re courageous when we feel afraid and still put one foot in front of the other to keep moving forward. When we focus our attention on our destiny and not our history doors open in amazing ways. We’ve all heard that if we do what we love and love what we do, success follows. Prosperity is founded on authenticity. Let’s align who we are with what we do and watch the money work out. We will always emerge triumphant when we practice grace under fire. When our actions are motivated by anxious defensiveness, control and pushing other people, we are weakened and become more vulnerable. There are truly no bad breaks or punishments, only opportunities to rise in our vertical journey.
Please write to Dr. Sandy Islands at sandyislands@hawaii.rr.com and feel free to browse previous articles at www.sandyislands.com .