I really love minimalism and the way it integrates with liberation from achievement/acquisition mindsets. With minimalism, we become happy with less, rather than constantly striving for more. We cultivate gratitude instead of jealousy, contentedness instead of dissatisfaction.

The new age obsession with manifesting abundance often dishonours the Hawaiian Huna principles of ‘to love is to be happy with’ and ‘now is the moment of power’. So often I see my spiritual brothers and sisters becoming fixated on future possibilities based on a feeling of lack. Rather than embracing the riches they already have, they focus on what they don’t have with a mood of discontent.

I am here now. I am enough. I have enough. I am happy with.

I create my own reality, not by visualising and saying affirmations then sitting back and waiting for my intent to pop out of thin air….

I create my own reality by taking ownership over my internal emotional state. I create my own reality via the filter of beliefs, attitudes and emotions through which I see and experience the world around me. I create my own reality by setting intent and taking action to ground my intent into reality.

The value of practical, grounded action

Affirmations and visualisation are only half of the story. They help us focus on our intended goal and they communicate our intention to the universe and our subconscious/mind-body/aura. But they cannot in and of themselves ground our dreams into reality. For that we need embodied action. Grounding is a vital aspect of reality creating; without it, our dreams are only dreams.

“I help those who help themselves”, says the Universe. Not investing practical action into your dreams is a bit like sitting in a car while visualising and talking about your destination, but refusing to turn the key in the ignition and drive the car from A to B.

“Pick me up and carry me there” our magical inner child implores the Universe. “I want miracles and magic! I want flying carpets!”

“Your physical existence is a gift”, replies the Universe. “Use it. Accept it. Be in and of it.” If your magical inner child is feeling bereft, you might find yourself always wanting to escape physical reality, rather than embracing and enjoying it. I’m not saying magic and miracles don’t exist. They do, it’s just that real magic only happens when we find wonder in our current existence, rather than feeling jaded with it.

The importance of cultivating your desired emotional state

Become the change you wish to see in the world around you.

Visualising and saying affirmations without meditating on the accompanying emotion is  like fuelling your car with petrol fumes and wondering why you don’t get very far.  Words (affirmations) and pictures (visualisations) have power, but this power is limited when emotion is not included. Words and pictures are abstract concepts- they mean nothing without the emotion, personal history and conditioning each one of us associates with them. They are empty when we don’t connect with them emotionally.

The primary purpose of affirmations and visualisations is to generate an emotive mind body state. When we practise the feelings we want to have in the future, we gradually learn how to embody these feelings on an ongoing, habitual basis. And when we can embody the future feeling we wish to experience, right now in this present moment, we call that future to us. Your auric field is a vibration. When you vibrate a mood, experiences that further amplify that mood will tend to be drawn to you. The vibration of who you are ripples out into the world around you, telling it what you expect. The vibration of your mood is like a pair of coloured glasses shaping your perception of what you see.

Being content with what you have and who you are

So many people miss the point. They think that having this or achieving that will give them the feeling they are searching for. The truth is, when you learn to embody the mood you are seeking/craving/chasing, you no longer have to rush about like a blue arse fly because you already have what you need. You still create, produce, accomplish and evolve…but you do this from a position of fullness overflowing and expressing, rather than a lack based mindset of ‘”I’m empty, maybe this next thing will fill me”.

If you want to feel empty, be my guest: fixate on achieving and acquiring. If you want to feel satisfied, cultivate a mood of satisfaction and you will find yourself feeling satisfied with life no matter what happens. And lets face it: as much as the reality creators of the world would like to pretend they can control their external reality, the truth is, they can’t. The point of power is within. The only thing you can really control is what is happening inside you. Making your happiness entirely dependant on external factors turns you into a leaf in the wind, with no internal locus of control.

What we are really chasing is a feeling, a mood (e.g. happiness, contentment etc). Success and acquisitions are just tools we use to stimulate the mood we want, the same way we might use a drug to stimulate a mood. You don’t really need the external trigger or drug. You can generate the mood from within. If you haven’t worked this out yet, a lot of the things you are relentlessly pursuing will elude you, and even when you do get what you want, you’ll still feel dissatisfied because it’s not enough. Yearning for more can become a reality trap.

Set yourself free. Be happy with.

The power of Fear

A lot of us are afraid to be content and satisfied. We worry that if we do this, we are saying “Yep, that’s it Universe… don’t deliver any more. I’m good with what I’ve got.” We get scared that nothing will get better. We worry that we are ‘settling’ for second best. “Is this as good as it gets?”, we ask ourselves and the Universe.

But it doesn’t work like that. Satisfaction is something that grows when you focus on it. Energy flows where attention goes. What we feed with our attention becomes our reality. You can feed a feeling of discontent and a pipe-dream you aren’t grounding into reality…. or you can nourish the good stuff you already are and already have and watch it evolve into even better forms. Start with who and where you already are.

FOMO

A client once told me that she had FOMO.

“What is FOMO?” I asked, curious.

“Fear Of Missing Out”, she replied.

Perhaps all of us have a fear of missing out, to varying degrees.

What are you afraid of missing out on?

Fear of missing out can be a heat motivator, but it needs to be balanced with the ability to recognise satiety or satisfaction. If you can’t feel contented, you will always crave MORE. You will never be satisfied. Our FOMO can blind us to what we already have. It can freeze us up and stop us from take practical steps towards our dreams. It can give us blinkers, driving us forwards obsessively and preventing us from being present in our now moment. Wow. What a tragedy, to miss out on your life because you weren’t there. You were too busy chasing a dream.

Fear of missing out can even make us behave in ways that violate our deepest values.

Know your fear so you can see it operating in your life.

Know it so that it can’t manipulate you.

And then switch your attention to what it is you really want instead.

Now think about the essence of what you want… not the external trappings.

Cultivate this essence within yourself. You can do this by practising this mood/state/attitude, and by searching for evidence of its existence in your life as it is now. Focus on these two things and the rest will take care of itself.

Blessed Be