It seems these days our Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of good advice. Phrases such as, “What other people think of you is none of your business,” grace our daily social media headlines and are “liked” by thousands. Every day people quote Rumi, Paramhansa Yogananda, Rabbis, Priests, Poets, Writers, Artists, and on and on. Daily, I get the message to “Let go and leave be,” a favorite saying of my late Grandmother. This onslaught of the positive recycling of inspirational messages is a fantastic movement and reflective of what I believe to be our generation’s sincere desire to bring about peace, minimize drama and awaken consciousness. Sometimes though, these “positive” messages begin to sound the same and lose their luster. It is my belief everyone wants to hear and apply “good news” to their lives, but gets frustrated with not knowing how. In order to “Let go”, “Dance like no one’s watching” and “Seize your future now,” you have to know where to start!
Here’s a simple exercise which can help you today and every day, identify the causes of stress and anger in your life and begin to DO something about changing how you react to them.
Grab a piece of paper and writing instrument and breathe.
Take a deep breath through your nose, and exhale out of your mouth. Take about three of these nice deep breaths, exhaling each time, and relaxing more with each exhale. Ok. Now I want you to think of what is causing you the most stress, drama, anger and frustration in your life right now. Write it down. If there is more than one circumstance or person causing you stress, make a list in order of their appearance in your thoughts. Also, I don’t want you to feel guilty about it. Don’t talk yourself out of identifying and owning what is causing you stress. We must be honest with ourselves to affect honest to G-d change in our lives. Also, write down any body parts which feel icky when you think of your stresses.
Good. Now I want you to think of what you need more of. Whether it’s money, or time or love or better parking spots, whatever materialistic, spiritual or physical needs you have today, write them down.
Finally, I want you to write down everything you would like less of. Perhaps it’s stress, or judgment, or drama or weight or bills, or people. I want you to be honest and clear about everything you would like less of in your life.
Now comes the fun part.
Look at your “stress” list and determine if anything is causing you drama because you wish they or it would do or become something else. Most of the time, people who cause us the most stress, do so because we wish we could make them behave differently. The same philosophy goes for situations. This is what I want you to do about it. For every item on the list who is a person, I want you to pray for their happiness and joy. Yes. Think about it, do happy people stress you out? So the happier our family and friends and “enemies” are, the less drama from those people in our lives right? Ok. Pray in your own way very simply for their happiness and joy. Now, often times, especially in the work environment, it is easy to get resentful and angry at our peers or resentful of the fact that we must work so hard at all. This is an example of a situation which may be causing you stress. For your situations, I want you to pray as well and ask for your heart to be opened and to be rid of entitlement and righteous anger. Letting go of righteous anger is the most powerful act of creating positive energy a person can do for themselves and it rids us of the need to control uncomfortable circumstances. Now, cross it off your list. Finally, pray for your body. Ask for it to let go of the responsibility of carrying stress and ask for joy and happiness to replace those icky feelings. With each crossed line you commit to being done worrying about these things. If you have to do this daily, do it daily. Learning to let go and be positive takes practice and prayer. A note on prayer – I believe in prayer without needing to believe in religion. I believe prayer to be a form of meditation and not only reserved for church or synagogue attendees.
Ok. Now I want you to look at the list of what you need and what you need less of. This is a good list. If you need less of anything, it means you already have abundance in your life; you simply need to direct the abundant energy into the areas which need more. Suspend for a second your belief in positive and negative energy. Think of energy as just “energy” until it is defined by the observer. You, being the observer get to change the polarity of the energy in your life and in your lists with your intention, again, prayer. Keeping this train of thought, I want you to pray that your list of needs receive and be receptive to receiving all of the abundant energy of the list you want less of. I want you to imagine the energy of one list going into the other and trading places. There, you’ve changed the polarity of your energy! Again, this can be a daily practice, a practice which will eventually lead to the habit of channeling nothing but abundant energy into the areas of your life which need it!
Now I want you to do something super fun. After you’ve done the exercise and you have your list and it has got pencil or pen marks all over it and you’ve prayed and meditated and contemplated, I want you to destroy it. Yep, via fire or tearing or tossing or flushing, I want you to crumple it up and let it go.
By throwing your list away, you are literally “letting go.” You have done your work; you have done all you can for yourself and those people and situations on your piece of paper. Since you’ve now done all that you can, I want you to give yourself permission to step away from your stress and lacks and desires, and go about your day and enjoy those positive social media newsfeeds even more!
By being honest with what brings us joy and anxiety in life, we can honestly affect conscious change within ourselves thereby creating inner peace, which is the only way to bring about peace on earth; one amazing person at a time, from the inside out.
The Temple Within 