Jealousy is one of the most destructive mind states leading us to behave in deplorable ways – from launching verbal swipes/put downs at others to some of the most elaborate and heinous crimes of murder.

Put simply, jealousy is that mind state of thoughts and feelings that is rooted in a belief – that someone else has or is something that I want but which I believe I cannot have or be.

Because we see someone else have what we want and what we believe we cannot have, we direct our resentment towards that person.  Yet, when we examine it closely, we find that our jealousy has far more to do with our belief that we cannot have what we want than it is to do with someone else having what we want.

This is an important distinction to make because it allows us to see that the source and cause of our jealousy is not someone else and what they have but our very own mind and its beliefs about our power and freedom.

If we believed that we could have anything that we want and we felt free enough to go after what we want, we would never feel jealous about anyone.

When we believe that we cannot have or do something, we effectively put blocks in the natural flow of our free, limitless energy.

When we believe that someone else, by virtue of what they do or who and how they are, is a threat to our inner happiness, we put blocks in the natural flow of our free, limitless energy.

All this causes us to feel powerless and it is the feeling of powerlessness that causes us to take jibes at others, behave in childish and petulant ways and, in more extreme cases, take more extreme and destructive action.

In the relationship we have with our partners, jealousy, which ultimately results in the feeling of powerlessness, blocks the flow of love and gets in the way of our inner happiness.

You cannot feel happy and powerless at the same time – they are two very different vibrational states.

Are you interested in finding out how you can overcome jealousy in your relationship and have the relationship you truly desire?  Are you serious about taking charge of yourself so that you can be the kind of partner you wish to attract?

You’ll find guidance on these and other relationship issues that trouble most partners in my free ebook, Relationships – Burning Questions, Illuminating Answers – The Inspired Guide to having the relationship you truly desire.  You can download it here.

“I have read a number of lengthy books on this subject and none have inspired me to ‘change’ as much as Lucy’s book.” Alison McCartney, Social Worker, Wife, Mother

Love always

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

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My wife and I keep fighting about sex and money. I think she charges me too much, you know – Rodney Dangerfield

Money is an expression of abundance and abundance is a state of ease and wellbeing.  And since any good feeling state is a state of power, abundance is also a state of power

Money, therefore, is an expression of the state of power.  But there’s a lot of misunderstanding about power.

True power is not something that can be used against someone else because true power comes out of love.

When money becomes a means of control over others, which happens when we act out of fear, then money becomes an expression of fear rather than of power and love.

Many people, myself included, have grown up with unhealthy attitudes around money because we have observed and experienced the use of money as a means of control and an expression of fear (even if we may have mistaken it for power), rather than an expression of abundance, power and love.

So, what is power if it is not over someone or something else?

Power expresses itself in a variety of ways – through self-confidence, conviction, determination, perseverance, acceptance, openness, inner happiness, freedom and adventure!

When we understand that this is how true power, which comes from love, is expressed, then we’ll stop being afraid of holding and expressing power.

Neither will we be afraid of people whom we have thought to have great power over us or others.  They don’t have power.  What they have is fear, which ironically, is the ignorance or unawareness of their true power!

It is only natural that achieving inner happiness involves shifting towards greater levels of power – not ‘power over’ (which is fear) but power within!

What kind of power fear struggles does your relationship express?

You can change that right now by taking the time to tune into your inner happiness and the power that comes with it

Love always

Lucy

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In the West, we use the word ‘mantra’ both reverently and derrogatively.

For instance, in corporate culture, the word ‘mantra’ is used to refer to something that is said repetitively and often without true conviction.  People who are disenchanted with an organization may cynically refer to so-called ‘corporate motivational BS’ as a mantra!

I can tell you’re familiar with this… :)

Still, the original meaning and intent of a mantra is to serve as doorway to higher consciousness.  And it is in our state of higher consciousness that we are most in tune with our natural, inner happiness.

Neuroscience informs us that mantras repeated silently activate the limbic association area in the brain which is responsible for thought, learning, perception and emotion.

Just to give you an example of how powerful and instantly effective this can be, I’m going to share one of my dead-easy relaxation techniques using the word ‘softly’.

If you simply sit quietly, take a few gentle and deep breaths, and hold the word ‘softly’ in your mind, you’ll notice a great sense of ease and flow happening right through you.

If you’ve had aches and pains, even chronic ones, practicing this can give you instantaneous relief.  There is no need to (in fact, you mustn’t) manipulate your body in any way.

A variation of this can be used when you are doing therapeutic exercise.  In this case, as you move, you hold the sense of ‘softly’ or ‘softness’ in your mind.

You’ll find that much of the resistance to movement dissipates and movement is a lot less painful and much more fluid.

Okay, so that was just to show you how the use of a simple word can have a very powerful effect on your mind-body continuum.

Let’s get back to inner happiness and making happiness your choice.  How can we use the idea of a mantra to achieve happiness?

Let’s first ask ourselves a few questions:

• Do I actively think about happiness?
• Am I generally so busy doing what I think will help me achieve happiness that I’ve actually forgotten why I’m doing it?
• Do I believe that happiness is something that I must strive for?
• Do I believe that happiness is my natural state, that state that lies underneath my conditioning into fear, anger, distrust, guilt etc?

You see, your answers to these questions will determine how willing you are to turn this statement ‘Happiness is my choice’ into a mantra that you will feel the effects of and that will guide all your thinking, speaking, feeling and acting.

As I said in a previous post, many people will readily declare that ‘happiness is a choice’ but they say it without conviction.

Perhaps when you are ready to say ‘Happiness is my choice”, perhaps then, you can make it your ‘mantra’.

Christmas is a time when emotions run wild and stress levels can soar –   so much to do, so many people to think about, so much money and time to (have to) spend…

If you choose to make happiness your choice, how will all this be different?  Reflect on that for a while.

Now, if you choose to make ‘Happiness is my choice’ your mantra, I suggest you do so ‘softly’.  There’s no need to chant it loudly and aggressively as we tend to do when we are trying to convince ourselves and others about something!  You know that’s only more BS.

So, how about starting today, now, Dec 1?  Softly, with deep conviction…let all that limbic association light up with your ‘mantra’ –

‘Happiness in my choice’.

‘Every moment, everyday, happiness is my choice’.

Smile.  Enjoy.  Let the truth of it flow through every part of you…

Mmm…how good is that!

Love always,

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

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Coexistence… what the farmer does with the turkey – until Thanksgiving.

Mike Connolly

On this side of the Atlantic, where I happen to be (specifically, Australia), this Thursday and Friday are like most other Thursdays and Fridays – working days.

But over in America and Canada, these two days are holidays, with Thursday being Thanksgiving and Friday being the day after Thanksgiving, a day which is known in the retail industry as ‘Black Friday’.

And, no, it’s a very good kind of black because store accounts will hopefully go from ‘red’ to ‘black’ with all the shopping that people are expected to do on and after the Friday following Thanksgiving!  Or so the urban myths say.  It’s officially the start of Christmas shopping.

Clearly, there’s a lot happening during these days and during the lead up to them and following them as Americans and Canadians slide (or struggle uphill) from Thanksgiving to Christmas and the rest of us wind up (or down) for Christmas.

I love the idea of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, can be marred for some at least, by national history, when battles between the early settlers and the indigenous people were waged, or personal history, where conflicts persist in the hearts of everyday folk with unhappy childhoods, estranged families or financial struggles.  For these people, Thanksgiving can be an occasion when their inner happiness feels most threatened.

Yet, for all of us, regardless of our current situation or history, thanksgiving -giving thanks and feeling gratitude – is exactly what can help restore our inner happiness.

Now, for me personally, gratitude is quite simply the recognition of goodness.  Gratitude, for me, does not even remotely hint of indebtedness or humility or feeling small in the presence of greatness.

For me, gratitude is recognizing the greatness and goodness in everything, including myself.  And that is not only a marvelous, enriching feeling, it’s a powerful one.  You see, you cannot be grateful without recognizing goodness and greatness.

If, on the other hand, gratitude simply means feeling good because of what someone or something has done for us, then I think we remain trapped in the craving and attaching habits of the ego-mind, a mind preoccupied with its unnatural and untenable survival.  Such a mind demands that other people and other things behave in certain ways in order for us to be happy.

On the other hand, recognizing the greatness and goodness in all things and enjoying freely and fully this recognition of greatness and goodness – that’s when I feel most grateful.  That’s when my sense of gratitude is not limited to what has been done for or to me, personally, but simply and inclusively, for what is.

To all my American and Canadian readers, may Thanksgiving be truly a day of gratitude for you.  And to all of us everywhere, may we enjoy the inner happiness of recognizing the greatness and goodness of all of life!

Love always

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

‘INSPIRED PARENTING’

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An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Renee Descartes

In psychology, there’s something that’s studied and referred to as ‘learned helplessness’.  You are probably familiar with it even if you don’t know it by that term.

For instance, have you ever said or thought or felt something like this:

“That’s how it’s always been.  It will never change” or

“It’s because of me” or

“I’ll never be able to do it”

Now, most of us may have such thoughts or feelings from time to time but they are fleeting.  We don’t hold on to such thoughts and often, we make attempts to prove our thinking wrong.  Most of the time, we do tend to have a more optimistic way of handling situations even if at first, we may feel pessimistic.

But for someone who has ‘learned to be helpless’, these kinds of thoughts and feelings tend to persist as ongoing pessimism.  Consequently, they feel less and less in control of their lives.

They tend to perceive situations as being permanent and unlikely to change:

“That’s how it’s always been.  It will never change”

They also tend to perceive them as ‘personal’ – a direct reflection on themselves:

“It’s because of me”

And this way of looking at things can be pervasive

“I’m never be able to do it”.

Such people have truly learned to feel helpless so that, even when situations change and opportunities do arise, they feel unable to make the most of them, to really give themselves a chance!

I’m sure you can see how pessimism and learned helplessness can prevent you from achieving happiness.

Optimists, on the other hand, are believers in change, in opportunity, in self-efficacy (being effective) and self-determination.  They are not prepared to let others or other things prevent them from achieving happiness.  Instead, they are convinced that they, and only they, are responsible for their happiness.  They know that the situations they encounter in life are ones that their own thinking, beliefs and attitudes have attracted.

The man who introduced the concept of ‘learned helplessness’, Martin Seligman, was also the man who developed the idea of ‘learned optimism’.

We are capable of learning anything and optimism is one of the things that we can learn.  I should know!

For a long time, I was an incurable pessimist, or so I thought (well, would you expect different from a pessimist?)!  But there came a point in my life when sheer logic led me to consider the fact that there were other ways of being.  That was the time it actually struck me that I could choose to be happy.

Now, I often here people admitting that ‘happiness is a choice’.  But they often say it with such a grim face, sometimes adding “but it’s so hard”.  And there you have a bit of ‘learned helplessness’ sneaking in!

So, I think it’s worth asking: Do I really believe that happiness is a choice?  And if so, what does that mean for me in a very real and practical sense?  How do you live that belief everyday?

I’ll leave you to reflect on that one and share my thoughts on it in my next post!

In the meantime, I hope you ‘unlearn some helplessness‘  in time for Thanksgiving!

Pessimism is as American as apple pie – frozen apple pie with a slice of cheese.

George Will

PS For an  inspiring model of learned optimism, check this out and this .  Enjoy :)

Love always,

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom!

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“I wanted to change my shirt but I changed my mind instead”

Winnie the Pooh

Have you noticed that every moment of your life is a moment of choice?

I know it’s hard to really get that because, most of the time, we’re on autopilot with our routines and our unquestioning acceptance of life ‘as is’.

We tend to forget that life ‘as is’ is the result of PAST thoughts, past choices and past beliefs.  If we want life to be ‘as desired’, then we have to change our CURRENT thoughts, current choices and current beliefs.

That means that we can choose to intercept our autopilot thinking, speaking and behavior.  More and more, we can make them moments of conscious choice

But perhaps you’ve decided that it’s easier to remain on autopilot, believing that being a conscious chooser can be hard work.

Take my friend, Beverly, for instance.  For weeks she agonized over a choice she believed she had to make.  You’d think it was a life-changing choice.  It wasn’t, at least not in the way we think of life-changing choices

It wasn’t about whether she should have an operation or not.  It wasn’t about whether she should marry her boyfriend or not.  It wasn’t about buying a house or donating an organ.  It wasn’t anything like that.

So what was this choice that she’d spent weeks agonizing over?

This:  “Should I exercise for five minutes every day or not?”

Yep, you can pick your jaw from off the floor now.  And no, I’m not telling you a porky either.

You see, poor old Bev was feeling dreadfully conflicted.  She believed it was the right thing to exercise.  She was afraid that if she didn’t exercise, she’d end up with medical and physical problems as she did spend most of her day at her desk.

But, the fact was, Bev didn’t like to exercise.  In fact, the very thought of it made her recoil with dread and pour herself even deeper into desk work.

For as long as she remained conflicted about what she believed was the ‘right’ thing to do and what she really felt, Bev could not make a choice.  And the more she procrastinated making her choice, the longer it remained unresolved in her mind.

Her ‘solution’?  Pour herself deeper into her work, distract herself.

But as you and I know, (because I’m sure we’ve had similar experiences), you can never completely distract yourself, can you?  That unmade decision is still tossing and turning in your subconscious mind waiting for you to put it to bed.

Without you noticing it, you start avoiding things, topics and people who remind you of it.  Sometimes, you go out of your way to convince yourself that other things are so much more important.

“This is trivial.  I’ll deal with it later.  For goodness sake, it’s not a matter of life and death!”

Or you convince yourself that you don’t have all the information you need and it’ll take you a while to gather it all.  In the meantime, distract yourself.

Yes, I know a lot about all these little devices that we use to get out of making a choice.  I’ve been a master of them!

The sad thing is, trivial as they may seem, we expend a disproportionate amount of time, mental and emotional energy in not making them!  Crazy but true.

And yet, most of these choices are really easy to make, once we know how AND once we understand why it is we experience such turmoil, resistance and reluctance to make them.

You see, they really do drain away our life energy for as long as they remain unmade.  They really are life and death decisions, slow death that is!

It’s much harder to resist or avoid anything than it is to allow.  Always!

Not making a choice is resisting the flow of life.  Making a choice, on the other hand, allows ‘flow’, it allows energy to do its work!

So, what are some of the things that you need to understand about why you find it hard to make choices and become a more ‘conscious chooser’ than an ‘autopilot’?

Here they are:

There are no ‘permanent’ choices unless you choose to make them so.  You need not condemn yourself to a life sentence of the choices you make

The best and most freeing choices are always open to review and revision

Not acting according to a choice you have made doesn’t make you bad, irresponsible or a failure.  It simply reflects your un-awakened state.  It is an opportunity to awaken, to observe yourself, to understand yourself and to take charge of your life.

There are no ‘wrong’ choices, only choices based on what you have and know best at any given time

You are a creative being whose creative process involves making choices after choices after choices – see it as a marvelous adventure in a field of infinite possibilities!

And finally, that empowering and liberating question that you can ask yourself whenever you are faced with a choice, regardless of how trivial or significant it may seem to you:

What do I most want now?

Yes, that is the only question you need to ask yourself every time and any time you want to make a choice.

Forget these types of questions:

What is the best or right thing to do?

What is the easiest thing to do?

What is the best gift I can give?

What is the best deal I can get?

None of these questions will inspire you and free you for three reasons:

1)     They are all about things beyond your control, based on arbitrary standards or values of others.

2)     They speak in absolute not relative terms which means they do not easily lend themselves to review and revision

3)     They are based on life ‘as is’.

But asking, “What do I most want now?” inspires and frees you to listen to your true desires which are not based on life ‘as is’ but which draws on your imagination, that creative genius which roams freely and is truly at home in the field of infinite possibilities!

Ask this question when faced with the most ‘mundane’ or ‘trivial’ choice.  Ask it when faced with the most trying and ‘critical’ choice.

Ask it.  Then listen.  Really listen.  Then allow yourself to be guided into an inspired, empowering and liberating choice!

Love always,

Lucy

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you cantake control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedomthat comes from being in charge of yourself.

Robert F Bennett

Want to be a Happy and Successful  Parent? Learn ‘INSPIRED PARENTING’ from 5 teachers from The Secret. (Might be the perfect gift for Christmas :))

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