Choosing Joy in the Midst of Crisis

Choosing Joy in the Midst of Crisis

A Different Way
No matter what happens, there is a different way to see things. You can broaden your perspectives. If you first understand how you create your own reality, you will be much more powerful in creating the experiences you prefer. No one "does it to you"….. you are creating "it" by what you choose to focus on, mentally and emotionally. In truth, everything is done for you as a reflection of your personal growth. You can tell what's happening within you, your emotional thermometer, by what's happening in your world.

How You Create Your Reality
Thought and feelings combined make your world of experience. What you focus on and what you feel are a powerful alchemical mix that is out-pictured as your reality. Emotions deep in your subconscious are the operating system of your life. Your thoughts and emotions give form to all that occurs in your world.

Triggers
Everything is a trigger to your potential emotions. Your interpretation of those triggers, based on your emotional operating system, determine your perspective. If you feel injured, you are. If you don’t feel injured, you aren’t. If you love a flower, it triggers a feeling of beauty and appreciation. If you determine that same flower to be a weed, other emotions are triggered. Same triggers, different interpretations.

Acknowledgement
Let me acknowledge those reading this who have had crises in their lives: rape, wrongful imprisonment, abandonment, abuse, floods, famine, earthquake, fire, disastrous health or lost a loved one, be it a mate, a sibling or a child.

My crisis was merely financial. It gives you a perspective, doesn't it?

Crisis Defined
When we are children, great drama is a skinned knee, being picked last for the team or not making the team at all. As we grow up, our dramas become larger and larger, yet within us is still the small child who skinned a knee. Crisis isn't defined by the externally applied test of severity, but by the internal gauge of our own emotions.

Losing the football game because you fumbled the ball on the tie breaking last three seconds of the game may be equally as devastating as if you had made a bad business decision that resulted in losing your job. We categorize levels of trauma; but to the emotional self, it's all pretty much the same: a massive blow to self worth, lovability, connectedness, abundance or control.

My Story
I had been a real estate investor. The Feds changed the law so I was unable to get loans and I needed many. Then I heard "In any moment we can choose joy. It is always a choice." I was being served with hundreds of lawsuits. I chose to be happy as the postman delivered a container full of more foreclosure notices. Instead of my embarrassment, I focused on him as he began telling me of his anniversary surprise for his wife. He was so happy I became happy. I was amazed. Choosing joy worked, for real.

How It All Shifted
When I stopped asking "Why me?" and began asking "Why did I create all this?" I began to heal. This led me to many discoveries about how to choose and what choices were available. I read hundreds of books, studied thousands of hours and sought out extraordinary masters, only to be redirected to myself as the source of all that was occurring in my life. I learned how I was that source, how I was creating what was in my world and finally how and why I had collapsed my financial world so completely. These answers didn't come all at once. It was the journey that made the difference. All the reading and all the teachers didn't give me answers so much as they gave me pointers so I could rediscover those answers for myself.

Ten Pointers: The Secrets I Learned to Choosing Joy
1. MAKE A JOY LIST. This gives you scheduled time to focus on joy. This is so incredibly simple that most of you reading this will think it’s too silly to do. But it is one of those life-changing things that is incredibly effective.
2. BEGIN APPRECIATING ANYTHING. This little thread will become a lifeline to joy. When you decide you’ve had enough of an undesirable feeling, you can begin to shift immediately by changing your focus to appreciating anything. Appreciate one thing, anything, then more things, until you all you feel is the vibration of appreciation.
3. LOVE A THING ‘TO DEATH’. When you are hurting and finally decide you’ve had enough you can love the pain to death. Once you make the determination to be done with the pain you can use any method possible to shift your awareness into one of love. It may be music, poetry, spiritual books, walking in nature meditation, or journaling. By shifting your focus, you allow yourself to move into an altered state, altered from the downward spiral you were in. You literally step into a clear space in which you choose your next feeling.
4. GIVE AWAY WHAT YOU NEED. When you’re hurting and in pain find someone else to whom you can give what you need. When we give away what we need, physically or emotionally, we have recognized at a deep internal level that we already have it within ourselves, or we wouldn’t be able to give it away. Eg. Give away loneliness by sitting with a stranger in a park or coffee shop.
5. SHIFT YOUR FOCUS. Whatever you focus on you get more of. This is the Law of Attraction. Attract what you’d prefer. Focus on joy, love, health or abundance!
6. CREATE A WELLNESS PLAN. Plan for your health on all four levels of your being: Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual.
7. CREATE A PERFECT DAY. Choose a day that becomes Christmas like in its expectation of joy and perfection. My day is April 21st.. every year!
8. REMOVE THE LABEL. Whatever you call the energy: anger, guilt, fear or something else, tear off the label you have given it. Beneath it is pure raw energy. Use it to feel good, heal yourself or get energized.
9. BECOME A SCREEN TO EMOTION. Allow them to pass through you. When you feel a wave of emotion coming toward you, choose not to clamp down and hold your breath but become pliant, like a tree in the wind. Open to the experience and imagine your whole self becoming like a screen door. Let the emotions sweep through you without attaching to them and without getting stuck in them.
10. CHOOSE JOY. It is always available as an option. Choose it by first remembering times of joy in your life. Then become it. Feel it. Be it. Exult in the feeling.

These secrets are expanded in greater detail in my book “Choosing Joy in the Midst of Crisis” available through my website.

Get straight Talk, Tea and Insight with Dolly Mae. Visit www.dollymae.com for scheduled events and other articles. Email dolly@dollymae.com or call toll free 877.246.9569.

Doing Nothing

It’s frosty. It’s cold and I’m lazy. But I’m really happy. Doing nothing suits me perfectly!

Lack of Energy
I know many of you are feeling the lack of energy too. It’s that time of year when plants and trees stop to take a break. They have ceased their growing for the season and have retreated into a long nap. Oh yes, there is life still going on, but at a much reduced rate. So copy nature. It’s down time! You can still be happy without having to achieve anything.

It’s OK to relax
Don’t be hard on yourself for just wanting to relax a bit. It’s ok. You don’t have to be the achiever of the year, but I bet you are to someone. We all need a break, but we forget to give ourselves time off. If you have children, what kind of an example is that for them?

Make Every Moment Count
Relax into whatever you are doing. If it’s the dishes, be focused on just doing dishes. If you’re reading, be focused on reading. Be present; then you are the present for your family this year. The most authentic and fascinating people I have ever met are those who are totally present when they speak with me. It is the gift of their attention bestowed on me. Give that gift to others. It’s free and is always the right size; just what they wanted.

Happier not Busier
Over achievers don’t necessarily have happier lives, just busier. On your deathbed you’re not going to wish you’d worked harder, but that you’d taken more trips or spent more time with loved ones.

If You Had Your Life to Live Over
What would you do? So, do it, because this isn’t a rehearsal. This is your creation.

Erma Bombeck
Humorist and columnist, Erma Bombeck, said it best in her poem after a diagnosis with terminal cancer.
If I Had My Life To Live Over
by Erma Bombeck
If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."

There would have been more "I love you's".. More "I'm sorrys" ...

But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it ... live it...and never give it back.


Other Famous People Quotes on Living Life Over

http://www.quotablebooks.com/over.htm

Empaths and Feeling

Empathy
Empathy is being able to feel feelings: your own and what others are feeling. Sometimes this is overwhelming and we get lost in someone else's stuff. Here's an idea.

What to Ask
Ask yourself "Is what I'm feeling coming from inside me or outside me?"
This will let you know if it's your stuff or someone else's. If it's not yours, dump it...let it go. You don't have to process it and it doesn't help anyone for you to do their stuff anyway.

Names ending in 'A'
If your first name (that you're called by regularly) ends in an 'a', then you are an empath. It means you wear your heart on your sleeve, can be easily hurt or overwhelmed and you feel other people's feelings.

Teach Kids to Ask
Children feel easily. When they are overwhelmed by feelings, many times from others, they tend to become shy and hide from groups. They have no tool to handle all that overload. So teach them to ask themselves if what they're feeling is coming from inside or outside of them.

Awareness
Just by being aware that what you're feeling isn't yours is sufficient to break the emotional journey it puts you on. You can just say "Oh, that's not my stuff." and let it go. It really is that easy. The trick is to remember to ask yourself the question. Tell others about this and have them remind you to ask yourself.

My Sister
My sister is very empathic. Of course her first name ends in an 'a'. She was forever being in a mood that was not hers.. Now she asks herself the question all the time and things are much easier for her..

It couldn't be more simple. Try it.