Focus on Abundance

When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.

It is true that we can’t be in denial about the pain in our life. That is damaging to our physical and emotional health. And just as importantly,

We can’t be in denial about the abundance in our life!

— Susan Jeffers, PhD, Gratitude: A Way of Life, by Louise L. Hay and Friends, p. 132-133

Trust

To love others without feeling the need to trap or control them requires trust that your needs will all be met, withor without the other person’s cooperation. You must be absolutely sure that loving connection can encompass any level of difference without disappearing. You don’t have to trust the other person. You must only trust that your needs will be met no matter what that person may do.

— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight, p. 198

Roaming the World in Books

It’s refreshing to roam the world — plunging into different countries, meeting new people and tasting their cuisine. If walking another step in your home leaves you less than inspired, sashay into a well-told story. The charms of being at home return after sampling new horizons. Books are an open invitation to another place and time. . . . Good books lead us to discover that it is not our house that binds us, but rather the dullness of our thoughts. Reading refreshes the mind and the imagination.

— Lisa Groen Braner, The Mother’s Book of Well-Being, p. 72

Seeing the Inner Light

True healers take into account any type of darkness, but their real task is to see the Light in their clients so as to help them remember and consciously reconnect to their own inner Light. In this way, both healer and client are healed together. Parenting is the same. The ultimate gift of a parent to a child is to care for the inner Light of children until they can care for it themselves. True friends are those who believe in you through thick and thin. They still see the Light in you even when your moods and behavior are dark and low. Mentors, managers, leaders, visionaries, peacemakers, and everyone who truly serves . . . they all see the Light.

— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 29

Controlling People

Every person alive has a chosen journey, one that is right for him or her. Letting the truth of this sink in is one way to begin the process of giving up control, as is acknowledging that the more we try to control someone, the less interested he or she may be in staying in our life. Every time we get into a power struggle with the person we are trying to control, we drive a wedge into the relationship. Other people’s desire to escape will be directly proportional to our continuing obsession with how they are living and what they are doing.

— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 140

Needing People

How do you know when you don’t need people? When they’re not in your life. How do you know when you do need them? When they are in your life. You can’t control the comings and goings of the people you care for. What you can do is have a good life whether they come or go. You can invite them, and they come or not, and whatever the result is, that’s what you need. Reality is the proof of it.

— Byron Katie, I Need Your Love — Is That True? p. 189

Bliss

If we are not practiced in saying yes to life, then we can forget about bliss — we just want relief! Relief from our hectic lives, from our negative self-talk, from our perpetual fatigue. I used to think that I just had the thermostat set too low, at Relief, and that with a little more practice, I would easily move on up to Bliss. Instead, it turns out that the road to bliss and the road to relief head in completely different directions.

Relief isn’t much; it’s only an interruption of discomfort. It leads to a nice rest stop with a turnaround that plops you right back on the same road. Bliss, however, is the superhighway to the juiciness of life. As my musician friends Bev Daugherty and Garnett Hundley sing, “Live flat out, eat it all up with a spoon!” Having a high bliss tolerance means you’re willing to be pleased by life. And the better it gets, the more you can stand. In this scenario, you anticipate benevolence and are expanded by your experience. When you are consistently grateful, it’s impossible to feel like a victim; you know that no matter how well it may be disguised, you can find the blessing in whatever’s going on.

— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 140

An Explanation

The general rule to remember is that when we’re scared, we’re scary, and when we’re scary, we’re usually scared. If someone seems strangely opposed to your actions, even though you’re motivated purely by good intentions and are doing nothing that could possibly injure him, rest assured that person is afraid. This does not excuse violent or malicious behavior; it just explains it. A common psychological error you’ll find in movies and television is that the evil people on the screen are often depicted as knowing they’re evil and feeling powerful in their destructiveness. In real life, people who perpetrate evil virtually always see themselves as victims, forced by circumstances to “defend themselves” by attacking others.

— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight, p. 193

The Place We’d Rather Live

In the aftermath of catastrophic wounds, an obsessive, demonizing hatred may be mobilized to help us survive. And yet here, too, understanding eventually becomes the desirable thing, if for no other reason than we don’t want to keep feeling like victims and living in hate. It rarely hurts us to be more generous. In many cases, even if the grievousness of the wrong is never acknowledged or atoned for, we may want to feel our way back to a caring place. It’s the place we’d rather live.

— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 175-176