To truly experience the benefits of positive thinking, you have to practice it all the time. Watching (& re-watching!) inspirational films like The Secret is a great way to keep positive thoughts in the front of your mind. Last weekend, Kelly & I watched Esther & Jerry Hicks: Law of Attraction:
Discover how the power of positive thinking applies to common, real-life situations as Esther and Jerry Hicks look at the commanding law of attraction and the teachings of Abraham, the collective consciousness channeled through Esther.
It took me some time to accept the idea that Esther was channeling “Abraham”, but if you can get past that bit there is much to be learned!
1. Wouldn’t it be nice if…
If you’re having trouble figuring out how to make a situation better, try playing the “wouldn’t it be nice if…” game. When I’m bored or depressed, I can always imagine better circumstances. Once you start visualizing what would make you feel better, you actually do start feeling better.
2. Stop caring about what others think!
According to Abraham, this is the most important thing you can do when trying to achieve joy. The only responsibility you have is to match your emotional state to the person you want to become. If you want to be wealthy, you can get there by feeling like a wealthy person. (“Act as if.” “Fake it til you make it.”) When you start worrying about what other people think about what you want, then you dilute your desire. If you feel guilty about what you want, you’re worrying about what other people think. All that matters is how YOU feel. Don’t compare yourself to others. Remove fear from your decision-making. If you worry about being judged, or looking stupid, you’ll never take the leap towards your true joy!
3. Teaching is about soothing disbelief
One of the most striking conversations in the film is between Abraham & a man who does motivational speaking. The man wants to know how he can teach, motivate, inspire & heal all at once. As a teacher myself, I often wonder what my students want from me, & how I can best help them. Abraham explains that all there is to teaching is soothing disbelief. A teacher must simply help her student believe that he is capable. A teacher must inspire a reduction of resistance in her student, by helping him remove anything in the way of believing he already has what he wants.
When teaching web design & development, I often have students who are so intimidated by code that they convince themselves they just can’t understand it. Changing this mindset is what teaching is all about.
Abraham continues with some practical tips on how to have the right attitude as a teacher. Before approaching your students, believe that they will summon from you what they want to hear. Think of yourself as a catalyst to open them up to receiving. Believe that you’re ready for them & they are ready for you. Above all, teach for the fun of it!
4. Practice the art of allowing
The art of allowing is this: you gain control of your reality by letting go of control. Decide what you want, then leave it up to the universe to figure out how to get it to you. Let go of your plans, stop working towards goals, & allow the universe to bring you the things you desire & deserve.
5. Follow your impulses!
Part of the art of allowing is following your impulses. The universe constantly gives you feedback on your proximity to joy. When you feel bad, you are far from joy. When you start feeling excitement & passion, you are much closer to joy. You were born with intuition. Use it! Whenever you get a feeling that you should do something out of the ordinary, indulge yourself! You will be surprised at what joy can come from it. Trust yourself!
6. I’m doing everything right
Abraham says that most people walk around life beating a drum, saying over & over to themselves “What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong?” Not surprisingly, those people have a whole lot of wrong in their lives. The other day I came up with a trick to combat this negative thought pattern: consciously walk around saying “I’m dong everything right! I’m doing everything right!” Before you know it, you will start to FEEL like you are doing everything right! That mindset is enough to change the course of your entire life.
Kelly & I have the perfect job–we walk around our beautiful city looking for JOY, adventure, vegan noms & friends!
Yesterday started out with a long, hot walk down South 1st to meet our friend Damiana at How Do You Roll?, a make-your-own sushi place. It was absolutely heavenly! I had one roll with strawberry, green onion & avocado, & one roll with tofu, green onion & sprouts. Kel had the same strawberry roll, as well as one with mushrooms, green onion & sprouts. Damiana tried the “modern” soy wrap instead of the traditional seaweed, which was way less chewy & incredibly delicious!
strawberry, green onion & avocado roll
tofu, green onion & sprouts, & the other one has mushrooms ew!
Damiana's modern roll!
It was absolutely frigid inside the store, so we sat outside while Damiana told us stories about a girl with “Fuck yeah!” tattooed on her ass…
Damiana
Next it was time to venture to Whole Foods, our second home. It has the perfect mix of free samples, huge seating areas, delicious produce & superb people watching. First we chilled at the juice bar, waiting for a table to open up. I had to take pictures of their juice menus to try my own some time!
Kel at the juice bar
smoothies!
shots & adds
fresh juice menu
I never realized how fun it is to just hang out at Whole Foods for a few hours. We bought some on-sale organic strawberries ($3 a pound!) & got to work.
strawberry energy snack
It started pouring while we were working in our little sketchbooks. I got sleepy & took a nap to the sound of thunder.
When the rain stopped we began our trek home down South 1st. The sky was beautiful & the air cool.
Ladybird lake
Thus concludes our Monday adventure! Can’t wait to see what goes down today.
I recently tried EFT to address my issues with emotional overeating. I wanted to manifest a reality where I could eat whatever I want & never gain weight. The other day, I realized that IT WORKED.
The first thing I had to do was give up intoxicating substances, because they interfere with my ability to find joy. How can you find joy when you’re taking depressants? Without clouded emotions, I don’t need to have such a restrictive diet. I don’t need to weigh myself, & I certainly don’t need to count calories!
The most important thing I learned is that there is a time delay when using the law of attraction. Even if it seems like it isn’t working, just keep thinking positive thoughts & searching for your joy! Keep believing the things you want to be your reality, & they will come to you.
I have had eating issues for TWENTY YEARS, & now I am over them. I have so much free time to manifest things like winning the lottery!
If you are unhappy or trying to manifest change in your life, the simplest thing you can do is start searching for joy in every moment. I’ve found walking is the most joyful thing I can do lately, because it leads me to adventure, friends, & delicious vegan food everywhere!
What you want you already have. Start believing it!
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“It’s easier to deal with the consequences of maturity than it is to deal with the consequences of immaturity.” (Steve Pavlina)
Power, grace, & maturity are my 3 magick words today. What are yours?
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Here’s something I don’t like talking about: money. I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, went to a private high school and attended college paid for by my parents. I have always felt extreme guilt for being born into a cushioned lifestyle.
My guilt manifested into debt. After college, I let my personal finances become a complete mess. I didn’t budget, I didn’t make enough money to pay for my apartment, & I used credit cards to pay for everything. I took out loans to pay for grad school. Finally! A financial situation to match what I felt I deserved!
Whenever cornered by my father about money, I would mumble something like “don’t worry, everything’s fine!” I wouldn’t dare tell him the truth, because it would make me feel ungrateful & idiotic.
Yesterday, I swallowed my pride & asked for help. I printed out my balances & asked my dad what I could do to improve the situation. Graciously, generously, & without biting my head off, he helped me come up with a plan to tackle my debt.
Now that I have come clean to him, I can come clean online. I firmly believe in financial transparency & took a stab at it with my weekly financial hygiene routine. But until I could see simple numbers like at Oh No My Money, my debt wasn’t going anywhere.
Here is where I currently stand as of July 18, 2010:
Here is where I am one year from now:
This is a visualization exercise to help me picture exactly how much money I want to attract into my life. My debt is paid, my savings overflowing, & I have plenty of income to support experiences like travel to Europe. I’m not yet trying to figure out HOW I’m going to get this money. All that’s important is that I know exactly how much I want & what it feels like to have it.
Now I can print this visualization out & make it happen! Money is such a touchy subject, but it doesn’t have to be! There is enough wealth for everyone! What are your thoughts on financial transparency? Yay or nay?
After many experiments in self-discipline, exercise, diet & spirituality, I’ve identified a few things that I KNOW make me happy if I do them every day. As Kelly & I ease into our next experiment in wealth, I want to bring these habits back into my life!
- Wake early. This is a really tough one, but so worth it! When we get up at 5a, we can meditate & run before it gets too hot out. Exercising in the morning totally energizes me for the rest of the day.
- Meditate. When I meditate daily, I am less anxious, more mindful, more in touch with the universe, & more focused on visualizing my desires. Meditation helps me get what I want!
- Exercise. It’s true, you can get addicted to the endorphins that come with exercise. Running, bicycling & pushups are what I’d like to do every single day!
- Eat (mostly) raw. I now know for CERTAIN that eating a raw vegan diet is what my body wants to feel its best. However, my mind often wants the comfort of warm carbohydrates, so I am willing to compromise. I eat all raw throughout the week, then allow myself a little cooked food drug on the weekends. Deprivation sucks! But eating raw is ideal for natural energy.
- Create! I know I am happiest when Kelly & I are recording the podcast & I am posting articles to this site daily. The podcast is a way for us to keep our relationship healthy & preserve memories. This site is my obsession! It’s kind of like looking in the mirror–every time I look, I find something I want to improve.
- See friends. It’s easy to get caught up in air conditioned work & hide inside, but I find that I am happiest when I socialize at least once a day. Besides, if I am the average of the 5 people I spend the most time with, I want surround myself with rawsome folks :]
- Always be grateful for what I have & visualizing what I want. When I know what I want & am grateful for what I have, I open myself up to accept abundance from the universe!
What habits make you happy? Are they hard to keep up with every day?
I have been meaning to do an inspiration post for weeks, so I have lots of things to share! I will try to keep them organized…
Food!
- First, we have raw vegan ice cream bars from Veggie Wedgie. We haven’t tried them yet, but they look incredible.
- We made this white chocolate dark chocolate raspberry torte with Annalise. The first piece is incredible, but don’t eat too much or the cashews become a little overpowering!
- We’ve been buying a lot of raw ingredients on Amazon because they are nearly half the price of Whole Foods! Check them out for raw cacao, hemp oil, & hemp protein.
- This raw vegan dude, Philip McClusky, is so sexy. He did a 100 day juice fast & tells us everything about it.
Blogging, music & design
- Learn how to write better headlines for your site at Copyblogger! Very formulaic, but it’s quite interesting, psychologically, to see what works.
- This site has 100 inspirational posts to make you a better writer.
- Get some serious inspiration from Coilhouse, who just released a new issue.
- My sister just started a new blog, called the Bitte Schön Beast. “Here be sketch comics about stuff in Berlin (where I live), American Studies stuff (which I study) (in Berlin), & best-of moments from English teaching.”
- I’ve been listening to Johnny Hollow again, for the first time since I was 19. It is beautiful gothy music, give it a taste. :]
- My friend has a gorgeous Tumblr full of sexy, gothy ladies.
- OMFG Anna Wintour is the hottest person on the planet.
- A great funding resource for artists!
- This Twitter tool, ManageFlitter, changed my Twitter life! I used it to unfollow about 300 accounts & I feel so refreshed! Thanks to Sarah Wilson for the suggestion.
- Financial transparency in a blog is so hot. So is this list of 25 Inspiring Blogs To Help You Sell Your Crap, Pay Off Your Debt, and Do What You Love.
All the rest!
- 18 ways to do things Apple doesn’t want you to do.
- Cory Doctorow reveals the tools & systems that he uses to get his work done.
- Ok, it’s official. I want a Nexus One. Please please please! It’s sounds so open & liberating!
- Do you have happy friends? Emotions are contagious! (Thanks Ariel!)
What’s inspiring you this week?
photo by cindy47452 with modifications by me.
This issue has been vexing me for months. I had my site (almost) exactly how I wanted it at jessicamullenslifestream.com/xx. Then I realized that my ‘personal brand’ would be much stronger if I was using my jessicamullen.com domain. So I put it on the to-do list to switch over, probably about 4 months ago. This week, I finally did it! The hardest part was figuring out how to do it right–I have thousands of posts in my database & it was causing all sorts of WordPress dashboard import/export problems. Here is what I finally came up with:
- Backup EVERYTHING. First, export your xml file from your WordPress dashboard. This step is practically worthless though, if you have a large amount of posts. Next, copy your ENTIRE WordPress installation directory from your FTP. Finally, make a complete backup of your database. I chose to not compress my database backup, but you may have success with a compressed file.
- Point your new URL to the directory you will be putting your new files in. First I had to transfer my domain from another hosting company, Yahoo. Once it made it over, I assigned it to my cPanel as an addon domain. During this process I chose a directory for that URL to point to.
- Copy your database to a new database. This I did in phpMyAdmin. Find your active database, & simply copy it to a new database with a new name. It should be an option under “operations”.
- Go back to your cPanel & add a user to the new database. I’m not sure if this is totally necessary, but it’s what worked for me.
- Download the most recent version of WordPress & update your wp-config.php file with the new credentials – the new database name, user & password. I tried using SimpleScripts through Bluehost to install WordPress but that was a nightmare. Upload the WordPress files to the new folder on your FTP that you designated when you assigned your addon URL.
- Upload your theme, plugins, & uploads folder. I still can’t figure out how to get the old posts on the new site to point to the new uploads folder. Any ideas on how to remedy this?
- Go back into phpMyAdmin & open up your database to start editing entries. All of the entries you need to edit should be in the wp-options table. I had to change the site URL entry from jessicamullenslifestream.com to jessicamullen.com. Then find any other entry that references your old URL and change it to the new one.
- Try loading your site! If it doesn’t work right away, try logging into your WordPress dashboard. If that works, then you might just have a problem with your theme.
- Fix up your widgets, sidebars, & plugins. I had to re-enter my widgets & sidebars (maybe, my memory is hazy here!), but my plugins made it through the process unscathed.
That’s all there is to it! I would love to hear if you have any easier methods or suggestions for improvement, since I have to do this again several more times in my near future…
Hugely inspired by Gala Darling’s Things I Love Thursday, I want to make a post about what is wonderful in my life this week! Research shows:
Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance. Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem. Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try to avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.
This week, I’m so happy & grateful that…
- My plaid juniors-sized skirt fits again woot! The last time it fit was spring 2009.
- We were able to get rid of so many possessions when we moved! We have about 75% less stuff now.
- I took a day off last week to work on my site & get inspired. Time well spent!
- Mondays are such fresh, new days waiting to be conquered.
My plaid skirt from January 2009 & a bunch of toys that had to go...
- We’ve moved to a new neighborhood to explore!
- We have a new friend, Annalise! I met Annalise when I was teaching at University of Illinois & she just recently moved to Austin. We have raw vegan feasts together & keep each other motivated to continue pursuing a healthy lifestyle.
- Our new place feels exactly like a luxurious hotel!
- We’re taking the first week of marathon training reeeal easy ;]
- We are on DAY 26 of our all raw vegan, no alcohol or caffeine challenge! Only two more weeks to go!
- Speaking of, we’re on DAY 5 of our 10 day water fast! Holy crap, what an experience.
- My kitty Linty survived the great move of 2010! When we were loading up stuff at our old house, Linty got scared & hid in a suitcase. That suitcase ended up in the moving truck, & we had no idea she was in there! After a huge scare when we went to pick up the cats, I found her all zipped up & safe & sound. Scary!
Annalise & our new view down South 1st.
- Austin has rawsome events like Dr. Ritamarie’s Raw Vegan Potluck
- My new multicolored pencils came in the mail! These pencils make my Moleskine happy.
- I get to stay involved with the UT Second Life group, even after my job ends. I love the people I work with, & am excited to see how the year unfolds for the UT campuses that are innovating education in virtual worlds.
- We’ve been doing little more than lying in bed watching Netflix! Fasting leaves my body pretty weak but my mind is racing, so cuddling in the bed with laptop & entertainment is a perfect fix.
- We are having a housewarming happy hour on July 30! I will be done with my job, we’ll get to drink & eat cooked food… Bliss!
Dr. Ritamarie's raw vegan potluck & my new pencils 
Thanks for reading! What are you so happy & grateful for this week?
