thanks: aussiegall & Swamibu | iPhone wallpaper
Now that you have your website up and running, it’s time to start getting serious about ENJOYING LIFE. This week we are focusing entirely on your new job: controlling your mood. Your thoughts are the only thing in life that you can genuinely control; start using that to your advantage!
This lesson will describe the conceptual foundations of thought design, then cover ways to implement these ideas with your website. The goal of life design is to get closer to your Higher Self (the person you want to be). Having a website reflection of that Self-in-progress makes your efforts more tangible and bolsters your reputation at the same time.
Review
The last lesson in designing your digital Higher Self was intended to get you more comfortable with 1) picturing who you want to be, 2) visualizing that person with your site, and 3) sharing it all publicly.
This course in Life Design uses lifestreaming as a “life design methodology.” Lifestreaming is simply sharing your experiences online. Sharing your progress in the ongoing process of designing your life helps you achieve five things:
- learn to focus on what makes you feel good by documenting those things in your life
- discover your passions (which can change over time) through self-reflection
- voice your intentions, thus placing an order with the universe
- teach and learn by finding new information, explaining concepts to yourself and helping others along the way
- process & synthesize information, reducing overwhelment and increasing comprehension
Lifestreaming is a relatively simple, conscious action you can take to start directing your life. But the real effort comes before you take any action at all. Learning to control your mood is your true work here in physical reality. The reason for this? The Law of Attraction. When you are in a good mood, you attract good things into your life. When you are in a negative mood, you attract more negativity.
The Law of Attraction
The Law of Attraction is the universal, unyielding principle that like attracts like. That which is like unto itself is drawn. Whatever you think about, you bring about–thoughts become things. When you conceive a thought, you are creating a very real energetic vibration, like a ripple in a pond. The universe interprets that vibration and brings you similar things.
The Secret
On May 21, 2010, I was introduced to The Secret by my friend Jessie. She had mentioned the Law of Attraction in a Facebook comment and I was eager to hear more. I watched the film the next day and began my ascent into conscious creation. The Secret imparts some intriguing ideas, such as:
- The instructions for taking advantage of the Law of Attraction are 1. Ask. 2. Believe. 3. Receive.
- Thoughts become things. What you think about, you bring about.
- Trust inspired thought.
- Life is meant to be abundant in every way.
After applying the concepts of the Law of Attraction to my life and to lifestreaming for a while, Kelly and I were introduced to the teachings of Abraham by our friend Heather McKissick.
Abraham-Hicks
The teachings of Abraham inspired the film The Secret, and there is a long story behind the connection. Abraham is a “group consciousness from the non-physical dimension,” channeled by Esther Hicks and recorded by her husband, Jerry Hicks. Abraham have said, through Esther, “We are that which you are. You are the leading edge of that which we are. We are that which is at the heart of all religions.”
Sounds pretty bizarre, right? A woman who goes into a meditative state and lets some other entity speak through her, sure, ok, whatever you say! But let me explain my take on Esther’s work.
I do not doubt the truth to the message behind the teachings of Abraham. I do not doubt that Esther is translating the message for us. But that is all she is doing–translating. Whether or not there is some sort of spirit inside of her, taking control of her mouth, is irrelevant. Esther is taking the infinite energy that creates all of us, that creates all physical worlds, and translating the best she knows how. Her message is simple: enjoy life. Be happy. Go with the flow. Only take action that feels right. Your emotions will guide you.
A lot of what Abraham says (through Esther) seems heavily influenced by the book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. Jerry Hicks even states in his biography that it was the book that catapulted him into success. So it makes sense that a lot of the vocabulary and concepts Abraham discusses sound like Think and Grow Rich, because that is what Esther has to work with from her experience.
Esther does not have some super power that allows her to receive this information from Abraham (though being able to empty her mind so quickly could be considered one!). She simply states what we all already know in our hearts: that feeling good FEELS GOOD, and that we all want to be the person we know we have the potential to become. This is why the work of Abraham-Hicks resonates so deeply with so many–it feels true.
Of course, there is criticism of the Law of Attraction and Abraham-Hicks. They call it a McDonald’s theology: “all the fears people have of meaninglessness, insignificance, lost goals and dreams, and ultimately death are all taken care of, without the person needing to do anything.”
And yes, that is exactly the point. You don’t need to DO anything to change the direction of your life! All you need to do is change your THOUGHTS. Think about it–even me typing the phrase “think about it” implies the importance of the effort that is thinking. Every single action you take, every decision you make, every opinion you hold, and every emotion you feel is a direct result of what you think about. How, then, could anyone discount the importance of thoughts? Remember Occam’s Razor–the simplest explanation is often the correct one.
Changing your thoughts
So perhaps this is all beginning to sound very stressful. “How am I supposed to control my thoughts?? They come out of nowhere!” That, my friends, is a belief. And a belief is just a thought that you think over and over. The wonderful thing about life is that you DO have complete control over your thoughts, and when you decide to take control of them, your entire reality will change.
Not that it’s easy, especially at first. Personally, I have gone through some serious emotional work the past few months trying to get a handle on it all. The hardest part was reducing my intake of intoxicating substances. I realized how hard it was to control my thoughts and my mood when drinking alcohol. And then I realized how much I use food to manage my mood instead of doing the work myself.
So when you cut out intoxicating substances (not entirely, or forever! habitual use just does not work out for me), life becomes a lot more clear. And this part can be very, very hard. What do you do when you have a habit of putting yourself to sleep with drugs, or drinking with friends every weekend, or binging on pizza and ice cream to soothe your sadness?
You change your thoughts, that’s what. A habit is driven by thoughts. So you just have to cut the thoughts out. Stop thinking about the things that you know don’t make you feel good. You have to put up a roadblock, so you don’t go down that path anymore. Just like your route home from work or school every day, a thought pattern becomes so ingrained that you don’t notice it anymore.
But if you’re not taking the same route home from work everyday, you still need another route to get home. You have to find thoughts to replace the thoughts that make you feel bad (or that lead you to bad feeling action). So when you think about things that make you feel bad (like, “I feel fat” or “I miss drinking” or “I want to get fucked up and forget about consciously creating my stupid reality”), you have to IMMEDIATELY replace them with different thoughts. Try “I feel beautiful” or “I love feeling healthy” or “I love being in control of my life.”
It’s not easy, not at first. Because thinking like this isn’t a habit. It isn’t ingrained, like negative thoughts already are. But eventually it can become your normal, every day way of life! Just remember–beliefs are only thoughts you think over and over. If you believe something negative about yourself, just start thinking new thoughts.
At first it will feel fake, and forced. But that doesn’t matter. When you start consciously directing your thoughts, you’ll begin finding positive thoughts that don’t feel so fake. If you go from “I feel fat” to “I like the way this shirt fits” or “I love my smile,” you’re moving away from the negativity that will bring more negativity into your life.
The best trick that Abraham teaches is that there is a back door to all this. If you are feeling bad, or negative, you can think ANY thought that makes you feel good. It doesn’t have to be related to the negative thought. When you think ANY thought that makes you feel good, you’re raising your emotional vibration. And then your next thought will come from that higher emotional vibration, instead of the negative one. So if you can just start with ONE better-feeling thought, your next thought will come out of that better-feeling place.
It took me a while to grasp this concept. Thoughts and emotions are intricately connected, so it can be hard to figure out how or where to start. But let’s try this: thoughts are energetic vibrations that create reality. The emotions you feel in response to your thoughts (or your manifested reality) tell you how close you are to your Higher Self. If you feel good, you are on the path to becoming who you truly are. If you feel bad, you are moving in the wrong direction. When you feel bad, you start thinking negative thoughts. These negative vibrations start creating a more negative reality. The whole point of life is to FEEL GOOD, so if you think positive thoughts, you create the reality you desire.
You can direct your reality by focusing on what you want, instead of what you don’t want. Anything you don’t like about your current reality, TUNE IT OUT, NOW! There is no point to wasting time on bad feeling thoughts! It will only bring more bad-ness!
Life is a video game
Kelly came up with an incredible analogy to help explain this. Picture your life as a video game, like Second Life (a virtual world where you have an avatar and can create anything you desire). Now picture Source Energy (or your Higher Self, or God, or Infinite Intelligence, or whatever you want to call it) as the player of the game, and you are the avatar (or video game character).
The only control Source Energy has over you, the video game character or avatar, is through giving you INSPIRATION, or by giving you EMOTIONS. You are free to take any action you wish, but you won’t level up (coming closer your HIGHER SELF) if you don’t work with Source Energy.
The weird twist to this game is the very fact that you are free to take any action. And that you, as a character, develop unique preferences about what you want and don’t want in your reality. So Source Energy tries to help you out. When you find something you don’t want, Source Energy feeds you a negative emotion pellet, so you know to not go back to that thing. When you find something you DO want, Source Energy gives you a positive emotion pellet, so you can return to that thing again and again to get more positive emotions.
Now we can introduce the concept of “clicking” on something. Let’s equate “clicking” on something in a game with “focusing” your thoughts. When you observe or think about something negative, you are essentially “clicking” on it in the game. You are saying “yes, more of this please,” even though you’re eating all these negative emotion pellets and feeling like shit! But when you “click” on something that you DO prefer, it makes sense that you’re saying “yes, more of this!”
If you keep clicking on the negative things you don’t want, the video game keeps bringing those negative things back into your life. Source Energy keeps trying to help your ass by giving you the nasty negative emotion pellets that SHOULD tell you to move on and click (focus) on something else. But no! You are so obsessed with telling everyone that “I DON’T WANT THIS” that your clicking just keeps bringing more and more of it!
Think about your current reality–what are you clicking on? What thoughts or observations do you keep asking for more of? How do they make you feel? Is Source Energy feeding you positive emotion or negative emotion pellets when you click?
When you’re stuck in the game, inspiration is like the magick potion, or mana, or health pellets that Source can give you. When you just can’t figure out what to do next, Source Energy steps in by giving you inspired thought. You can think of this as your intuition, or as hunches. When you get a gut feeling to do something, but you can’t explain why, that is Source trying to give you a little help in the game. When you are working on finding some solution, or invention, but can’t make progress, that is where Source Energy comes in to save the day.
In a later lesson I’ll talk about ways to allow inspiration into your experience, but for now just digest this video game metaphor and really try to apply it to your life. Think of your life as a game, and you have absolute control over what happens in the game. When you are thinking or observing, realize that you are actively focusing and creating your experience. Focusing is the same as clicking in a video game. Focusing is directing your energy to manifest reality. So apply this concept to your life literally. As you go through your day, think of every thought or observation as a click in a video game. Are you really asking for more of what you’re clicking on? Or is Source giving you negative emotion pellets, telling you to move onto a different thought or observation?
Your mood is your work
Source Energy feeds you positive emotions to let you know you’re on the right track towards your Higher Self–so your purpose in life is to find things that make you feel good, and keep doing them. Observe or think of things that make you feel good. Your purpose in life is only to pursue joy.
At first, it might sound selfish, to worry about no one’s happiness but your own. But how can you be of any help to anyone if you’re unhappy? You cannot change someone else’s reality, only your own.
The Emotional Guidance Scale
On page 114 of Jerry & Esther Hick’s book, Ask and It Is Given, they explain a scale of emotions that can help you move from negative feeling thoughts to more positive thoughts. When you feel bad, look at the list and figure out something, anything, that can bring you one step up on the scale. By doing that, you are raising your emotional vibration and enabling yourself to think better-feeling thoughts. Even if you just move from depression to anger, you are in a better place than where you were, and more positive manifestations will begin coming into your reality.
Don’t expect to make a huge jump (the Hicks’ call them quantum leaps) from a very negative emotion to a very positive emotion. Work incrementally up the scale so you don’t get too frustrated or pissed! Often Kelly and I will be feeling frustration or pessimism and want to jump right back to joy, but it isn’t really possible. We have to think thoughts that bring us up bit by bit.
- Joy/Appreciation/Empowered/Freedom/Love
- Passion
- Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
- Positive Expectation/Belief
- Optimism
- Hopefulness
- Contentment
- Boredom
- Pessimism
- Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
- Overwhelment
- Disappointment
- Doubt
- Worry
- Blame
- Discouragement
- Anger
- Revenge
- Hatred/Rage
- Jealousy
- Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
- Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness
Jerry and Esther offer a ton of exercises and processes that can help you move up the emotional scale. Check out this site for a great list. The exercises that have worked best for me are segment intending, the why game, and appreciation games.
Using your website to feel good and get what you want
The last lesson, I suggested many post ideas to bring more good feelings into your life. This time I’ll go deeper into a few specific types of posts to explain exactly how they will make you feel good and bring you what you want. Try using any one of these post design ideas to raise your emotional vibration and attract more of what you want into your reality:
- Throughout your day, photograph and post things that make you feel good. What gets you in the vortex of feeling joy? Is it the food you’re eating, the places you’re going, the people you see? Start noticing details around you that make you feel good–stickers, neon signs, animals, graffiti–anything that brings a little smile to your heart. When you appreciate your surroundings, you purposefully avoid unwanted observations. Every thought you think, every part of your reality you observe, is an active click for more of the same! This is one of the ways lifestreaming benefits me most when I’m off my computer–by acknowledging thoughts, observations and experiences I am enjoying, I am deliberately asking for more. At the same time, I experience a boost in my emotions because I am thinking about things I like, instead of things I dislike.
- Discover what you’re passionate about with research posts. What you think about you bring about, and if you’re not sure exactly what you want, start anywhere! Do you think you might enjoy more travel? Cooking? Making art? Making money? As you start focusing your energy on figuring out what you want, these things will start coming to you. Some things you might like, some you might not, but you won’t know until you start thinking about it. Think more money might make you happy? Create a post about what you would do with a million dollars. Post about places you might like to visit, a la Gala. Or just start collecting images that resonate with you and make a vision board post.
- When you know exactly what you want, voice your intentions by placing an order with the universe. Telling the universe what you want via public declaration on the Internet is a powerful way to start manifesting the things you desire. Essentially, you are increasing your belief that things may start happening in your favor, because now a lot more people know exactly how to help you. To get started, talk about things you already have and would like more of in a gratitude or rampage of appreciation post. Next, make a list of things to manifest, detailing all the specific things you would like to see happen in your life in the near future. If you want to get really specific, try making a “telling your future” post, where you describe exactly how you want things to play out for the next day or week. Before you try this one, make sure you’re feeling joyful already, it will make writing a lot easier!
If you’re out and about without your computer, but still have your phone, try segment intending. Take a picture of something and title it with how you want your very next experience to play out. For example: today I have to go to the dentist. When I get to the office, I’ll take a photo of the building I’m about to enter, and title it “I’m about to go to the dentist, which is going to be fun and easy and I will leave cavity-free!” I’m setting my intention about the next segment in my life and determining how I want it to go, not waiting for something to happen to me by default. (p.s., this worked, I am cavity-free!) - Start teaching by actively learning from your experiences. Creating a “how-to” post is a RAWESOME way to turn any negative experience into a positive one, because it forces you to look at things from a different perspective. Picture this: you’re home for the holidays, and it is not bringing you much joy! Your family is bickering, you’re stressed about all the chocolate you’ve eaten, or you’d just rather be anywhere else. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, start composing a “how to survive being home for the holidays” post in your mind. This will immediately cause you to start looking for ways to improve your situation, turning your experience into a positive one. Pissed that you have to go to that meeting at work? Write a “how to survive lame business meetings” post. It will force you to come up with creative ideas to make the meeting fun (or at least bearable)! Seriously, this works!
You can also try podcasting. Kelly and I have been producing our podcast for over two years now, and it is BREATHTAKING to watch our journey from there to here. Not every episode is a comedic gem, but the archive of personal development progress we’ve made is one of my most prized possessions. We’ve gone from being chubby drunks, to mean girls on a diet, to becoming vegans, to becoming marathon runners, to going raw vegan, to fasting, to learning about the Law of Attraction, to where we are today. Creating a video podcast forced us to really observe ourselves from the outside, and that observation caused us to constantly reevaluate our lives and what direction we’re heading. Basically, we’ve learned SO MUCH from doing the podcast, I’d recommend it to anyone! - Chill out and let your brain do some processing with creative exercises. You might not be inspired to do any of these posts, and that’s ok! Sometimes it’s better to let your brain do some creative processing and synthesizing before taking action. Whenever I lack inspiration to work on my site, I do something creative yet mindless. I doodle in my sketchbook, open photoshop and mess around with fractal art, or make friendship bracelets and beaded jewelry. Often, doing work like this quiets my mind enough to let inspiration flow through me again.
What to avoid posting on your website
Whatever you do, don’t complain on your site! It brings everyone down, and attracts more things to complain about into your life! Look for the silver lining of every situation, or just plain ignore the unpleasant ones!
When “bad things” happen to you (which they will less and less as you take control over your thoughts), try to learn from the experience. Look for the positive outcomes. Look for the “how-to” post.
How to decide what to post about your “current self”
Lauren Lionheart left a great comment on the last lesson. She was asking how I determine what “current self” stuff makes it on the website vs. all the “Higher Self” work:
My experience has been that there are aspects of the current self that will ask insistently to be shown on the website. Following your intuition will let you know which ones can help you along your journey, while others are more like echoes from an old life. Some parts of our journey are very appropriate to write about online, and serve as a personal healing tool as well as bonding our readers to us.
Here’s how I distinguish whether a part of “current me” is ready to shine on my website: Can I describe the lesson I learned from it? If so, onto the blog it goes! If I’m still mucking about in the issue and feeling confusion, fear, anger, etc. about it… then I keep marinating until the lesson makes itself clear.
I completely agree with Lauren here. If something about your current situation is making you feel bad, don’t post about it. If you are feeling higher on the emotional scale about it, then share away! The point is to not to make too many decisions while feeling crappy, because those decisions aren’t going to help you feel better. Wait until you’ve raised your emotional vibration about an issue, then post away!
Activity
Try out any one (or more) of the posting ideas above and let us know what works for you. What feels best to create? Please share a link to your posts in the comments!
To go deeper into this lesson, don’t forget to listen to the discussion MP3.
See you next time!
Lesson 4 is Designing Daily Life. We’ll put the concepts covered here into practice to transform your daily life. We’ll talk about taking adventures and entheogens, using divination tools like tarot cards, and embracing the synchronicities that are occurring all around you. Essentially, this lesson will be about finding every-day evidence that the universe is working to bring you what you desire.
Be sure to sign up for the School of Life Design Mailing List to get emails when new lessons go up, and to get exclusive content not available to the public.
Thank you!
Designing life wouldn’t be nearly as fun without you! If you enjoyed this lesson, please consider a donation to keep the School of Life Design thriving.
Thank you for co-creating with me!
image by jaci XIII | download the iPhone wallpaper
This lesson is about creating the public, web-based version of yourself, which will aid you in the never-ending process of designing your life. Having a personal website is like a personal development catalyst, so get ready to bust out the reality of your dreams!
After you read through the lesson, download the accompanying discussion MP3 between me and Kelly Cree. We expand upon many of the ideas below to further our understanding and yours.
Be fearless!
We are all one. We come from the same place, we are made of the same energy, and when we die we go right back to the whole.
The Internet is a physical manifestation of our inherent oneness. We are all connected. We all have unique perspectives, but collectively, we are something much bigger than ourselves. And if we are all one, we are all each other. I am you, you are me. We are like spines on the same koosh ball.
Under this assumption I came to my views on privacy. If we are all one, what is the point of privacy? The need for privacy comes mainly from fear of what other people will think. Why would we be afraid of what others think, if we are all the same underneath? Why would I chose to hide from myself?
It’s time to stop caring about what anyone else thinks, discover what brings you passion and joy, and become the person you’ve always known you are! Amplify your ideas, share your happiness with others, and expand your possibilities!
Why exist digitally?
Having a personal website is a great boon in the process of designing your life. It is a way to view yourself from outside of yourself, a digital ledge from which to gain perspective. Since we spend so much time online anyway, it makes sense to be focused and deliberate about what kinds of digital creation we engage in.
Many of you are entrepreneurs at heart and hope to make money from your website, maybe through advertising revenue or product sales. By approaching your website with passion and the mindset that it is enjoyable to work on it, you are setting the stage for a successful endeavor. Below are several reasons to keep an active website, which can ultimately lead you down the path to financial success.
Feel good.
Keeping a personal website has been the single most valuable thing I’ve done for myself. I knew that it was a great place to collect creative works, memories and inspiration, but until recently I didn’t really understand why. The simple answer? Because keeping a website feels GOOD. It feels good to create and share our work, it feels good to collect inspiration, it feels good to write about topics that interest us, and it feels good to receive feedback in comments and conversation. It feels good to take photos of ourselves for the sole purpose of posting them to our blogs, it feels good to organize our thoughts in the form of a website, and it feels good to create digital representations of ourselves that spread our ideas to people across the world.
Maintaining a personal website feels good, so what? SO, feeling good brings more good things into your life! Whatever you think about, you bring more about into your life. So if you are feeling good, you are thinking good thoughts. These good feelings and thoughts do nothing but generate more. The more joy we look for, the more we find!
A website is like a mirror of your mind. When you design a new portfolio section, or write a fresh blog post, or take a great outfit photo, you are reflecting your life at the moment. How do you want it to look? You are in control! Every moment is an opportunity to find something that makes you feel good, and when you collect some of these moments on your site, you begin creating an archive of good-feeling memories to scroll through whenever you need a boost.
Discover your unique passion.
Kelly once said about personal websites, “if you know what your site is about, you know what your life is about.” How true this is! What parts of yourself do you want to showcase on a website? What ideas do you have that everyone should hear about? What are you truly passionate about?
Don’t worry if you don’t know yet! Maintaining a website can help you figure out what makes you feel good, what interests you, and what you are passionate about doing. This doesn’t require chaining yourself to your computer or constant twittering through meals with friends. Having a website may actually inspire you to spend less time online, so you can be out having exciting adventures to share!
Voice your intentions.
I like when I create posts that resonate with other people. I like creating with a joyful vibration, and I like it when others vibrating at the same level respond. Wouldn’t it be nice if this post resonated with many of you?
By stating what I would like to happen with my creation, I am voicing my intention. This can be applied to anything you want. Are you looking for a new bicycle? Tell the Internet! Are you in need of inspiration? Make a post about it. The universe can’t answer you if you don’t ask for what you want. And by asking publicly on the Internet, you are making it easier for yourself to believe that things can be orchestrated for you. If you just asked aloud for a new bike, you might have a hard time believing the universe was going to bring you one, just like that. But if you ask online (like Kelly did after her bike was stolen), it’s a lot easier to believe that you might have a friend with an unused bike laying around for you.
Voicing your intentions and desires online can help you begin noticing the little coincidences and synchronicities that are occurring all over the place as the universe works to bring you what you ask for. The resulting conversations tend to be deeper than the usual Facebook conversation fare. It’s fun to talk with people who have thought about life a lot!
Teach and learn.
Every single one of us has knowledge that others could benefit from. Providing digital access to what we know is a surefire way to speed up discoveries and fun-having worldwide! Not only do we all have something to teach, but by teaching it we learn it again. Teach once, learn twice. Also, it can be fun to challenge yourself to do new things and post about them along the way–learning and teaching at the same time.
Process and synthesize.
All of this business about the universe and positivity and synchronicities and the power of thoughts and putting it all online can be overwhelming at first. Having a creative outlet to discuss your understanding and progress as you go through life is invaluable. Putting your experiences online publicly is different from keeping a personal journal, because you create with the knowledge that someone else might be looking. This is a good thing–it encourages you to clarify what you’re thinking and experiencing. This clarification helps you process and synthesize new information as it comes, deepening your knowledge. Coming closer to understanding the meaning of life is definitely something that brings me joy :]
Phew! Now that we have all the conceptual reasoning for having a website out of the way, we can start talking about your new (or improved!) online presence!
photo by margolove
Visualization of Your Higher Self
In the previous lesson, we talked about writing our dream “About” pages. What would your future biography say if you could determine it now? We are going to take the same approach for our websites.
Your Higher Self is the you that you want to be. It is you in perfect form, the dream you, the you living out your fullest potential. Your website is about that you. Not you in your current reality, not the flawed you, not the sad you, not the negative you, not the unhappy you. Your Higher Self is who you are striving to become.
When you look at your website, you want to feel like you’re looking at the website of your idol. Do you want to be a rock star? Do you want to be a fashion designer with more sales than you can fulfill? Do you want to be an artist with openings at every major gallery in the country? Then design your site to reflect that!
Create a page with tour dates, use Paypal to easily let others purchase your work, describe your most recent smashing success. It doesn’t matter if you’re fibbing a little (or a lot!) because the point is to get in the feeling of success. You have complete control over your perception of yourself! And when you create an outstanding website for your dream self, you are aligning the stars to make that dream a reality.
You might be wondering how you are going to get this site of your dreams! You are going to make it of course, or perhaps you know someone who owes you a favor. But to do it yourself is most rewarding, so you can change anything and everything at any time. Creating a site that best reflects the you who you want to be is a never-ending process, because your desires are always changing.
Where to start
Your job is now to create a website that best represents your Higher Self. The first decision you need to make is where this website will live. Do you already have a site? Is the URL what you most ideally want to be known as? Whatever you chose, make sure it’s something you really love. Don’t love your real name? Change it! But be consistent across the Internet–try to make your website URL and your various account names (Twitter, Tumblr, etc) the same.
The easy way out
If mucking about with code and webhosting makes your eyes glaze over, never fear! You can get a free WordPress.com account and let WordPress worry about all the technical bits. Once you log in to your dashboard, you can choose from 99 different layouts (called themes) to make your site look the way you want it.
If WordPress.com isn’t the right fit for you, feel free to create your digital Higher Self anywhere else that makes you feel comfortable. Livejournal, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, Myspace, Flickr, or Blogger all have free options for your enjoyment.
How to get started with webhosting
If you’re willing to go the extra mile to have things just the way you want them, the best possible thing you can do for yourself when creating your web presence is getting your own domain name and hosting. This means that you pay someone for computer space where your website lives, but you get complete control over everything. If you ever hope to make money off your website, make sure you do this! It is more work for you than signing up for a WordPress.com account, but it pays off to have complete control over the way your site looks, what kinds of advertising you can put on it, and what kinds of content you can publish.
If you are looking for a place to host your website, I recommend Bluehost, with one caveat–they have a pretty strict Acceptable Use Policy. If you want lots of nudity on your site, Bluehost is not for you! I have held an account with them for a couple years now and they have been quite lovely to work with. If you do choose to sign up with them, use the link above and I get a little cut from the deal ;] Here are roughly the steps you will have to follow when signing up:
- Go to Bluehost.com or your hosting provider of choice.
- Choose your domain name and monthly hosting plan. Bluehost gives you unlimited storage space and bandwidth, great for when your website explodes with traffic!
- Log in to your new account and explore your Control Panel (aka cPanel). This is where you get to do lots of fun things like set up email accounts, back up your site, and manage your databases.
- Configure your FTP settings, so you can easily transfer files from your computer to your website.
What next?
Once you’ve figured out your FTP settings, install WordPress on your server. If you want to design your own theme and code it yourself, check out some tutorials. Otherwise, start browsing all the free themes available.
Things to consider about your Higher Self-cum-website
- Header: your site header is generally an image or block of text at the very top of your site. This is the first thing your readers will see when they get to your site. Does it accurately represent your higher self? Does the imagery you use have meaning?
- Sidebar: the sidebar is often your site’s primary navigation. Ponder every single link or bit of text you put in there. Carefully consider the sidebar hierarchy–what is the most important navigation item? Put that one first.
- About page: your about page is very important to give visitors some context about your site. And it is an extremely important part of visualizing your Higher Self. What you write in your About page is what will come to be, so make sure you know what you want and aren’t afraid to say it!
- Categories: the different types of posts you make can all have separate categories, so you can sort your site. What are the different aspects of your life you want to showcase? When picturing your Higher Self, what are the different areas you see? Don’t use categories for areas of your life you dislike, because you’ll just perpetuate those aspects.
- Portfolio: no matter what your industry, a portfolio can be a great section to include on your website. Choose to showcase only projects that you truly enjoyed doing and would love to do again. This will bring about more projects like those.
- Copyright: Copyright is obsolete. Read this post by Steve Pavlina on why he is no longer protecting his work with copyright. Leo Babauta at Zen Habits also has an awesome copyright policy on his blog. Consider releasing your copyright in your sidebar or footer by including a Creative Commons Public Domain license.
- Posts: every post you make should make you feel good. If you’re documenting or talking about something that doesn’t make you feel good, STOP RIGHT NOW, unless you want to bring more bad feelings into your life!
So what should I post about?
Here are some different types of posts you can create to make yourself feel good and bring more joy into your life.
- Things I love: a list of things you are grateful for, or that make you laugh, smile, or feel joy.
- Rampage of appreciation: a stream of consciousness flowing of things you appreciate about your current situation.
- List of positive aspects: if there is something bringing you down, list out all the positive things you like about the person or circumstance.
- Visualization: draw a picture of something you want, and include yourself in it.
- Vision board: put up a bulletin board in your home where you hang up all the things you want to bring into your life. Post about it!
- Exercise: embed your Runkeeper routes or talk about your favorite way to get your body moving.
- Fashion: make the Polyvore collection of your dreams, or get a lookbook.nu account.
- Link love: link to all the different bloggers you love and explain why! You’ll get good link karma.
- Research: pick a topic that interests you and dig up all the information you can find about it. Organize your discoveries into a gorgeous post that will save someone else time.
- People you’d like to meet, places you’d like to travel: start writing about the things you want to attract into your life!
- Inspiration: what is inspiring you today? Beautiful new colored pencils? A triple espresso? Your grandparents? Tell us about it, and receive more inspiration for your trouble.
- Music you’re listening to: I am always dying to hear recommendations from others!
- Book reviews: what book has really changed your life, and why?
- Portfolio of your work: no matter what it is you do, you have enough experience to create an amazing portfolio. Choose your favorite projects from your entire lifetime and showcase them. Then sit back as you attract similar projects into your life.
- Food photos and recipes: if you like to cook, document it and make it look exquisite.
- How-to: we all know things that seem simple to us but not to everyone! Think of one thing you know how to do really well and post a detailed tutorial.
- Funny family stories: we all love hearing how screwed up everyone else’s family is…
- Oh, pets: you like it when your cat does that cute thing? Make a post about it and watch more cuteness unfold ;D
Activity
Your assignment this week is simple. Get yourself a website, then start making it look like the website of your Higher Self! If you already have a site, take a look at it and make a list of the things you could change to make it better reflect who you want to be. Then start crossing things off that list! To turn in your assignment, just post a link to your site in the comments for critique and feedback.
On my list of improvements to make this week: put up my portfolio and re-categorize my posts to be more like Kelly’s!
Remember, the point of having a website is to feel good. If at any time the process is making you frustrated or upset, just walk away! There is no deadline, and no pressure. Work on your site for the pure pleasure of creating. You can’t get it wrong, because you’ll never get it 100% done. You are always changing and your Higher Self is always expanding. Do what you’re inspired to do in this moment and you’ll never be disappointed with the results.
To go deeper into this lesson, don’t forget to listen to the discussion MP3.
See you next time!
Lesson 3 is Designing your thoughts & emotions. In this lesson we’ll cover the law of attraction, positivity, manifestation & subjective reality. Learning how to control your thoughts and emotions is the basis for designing the rest of your life, so I’m super excited to see what inspiration brings us!
Don’t forget to sign up for the School of Life Design Mailing List to get emails when new lessons go up, and to get exclusive content not available to the public.
Thank you!
Working on the School of Life Design has been hugely rewarding thus far! If you enjoyed this lesson, please consider a donation to keep the School of Life Design thriving!
Thank you for co-creating with me!
image by kevindooley | download the iPhone wallpaper
Welcome to the School of Life Design! We are here to learn and create together. This school has manifested in my life and yours to bring us closer to what we desire. As we teach each other and share our creations, the most important thing to remember is that you are doing everything right. We are inspired to make our lives more joyful and fun, not to doubt our choices or worry about what anyone else thinks. All that matters in life is feeling good, so we are coming together to design experiences that feel good.
After you read through this lesson, you can take a listen to the accompanying discussion between me and my partner-in-design Kelly Cree. Kelly is an absolute expert at explaining these concepts verbally, so if you find yourself getting lost, just listen to the MP3 to gain a better understanding of the topics we’re talking about here.
What is Life Design?
Life Design is the practice of shaping your reality into the specific experiences you desire. Let’s compare it to graphic design: a graphic designer shapes art, technology and information to form a specific message. A life designer has not only visual communication elements at her disposal, but her entire world to draw from.
Why practice Life Design?
Because you can. Because once you get a taste of how much control you have over your life experience, it’s impossible to turn around. If you are complacent, content, & hate rocking the boat, then this course is not for you. If you are always reaching for more, never satisfied with where you are, and full of desire to live your life to the fullest, then keep reading.
Contemporary Life Designers
Life Design is nothing new. Any person pursuing personal development, self-improvement, and spiritual growth is a life designer. But most life designers are not very successful at creating their dream realities, because they are missing one simple thing–confidence. You can have anything you want, if you believe that you can.
Try spending one day listening for what people tell themselves they can’t do. “I could never quit my job, because I can’t find a better one.” “I can’t eat that pizza, it’ll just make me fat.” “I can’t take up running, I’m too out of shape.” And on and on and on. Count the times people are making their own realities with negative statements. Do you ever find yourself doing the same?
Why do we think we can’t do the things we desire? One reason is because we believe someone else is controlling our life experience. We believe our boss, our parents, our children, our friends, the government, the weather, or God is what’s holding us back. But you know what? No one controls your life BUT YOU. Your thoughts are the only things that can hold you back from achieving everything you want.
There are many successful life designers creating their realities and sharing them on the Internet. If you ever need inspiration from people who are living the lives they want NOW, look no further! These are a few of the unique souls who have turned my perspective on life inside out:
- Gala Darling: “I believe in making mischief & the triumph of magic over the brute. I believe in short skirts & lip gloss & bringing the radical self-love revolution. I believe life doesn’t have to be serious, that you create your own reality & that beauty is all around us.”
- Esther & Jerry Hicks: “Jerry and Esther Hicks live a fairy-tale life. These two fun-loving adventure-seekers are currently breathing in huge lungfuls of joy as they figure-eight across the United States in their rock star monster bus, following the good weather, meeting friends along the way and enabling as many people as possible to visit with Abraham.”
- Steve Pavlina: “widely recognized as one of the most successful personal development bloggers on the Internet, attracting more than two million monthly readers to his website.”
- Dawn & Drew: “two ex gutter punks who fall in love, buy a retired farm in wisconsin (then move to costa rica) and tell the world their dirty secrets…” When I met Dawn the other day at Rasputina, Kelly asked her what the point of life was and she replied “to have fun!” Dawn & Drew have been my life design heroes since 2005, leading with their example of supporting themselves doing exactly what they love: podcasting.
- Tim Ferriss: a self-proclaimed lifestyle designer who wrote The 4-Hour Workweek. “Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan—there is no need to wait and every reason not to. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, high-end world travel, monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.”
Basic principles of Life Design
These are the six basic tenets that assist life designers in the creation of great life experiences.
| Oneness | We are all one. We all come from the same source energy. We are just different windows into the same soul. This concept is the reason for living transparently, for sharing what we learn along the way, and for letting go of a little privacy. |
| Alignment | When we are aligned with who we want to be, we feel joy. That alignment comes from feeling good, and from following our inspiration before acting. |
| Contrast | Every time we experience something we don’t want, we know more of what we DO want. This delicious contrast is what creates the desires we strive to quench. Without contrast, we would have no desire. |
| Patterns | Your daily habits, behaviors and experiences come from thought patterns. Your beliefs come from repeatedly going down the same sled-tracks of thought buried deep in your brain. We can learn to recognize when we’re taking the easy way out, and following our thoughts down old, undesirable pathways. Once we recognize our thought patterns, we can allow the creation of new patterns. |
| Balance | Energetic balance means that what you put out into the world comes back to you. By listening to your intuition and bodily cues, balance can be easy to achieve. |
| Whitespace | In graphic design, whitespace is the absence of design elements. It is the place where your eye goes to breathe. In life design, white space occurs where we experience relief, where we let go of resistance. White space is inspiration from our higher selves, after our resisting old thought patterns get out of the way. Meditation and exercise are two ways of creating whitespace in your life. |
Life Design Toolbox
Below are some concepts you can use to start improving your life right now. This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point for shifting your reality. These concepts will help you recognize the power you have over your own life experience, and every one of them is easy to practice. All you need is an open mind.
| Gratitude | As Steve Pavlina says, “Persistent gratitude will manifest financial abundance much, much, much faster than worry, frustration, or apathy.” Wake up each day and count the things you are grateful for. Keep a list in your sketchbook and add to it every chance you can get. Have an hour long conversation with your best friend about all the things you are grateful for in each other. The point is that once you feel grateful for what you have, more good things will start pouring into your life. |
| Visualization | Penelope Trunk interviewed Jim Fannin about visualizing success. Fannin suggests doing one thing: “play a movie in your head of you achieving your big goal.” By knowing exactly what you want and what it will feel like, you are creating the conditions for your dream to become a reality. Think about it in terms of sex. Before you had sex with someone, did you fantasize about it? Did you try to picture exactly what it would be like? Then, almost like magick, the opportunity arises. Visualization helps focus your intentions, helping your mind bring you what you desire. |
| Creativity | Whenever I feel uninspired, I do some sort of thoughtless creative activity to get my inspiration flowing again. Sometimes I doodle in my sketchbook with pretty colored pencils, sometimes I sit down in photoshop and make fractals over and over. Invariably, the exercise stops my negativity and allows me to move forward with fresh energy. |
| Positive thinking | Taking control of your thoughts is key. Whenever you catch yourself thinking negatively, about ANY subject, pivot into a different thought or different perspective. If you’re thinking “I look so fat” just start thinking “I feel beautiful today!” Turn “I don’t have enough money this month” to “I have more money than I need right now!” It can be hard at first, but only because you’re creating a new thought pattern. It’s easy to keep thinking in your old pathways, but making new thought habits pays off big time. |
| Affirmations | It can be hard to remember to keep thoughts positive, so it helps to write down what you want yourself to believe. Kelly and I made a list we wanted to remember, printed it out and hung it up in our bathroom. Some of the phrases were “I am healthy and prosperous,” “I create my own future by envisioning it clearly,” “I deserve the best, and I accept it now,” and “I choose courage over fear in every decision that I make.” |
| Mindfulness | Mindfulness is about living in the moment. It’s about feeling the breeze on your skin, the air in your lungs, the grass between your fingertips. It’s about looking for things that feel good in every single moment. I’m appreciating the warmth of my keyboard as I type this. I’m enjoying my hair staining my periphery bright pink. I’m loving the sound of raindrops outside my window. By looking for good feelings in every moment, you raise your emotional vibration and attract more good feelings into your experience. |
| Intuition | According to Abraham, you are born with an emotional guidance system that leads you towards what you want. It’s like the “warmer and colder” game you played as a child. When you are getting closer to what you want, you feel better. Warmer… Warmer… Hot! When you are moving away from what you want, you feel bad. Colder… colder… colder… Learning to trust your intuition is not really complicated, just think about how you are feeling. Do you feel good? Then keep doing whatever you’re doing! Personally, when my intuition is really strong, I get a funny taste in my mouth, like a dentist’s drill. It’s not unpleasant–and it lets me know that I’m on the right track! |
Life Design methodologies
A methodology is a system of methods you use to find a solution. A life design methodology is a process of allowing a desired experience to unfold.
The methodology for using the Law of Attraction is: Ask, Believe, Receive. First, ask for the experience you desire by creating it in your mind. Figure out exactly how it will feel. Next, release it into the universe and trust you will get what you want. Then allow yourself to receive what you have asked for. It’s that simple.
Lifestreaming is the life design methodology we’ll be using in this course, and it is very similar to the Law of Attraction methodology. But first–what the hell is lifestreaming?? Lifestreaming is simply sharing your life experiences, usually online. You can lifestream by blogging, podcasting, or publishing an e-book. I lifestream by podcasting, posting lots of photos and creating articles for this site.
As a life design methodology, lifestreaming is the practice of documenting things that feel good. First, by posting about what makes you feel good, you are automatically asking for more things that feel good. You can share about a visualization exercise, what you are grateful for, or any other topic that makes you feel good.
By posting about something that makes you feel good, you’re asking for more good feelings.
Next, you release your desire to the universe. In lifestreaming, you are releasing your desire into the Internet. Publicly sharing your posts is a way for you to believe in them, and also a way to let them go and let the universe take over.
Picture asking for a recipe on Facebook. If your network of friends is large enough, you can trust that someone will answer you with what you want. You wouldn’t freak out, wondering if your question will ever be answered. You just believe someone will step in to help.
So then you receive what you want, and you can document your gratitude, sharing with others how easy it is to get what you want. Posting about the good things in your life just keeps them coming to you faster and faster!
I used to believe that lifestreaming was about portraying reality as it really was. A classmate critiqued my work, saying “what about documenting all the bad things that happen in your life?” I took her advice and started looking to document the shitty parts of my life. Guess what happened–I invited more shit into my life! Before that point, I didn’t have much shit to document! Lifestreaming is about creating experiences that make you feel good, releasing them into the Internet with trust that more good things will come from it, and then receiving more good things!
Posting about gratitude and visualization, or about anything you’re interested in, are just ways of feeling good. By sharing them online, you’re publicly asking for more good things! And when you share your experiences, more people get to see the positive outcomes you are creating, and might be inspired to do the same!
In this course we will be using this lifestreaming methodology, since it would be pretty hard to work together online if we weren’t sharing! If you’d like to try a different methodology, please do! We’d all love to hear about your process.
Activity: Who do you want to be?
When you decide to begin consciously creating the reality around you, it’s a good idea to know what you want. Today’s exercise is to write the “About” page of your dreams. When you have completed this course, what do you want your life to look like? Picture someone asking for your bio. What would you send them? Now is the time to craft your biography to say exactly what you want it to, then get to work designing that very life! I’ve written mine, and it now lives on my own About page. You are in control of where your life is going, so start making some decisions! And don’t worry, you don’t have to keep it forever–you can modify it any time you like!
I am a teacher & student of life design living joyfully with my partner Kelly & my two feline familiars in Austin, Texas. Independently wealthy, super-fit, and covered in mystical tattoos, I have woven my life into a magickal, dream-like trip full of loving friends, delicious vegan food & mind-blowing adventures around the world! My purpose in physical reality is to pursue JOY & share it with others.
This website, jessicamullen.com, inspires thousands of individuals daily to consciously create the lives of their dreams.
Kelly and I also produce The Popular Podcast, a hugely successful video podcast which documents our lives and entertains our international community of friends.
I received my BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005, and my MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. My thesis report is titled “Lifestreaming as a Life Design Methodology” and you can read it here.
To turn in your assignment, leave a comment on this page with your new bio. Or if you already have a website, post it on your “About” page and leave us a link to click! (If you want me to take a look before you post it, just send it to me in an email.) Also, feel free to do something other than writing! Maybe your bio is in the form of an image, or a video–it’s up to you!
Once you’ve turned in your assignment, I will offer any suggestions I might have!
Don’t forget, you can download the accompanying discussion MP3 to help clarify the concepts covered in this lesson.
See you next time!
Lesson 2 is Designing the Digital You. In this lesson we’ll get you all set up with a website that makes you feel good. We’ll cover privacy concerns, graphic design and whole lot more about lifestreaming to get what you want. And the best part–your “About” page is already written!
Don’t forget to sign up for the School of Life Design Mailing List to get emails when new lessons go up, and to get exclusive content not available to the public.
Thank you!
I am so happy and grateful that we are on this journey together! It is so exciting to find joy and share it with others. If you enjoyed this lesson, please consider a donation to keep the School of Life Design thriving!
Thank you for co-creating with me!
Education as we know it is dead. College does not equal happiness. With our collective knowledge stored safely on the Internet, there is no more need for memorization or regurgitation. We learn best through experience, not hungover in a packed lecture room.
So where do we get these experiences? How do we create the experiences we want? Enter LIFE DESIGN! Your life is yours to do with as you please. You have the power to create your reality, & the only limit is what you believe you can achieve. Life Design is the practice of shaping your reality to be a continuously joyful experience–or anything else you want it to be.
After lots of trial & error, I have designed my life the way I want it–for now! Our desires change constantly, so Life Design is a never-ending process. Every single day I seek out experiences, teachers & inspiration to keep my vibration high, my mood positive, & my creativity flowing. I certainly don’t know everything about Life Design–far from it! I just want to get the discussion started. My main reason for starting this school is to learn from you!
So what the hell do you learn in a Life Design School anyway? Below are the eight lessons I will be offering on this site:
- Introduction to Life Design: influences, history & basic principles of Life Design
- Designing the digital you: lifestreaming, graphic design, privacy & the Internet
- Designing thoughts & emotions: the law of attraction, positivity, & gratitude
- Designing daily life: adventure, magick powers, tarot & entheogens
- Designing your environment: minimalism, DIY & environmentalism
- Designing your relationships: love, sex & family
- Designing your work: creativity, money, inspiration, & visualization
- Designing your physical body: diet, exercise, meditation & body modification
Introduction to Life Design will begin in the next week. Stay tuned for the course calendar, assignments, & resources. I am unBEARABLY excited about this new project & am so happy that so many people are interested already! If you don’t want to miss anything, please sign up for the School of Life Design mailing list.
Below is a quick hello & thank you video from me. I am so happy & grateful that our paths have crossed & that we can now seek joy together!
Today I have been thinking about teaching. When Kelly & I returned home from our 9 mile walk to & from campus, the idea entered my head that the time has come to start teaching again. Then when I opened my email, I saw a job listing for a design position at a university in Toronto. Tempting, yes. My sister called & we talked about it, & she reminded me that it was what I wanted to be doing all along anyway. I went to graduate school to get my MFA so I could teach, & now it is time to make that happen!
This site is now the course materials for MY IDEAL DESIGN CLASS. Wee! It sounds so exciting! I will cover many topics, including website design, lifestreaming, life design, & web development. I will also focus intently on positivity, magick & the law of attraction, because the Internet we manifest today is influencing everyone’s future.
In addition to this free resource website, I will also be available for private tutoring, phone consultations, email discussions & emergency problem-solving. As a teacher, I am at my best one-on-one. I am patient, understanding & have plenty of experience.
Teaching design is not about me knowing something that you don’t; it’s about knowing how & where to look for the right information. Everything you need to learn is on the Internet, & together we can find it! Your intuition will do the rest.
I’ll begin with the basics, follow a loose syllabus, & veer into new territory when inspired to do so. I will include video, image, text & code. I promise to be transparent & honest.
Anyone with an Internet connection can design the web presence (& life!) of her dreams. Design on the Internet is a lot more than just making websites now. It’s about using the Internet to find what you want & create the reality you deserve.
If you aren’t interested in learning to code, don’t worry! After a while you will be so driven to design things exactly the way you want them, that learning a little bit of code along the way will be easy & even fun!
I have taught three web design classes at the University of Illinois, & was a teaching assistant in Design History for the University of Texas. I have a BFA in Graphic Design, & I worked at several design firms in Chicago before freelancing for the past four years. My MFA Design thesis proposes that lifestreaming is a life design methodology. I’m ready to mold all of these ideas & experiences into one comprehensive, regularly updated guide, to keep in your pocket whenever you need it.
As I prepare these course materials, I invite you to ask any questions you might have about graphic/web design, lifestreaming, life design, the Internet, or positivity. What do you wish you could do with your website? What excites you online? What would make your life easier? What are your deepest digital desires? ;D
The past few weeks I’ve been really into cutting up my tshirts to breathe some new life into them. I’m super excited about my latest tshirt surgery discovery, which resulted in the above beauty! This is the tutorial I used:
Ever want to kaleidoscope a website? Now you can!
You might have noticed my recent obsession with fractal imagery. PSD Tuts taught me how to make them!
The Interplanetary Internet: Towards a Matrioshka Brain? gave me goosebumps! The article talks about the possibility of us being simulations in a computer, & the potential that our descendants will be indistinguishable from the network we now know as the Internet. What do you think?
Staying inspired, connected to Source & full of joy is my full time job. When I woke up this morning feeling depressed & like I had the flu, I knew I wasn’t doing my job very well. I eventually figured out that it must have been food poisoning, but I managed to cure myself with the following!
Eat a salad
I’ve been totally overindulging in cooked delights. Did you know that wheat gluten is like an opiate drug, producing similar feelings to endorphins in your brain? In my experience, diet is the single most important factor in mood regulation. As soon as I ate my delicious kale salad, I started feeling heaps better.
Make fractals
After my mood started improving with the salad & watching a little Esther & Jerry, I sat down to get to work. But I was still feeling blocked & tired. Lately, whenever I have that feeling, I start making fractals! This mindless creative activity always results in beautiful imagery (I made the image above today), & usually clears my mind enough to get inspired again.
Give up alcohol FOR GOOD
As you may have noticed, I perform a lot of dietary experiments on myself. I’ve been working on removing alcohol from my life for several months, & invariably I return to it during social gatherings. I imbibed at our housewarming party on Friday, which resulted in me feeling SO UNBEARABLY HORRIBLE. Compared to the previous week of unparalleled sobriety, I was in hell! Finally, I’ve experienced the contrast I needed to officially say that I. DO. NOT. DRINK. I feel such extreme relief that I never have to think about it again! Cheers!
Do what you are inspired to do
I was going to work on some website maintenance tasks this afternoon, but wasn’t feeling any joy from it. So I started making my fractal image & composing this post in my mind. I’ve been completely obsessed with Steve Pavlina’s 30 Days of Inspiration, during which he is “testing what it’s like to live without thinking or planning ahead.” He is only doing things when he is inspired to do so, & from what I’ve read the trial seems to be incredibly rewarding. I believe that following inspiration is a sure path to joy, so I’m excited to try a similar experiment on myself. My first wave of inspiration–read Kelly’s pizza post!
Yesterday was my last day of work as program coordinator for the TUE VLCI grant project in Second Life.
I worked on the 22nd floor of the Tower at the University of Texas at Austin, in a department called the Division for Instructional Innovation & Assessment. I had the privilege of working with many beautiful souls who made the year breeze by.
Mario was my supervisor. We travelled to Dallas together to do Second Life training, coordinated all of the Second Life meetings, & generally kept the project going together. The photo above is us in my office.
Mario shares an office with Morrie.
Down the hall from me is Mark!
Also on the 22nd floor works Rachel, a wonderful woman with lots to share about shamanism & lottery strategy!
Sara works with DIIA as well, & is a total sweetheart. She made everyone delicious bread for Christmas, though sadly I had just gone vegan at the time & could not partake!
Sam is another graduate student who works with DIIA, & we collaborated together on a video project for the VLCI.
Sadly I did not get photos of all the fantastic people who I had the pleasure of working with this past year, but I will remember them forever! I am happy to be moving onto the next phase of my life, but will always remember this time of growth & virtual world innovation fondly!
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.
