5 ways to create more good for ourselves - #2 focus on our thoughts and especially on how we want to feel

Candace Pert was a neuroscientist (she passed away a few months ago) whose amazing career included two excellent books "Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel," with Deepak Chopra and "Everything You Need to Know to Feel Good".

In the early 90's while serving as the chief molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health she made an amazing discovery that thoughts are real, physical things.

She found that every thought we have (and emotion it produces) has a unique neuropeptide associated with it. Our body produces that unique neuropeptide every time we think that particular thought and experience that particular emotion. These neuropeptides are amino acids produced by the hypothalamus (the control center) in our brain.

Every time we think a thought our hypothalamus translates the thought into billions of neuropeptides that are uniquely associated with the feeling we experience by that thought. Our bloodstream is just flooded with this stuff. 

These billions of neuropeptides join with our cells by inserting themselves into a special receptical in each cell's membrane - just like a key fitting into a lock.

Each neuropeptide receptacle on a cell's membrane is designed to fit just that one particular peptide and no other. So once that neuropeptide finds the right receptacle it gets absorbed into the cell (the cell that literally creates our physical body).

Dr. Pert discovered that over time our cells develop more and more unique receptacles based on the neuropeptides they are most frequently capturing. Our cells even begin to crave these familiar neuropeptides (the ones they have built those unique recepticals to receive). Our cells start telling our hypothalamus to produce these particular peptides because we have developed an actual physical need for them.

So, our cells are not craving stuff that feels good (meaning good thoughts and good emotions) - our cells are craving thoughts and emotions that are familiar.

This gives the need for us to "focus on the feelings we want to have" a whole other impetus. It also helps to explain how focusing on how we want to feel rather than focusing on what we want to get actually works.

(also the law of attraction which is much, much bigger than The Secret and operates more like a tuning fork with like attracting like)

Focusing on a goal always brings up resistant thoughts - Why aren't I there yet? Why don't I have that yet? Why does she have that and I don't? What if I don't get it? What if this never happens for me? This is the "what we resist persists" problem with attracting what we want.

Focusing on a goal also requires us to actually have a goal in the first place which means we have to know what we want which is the place we might get stuck because we often don't know what we want in the first place.

Luckily, we don't have to know what we want. We only have to know how we want to feel and all of us, every single one of us already knows that. We just have to get our hypothalamus to start creating the right neuropeptides and our cells to start producing the right keyholes!

Now our cells may have had decades creating all these keyholes for chaos and shame and fear and guilt and grief, but we can start building new keyholes today - right this minute. We can start focusing on how we want to feel (regardless of what is happening in our lives) today.

How might this work? Well, let's say we have a goal of making more money, but we can't really see how we can do this or what this would actually look like. So, we don't worry about that part (worry thoughts will just produce worry keyholes in our cells and we will literally become made of worry).

If we want to attract more money we think about the feelings that extra money would bring us which could be : safety or freedom or joy or peace or being loved or cherished or attention (which I've heard is the number one thing women want from men) or appreciation (which I've heard is the number one thing men want from women) or some other thing or all of these things.

We make a list of the emotions we want to feel.

(always write lists out by hand and use script since there is more energy in our physical makings and more fluid movement with script writing - I have heard some schools are no longer teaching script - maybe they have forgotten we all need to be able to sign our names and our unique signatures come from writing script letters a hundred, gazillion times)

We spend time each day with this list feeling each emotion. 

We think about things we have experienced before or we just make stuff up - our body doesn't know the difference. We just feel what it feels like to be secure - to have enough money that we can take care of everything we need to take care of easily. We feel what it feels like to be happy and joyful. We dance around our studios and bedrooms and kitchens. We breathe deeply from our bellies with this stuff.

We also notice when we feel these emotions throughout the day (and we will start feeling them more and more) and we savor them.We don't wait for something to happen to feel a good emotion, we just feel them for no outside reason at all.

(think about that Meg Ryan diner scene in When Harry Met Sally, you know the one I mean, we need to really savor these emotions that we want to feel - other people will just want some of what we are having)

When we notice a negative thought coming in - we catch it before it produces the negative emotion. We let that thought go - we replace it with another thought - one that produces the emotion we want to build keyholes for-

the kind of emotion we want to feed our body; the kind of emotion we want our bodies, and lives, to be created from; the kind of emotion we want to attract more of.

(yes, I'm dangling participles all over the place - ignore this)

Now, again this isn't about pouring pink paint over our problems and pretending they don't exist (as Marianne Williamson says) - sometimes we are going to get mad or feel overwhelmed or sad or scared - once the thought has brought on the emotion, we let our bodies feel it, then we let it go - breath it out with a pulse breath.

We move on to a better thought and an emotion we want to have. We let our bodies chow down on that.

I turned my entire life around very quickly many years ago with just this step and meditation. I have gotten out of practice but am back on the wagon .. will report on what develops.

next up part #3 necessary stillness

back step (but not in a fancy "let's tango" kind of way)

OK I had a couple people email me about my post yesterday - they didn't like what I was saying and thought it was the opposite of the stuff I usually say.

Most likely I didn't say it very well. Let me try again - let me say it like this.

I am not saying we shouldn't do the thing that will make us happy. I am only saying we do not know for sure what that thing is.

What I am saying is we should do the thing we want to do.

I am saying the thing we want to do is the thing we should do. There is no thing we want to do and thing we should do that are different. I am saying these things are always the same thing.

The thing we should do is always the thing we want to do - this is how we live authentically.

There is no guarantee this thing will make us happy though ...

also my post on Create and Thrive on How to Get Unstuck is up today and HERE

Happy weekend all - please don't think SNOW ... think GREEN (as in grass and money and sustainable living) ....

(The example someone emailed me yesterday was that she would rather read a book on her Kindle than do her dishes so am I saying she should not do the dishes? My thinking with this is - if we want to read a book on our Kindle we should read a book on our Kindle - at some point the dirty dishes will begin to make us feel yucky and we will want to do them. So, that's when we do them.

If we don't want to get up and go to work in the morning, but we know that not going will make us feel worse than going - then going to work is the thing we should do and it's also the thing we want to do. We are just used to thinking of it as the thing we have to do, but it's really not any less the thing we want to do ... and thinking of it as the thing we want to do instead of the thing we have to do is what changes everything.)

the waning moon, mercury retrograde plus the sun moves into pisces

The sun moves into Pisces on Thursday and the moon is waning now (moving from last weekend's full moon toward the new moon in March), Mercury is still retrograde and next week Jupiter squares Uranus as the Pluto square Uranus we have been dealing with for the last couple years marches on.

So what does this mean and why should we care?

Well, first let's look at the sun in Pisces. What most people know about astrology is their sun sign and of course, astrology is much more than this, but we do revolve around the sun after all - it matters.

Although the space the sun occupied when we drew our first breath isn't who we are. We can't be our sun even if it does make a nice solid box in a world filled with boxes that are leaking, bottomless or falling apart. Our sun sign doesn't so much show us who we are as it shows us our process; the way we create experiences and the way we measure those experiences later.

Pisces are particularly proud of their sun signs. I know a lot of Pisces. I have never known a Pisces who would rather be anything else. Maybe it's because they are the last sign, I don't know. But Pisces really seem to like being Pisces (of course that's really not who they are at all, but we won't tell them that). This time of year when the sun moves into Pisces we all get more sensitive (we are also more likely to have childhood memories pop up to deal with and past life memories, too if you resonate with that).

When I started learning astrology I pretty much ignored sun signs. Now I don't. The sun acts kind of like an engine moving us forward and it makes perfect sense that it rules Leo which in turn rules the heart.

The sun teaches us that doing what is in our heart and doing what is required of us is actually the same thing. 

We get this stuff confused because we think doing what's in our heart will make us happy. That's not always true. The sun's light may be very bright and feel really good sometimes, but the sun's light burns, too.

Following our heart doesn't guarantee a happy life; it does guarantee an authentic one though. At the end of our days in rocking chairs or hospital beds we will be content with what we have done.

But now, hopefully many years before those rocking chairs and hospital beds, we think that living a happy life is what we want, although often we don't know what will make us happy and get ourselves stuck and sometimes we think we do know and then we get the thing we are so sure will make us happy and realize it doesn't make us happy after all, this happiness thing can really muck us up.

(we can't really muck it up though, don't worry, life will find a way to get us to the challenges we came here to meet)

And this is where that value post I never finished should come in, and it will, I just need to wrap my brain around it a bit. Also I need to get back to our nodes and our goddesses. I have been side tracked by the moon for the last year!

While the moon is waning we will be most comfortable (and get the most universal support energetically) releasing. If money is tight this is an easier time to cut expenses than it is to create more money, for example. It's an easier time to let go of a relationship that isn't working than to start a new one. Also we've got that mercury retrograde going on for another week or so.

Some other stuff that is happening - Jupiter is in Cancer until July- he is currently retrograde though so more about expanding inner things than outer stuff (if you have Cancer or Capricorn 10-12 degrees in your natal chart you will be feeling this most strongly now). Saturn is in Scorpio for the rest of this year (this one has been challenging me and anyone else with a Scorpio ascendant or any planets 21-23 degrees Scorpio or Taurus are being clobbered with hard lessons - hold on). Uranus is in Aries for the next 4 years, right now moving through 9-10 degrees so if this is challenging your natal chart you might as well just give in to it and run away for a while, like a long while or maybe forever - I firmly believe in befriending transits like this! How about Hawaii?! We've got Neptune in Pisces, right now she is 12-13 degrees Capricorn so if you have your sun, ascendant or planets 12-13 degrees Capricorn or his Cancer polarity you will probably be doing some major releasing right now or depending where this hits your chart you could be dealing with focus and motivation stuff  - this low-grade depression might hit everyone before Neptune moves on in 10 years or so, of course on the flip side of this (this is the Magician card in Tarot after all) is amazing creativity, manifestations and dare I say, magic ....

You can check your natal chart HERE

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - #1 tell the best possible story ....

Since hubs and my dinner last Christmas when I realized our entire conversation was comprised of problems, bad news and complaints - I have been determined to change the way I am framing the things that are going on and the way I am verbalizing this stuff in conversation with other people and Olive, of course, and especially in my own head.

I deleted the old Whining Wednesday link from my blog header (sniffle) and have been paying greater attention to my language.  

This has resulted in me saying a lot less - probably not a bad thing. Although no one has noticed. I haven't had anyone ask, "hey Cat, cat got your tongue?" ... yet.

I know that my words and thoughts influence my actions and outcomes, but I still find it challenging sometimes to practice what I know.

(There are quantum experiments with accuracy within 1/100 of a decimal point illustrating that there is no such thing as a detached observer. We all grew up with the scientific method where we watched and recorded, but quantum physics tells us that this isn't possible. The observer is actually a direct participant in all that is being observed and outcomes are effected and even created by the observer's expectations.)

The fact that our expectations and beliefs literally create the world around us is a huge shift in the way most of us have been taught to think the world works.

The first tool I have been using in working with my expectations is to tell the best possible story.

This doesn't mean pouring pink paint on problems and pretending they don't exist, but the truth is that while something is happening we can rarely know for certain that it even is a problem. It can be painful, yes, but we have all had events happen that we interpreted as "bad" at the time, but later, in retrospect, we can see things that were actually good about what happened, sometimes even very good and usually we can see things weren't nearly as bad as we thought they were at the time.

Telling the best possible story is easier when you remember the story of the farmer whose horse runs away (I 'm sure you've heard this one, but in case you haven't I'm going to give it a go) and his neighbors all come around and say "this is such bad luck that your horse ran away" and the farmer says "bad luck, good luck, who knows" and then his horse comes back and brings 2 other horses with her and the neighbors come back, too and this time they say "this is such good luck that your horse came back and now you have 3 horses" and the farmer, of course says "good luck, bad luck, who knows" then his son breaks his leg riding one of the horses and you know what the neighbors say next and then war breaks out and his son, the one with the broken leg, is the only young man in town to survive the war ... you get the picture with this.

It is sometimes hard to know what is good or bad while we are in the middle of something, so rather than rushing to label something as bad, rather than judging it - we find a way to tell a good story about things as much as possible. The frame we put around the things we choose to think and talk about is up to us. And the frame matters.

Science is now proving that by looking for ways to feel as good as possible about the people, places, things and circumstances in our life - we are literally creating more good for ourselves. This isn't about pushing down bad feelings, but re-languaging what is happening is very powerful stuff. I have already been seeing myself getting luckier as a result of small changes with this.

So, maybe the next time you go to lunch with someone or out for coffee - choose the direction the conversation flows deliberately - see if there is a way for you to tell the best possible story about the things you are talking about.

#2 focus on how we want to feel, not what we want to get (next post)

One thing I wanted to say about the advice I offer on this blog. I am an expert in exactly one thing - myself (and my expertise is called into question on that all the time ...). I know for certain that each of us is different and each of us is here for different things. One person really needs to step on to the stage and one person really needs to go to the back of the line and these people could be the same person at different points in her life. So, if something here doesn't resonate with you, just let it go. I think, for me, my basic human nature is not so optimistic so this is a learned thing for me; something I have to continually work at. It may be your basic nature to tell the stories with the least amount of judgement already, so just keep telling them ...