In July I used an example of how my husband was driving me nuts by leaving the kitchen cabinet doors open. By writing about it I put a lot of focus on it. Then readers loved it and commented on it to me in email so I thought about it some more. Over the months I realized the kitchen cabinets were left open even when my husband was on a business trip. So who do you think leaves the kitchen cabinet doors open now? Me. To top it off, some of the cabinets are now popping open by themselves or simply won't stay shut. Coincidence? Hardly. What you focus on expands. Try This... Look around the room and count the number of white items you see. Now close your eyes and tell me how many brown ones there are. Life is like that. If you see people cutting you off in traffic and you focus on it you're going to find yourself in more and more similar situations. It could start off as something silly, simple or "no big deal, really" like them leaving the kitchen cabinets open. At first blush these things aren't a big deal - unless you focus on them. How Focus Works If you focus on them and when you do it feels terrible, that's your emotions telling you that you're heading in a direction you won't like. Pretty soon you're thinking about all of the times they haven't said "I love you" while never seeing the things they do to show love (and that could be your husband filling your car with windshield wiper fluid). Next thing you know you're mad that they don't call when they're going to be late for dinner, you feel like you never have a proper date and they don't treat you like a woman should be treated. If you're a man, the flip side is they don't appreciate all of your hard work, they nag you and they demand emotional things from you that feel awkward for you to implement and then don't even appreciate it when you try. As time goes by you're calling your lawyers wondering where it went wrong... ...and it was all because of some socks left on the floor or the simple fact that you didn't see all of the ways they were living love, even if they weren't saying it. Which Means: You manifested all of the things you were trying to avoid. "I don't want to live in a pig sty." You want to avoid this so you look at the socks and complain about them instead of focusing on what you want instead. Most people do this. They pick apart what's wrong and analyze it over and over thinking the solution lies with with the other person or it's something they can "fix". At lunch with the girlfriends "And can you believe he did this...?" Or out with your mates, "She's all over me, I can't get a break..." Then you go home and try to implement a solution "I need you to call me..." or "I need you to give me a break..." and all along you're both looking at what's wrong, trying to fix what's wrong (or just run away from it, like a dog with a can tied to its tail) and getting more and more out of sync. If you want to avoid this terribly common and disaster-prone cycle here is what you do:
But there are a fair number of couples out there who started off in sync and would have stayed in sync if only they had applied the power of positive focus to their lives - before things got so bad they just couldn't picture good things at all. So focus on what you want... ...and live happily ever after! "If we had...anyone, and we caught them doing something inappropriate, we would not amplify it with our words. We would identify what it is we do not want, and then out of it would come the rocket of desire of what we do want, and then we would just visualize, visualize, visualize, until we find peace within our vision. When you make someone and their action the heart of a vision that you've spent time on -- your relationship improves, your experience is better, and they receive the benefit of the experience. But if you catch them, and see them, and worry about it, and put mechanisms in place to prevent it, now you have not only amplified it, you have now made a commitment that is hooking you both into that, until usually it gets big enough that you break apart, and then you attract others to fulfill that role." - The Teachings of Abraham with Esther Hicks, Excerpted from a workshop in Chicago, IL on Sunday, April 25th, 1999 Comments are closed.
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