17 seconds to feeling better

I often talk about the law of attraction and, although, manifestation can have different connotations for different people, we all manifest daily, within each moment.
​ It’s just that we can live life more consciously and aware than we often do.
When we set an intention, we hold a thought, an idea, of something we would like to experience, or a shift in how we feel or live.
This intention has a feeling space, and when we use our imaginations to actually FEEL that feeling, our spirits, our hearts and even our cells within our bodies, don’t know it’s not actually happening.

Have you ever played an imaginary game with your child?
It’s so funny, because I so often resist playing pretend, and I don’t do it half as often as I wish I did… but when I do, when I actually get involved in a game with my kids, oh there’s nothing better. My son and I used to have a game where we had a magic car that would time travel and turn into whatever we needed. We rescued animals and saved the world on numerous occasions. The amazing thing was within that moment, there was always a moment, when we both just let go of our current perspective and lived within that game. We both would see the animals in danger, we both felt the adrenaline of excitement as we pulled them into our car for safety.

It’s the same when I write. 
11 years ago I wrote a novel. I still work and re-work it and its sequel, one day they will make it out into the world. But what is amazing is how alive the characters are in my mind and heart. They are so dear to me. I love how they live, how they work as a family. I love how they communicate and share their home. Strangely enough, shortly after writing the book, similarities started to appear within our own lives and those of my characters. Even now, after all this time, my husband and I will laugh when something from that book “comes true.” 
It’s not that it was planned that way. I didn’t visualize the story with the intention of painting out my own life, rather the FEELING of the stories and characters, the energy the books carry, held. It was like they became part of my signal that radiates out, and since I visit it often, sometimes it becomes my own.

There’s a great quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“We become what we think about all day long.”

And this is really what I want to talk with you about today. Because the resistance I feel in playing an imaginary game with my son, or writing a story, comes from the resistance to focusing in on one energy feeling space. Like standing on the edge of a diving board, hesitating to jump, I can often resist diving into full focused experiences in life.

We live in fast paced worlds, we are all in information overload, and we are being bombarded by the different stories that are fed to us. We have our phones, our Facebook feeds and our full lives. We rarely hold on to a feeling space of one thought or story for more than a few moments. We jump from focus to focus and to-do lists items like they are hot coals and we’re worried we’ll get burned if we focus on one thing for too long. 
So, when do we create our stories?
When do we become what we think about, when we think about everything?

We set New Year Intentions and consider them set, but I want to encourage you to visit them every once in a while. I’ve been visiting Thriveas my word of 2018 often, and really asking myself to dive deeper into my personal feeling of that word. How does it feel within my parenting, my marriage, my work, my spiritual practices?
My meditation practices isn’t just about trying to calm a scattered mind, rather I’m aiming to focus in on feeling the vibration of how I want to FEEL.Thrive isn’t a word, rather it’s a story.
My story and I’m exploring myself as my own character and how she navigates through life.

The other day in the facebook group I was telling everyone about the concept of 17 seconds.
It only takes 17 seconds of feeling a focus to allow it to take hold and grow into a following thought. 
It’s surprising how difficult this practice can be with a modern day, over active mind. Abraham Hicks introduced the idea into their teachings of the law of attraction years ago and it’s one my husband and I use regularly.
​
So, if we hold a feeling space, sparking it by using our imagination and experience, for a short of period of time as 17 seconds, then the energy is strong enough to attract more like minded thoughts. If we hold it for 4 sections of 17 seconds, so 68 seconds, then it starts to appear in our physical reality and it becomes part of who we are.

I never know if this sounds too simple or too difficult. How do you find the focus you wish to experience? How do you know what to give energy too? As scattered, information overloaded people, how do we decide?

Here’s a couple of steps how to find focus and how to dive off of the spiritual diving board.

1) Go simple. Go general. 
This isn’t about castles in the clouds, this is about simple feeling spaces of Relief, happiness, and fulfillment. One of my favorite spaces to visit when I want to give focus to a feeling is a wood over in England. No specific wood, it just feels like an English wood. I walk through it, sit by a stream and feel myself relax and be present, for no other gain than because it feels good. 

2) Set aside some time, or put post-its around to remind yourself, to practice holding focus for 17 seconds.
If you are doing dishes and see the post-it, 17 seconds of having soapy hands while you imagine something that feels good does the trick. 17 seconds is too short of time to not have time for… and each 17 seconds that passes with you holding specific focus, is being built upon anyway. You might as well do it consciously.

3) If you decide to grab the Mp3 tool, even just starting with playing the ting in the background helps. 
I sometimes keep it on while I work, as it draws my attention back to my thoughts. On days I can’t find focus, I simply listen to the ting, much like breath focus work, and follow the vibrations of the triangle, until I can’t hear them anymore. Once I find focus then I can start setting intention with finding a feeling.

4) Journal, write, brain dump.
And then write your feelings out some more. It all starts with awareness to how things feel, so that you can consciously choose how you wish to feel by focus.

5) Allow yourself to play. 
Imagine, daydream, and stretch out of the day to day. No harm can come from playing and experiencing different things through the power of your own mind. Our children do it all the time, why shouldn't we?

My life has become so much deeper since I started to allow myself to dive deeper into the intention of my focus. You are allowed to interrupt thought processes to refocus to things that feel better.
You are allowed to pursue feeling relief and feeling good. Because when we feel better we allow ourselves to be the parents we want to be.