If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius

If you’ve been reading my musings for some time then you’ll know that I regularly talk about The Law of Attraction, and the power of positive thinking. No surprises today because I’m going to talk about it again ☺ The reason I say so much about it is because it’s so fundamentally important for us all to understand the power of our thoughts and feelings in terms of what the life we create for ourselves. When we are connected to our true self, our authentic self, feelings of joy and happiness really begin to flow. When we are connected to our true self and not our ego, we can think and act from a place of truth – as I was explaining last week. The more we connect with who we really are, the easier life can become. The more we connect with who we really are, the easier it is to create a life of joy and happiness.

So creation then. How do we do it? Basically we create by what we think and feel. What we think gives us feelings, our feelings have energy and power behind them that we send out into the world. Our thoughts create the actions that we take which will have a knock on effect in our lives and the lives of those we touch. So the long and short of it is, be careful what you think because where you put your focus is what you’re actually creating.

The thing about taking action when we’re creating is that it’s imperative that we take action from a place of centredness and happiness, not from a place of fear and panic. The problem with the latter is that a) we end up wasting our energy doing all sorts of things to try and sort things out and b) we make ourselves incredibly stressed and ill. The other important thing here about creating from a place of fear is when we try to take action and create from a place of fear what we do is actually create the thing we’re trying to avoid. Let me repeat that last bit again: we actually create the thing we’re trying to avoid.

Why is this? Because that’s where you’re focus is: on the fear, not on the place where you actually want to be. Let me give you an example, you’re running out of money and you’re beginning to panic about being able to pay the bills. So you think to yourself “I’ll do whatever I can to get more money so that I don’t end up going to court or losing my home” and then you start to look around fearfully for ways of making money. The more you try to find things, the less and less you find them. The more stressed you get. The nearer the date comes for when you need to pay your bills, and so you get more stressed and search even harder and still find nothing, or grab at the first opportunity even if you know it’s not really the most helpful thing to do. All because the focus is on “so I don’t end up going to court and losing my home”.

Let me give you another analogy. This time from the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. For those that don’t know the story, here’s a very brief synopsis: Voldemort is an evil wizard trying to kill off Harry Potter and anyone who’s not a Pure Blood Wizard, and ultimately take control of everything. Now the thing that Voldemort feared most was that Harry could beat him because of part of a prophecy he’d heard. Voldemort totally feared what Harry might become so tried to kill him and ended up killing only Harry’s parents. If he hadn’t killed Harry’s parents Harry never would have grown up wanting to end Voldemort. Thus Voldemort set up his own downfall. Do you see? If Voldemort hadn’t gone out of his way to kill Harry he never would have set in motion Harry’s determination to take revenge.

Unlike Voldemort, we are all capable of love. We are all capable of being centred and of feeling good, despite what is going on around us. What we must do when we fear something is allow the fear to wash over us and focus instead on doing whatever we can to get back to a place of centredeness. We need to focus our thoughts on feeling good and take action from a place of love. We need to take action that will take us to where we want to be, not take action to avoid what we don’t want. Subtle difference I know, but it does make the world of difference.

One way of taking action is powerless and energy draining. The other way is empowered, powerful, and completely flowing. I know it can be challenging at times, especially when we feel the grip of fear take us over completely. Those are the times that we need to take some deep breaths and then do whatever we need to in order to get back to a place of centredness. Always act from the heart centre, never from nervous reflex and fearful reaction.