What you give your attention to is what you get more of in your life. If you focus on what you don’t want, you actually get more of that same experience. If you focus on what you do want, you get more of that instead. Einstein said it. Buddah said it. Jesus said it.
We attract into our experience the feelings, experiences and situations that we spend the majority of our time thinking about.
As Einstein said, this is not philosophy. It is physics. Energy attracts similar energy. It is a law of the universe. Just like gravity.
The more you pay attention to what you spend your time thinking about, the more you can change your experience. This is not a “get-rich-quick” pep talk. This is so much deeper than that. What you think and how you think changes everything. You can’t spend 80% of your days thinking about what scares you, what you fear, what you hate, what you don’t like, and expect to live a happy experience. This is about choosing what to focus on even though life is imperfect, even though bad things happen to good people. The challenges are there to help you get clarity about what you want, so use them to that end.
I’m so convinced of this because I myself struggle with my thoughts. I have regular periods of negative thinking, fear and anxiety, feelings of insecurity, and feelings of being alone and lonely. I worry at times that I’m actually going to fail at everything I try. It is so normal to have these thoughts. But a few years ago, I started the practice of awareness of how I think. I decided to pay close attention to my thoughts and to view them almost as a movie running through my mind – not judging, but just noticing. And I realized that I was spending more than 80% of my waking hours worrying. Stressing. Fearing. I knew I had to figure out a way to make a change.
And so I developed a system about how to do that effectively, and my daily experience began to change. I not only got more of the experiences that I wanted in my life (and material things too), but I began to be more satisfied with my life, with myself, and even with my loved ones. It was revolutionary.
And we are living in incredibly uncertain times right now – more than ever, maybe. And many, many of us are feeling fear, worry, anxiety. But the same holds true for us as a community as it does for each of us as individuals. What we as a community focus on is what we get more of. Focus on what you do want, not on what you don’t.
So I am launching my new series, Daily Devotions.
Devotion is actually one of my words for the year, and I love it because it encapsulates so much at once. It is another way to say love, and it involves dedication, passion – a deep care and commitment of time, money and resources to something that matters to you. It is so much more powerful than positive thinking. It is a form of prayer, or meditation on something you care deeply about. I want to spend my life devoted to the things I love, care about, want to see happen in my life and in the world, and of course, devoted to the people I love. Devotion is a powerful, powerful thing.
My goal is to encourage myself and all of you to focus very deliberately every day on what we want for not just ourselves, but for our country and our planet. A small, devoted group of us can change the experience for everyone for the better. I hope you will choose to follow along and try it. Make the commitment to focusing on what you want, and specifically what you want for our country. Start now and don’t give in to fear. Jesus said that perfect love casts out all fear.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
So go toward the light, and be a light in the world. Let’s do this together.
In love and devotion,
xo Jessica