Ready to get Serious in 2019?

No, really.  And serious doesn’t mean lacking frivolity, delight, fun, and joy.  Serious, in this sense, means decision made.  What are your decisions/choices for the new year?  Here’s a check list:

_____This is the year I decide to feel good.  (No “if” and/or “but...”)  I want to feel good.  There are no longer any conditions on my good feeling.

_____This is the year I choose to treat everyone (and I mean everyone) the way I wish to be treated by them.  It doesn’t matter how they respond,  I feel good doing this.

_____This is the year I relax more, create more personal quiet time (to listen to my thoughts, and the thoughts they attract), and find something pleasant in every situation in every moment.  (This isn’t pretend – there is something to appreciate in every moment.)

_____This is the year I will give my attention to the things that I feel good about.  (I’m not going to be conned into feeling lousy by the “news” or unhappy people.)

_____This is the year I will be my best.  (No need to wait until this or that happens in order to feel good, or choose actions that I desire.)

_____This is the year I contribute to the well-being of all by being happy and desiring happiness for everyone (even if they don’t want it.)

_____This is the year I pay attention to my instincts, that inner voice, my higher self, and Jiminy Cricket.

            You get the idea.  It’s impossible to feel good and harbor anger, resentment, jealousy, and such feelings.  If your ability to feel good is mortgaged to another person’s behavior or actions, then you won’t feel good.  You can’t feel good in the company of unhappy people.  Your misery cannot make someone else feel better. 

            Habits, Patterns, and Thoughts That Go Bump in the Night  recognizes thinking as the important activity.  Thinking is important because nothing can occur without a thought.  In the most basic structure, things not thought never come to pass.  The flip side, of course, is all that stuff that comes about as a result of careless (or unawares) thinking.  It’s the difference between living a managed life and one bouncing around the chaos of other peoples thinking, i.e., victim of external forces.

            Any person, anywhere, anytime, prefers to feel good rather than bad.  Good is relative, granted, and the range of  a “good” feeling is vast.  Someone’s “good” feeling may be seeing another suffer.  That’s hardly the same “good” feeling of someone providing assistance to another.  There are degrees of every feeling and experience.  Life is about moving to a better feeling experience.  A mental move to a better feeling experience is not an accident.  It is a choice - a decision, a thought.

 

            Nothing can improve without a thought for improvement.  Some people understand that.  Some don’t.  One of my favorite thinkers, Emmet Fox, noted that People are trying to change outer conditions but leaving their consciousness unchanged, and it cannot be done.  Fox was emphasizing that until consciousness changes it’s not possible for anything else to change.  Consciousness is an awareness of thinking and there are degrees of consciousness as with everything.  The higher degree is characterized by a greater frequency or vibration.  Higher frequencies, in a word, rule over lower frequencies.

            Contemporary with Fox was Charles Fillmore, who summed up the mental process:  If you’re unhappy with your life, change you thinking.  In essence, it’s not possible to “fix” your life until you are able to “change” your thinking.

 

            Yet how do you change thinking?  Simply by giving attention to something else that evokes an improved feeling.  Simple, but because of the ability of people to habituate, not always easy.  Many of us aren’t aware of that we’re thinking, let alone how.  As one wag said, consciousness is a terrible thing to waste.

            This can be the year to get serious about your thinking.  You’ll feel good about it!