Gratitude, Manifesting and Overwhelm

Last night I led a ceremony celebrating the beginning of spring.  One of the things I did during the celebration was give out plastic eggs with a secret word in them--words like truth, clarity, joy, fun, abundance, etc. Then we did a meditation with our special word and helped it to flower and grow in our lives. When I opened my egg my word was gratitude.  I laughed and talked about how I have been receiving lessons in gratitude for many years and I guessed I was going to be doing some more work with gratitude and then went on to the meditation. The celebration went well and we all had a great time.

But when I got home and was alone with my thoughts I started not feeling so grateful to have gratitude as my special word.  I spend lots of time talking about how important gratitude is in generating the life you want to live.  I say my gratitude list every morning before I get out of bed, and I really am grateful for lots of things in my life.  But when I got gratitude for my word instead of something like fun, play, or laugher, I felt slighted by the universe.  In truth it felt like I was a student who had gotten a failing grade on a paper and was going to have to do it over again to improve my score.  I'm one of those students who only likes getting "A"s, so it didn't sit well.  

Another truth is that I have called all this great stuff to me that I wanted to do and have,  and over the last couple of months I have mostly been whining about all the stuff I have called to me.  Hmmm.  Well that gave me pause.  Was I just losing the spirit of gratitude?  I really do feel grateful for a lot of things in my life, and I do feel grateful for the things the universe is sending me.  So what could possibly be the problem?

When I dug deeper and hit the little button inside my heart that makes the tears come (always a good indicator of finding the sore spot) I realized that I was feeling resentful and whiny BECAUSE I was getting what I asked for, and I was having trouble managing all that wonderful new stuff.  A friend I was talking to on Skype this morning pegged it perfectly by calling it OVERWHELM.  Plus, by bringing these things into my reality I became responsible for them, and that is just a little bit scary.  It's like bringing home your first baby and then realizing you have to take care of it, feed it, change it's diapers, and watch over it for YEARS.  

But just like bringing home that first baby, after a while you settle in and realize you aren't going to kill it when you change a diaper and you will someday sleep again and it becomes okay. In fact it becomes more than okay because it is yours and you are falling in love.  Then feeling a little overwhelmed sometimes is worth it because you know you are doing something worthwhile and meaningful.  And in thinking about the things I have recently manifested in my life I really DO like them enough to give it more time for me to get settled in and know that I CAN do this.   

Once I came to that understanding things began to fall into place around my word, gratitude.  Receiving an egg with the word gratitude in it wasn't about me failing to be grateful or being bad at it somehow.  It was a reminder of the POWER of that word and the energy behind it.  Gratitude is a word of creation, and if I can use it to attract new things into my life I can also use it to manifest a little more ease and grace in becoming accustomed to the "new baby."  And with that realization the angst and fear have fallen away, at least for now, and I am feeling grateful for the word GRATITUDE in my life.

Many blessings to you all and HAPPY SPRING!

Hail, Hard Hats and Acceptance

This morning my Bunnyhunny called me from his work location in Northern Cal to tell me that he was being hailed upon.  When I asked him if the hail had knocked him on his noggin (in West Texas where I grew up our hail is usually really BIG). He laughed and said, "No.  I'm wearing my hard hat. But the hail is all piled up on top of my windshield wipers." I heard him turn on his wipers to move the hail away so he could see where he was going.

Our short conversation about the hail made me think about how often we allow ourselves to be waylaid by the stuff that comes up in life.  But the truth is that we always have our very own invisible hard hat.  It is called acceptance.  By acceptance I do NOT mean abject doormat-style surrender, though we sometimes must surrender things we can't do anything about.  

What I mean by acceptance is that in any given situation we will be much more flexible and able to respond if we have accepted the situation just as it is in the moment.  Refusing to see things as they really are does not make them change any faster.  But when you accept what is, you immediately open yourself to all the possibilities.  

When it hails we don't stand there being pelted and say, "I refuse to accept that it is hailing."  We think, Ouch, it's hailing.  We evaluate the possible solutions and we pop up our umbrella, step into the nearest doorway or race to our car.  

Even in the worst situations, when we accept what is we have more choices in how we are going to respond. Acceptance leads to solutions.  

Can't be hateful when you're grateful

"Can't be hateful when you're grateful."

I had a friend who used to say that alot.  And over the years I have come to believe she is absolutely right.  Something else you can't be when your grateful is fearful and negative.  That's why gratitude is so very important to manifesting.  When you act as if what you have ordered from the cosmos is on it's way and then you feed that energy by looking at all the wonderful people, places and things you have in your life right now, you draw good things to you much faster.  Plus it is almost impossible to be freaked out about what might happen tomorrow, or next week or next year when you are focused on all the goodness of the present.  

Does that mean we have to deny the things that aren't so great, pretend that they aren't happening?  No, but if we feed the negatives with our attention they tend to get bigger and we are likely to draw more of the same to ourselves.  

So develop  your attitude of gratitude in order to stay in the present moment and boost the signal you put out to the universe for the results you desire in your life.  

Happy manifesting!