The Happy Rug...

I came up with that title about 25 yrs. ago when my children were only infants. I had the idea my whole life that the day I had kids I was going to be the best possible mom, so I kept on searching for those special out of the ordinary methods to raise them in a different way than how we were raised, neither of us had very clear role models in our childhood, I didn't want to make the same mistakes our parents did and have our kids wind up in the same spot where we were.

The Happy Rug was a game I designed so that we could get together as a family and talk about anything anyone needed either some clarification, some help, ask questions, or just to learn to communicate with one another.

It was actually a lot more fun than I expected it would be and the benefits were priceless.

The kids were very little when we started so they would actually ask for a Happy Rug when they felt the need to express something.

It consisted of the following. The four of us would sit on a rug and the one who had called it would hold a stethoscope on their hand. Only the person who was holding the stethoscope was allowed to talk. We came up with the stethoscope because we were supposed to talk from the heart. Once that person finished what they had to say or ask the one who wanted to talk next would raise their hand and the stethoscope was passed. Everyone got to talk and nobody ever got interrupted even if what they were saying was wrong in someone else's eyes.

We spoke so many times on the Happy Rug, at the end of the session there was always an understanding, a better feeling or emotion, we never ended the Happy Rug on a sad note even if the subject we spoke about seemed sad. We spoke about life, death, friendship, family, relationships, education, sex, world events, future hopes and dreams, ideas, doubts, fears, joys, you name it we covered it.

I remember one time when I made up four little notebooks. The cover was decorated and it had the name of each one of us. The project that day consisted of writing 10 good things we each thought about the other three. So each one wrote in three notebooks and at the end we got to keep the one with our name on it. We each read what the other three thought about us out-loud. I remember how surprised the kids were especially when they read what their sibling thought of them, as children we rarely tell each other the good things we see in them. It also made an impression on them when they were able to see themselves through the eyes of their loved ones.

I can't wait to have grandchildren to pick up where we left off, at The Happy Rug...

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

"A Belief is just a Thought That You've Been Thinking"...

The other day I was watching an Abraham/Hicks video and it said something that really caught my attention. I had to listen to it several times so I could write down the exact words they used when describing what a thought is. They said "Whatever you are focusing upon is training you into a habit of thought. That's all a belief is. It's just a habit of thought". I never really gave any thought to what a thought is but when I heard that it made total sense.

For some reason it reminded me of an episode of the "Twilight Zone" I must have watched at least 30 yrs. ago called "Eye of the Beholder" It basically deals with a beautiful girl who thinks she is ugly because she lives surrounded by what we consider to be ugly and she is amongst the few beautiful people around and is trying surgeries to change her face to look like theirs.

What that tells me is that we can be convinced of anything either we think about constantly positive or negative or by what other people tell us consistently that makes us think, so if we are convinced that we are very creative because our mom and dad tell us constantly that we are, our thoughts may be positive because of someone else's view of us, on the other hand if we are told constantly that we are stupid, evil, selfish, lazy our thoughts will go there as well, at the very least we will entertain and then make the decision if we are going to turn those thoughts into beliefs or discard them.

Unlike other species we are thinking animals and we have to be very aware of what our minds are telling us about ourselves and everything else that surrounds us. 

Paul Shepard says in one of his books "Without other living species by which to measure ourselves we would be less mature, care less for and be more careless of all life including our own kind." 

I had a friend once who was a priest, our friendship was rather funny and unique, he would preach his advice to me but yet he would ask for mine as well.

One day I must have been caught up in having to make an important decision so he said to me you are not the thinker, observe the thinker. He said sit down on a sofa and that's the thinker, leave her there and then the real you come out of your body and stand in front of the thinker. Look back at the thinker and ask her what her challenge is, have her tell you everything she is thinking that has her concerned, then like you do with people you love or even strangers, look at her perception without the emotion involved and tell her how you perceive it and why and then merge back and act from that perception.

Well that was a very valuable tool for me to have because ever since that day I look at my life, my situations, my decisions even my emotions straight from that inside view of my life in this spectrum without allowing all those negative emotions that I carried my entire life in my thoughts, when I didn't realize those thoughts were not who I really am.

Now my "Habit of Thought" is simply no resistance. Everything is just as I intended it to be and I'm actively involved in making it better every day. Sky's the Limit!!!

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

Many Shades of Gray...

We are emotional beings who learn how to think and I believe that one of the main differences in the way we view things has to do with a combination of our life's experiences and our interpretation of them. We can sway between perceiving something to be good or bad depending on how that experience affected our own lives and we judge it or others accordingly.

If all of a sudden your life takes you to where the experience that once proved to be negative becomes positive you may stop judging it and start giving it a different meaning, you may even adopt that view and try to communicate it to others the way you see it.

It is very difficult to know how we might react, feel or think in a situation unless we experience it ourselves first hand. We might think that we know what we would do if say we were attacked, imprisoned, become ill or even if we come into unexpected wealth or fall madly in Love because we think we know ourselves and how we would react in any given situation, but the truth is that we don't really know unless we live the experience.

If we watch a movie it seems very clear to us what the protagonist should do to obtain a good end result, but as protagonists of our own movies can we see it as clearly or are there many emotional patterns that we have created that may affect our ability to act the best possible way to bring on the result we desire?

We may judge something or someone out of fear, anger, pain, joy, jealousy, happiness, but there are as Many Shades of Gray in life's experiences as there are emotions who give the Shades their Hue.

Hugs xoxo
@nit@

Finding Happiness...

This afternoon I watched an MSN video of this ADORABLE big elephant who takes a dainty paintbrush with his nose, and he draws an elephant on a canvas, holding a lovely flower, and even draws the leaves and the grass. I couldn't help but smile the entire time I was watching it, and in spite of the fact that I had just had a very difficult experience the whole day and night before, at the end of this video, I had released the tension I had and began to feel happy again, which is now my normal condition (most of the time of course).

First it made me wish I could get inside the elephant's mind to see if this was bringing him as much joy as what he was giving to those of us watching him. I wondered if he had any idea of how talented he was compared to most of the other elephants in the whole world :) or if it was just us humans who could actually be conscious of those emotions.

If everything is energy, and thoughts do become things, and humans are doing most of the thinking, I knew I had the responsibility to try to control what I was thinking by learning how to control my emotions.
Happiness is MOST DEFINITELY and without a doubt, a conscious emotion. It's a decision we make with every single thought.

There are some incredible resources that are available to all of us just for the taking, and when you manage to pay attention to your life, you begin to see how these resources come to you when you ask for them consciously, when you find out what your purpose in life is.

I will highly recommend a few main resources, at least I have been able to get the most comprehensive information after weeding through the huge amount of information you find out there.

Start by login into http://www.universeofpower.com/ and http://www.ourultimatereality.com/ in those two sites alone you have a lot of intelligent and well written information based more on scientific findings, but with a very simple, positive and encouraging outlook, without making you feel overwhelmed or that it is out of your reach, because it's not at all!

Read the New Eckardt Tolle Book 'A New Earth' or his previous book 'The Power of Now'' http://eckharttolle.com/ and you can watch the class Oprah conducted every Monday for 10 weeks to cover the book in detail with the author, you can see all the classes on her website for free, http://www.oprah.com/

Get the 'Science of Success' tapes or the 'Harmonic Wealth' book from James Ray, http://jamesray.com/ go experience one of his free seminars, he does them all over the country. I am lucky because a lot of the people who were in "The Secret" live right in my backyard, so I guess I'm surrounded by good Energy :) Deepak Chopra lived a few blocks from where I raised my kids.

Sign up for the free 'Thoughts from the Universe' by Mike Dooley http://www.tut.com/ they inspire you while putting a smile on your face.

Order the Astonishing Power of Emotions (The Teachings of Abraham) by Esther and Jerry Hicks http://www.abraham-hicks.com/. It comes with a great excerpt CD from one of Esther-Abraham seminars. Not only is it insightful and leaves you feeling very empowered, but it's done with humor and makes you feel that it is so easy to attain.

Get the free Sedona Method DVD http://www.sedona.com/. you realize how simple it is to let go of anything that you don't want in your life.

Happiness is as much a habit as sadness, you just have to substitute one for the other, but to do that you need to understand how it works, and then you just go do what you need to do, to feel the way you want to feel, and in the meantime, love what you already have.

For me, my best teachers have been my kids. I wrote an article once called "My mom gave me my life, but my kids taught me how to live it." I gotta find that article!

Good luck to you finding happiness, its right there, see it?

Hugs xoxo
@nit@