Finessing My BIG PROJECT … the Inner Game - by Tom Wells

“In the absence of resistant thought, your Vibration returns to its natural state of power and clarity and love.  In the absence of resistant thought, your true nature of resilience and replenishment and vitality returns.  In the absence of resistant thought, your true nature of eagerness and joy and fun returns.”   Abraham-Hicks

Worry. Concern. Struggle. Effort. Controlling.  These are the forms resistance has taken in my life.  Believing that it is up to me to make things happen.  “Facing” a “BIG PROJECT” and feeling such a heavy weight on my shoulders.  Hesitating before beginning, delaying, fretting over how I will ever make it all come together.

How different all that efforting and struggle is when contrasted with allowing, releasing, relaxing, letting go of all that resistance.  In my mind, it’s almost like the difference between being a child or an exuberant, eager young adult, and an older, more sophisticated, more complicated, more cautious and analytical adult.  To that older more concerned and controlling adult within me, those ways of approaching my goals, dreams and visions as the playful, trusting, relaxed and excited “young” person that lives somewhere within me, seems sometimes like a BIG PROJECT itself!! 

After all, I’ve spent the better part of this lifetime learning from the world around me and from all the hard, laboring efforts I’ve made to get things done in my life, that getting results, manifesting goals, takes great diligence, perseverance, control of my schedule, adherence to a strict work ethic, grit, determination, willingness to defer gratification, and usually a long uphill battle of “paying my dues”, before I should expect or even be worthy of receiving just compensation.

“If it’s hard, if it’s a struggle, then stop doing it!!  Don’t try to make things happen when it’s not happening easily!  Back off!!  Don’t try to force anything.  If what you’re feeling and doing isn’t pleasing you, then defuse it, release it.  Trying too hard is trying to make something happen from a vibration that isn’t cooperating.”  Abraham-Hicks

Of course, I find it reassuring that the very nature of my overall BIG PROJECT is to learn, apply what I learn, and most of all, enjoy this process of once again allowing myself to align with the well-being of my Source... to gradually release resistance... and to increasingly live inside this place within me, of allowing and ease.

Appreciating This Life! - by Tom Wells

Just being a human being, what is it to have a good time? 

Why did I come into this human body anyway? What am I doing here everyday? If I'm not having a good time, then I certainly want to be headed toward having a good time! I certainly want to be reconciling anything that's keeping me from having a good time, and letting go of any resistance or fear or anger or suffering of any sort that might be keeping me from having the life I really want to have… living full out… living life OUT LOUD!

I love the idea of living life OUT LOUD!  Being able to proclaim how awesome it is to be here! I guess in a way that's what my whole life has been about… slowly, over the decades, removing all the obstacles I have erected that may have blocked my appreciation of how cool it is to be in this body, to be alive.

I’ve tried to do that, no matter what age, and it seems to be a bit more challenging as I’ve gotten older. On second thought I guess it's been challenging on and off through my life to admit just how good things really are. Except when I was a kid… it was pretty easy then. I've got to say I had a really good time, not so great when school was in, but boy, when school was out, I was having fun pretty much 99 percent of the time!

Appreciation seems to lie at the heart of not only giving value to my time alone, but in valuing my relationship to others as well.  When I truly find things to appreciate in other people, and be in a sort of awe and open wondering about who they are, and what they're up to, and how they're shaping their unique reality.

I remember when I learned that if you want to have a truly successful relationship with your life partner, pay attention to how they mind map their reality. How do they put together their whole life experience? What's their map of reality? And if you can understand that a little bit better as time goes on, you learn to get along with that person a lot better because you begin to understand why they make the choices they make, why they say the things they say and do the things they do.

Of course I would like it to be easy and simple to understand myself and other people. I think that the more that I have deep appreciation of who I am, the more I can appreciate others. The root of so much that makes life worth living, is self-love. It's actually something that kind of alluded me for a long time. I always assumed I had a lot of self-love but when I really look at how I've acted towards myself for a lot of my life, I can see how I demonstrated a lack of self-respect for who I really am, sort of a lack of enthusiasm for my own awesomeness. I can remember sometimes thinking of myself as kind of a loser, not quite adding up to the high expectation I had of myself.

I love the fact that all of that's changing. I'm realizing that at the heart of everything I experience in my life lies my own self-worth. I can't be with other people, I can’t even be in the middle of the woods camping alone by myself, without a strong sense of self-worth, if I expect to have a really good time. After all, all my experiences are coming through me, and if at the core of my being, I'm not looking out through eyes of ease, and love, and pleasure, and kindness, and happiness, happiness to be who I am, pleasure to be who I am, ease and relaxation about who I am… if I'm not coming from that place, it's hard to appreciate the beauty of the forest, the beauty of the clouds, the rock formations, the rivers and streams.

I love that I'm learning to appreciate more and more every day who I am, who you are, the beauty of this natural world, what this life is, what an amazing gift it is.  A lot of that comes from just constantly noticing what I'm thankful for. As much as I can, just noticing how good things really are.

Can you imagine how this world might be if most of us were spending our time just noticing how good things really are? I think a lot of things might get better, because we would bring that vibration of appreciation to everything! 

I'm reminded of a friend of mine who so impresses me, because she has this uncanny ability to find good in everything. That's all she’ll talk about! She loves to talk about how GREAT things are! Oh, she might occasionally mention about a bit of a struggle she's going through, but she doesn't linger there, she gets right on to what's good about the situation, and how GREAT things are, always finding things to appreciate no matter what!

I love being around someone like that… pointing out how beautiful the flowers are, how lovely the yard is…” Come and see my amazing zucchini plant!”…” Isn't our new puppy just so,soooo adorable?!”…” Oh my god, we had soooo much fun today!”  That kind of an attitude is so refreshing for me. 

Sometimes I've noticed in my life how I had this way of sort of downplaying things, kind of turning things to some shade of gray. You may remember the Rolling Stones song, “Paint It Black”.  The gist of the song was that no matter what the guy would see, he would always paint it black, cover it in darkness, take the light out of it. So unnecessary!

Maybe a lot of us have had periods of our lives where are we have done that. I certainly have.  Maybe from our depression, our sadness, our despair, our cynicism.  But I can see how I'm learning not to do that. As I learn to appreciate and notice all that I'm grateful for, and to expand my capacity to love my self more and more, I literally notice colors coming alive all around me, and it's so beautiful, and so exhilarating, that the last thing I would want to do is ever “Paint It Black”.