Choice!

By Dr. William K. Larkin on April 27, 2009

It's very difficult to believe that we have built such strong ideas around the notion that how we are feeling "just happens" to us. It's hard to believe that what we feel is a result of choices we have made over time that have become habits and patterns of feelings.

Feelings are very changeable. You just have to want to change them. Recently something happened to me which seemed very negative and unexpected. It was very hard to believe that even the negative looking thing could become something positive -that it could be transformed to work for the good. It was very hard to start feeling gratitude even at a "1" when "10" is a lot and "l" is a little.

In fact, I just started saying "gratitude, gratitude, gratitude," and it didn't feel like anything happened. It felt like it was all just in my head. I kept thinking of things for which I felt grateful, and picturing them, but I couldn't feel gratitude. I could only think it.

I realized that I was thinking gratitude but I was really feeling fear. Fear and worry, worry and fear-it was like an obsessive cycle that did not want to let go of my mind.

I journaled and said "gratitude, gratitude" and felt oh so little of it.

I prayed and obsessed over fear and worry. God was not to be found.

And then I followed some of my own advice. I put on the new CD for the Emotional Gym and I just kept moving to music, remembering the moves, and moving from one to another. When I finished, I noticed that I did feel a little better. The edge was off, but I was still dulled and not really with it in the same way that I usually am. The feelings were anything but lifted, except perhaps just a little.

And then something happened that totally took my mind off of everything. It was the silliest thing - the recycling man was driving by my house and forgot to pick up my bin of recycled trash... I took off down the street after him and caught him He backed up and he took the trash away. I stood there feeling relieved that the trash was gone! And guess what? The fear and the anxiety largely went away with the trash. Just like that!

I had a few more minor bouts with it the rest of the day, but the cycle was largely broken and gone.

It was my choice. I could remember the day when I would have been depressed and down for a week, isolating and complaining only to the people who were close enough that they had no choice but to listen.

Choice. It's a choice.

And Where Did You Come From?

By Dr. William K. Larkin on April 20, 2009

Little negative thought...You are a like a little spider starting to weave its web that gets larger and larger and larger. But I am going to use the web you weave to catch every negative thought that fear of you could possibly create. You, little spider of negativity, are going to be my signal of negativity thinking. Every thought counts, every thought affects the neuropathways of the brain and either makes negativity or positivity stronger. Each thought increases some part of my brain that has to do with fear or peace and love. So every time I feel a tug on the web you have woven, little spider, I am going to recognize and welcome you, little spider of negativity.

I'm going to say hello to the negative thought, I'm going to greet it and say thank you and then I'm going to think and feel gratitude, or love or peace or joy or hope. You are going to be my reminder, little negative thought, to go to the good, the positive, and what feels like hope, love, peace, joy, gratitude or hope. I celebrate you, little spider, and your web of negativity because you remind me that it is the chronic, low level thoughts of love, peace, joy, gratitude, and hope that can change the ambient background music of my life.

So today and every day that follows, I will smile at you, little spider, and thank you for negative reminders to go to "peace." I will remember that peace at a "1" or a "2" or a "3" on a scale of 10, a hundred times a day, will do more to change my life than big hits of peace. Honestly, little spider, when I welcome you, rather than resist you, you become a gift that reminds me that we are one. Let every negative thought or feeling be a cue to go to pulse a little thought of love, peace, joy, gratitude or hope.

The Upset Between Wanting and Knowing

By Dr. William K. Larkin on April 16, 2009

One of the most uncomfortable places of all can be in the formulation of what we want. Most people don't really know what they want so getting to "knowing" that it's happening is full of anxiety, unrest, doubt and even dread. A lot of people solve this by detaching themselves from their wanting. Whole religions are based upon killing your desires and stamping out your attachments; instead of flogging the flesh we can flog our wanting and desiring in an attempt to become "empty" or "purified." No thanks; been there, done that, got the scars.

The formulation of wanting has to emerge in one way or another because it is creation moving forward through you. You have to want what you want even if it changes. But once you want, the space between wanting something and knowing you have it can be full of unrest. This is the secret of getting your vibration aligned with the absolute good of God (or Source, or Essence, Mother Earth, Allah, Buddha, or Jesus.) Live right now in the feelings of what you would feel like if you had what you want.

HOW CAN THAT BE? How can we do that? What we really want ultimately is love, peace, gratitude, joy, and hope. Learn to live in such a way that everyday you experience the UpSpiral of these feelings and the thinking that accompanies them. In this way, you will close the gap between wanting and knowing that you have it already, that in one way or another it's on its way in one form or another. Try it, you'll like it. And you'll get what you want.

Adding HOPE to the Big 4

By Dr. William K. Larkin on April 6, 2009

Love, peace, gratitude and joy have always comprised the basic building blocks of the Emotional Gym. I am adding a 5th feeling to those basic 4. And it is HOPE. As the research emerges, the construct of hope continually pushes forth as a major and robust predictor of happiness and joy. And so we add it here and you have another emotion to practice and build into your neural circuitry.

Even St. Paul in the New Testament of the Bible writes that "faith is the hope of things unseen." And that is what we especially need right now. Hope is that which we cannot yet see yet know will come into being. Hope is definitely a feeling and a significant issue in dealing with doubt, worry, anxiety, fortune-telling (that's imagining and projecting negativity into the future.) So begin to pulse hope. Find a few cues that will remind you to feel hope and "pulse" it. Every time you hear negative economic news from another "talking head," pulse hope.

Pulse this emotion, and after a while, it will pulse back!

Whenever your mind wanders and begins to worry about what will happen, pulse hope and let it build, even more strongly. Hope is the foundation of the State of Mind of Certitude.

So now there are five basic pillars in the Emotional Gym - Love, Peace, Gratitude, Joy and Hope.