Cymbidium Orchid painting featured in To Paint in Ling-nan-Style (1) Theories, Flowers, Vegetables.
The Beginning of My Adult Life Was Full of Action
I heard this kind of advice from many success gurus. The three things that are said all the time is positive attitude, never give up and take massive amounts of action.
I don't disagree with this advice. When you don't have time to work with someone in a nuanced way and want to give them foolproof advice, these things are universally accepted as elements of success.
For me personally though, I spent 10 years following this formula and although I created some compelling experiences and moderate successes during that time. Two things were also true. I ended that period deeply dissatisfied with what I had been able to accomplish especially considering what I sacrificed to get the results that I got.
I was working full time at white collar tech jobs during the day and producing and playing in a rock band at night. Every single waking hour was spent doing some kind of work. I would commute to my job in the morning, work a full day, rush to our studio to load up our equipment, set up for sound check, play music from 10PM-1AM, load our equipment back into the studio, sleep for a few hours and wake up and do it all again. During the nights when we didn't have shows I would be at band practice or walking around the city pasting up fliers to promote our next show.
When I look back on this part of my life, I realize my mistake was that I was trying to create exclusively with my action. I took plenty of action to create the kind of success I wanted but deep down, I doubted if I really deserved the success that I was striving for. This approach over time just made me more and more tired as the action I was taking had no leverage. Eventually I got resentful and wanted a way out of this life that I had created for myself and finally sabotaged what moderate success I had created just trying to relieve myself of the obligation of continuing to run the hamster wheel that my life had become.
As part of this "action" period of my life, I was able to executive produce this music video for the music group that I was playing in and managing.
Waiting Was the Next Thing I Tried
After a period of searching I happened upon a series of books that helped me to shape a new view of the way that the world works and the way that desires are fulfilled. The main books were the Conversations with God series by Neale Donald Walsh and the writings of Esther and Jerry Hicks, most notably the book Ask and It is Given.
Much of my writing in these emails is built off the foundation set by these books and my own ideas that have come from 10 years pondering these ideas and observing them in action in my own life.
Once I became convinced of the power of thought and focus, ironically I didn't spend a whole lot of time focusing my thought. Instead I would do it intermittently and then follow it with long periods of what can be most accurately described as "waiting for something to happen."
This existence was far less stressful than the period of my life that was focused around action but as you can imagine, it still did not produce the fulfillment of my dreams.
Time for Focusing
As I am writing this, I realize that I am closing the chapter on the waiting part of my life and am fully ready to discover the power of focusing my thought.
I realize much of the difficult work has been done. I have finally gotten to a place where I fully accept myself for who I am and feel fully deserving of what it is that I want.
I also realized that I was interpreting previous teaching about the power of focusing my thoughts in a way that was lazy. The same energy that I directed towards action early in my life, I now will choose to direct towards focusing. It is my job to focus. I examine my thoughts from moment to moment, making note of how those thoughts make me feel. I exchange my thoughts for better and better feeling thoughts. I continue that process until I am feeling passionate and joyous about my life experience.
From there I am inspired to leveraged action. My intuition guides me to action that has been choreographed by the Universe to be just the right action at just the right time with just the right people resulting in the relatively effortless materialization of my desires into my current experience.
What a joy life is! Will you join me and commit to the discipline of focusing your thoughts in ways that are consistent with your dreams coming true?
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