Blog
What you feel is what you get
by Franciska Moors
September 22, 2011
This week’s Tuesday was the 3rd Tuesday in September. In the Netherlands this day is traditionally known as “Prinsjesdag.” This is the day that the Queen (Beatrix) is voicing her yearly “Queens Speech” and the Minister of Finance is presenting the budget for the next year. The message was sombre. The outlook is cheerless. We are facing a difficult year… This is in essence what I heard – again – on the radio when I woke up this Tuesday morning.
Hearing the news, how was it impacting me? It drained my energy. Well, only briefly. For I have learned (through trial and error) that “whatever we give our attention to, will grow.” Little surprise, I thought, that with the consistent collective worrisome messages about our economy, the situation carries on. It is us creating it together, by validating what is (not). I turned off the radio.
After turning off the radio and having these thoughts about the collective negative attention to our countries social and economic outlook, I decided to do a little maintenance work for myself in my “micro socio-economic environment.” A self-inquiry: Where was my personal attention this morning? The answer came quickly: I am facing a busy week. A good week, but also lots of loose ends and things to do. And yes, little money in my bank account, with big expenses ahead… How did that make me feel? It felt sort of ok, but also like I was losing energy. It made me feel somewhat irritable. And I know from experience how a day will unfold, if I stay in this energy. Such a day would seldom become a “top” day.
OK, great clarity. Now what? I decided to make a choice. I decided to focus for this day on two particular projects that I really wanted to move forward.
How was that decision making me feel? I could feel a tickle of enthusiasm at first. The tickle grew when I pondered the thought and soon after I felt an urge to step out of bed right away to get on to it.
Now isn’t this what could greatly impact our economies? If massively we did something with our perspective, our focus, that resulted in us jumping out of bed?!
Whatever we give our attention to, grows. It is not the mental attention, it is the feeling attention. In Tiara this is what we practice, in a playful manner. So what if you took just a minute and consider, right now:
- Where are you focusing?
- How does it feel?
- What could you do or think –in this moment – that could make you feel a little better?
Have a wonderful day!
I LOVE the way you put this so simply: It is not the mental attention, it is the feeling attention. This is a subtle, often overlooked and/or confused piece of the ‘what we focus on grows’ approach to life…for me, anyway. Thank you for that simplification and clarity!
Thank you Anne, happy to hear! I am also curious to know if it did change anything for you today?
This is lovely! Thank you Franciska for the simple and clear message you sent!
I have gotten into the habit of not watching the news actually and I am finding that it helps me feel positive energy more easily and yes what if we could “massively” do this.
There are days when my company isn’t doing as well as I would like and I am choosing more often to have appreciation for how much the darn phone rings really!!
In yoga today the message was about how the energy we put into the world is what we get out of it and the importance of having the intention of sending out positive energy.
What I love too that I learned in the Tiara “Self Compassion” tele class is that when I do put out less than positive energy (since I am human of course) I can hug myself and be kind to myself and get back on track.
This is a wonderful subject to be spreading!
Thanks Holly for sharing your great practices. And yes, the “hug myself” is a great reminder too. How easy to forget that one, that is so easy and has such great relieving and comforting impact.
Franciska, YES it has freed up lots of energy for me recently!
I noticed for awhile that I was trying to ‘force’ myself to not think about the things I don’t want right now. And this was not working well and not fun! When you reminded me that it’s the FEELING that actually matters, this was a gateway to freedom.
Here I can focus on what I need to – and it can even be useful to focus on these things I don’t want. The shift I’m finding is that I now focus on being accepting about it, being hopeful about it, even at times being being playful about it. And in the times I don’t FEEL great, I use the emotional scale to see – how can I feel just a little bit better?
Anyway…it’s been a practice that is much more effective for me than trying to ‘control my thoughts.’