Don’t worry, be happy” – Bobby McFerrin

Worry is a useless emotion – it lowers your energy, creates a lack of clarity and makes you less productive.  Worry causes stress and makes you feel tired and uncomfortable.  So… don’t worry, be happy.

Start by recognizing the reasons you worry. You believe that somehow worry will help.  Maybe it will give you solutions or propel you in the right direction. This is not truth.  Worry is stifling.  When you worry you are fearful and all of your solutions arise from fear.  This makes it very difficult to move forward and it creates mistakes.  Fear does not make for the best solutions.

Maybe you worry about other people because you believe it makes you a more compassionate person.  Did you know that worry not only makes you sick but it disempowers the people you worry about?  It sends the message that they are incapable – that they need to be worried about. 

Once you are clear that worry is not serving you in any way, you must catch it while it’s happening.  The easiest way to catch it is to pay attention to how your body feels.  Worry always causes a stressful feeling in the body.  Once you catch the feeling just observe it.  Then notice that it is your thinking that is creating it. 

If you can, talk yourself through it and change your thinking. Remind yourself that worries are just made-up ideas that don’t even exist.  There are always infinite possibilities in every situation.  Worry comes from focusing on just one negative possibility when there are so many other possibilities out there.  In addition, remind yourself that most of your worries never come to be. True, isn’t it?

Then change your focus.  Place your awareness on the beauty around you.  Go out into nature. Think of all of the things you are grateful for.  Fully experience the moment you’re in with every one of your senses.  Become present.  The amazing thing is that when you are fully in the present moment, which causes you to stop thinking about your worries, you become clear and incredible solutions and ideas come to you.   It’s like losing your train of thought.  When you try to remember the thought you can’t, but when you let go it comes right back to you.

Bonnie Moehle is a Life Balancing Coach and Author.  Included in her teachings are the how to’s for letting go of stress, fears, worry, depression and anger.  Her Life Balancing program is designed to promote joy, peace, health, better relationships and overall well-being. “I teach people to be happy”. For information or an appointment phone: 602-717-6228 or www.lifebalancingcoach.com

Why? Well, there are no idle thoughts. All thoughts create at some level. They create an energy, a feeling, a perception, a behavior, or an action that we choose to take. These in turn become an outcome, or what we call our reality. In addition, the Universe is very cooperative with giving us what we ask for. We’ve all heard, you reap what you sow or what you put out you will get back. Our thoughts send a message as to what we want and the Universe follows by bringing us the people and situations necessary to answer our requests.

Most of the time we don’t even realize that we’re making requests because we are unaware that our thoughts create our experiences… and we’re so unconscious of the things we think about. When all of our thinking is focused on what we don’t have or what we don’t want, we get more of what we don’t have and don’t want. However, if we focus on what we have, we get more of that as well. This is the Law of Attraction; like energy attracts like energy. When we are focused on the negatives, our energy becomes very low, and we attract into our lives people and situations that are also low energy. When we are focused on the positives, our energy is high and we attract more of the things that vibrate at high energy: peace, prosperity, and love.

Raise your energy so that you can begin attracting more of what you want into your life. Start by being grateful! Make a gratitude journal or create family time to sit and talk about what you are grateful for each day. Before you get out of bed in the morning or as you lay down to sleep, point out to yourself all that you have. This will raise your energy.

Hold yourself in that energy, in the feeling that it gives you. Catch yourself thinking about what you don’t want and STOP! Instead put your attention on what you do want. See it as if it is already here. Use your imagination and pretend that you already have it. Feel how it feels. Notice how your energy becomes lighter and sit in that feeling. Make this part of your daily routine. Then observe how your life begins to change.

Excerpt from the book by Bonnie Moehle – Thoughts From Within: A Guide to Inner Peace in a Crazy World. Listen to a radio interview with Bonnie at: www.findingyourdiamond.com