Who surrounds you?

I felt moved to write again after a while. I want to share some brief thoughts on the significance of who & what you surround yourself with. It has more of an affect on you than you might realize. It's important to assess who you have chosen to surround yourself with and carefully choose who you will surround yourself with from this point forward.

Do you have someone in your life who brings you down somehow? Do you have a choice to be around this person or not? If so, take control over what you do have control over and do not continue to be around this person. If not (e.g., a negative or evil co-worker), it will take some effort, but try not to be around them or the circle they're in as much as possible. Obviously, use your discretion if you feel they're overstepping the usual boundaries and speak up to a supervisor or HR. Btw, if it's your family who is bringing you down, you do have a choice on how often you surround yourself or maintain contact with them. Even though it's often "required" to spend holidays with family, and you don't want to alienate yourself from them, you don't have to be around them any other time if you don't want to and you can choose how much you're going to make them a part of your life.

On the flip side, do you feel no one understands you or shares your passion or beliefs about something? Then you need to seek out those who do. Surrounding yourself with these people can re-affirm and inspire your beliefs and passion.

Another reason to step back and assess who you're surrounding yourself with once in a while is because we all change (ideally) and sometimes, if, in our personal growth and development, we discover that previous beliefs, values, thought patterns or behaviors are no longer serving us well, or are holding us back from becoming the person we want to be, or worse yet, are negatively affecting our mental/emotional well-being, it's a good idea to detach ourselves from certain people who used to share those things. It doesn't have to be an abrupt, negative, "I don't want to be friends with you anymore" kind of detachment. You can just start to seek out and surround yourself more often with others who share your beliefs, values, thought patterns or behaviors.

Assessing who you surround yourself with is a great self improvement/growth/development tool too.  Sometimes, when people assess who they're surrounding themselves with, it's like discovering parts of themselves they might not have realized before - like looking in a mirror for the first time. It's a biological/sociological fact that people are attracted to those who are similar to themselves. So, if you realize that your friends are a certain way (for example, shallow and judgemental) you should take a look at yourself and evaluate whether this is the kind of person you really want to be.

Rome Was Not Built By One Person

If you are striving to be a certain kind of person and/or do a certain thing in life, know that you can't do it alone. There is so much power in the encouragement, affirmation, inspiration and strength that friends/acquaintances can give us! I know some people who believe they should be able to achieve great things all by themselves or else there is something wrong with them. They dismiss dreams or passions of doing something just because they don't have all of the skills, knowledge, money or other that it might take to complete. These are all things you can acquire from others if you believe in yourself, your vision and the law of attraction. The only thing that you MUST have is passion. You can surround yourself with others who are doing the same or similar things who will give you encouragement, affirmation, inspiration and strength to follow your passion. You can talk to these people who are successful at doing same/similar things to get the advice/knowledge and skills that you might not have. They can help you figure out what you need to do and you can develop a clear focus of your end goal (the other component needed to allow the law of attraction work). Many successful business people have a business partner who have certain knowledge or skills they themselves don't have. In fact, I just saw an interview with a very successful person who said they wouldn't have been able to excel if they had not focused on one aspect of their business and had spread themselves too thin. Barbara Sher has devoted her life to this teamwork aspect of achieving your dreams. She has a lot of great advice & resources... www.barbarasher.com 

Since I love to help people realize and achieve their dreams, my posts seem to always lead to the law of attraction by the end regardless of where they start. :)

To close, I will share with you a piece of advice a wonderful, wise, successful man* recently shared with me: create a binder and fill it with things that are associated with your passion/dream and continue to add things that make you feel good - whether it be clipping out a page in a magazine or newspaper or printing a link/page from the internet or a picture you or someone else has taken.

If anyone tries this, let me know what happens after a little while.

*p.s. I met this wise man at a meeting I just discovered of people who believe anyone can achieve anything they want because of the power of the mind, universe and law of attraction. I have spent my first year in Nashville seeking out like-minded people who were doing or believed in things I wanted. I continue to meet, be recommended to and "coincidentally" discover amazing people whose love, belief, passion and affirmation have helped me continue on my path and get even closer to achieving my dream.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Love

I recently realized the amazing power of love. My life, my path, and everything else can be a lot simpler than I realized if I just use my heart and love to guide me.

I had heard this before from other wise people in my life and I used to think, oh, love, blah blah blah, isn't that nice, but life isn't all rainbows and butterflies and love and stuff. I never actually tapped into the true power of love.  I wasn't able to do this before because I didn't fully love myself. This is what blocks a lot of people from being able to harness the full power of love and manifest their desires. As simple as it sounds, it's a lot easier said than done, to fully love yourself.

There are many subconscious reasons people aren't able to fully love themselves. Obviously, a low self-esteem is closely related to how much you love yourself. Guilt and fear are other powerful emotions that block people from fully loving themselves. I've also found that perfectionism hinders being able to fully love yourself because you're worried about either being perfect, performing perfectly, everything in your life going perfectly, or you flat out avoid going for what you desire because you have a fear of not being able to be successful to the perfectionistic level/standards you set for yourself.

Once I was able to ask God and all my spirit guides to help me feel loved (you can ask them to literally hug you and you will feel that warm loving feeling all around your body), I started feeling loved and that I was worthy of being loved and deserved love and success. So much so, that my heart felt overflowing with love for not just myself, but others. Love is unique in that it is more contagious than anything I can think of. Once I feel full of love, it's so powerful, it feels like my whole life perspective changes. I want to do the things that make me feel that warm fuzzy feeling love gives me - the things I love. Suddenly, all the doubt, fear or other mental chatter that blocked me from fully doing what I love disappears and all I can think about is that great warm fuzzy feeling, that bliss I feel when I'm actually doing what I love (singing). When I'm full of love, I also want to share it with others and feel love for others, even those people for whom love isn't exactly the first emotion I feel when I'm around them (especially these people, because they are usually the ones who need love the most).

I've noticed that when I sing and I'm feeling full of love, I sing better. I'll bet if you tried doing something after trying to harness that full-of-love feeling that makes your heart feel overflowing with love, whatever you do will be better.

You can also use your heart to help you make decisions and to guide you on your path. If you want to know how to do this, let me know. Maybe I'll write about it in a future post, but for now, I must run.

In summary, you can be successful if you do what you love and do it with love. There are obviously other factors to success, but I really believe that love is the foundation.

My life's paradigm shift

I have recently experienced something that can only be described as a paradigm shift of my life's beliefs and perspectives. I've had a couple of these in the past year as I'm moving toward spiritual "enlightenment".

What seemed at the time to be a devastating break in my relationship with my mom, has turned out to be a positive shift in my beliefs and life perspective. After I had time to ponder it and talk it out with friends, and realized what was really happening, it felt like a giant weight had lifted off my shoulders. It felt like a door to my future had just opened.

First, I want to say that last month, I met with a psychic at the Galactic fair who told me that I was like a butterfly who was about to exit the coccoon and spread my wings and fly away and achieve my dreams, but first I had to let go of past beliefs that will not serve me on my future path and were limiting me from achieving what I want as well as using the law of attraction. I knew much of this already (from my intuition and spirit guides) but it was nice to have it validated by someone else.

So, I asked my mom for advice on how to talk to my new boss because I was experiencing challenges with my new job. Our conversation somehow turned to her judging many of my past decisions (on many things, not work-related) and making me feel bad about bad decisions I have made in the past. I felt very upset, especially because I had called her to get support when I was feeling stressed and I ended up getting the opposite. I know she did not intentionally make me upset and was just acting as a protective mother and not the supportive friend I was expecting.

Usually, in the past, I would feel crappy about myself and my abilities and my self-esteem would go down after having a similar conversation with my mom. I did feel like this for a brief period after this conversation, but for some reason, this time, I started to think differently. It really helped talking to a friend who experienced the same thing and helped me realize that my mom's beliefs, many of which used to be my beliefs, were very different from mine now and were not useful to me on my current/future path. Most importantly, I realized for the first time I did not need her approval to know that what I am doing and the decisions I am making to fulfill my dreams and desires are right. This is a big boost to my self confidence. Knowing that she didn't approve of or agree with my decisions, was always a conflict that was weighing on me and is now lifted.  I feel more free than ever!  Although at the time, I felt devastated when I realized I just wasn't going to get the approval I hoped for and that I wouldn't be able to rely on her supporting my new path to rockstardom and my journey toward spiritual fulfillment.

It isn't an easy thing to accept that many of your core/fundamental beliefs are no longer useful and that the person you have always leaned on for support is not able to give you that support. It was also hard to realize that I am growing farther apart from my mom in these fundamental beliefs and perspectives on life. It was ironic to me when I realized how much I felt I needed her approval at my age.  It was like a comfortable safety net but I now feel strong and confident enough to not need anyone else's approval but my own (well, realistically, probably my husband's ;). This realization alone, makes me feel more free and confident than ever.  I feel fully able to take the next steps toward fulfilling my desires. I don't need my mom's support when I have the universe to support me!

I find it funny that in theory, I believed what Wayne Dyer says - that you can't look for approval (or something like that, I can't remember the exact word) in anyone else but yourself. These are wise words, and are often easier said than done. Many people, and I would argue probably everyone, have certain beliefs and feelings they are not conscious of but yet control their actions. Just like in my instance above, I wasn't aware how much I needed my mother's approval and how much it was holding me back from moving forward on my path.  How was I able to finally realize it? I intuitively sensed (and confirmed from others) that I was approaching a new phase in my life, one that would lead me to my dream of rockstardom, but that I needed to let go of some past beliefs that would not be useful to me in this new phase, and would hold me back from fully stepping into this phase. I didn't know what these beliefs were, but I just prayed and asked God and my spirit guides and the universe (all other beings out there) to help me see what these beliefs are and release them.

* Btw, this is why having a strong faith/belief in your intuition and spiritual guidance is imperative to moving forward with your path to your dreams. * You may not understand what you sense, but you have to believe it's true and right for you. From the time I first sensed this (what I described above), it was 2 months of asking/praying to see and release these beliefs that were holding me back. I said to the universe (God, spirits, etc...) and felt in my heart that I was ready to face and accept whatever was going to come at me because I intuitively knew it was the only way I was going to move forward toward becoming a rockstar, and I want it so badly, I'm willing to face anything.

The universe sure gave it it me! This incident with my mom happened the same week that I got in a car accident and my cell phone died. I almost got into a big funk for a bit there, wollowing in my sorrows and pity that my life felt like it was collapsing around me. A couple years ago, I would have probably gotten into a depression after that, but now, because I'm so close with my spirit and the universe, they (God, spirit guides, etc..) didn't let me and I listened to their guidance to get me through.  One example is when I was in my jazz vocal class last week and I forgot all about the relatively minor things that were happening to me compared to my destiny. I felt very lucky that nothing major happened to me in the accident, specifically to my voice, and that if I still had my voice, that's all I needed. I was reminded that singing heals my spirit and it was what I was meant to do.  I was just happy I was still able to do it, and better yet, I was doing it! I felt a strong reassurance that I was on the right path and it felt great! It made the minor shit that life sometimes throws at you not mean so much. I knew then that I would just focus on chugging along with my dreams.

Watch out world, I'm like a freight train! I'm going to keep on the rockstar train no matter what gets thrown at me.

I'm still waiting to see what good will come of the car accident. ;) I'll let you know in my next blog.

More Ways the Law of Attraction Has Worked in My Life

I didn't realize it has been 2 months since my last post! Funny how fast time flies.
So, I recently had an event happen in my life that I thought would be good to talk about in my blog, and then I thought of one cool thing that happened a year ago that I wanted to talk about here too.

First, I have been asking for a well-paying job that I enjoyed that still left time for me to pursue music, and I just found it. I just got offered a permanent, part-time consulting job with a consulting firm in Indianapolis, so I get to work from home (or on the road when my band starts touring), get to do work that I enjoy (most of the time), and get paid as much as many full-time jobs only working part-time, which of course leaves plenty of time for my music. It doesn't offer health insurance, but that's not a big deal because I can just get individual health insurance that won't be too expensive because Dave & I are still young and healthy. And it sounds like in the near future, with Obama's new health plan, we might actually be able to have our individual health insurance plan pay for pre-existing conditions.

The other incident I wanted to tell you about happened a year ago. I was in the Puerto Rico airport coming home and I missed my flight earlier that morning and there was only one flight back to Chicago shortly after my original flight and the next one wasn't until later that night. I was told I could go on standby but that the flight was completely booked and had some people on the standby list ahead of me. It looked like there was no way I was getting on that flight and the attendant didn't seem very optimistic. They didn't know the powers of the mind & universe that I was about to use. The whole time I was waiting, I was trying hard to expect that I would get on and envision in my head that they called my name and I walked onto the plane. They ended up having a few empty seats that were filled by the people ahead of me on the standby list. I didn't give up hope though. You'll never believe what happened! After the last people boarded the plane and 10 minutes had gone by, they wheeled an old man and his wife off the plane and the attendant called my name. He was pretty surprised and told me it was my lucky day. The old man apparently had taken too many sleeping pills and had become incoherent and his wife was worried and took him off. Two seats miraculously opened up for me. The guy next to me on the plane who had sat next to the old man told me he how lucky I was. Little did he know, it wasn't just luck. ;)

In case you're curious, things are going great with my band, Scale Model.  Our new recordings turned out great and we played a great first show with our new band members and look forward to our second in a couple weeks. We've been busy making press kits to send to independent record labels, radio stations around the country and press for review. We'd love to be able to pay a publicist to do much of this as it's quite a task and we'd like to focus on writing new music and booking shows and tours. We're lucky enough to have a friend (the drummer who played on our recordings) know a music attorney here who works at a full-service company that does music management, booking, publicity, publising, recording and law. She does press, marketing & management also, and has generously agreed to meet with us next week to give us advice. We're hoping she will be willing to take us on as a client for this type of thing.
We're planning a long weekend tour which will include Chicago in August as well as playing a festival here in Nashville. I can't wait to play a show in Chicago again. We hope to play a festival in Indianapolis in September.

You can keep up with our schedule and hear our new tunes on myspace: www.myspace.com/scalemodel

Listen to your feelings

So much for posting every week. Well, I got in a funk for a few weeks and lost touch with my spiritual side. I was tired of feeling negative emotions/feelings and thinking about what I didn't have instead of focusing on what I want to have so I got back in touch with my spirit and started trying to use the law of attraction again. It never fails me.

Whenever I find myself not in touch with my spirit like I'd like to be or if things don't feel quite right, or if I'm not seeing my life unfolding the ways I want, meditation is a great way to get back in touch with my spirit and gain clarity. If you're new to meditation, it helps to listen to a guided meditation. I found a couple cool free podcasts on itunes that I like to listen to on my iphone before I go to bed every night. One is called Meditation Oasis, and the other is Learn to Meditate.

Another way I get back on track (or stay on track) is read a daily quote from my law of attraction app (for iphone) from Hay House called Ask and it is Given.

A recent conversation with a friend made me think that fear is a more common emotion that people have than I realized. Fear only serves us when it's our instincts telling us danger is near. It does not serve us when it's just irrational thoughts that are repeated so much that we feel and believe they're true. I see in my own life and in others, fear holding us back from manifesting all that we want. Whether it be holding us back from taking that first step in making a change or holding us back from believing we are capable of manifesting anything we want.

I heard this and love it.... F.E.A.R. = False Evidence Appearing Real

So, I have been keeping track of ways the law of attraction has been working in my life...

We were starting to stress over money but I realized that was useless and was sucking my energy so I consciously tried using the law of attraction for abundance and 3 days later, we got a check in the mail for $400 from the gas company in Chicago. Apparently, we had a credit from our account before we moved that we didn’t know about and they just sent us a check for it! 

I was wanting to plant a vegetable garden this spring and was researching the best way to do it since I have never had a garden before and the soil down here is different from Chicagoland and is not ideal for gardening. I found a google group – East Nashville – that posted that their gardening club was having a free class the following weekend for beginners on planning a vegetable garden!

We found the ideal rhythm section after only a few months of looking (ask anyone who has put a top notch band together, it usually takes more than a few months). They were actually the first people we met with.  

First post

At an uncle's suggestion, I am starting a journal of all of the ways that the law of attraction is working in my quest to follow my dreams. I am not an expert on the law of attraction, but am testing it as I learn more about it. I’ll throw in some educational information on things I learn along the way. I welcome your comments and anything you'd like to share about your own experience with the law of attraction.