I was lying on the bed in a star shape position, watching Ads’ Frida Kahlo style folk balloon bopping against the ceiling.

All around me, the bedroom was like a mood board of clashing, ridiculously bright colours – gaudy as an Arizona flowerbed in midsummer.

Lying there, I could hear Reid playing downstairs.

Outside, birds were singing.

I closed my eyes.

As I closed them, I felt this sunshine sense of “goodness” inside me and it was directed towards myself.

This wasn’t an ego-driven “I’m so frickin awesome” kind of feeling.

It was more of an inner, collaborative, arms wide open, GRATITUDE of the goodness of who I am. It was a feeling that felt good and fitted a perfect good-shaped cookie cutter space within my heart.

It felt like me and feeling goodness, were One.

The reason that I’m writing about feeling goodness towards myself is because I also know the contrast.

I know what NOT feeling good feels like.

I have known acutely the feeling of everything in my outer life being misaligned with my inner life.

I know how it can make a person feel awkward, almost mechanical, like your cogs are all out of sync. I also know that, after a long time of feeling this way, you kind of get used to it. Not feeling good becomes the garish inner wall paper that you eventually no longer notice.

Have you ever considered how much of what we DO every day is an attempt to feel good about ourselves?

How much of our desire for achievement, status, money and material objects is simply a mask for a desire to feel good about ourselves and our lives?

And how much of our escapism – addiction, substance misuse, food, sex, mindless consumerism and online obsessions are methods to numb out when “goodness” is missing from our inner world?

Because I am in love with the feeling of feeling good about myself and life, it interests me how we get to this place.

I like the idea that we can cultivate a life where ALREADY feeling good is the starting point … that we needn’t spend our existence on Earth striving towards an experience of bliss.

For me, 2017 has been a experiment in that journey. I blogged about it a few months ago here. Since that time I’ve tested and tried out a number of methods and practices … mainly eating extremely high nutrition foods and developing a strong mental practice of gratitude and releasing.

 This has culminated in some profound shifts, major manifestations and beautiful gifts from life.

The nicest gift has been the wonderful feeling of inner sunshine.

Lying on the bed the other day, I imagined being Ads’ Frida Skull balloon looking down from it’s birds eye view on my journey to feeling goodness (so far).

If it could talk, this is what it would have observed:

Early on I became aware that our perceived lives are an illusion … a realistic illusion … but still more dream than reality.

And we are bloody dedicated dreamers!

The beliefs we hold about ourselves, the ideas we have carved around life, the problems we clutch and the challenges we cling to are all different threads of our waking-dream illusion. Each day we wake up and re-identify with who we’ve become and the state of our lives and we begin to turn the same thoughts, ideas and reactions over in our heads.

It’s with our immersion in these ideas of who we are that the momentum of our life continues along its course.

And this is cool if we feel really good about the life and self we wake up to each morning.

But what if the things we are doing don’t make us feel the sunshine inside?

Here’s an example:

YOU know that by eating a diet of high quality, fresh, nutrient rich food, you will  – quickly – feel amazing.

But every morning you wake up and can’t help reaching for a double shot coffee, or grabbing a bagel on the way to work and sitting down with a glass of wine and a ready meal by the time you get home.

You KNOW this isn’t helping you move forward, but this is what you’ve been doing this for years. It’s your pattern. The habits are set and the momentum in your life is like a train that’s charging through each day at 90 miles per hour and you have no idea how to hit the brakes even though you want to.

The momentum is too much.

My first step to change the direction of my life momentum was to become aware of it.

I asked myself:

Where is the lack of progress progressing? Where is there growth, movement and positivity?

My next step was to Break the Pattern.

This is one of the techniques that marketers use to grab potential customer’s attention. They write something that is controversial, attention snagging and world tilting. This disrupts the buyer’s normal mental momentum and  suddenly they are fully present and paying attention.

Most of us are unaware of the momentum in our lives. When we become aware of it and realise that it isn’t making us feel good about ourselves, we try to find the brakes – quit smoking, stop drinking, stop procrastinating about exercise, stop eating junk every time we’re emotional – but this requires will power and sheer strength of self discipline.

It’s hard work.

A better way of breaking the momentum and starting the train moving towards actions that make us feel wonderful is by BREAKING THE PATTERN.

For me this involved designing the Gorgeousness Energetics Programme. Then I invested in the 6 Week Raw Food Detox. Then I kicked it all off on the week that Adam went skiing so my “normal” routine was disrupted. Then I made myself accountable by publically blogging about it.

Using the healthy eating example from the last step, other ways of breaking the pattern could be:

* Going on a week long Yoga and juicing retreat.

* Selecting a different route to work (that doesn’t go past the bagel shop).

* Setting your whole family on a one week healthy eating challenge and offer prices for the triumphant ones.

* Inviting a super healthy friend to stay and asking them to help you change your eating habits.

Breaking the pattern may take some investment and thought.

The idea is that you wake up, shake up, get present and become a conscious participant in the things that are going to make you feel good.

Thanks to a little trick I designed in the Gorgeousness Energetics Programme, I was able to blend my gratitude practice, intention setting and food into one thing … but usually I’m not sure I’d recommend having lots of “mental practices” at once.

I think that sometimes its kinder to ourselves to choose one thing and do it well every day.

If I could suggest one thing that you do on a daily basis, it would be to listen to this piece by Esther Abraham Hicks.

When I first started listening to it I played the audio several times a day, then  gradually I reduced it down to once a day. Within three weeks of listening to this every morning, my sense of inner goodness began to grow. I also became more conscious of holding a vibration of what I wanted to attract rather than mulling all of the things that were worrying me or – to put it bluntly –  pissing me off.

Other daily practices could include:

A short Yoga practice

Daily Journaling

Morning Pages

A walk in nature

Daily gratitude list

Having a proper breakfast

Meditation or Visualisation

Or more specifically, let go of what is troubling you …. for just ONE day (at a time).

For one day, CHOOSE to feel really good about yourself and your life … just because.

When we are unconscious of how we perpetuate the momentum of our lives, we live each day repeating the same thoughts, the same worries, the same challenges and the same points of view. As a result, our lives don’t change much. We continue to reach for the things that will hopefully make us feel good; a nicer house, a better car, a well paid job, a holiday. Or we continue to reach for things that numb our not-feeling-goodness.

But, if we choose, for just one day to let go of all the things we are thinking about and just enjoy being alive, something magical occurs.

When we stop

we open something.

A

New Space

Unfolds

Inside Us.

And only when this space occurs can the new possibilities fly in.

On the 61st day of doing the Gorgeousness Energetic Programme I spent one whole day letting go of everything.

On this day my entire inner landscape and outer life altered dramatically.

I am not in the position to share how at this time, but now there is a very different future ahead of this family.

I believe that shift only came when I Let Go.

Since that special day, my momentum has U turned. I spend no time thinking “what if” or “I can’t”. Instead those thoughts have been replaced with “this is what I could do” and “I can.”

I’ve also spent a shameful amount of time lying in a star-shaped position on my bed, listening to the birds, gazing at Adam’s Frida helium balloon and feeling gorgeously good.

I hope this post has inspired you to cultivate your true feeling-goodness.

See you soon. xxx