How to Have Better Days

I'm lmao...

…because just as I began to compose this post, a notification popped up on my laptop screen from CNN. It was all I could do not to click on it. You’ll understand why that’s so freaking hilarious in a minute.

Okay, so I’ve been finishing up The Bliss Book, and there’s a chapter in there about world events, where I describe myself as a recovering news junkie. I state in the book that I can now watch politics like I’m watching a reality show, not letting it suck me in too much, always aware that we humans are truly making all this up.

We sure do love our drama! But we really are making this up, both the big WE, humankind as a whole, and the individual we as well. We are projectors of consciousness. Our bodies are like those tall blue ones in Avatar. They are not the being within them. The being with in them is a part of something else, and in our case, something broader.

Well, before we publish The Bliss Book next month, I’ll be changing that part about how I can watch news like a reality show and not get sucked in, because it turns out, it’s not true.

Look, the news, of late, has been mesmerizing. I think for a lot of us, right? It’s one thing after another after another. Back when life was boring, I was all but cable-news-free. But man, lately….

I got sucked in I hit bottom the other day, left the cable news on all day long to keep track of rapidly unfolding events.

I felt terrible all that day. Flu-like, almost. Just dead tired. And I ambled through the day like that. We had a dog fight that day, between the feisty girl mastiff and the old lady bulldog. It wasn’t bad, no one got hurt. Still, we haven’t had a row in months and thought they’d got over it. I got all tensed up about it. And I still didn’t get the connection.

So then I was on Big Brother, I mean Facebook, and I saw a meme. Yes, a freaking meme. I didn’t even read the whole thing. It was one of those irritating, wordy memes, all long-winded, like anyone’s gonna spend more than 3 seconds reading a meme. You look, you LOL, you share, you move on. 3 seconds. Am I right?

Anyway, this meme said something about, you wouldn’t eat poison, but you feed it to your brain. Something like that. Or maybe not anywhere near that, but that was what it said to me. That was my takeaway. “You feed poison to your brain. And then you wonder why you feel like shit?” is what it said to me.

And so I finally turned the TV off. I ate badly, slept heavily and hit the reset button.

Take Two The next day, I didn’t turn on the TV when I got up. Oh my Goddess, that was so hard! I wanted to know what new details had been unearthed overnight sooooo bad. I was almost in withdrawal. My hand kept spasmodically reaching for the remote. But I didn’t click the button.

I did my morning routine of finding uplifting things to share with my social peeps, answered messages, talked to hubby over coffee. We did tune in to the local news, which told us, in brief, all we needed to know, condensed into easily digestible 30 second portions. And the weather looked cheerful. I mean, there’s a light at the end of this long, cold, white, white, white tunnel.

The next day, I didn’t turn on cable news at all. Instead I meditated first thing, fifteen minutes and then a few more after my music ended. It was good. It felt great. I felt like there was a download running in the background, and maybe this post is part of what downloaded.

After that, I worked upstairs in my office, where there’s no TV, on the treadmill desk. Which I actually turned on! Yeah! I walked while I created. I moved my seasonally sedentary backside.

I worked on what I think is a top-notch piece of fiction, and I came downstairs later with my work done and time to burn, feeling like a million bucks. I caught myself in the mirror and stopped. I looked better than the day before. Even younger. I swear, I even looked thinner. Hand to Goddess.

I felt great! I had energy!

What was the difference? You guessed it. I kept the TV off.

Now, I’m not 100% cured. I’ll probably settle in and allow myself 1 favorite news program a night. Just to catch up. Come on, I can’t quit cold turkey. And it really is like a reality show right now, if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s very entertaining.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m taking our nation’s troubles lightly. Except, I am actually. I am taking it lightly, because I know what hard times are for.

The farther you draw the bowstring back, the farther your arrow will fly.

If these times right now feel hard to you, please don’t worry. Remind yourself that the hardest times create the best of times. We never crave easy times more than when things are hard. And so that’s what we create. We long for good times, and that longing projects forward and becomes those good times. And the worse the bad time was, the better its corresponding good time will be. It’s the Diana Effect. The further you pull your bowstring back, the further your arrow’s gonna fly.

So what we’re doing, and feeling, and thinking about right now is what’s creating the future. In bad times, that’s something entirely different than the bad. In good times, we’re creating more of the same, and then some. Right now, we’re creating what will be our best times yet.

We are always creating our best times yet. Evolution can only move forward.

So take heart... Rest assured that better times lie ahead, and amuse yourself by imagining them. Daydream them. Explore them. Decide how you’d like them to be. Go into great detail. And then once you’ve got your paradise-world really clear in your mind, start looking for any little sign of it right where you are. No matter how tiny, how minuscule, notice it right where you are. And keep looking for more of it. And start creating little bits of it, right there where you live. Just small scale. Live it. Feel the way you’ll feel when your world is this way.

And the next thing you know, it will be. That’s how we create reality. We imagine it right into being.