With the challenges of living through a pandemic for the past 2 years, there has been constant uncertainty. Even the most positive, spiritual person can find themselves questioning everything they have ever learned, and I was no different. Frantically trying to guide myself through the trauma of losing family and friends to COVID, I lie in bed every night reciting every personal development book I read (and there were A LOT of them) clenching for some hope and relief, but I still could not pick myself up. The mantra “I am so happy” can be spoken only so many times before even my own subconscious mind would whisper to me, “I smell BS.”
I’ll never forget talking with Flory one afternoon late last summer with her beautiful pool as our backdrop. As we began to drift into conversations of the metaphysical, as we always seemed to do, I confided in her that I was having a really hard time trusting the things I learned while reading The Secret and other books at this moment in time. Although there were so many powerful books I had read, I could not figure out how to convince myself to think happy thoughts enough to make them true. I knew I could not be the only one who felt uncertain and scared with the never ending changes we had to manage during this pandemic.
Flory recommended that I read Jerry and Esther Hicks’ Ask and It Is Given when I had a chance. I could not have been more grateful for her advice. It was the first time, in a long time, that I was able to truly feel better. This is the first book that I read that made me feel seen – you cannot jump from sadness to joy in 15 seconds or by wishing for it hard enough, you could only do the work, step by step, to slowly climb up the emotional scale. It is impossible to feel 100 % better in 2 seconds, but it IS possible to feel 2 percent better – and with baby steps and self-understanding and compassion, you can get back to feeling 100%, and that I did.
I was reminded of a very important principle that day: when things are hard, concentrate on the one thing that you are ALWAYS in control of and that’s the power of your own thoughts. “Once you deliberately choose a thought and consciously feel the improvement in the way you feel, you have successfully utilized your own guidance system, and you can now be on your way to the freedom that you desire and deserve–for there is nothing you cannot be, do, or have" (Hicks 111). I am so excited to be a part of this AWEsome family and for YOU to have the tools and knowledge you need to improve your thoughts and your life because as Jerry and Esther so perfectly put it in this book, ''When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
