Are you squashing your joy with yay-buts? (plus exciting news!)

Well, we’re all done with the bugs, and may I never have another bug story to tell you. Here’s what I want to share with you today.

A few weeks ago, I was coaching a client and I noticed something significant. I like to start my sessions with hearing wins and miracles. As my client shared her wins, I noticed she was doing something interesting, and so I offered an observation.

“Did you know that after each win, you downplayed it?” I asked. 

“I didn’t! What did I even say?” she wondered.

“When you shared that you got a tax return, you said that it was small. When you told me that you cleared out some boxes, you minimized it by saying there were still so many more to unpack,” I reflected back to her. 

She decided to share her wins again. “I got a tax return! I cleared out some boxes!”

The feeling between the two experiences was monumentally different for both of us.

So now I turn it to you. Do things that you want come into your life and then get minimized because they’re not an exact match? Often we get a version of what we were hoping for but it’s not exactly how we visualized it, or it's still in process, and so we focus on the lack rather than the abundance. I call that a Yay-But. Yay this happened but…

There are oh-so-many ways we’re programmed to tune into lack and if that’s where your focus keeps returning, you’re going to attract a lot more of it. An abundance of lack! Who wants that? Not me. And probably not you either.

What we really want is an abundance of abundance. The more you can celebrate and leave it at that, the more success and abundance you will experience. Why?

Because the Universe is made of the vibrations of celebration, delight and joy. The more often you can hang out in those energies, the more ease, grace and awesomeness you will experience.

And guess what? You have to work on increasing your capacity for those vibrations. Most people actually have quite a low tolerance for high vibration feelings, as evidenced by my client and her wins. 

In another example (and here’s the exciting news), my daughter Zoe got a role in a movie - hooray! 

For a little contextual backstory, she injured her ribs while wrestling in the city finals in March. Then, she decided to try out for the rugby team, even though she wasn’t fully healed. She made the team and was just practicing and not playing games. She said to the Universe: if you don’t want me to play rugby, then give me a role.

Guess what happened? (And you should be able to guess, because I already told you…) She got the role. And guess what she said once the initial excitement wore off? “Oh no! I’m going to miss two rugby games this week during filming.” 

And then, to take it down even further, she lamented how it wasn’t a lead role. Being wise in the ways of the Universe, I couldn’t let that spiral much lower. I explained to her that she had dropped out of celebrating and into lack. (For some reason, she wasn’t as grateful as my client when I brought it to her attention…)

However, she eventually got back into celebration mode and we talked about all the wonderful things that were going to happen, like getting to be on set, getting to miss school, being in a movie in a fun and light role and so on.

She filmed last week, and it was magical for several reasons. The weather decided that we weren’t done with winter and so it snowed sideways (due to such intense wind) pretty much the whole three days. Zoe and the other actors had outdoor scenes the first two days so they were cold, but they still loved it. And here’s the miraculous part: because of the winter-revival, Zoe’s rugby games were postponed until this week. 

How perfect is that? She got a role, she got to heal fully and she still gets to play her games this week. I feel like that only could have happened because she actively chose to expand her capacity for celebration. Plus, the other cool thing was that one of the producers came over to her on the third day and told her she had one of the biggest roles in the movie. It was like the Universe was reassuring Zoe throughout the entire experience. 

It can take a concerted effort to stay in the joy. The first thing to have is awareness. When something comes into your life that you wanted, notice what your mind wants to do. Can it revel in the awesomeness, even if it’s not an exact match? If it wants to dip down into lack, notice it. You can even celebrate that you noticed, because progress is progress.

I invite you to experiment this week. How often can you bring yourself into the vibrations of joy, delight and celebration? Make a reminder on your phone or put up some post-it notes to keep the experiment in your awareness. Not only will you feel better, you’ll be removing all sorts of energetic blocks to success and fulfillment. Definitely a worthy experiment. 

Wishing you a week filled with celebrations for all sorts of reasons.

With delightful love and joyful courage,

Christina

>Creator of Courageous Self-Care

>Daily seeker of delight

>Super proud stage-mom!

PS- The movie is called One Million Followers and should come out late this year. I'll be sure to keep you posted when we know more.