The Uplift one

Words have a way of activating associated concepts and emotions. In these times we're regularly exposed to language that has the effect of not only increasing feelings of fear, sadness, anxiety, and aggression, but impacting the body, hastening the breakdown of health.

Repeated exposure to positive words has the opposite effect, encouraging the spirit and building resilience while blunting the psychological and physiological effects of negativity.

abundance

"Abundance is not a result you create. It is an existing state you recognize."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Where do you stand? Do you believe you have all you need? Are you 'enough', or never quite there? Do you live with the nagging feeling that something is missing - are you less than satisfied, wanting more, wanting things to be different, or fearing the loss of what you do have?

As your body listens to every interpretation of every word you think or say, whether feeling abundance or lack, you're affected physiologically. With feelings of abundance stress and anxiety are lower, and with less worry your immune system remains strong, ready when you need it to keep you well.

Feeling abundant you're more open to new experience and moved towards acts of cooperation and generosity. The returns are big and swift, leaving you happier and more confident.

From an evolutionary standpoint, feelings of plenty serve an important purpose fostering survival.

With confidence boosted, you're more likely to explore, and with exploration comes the benefit of even greater abundance in the form of resources, leading to an increased willingness to share.

As positive feelings expand, sharing, cooperation and generosity increase your network of those ready to help in times of scarcity. So, the more abundant we feel individually and collectively, the more likely we are to survive, better and longer.

A research team conducting a study years ago on the streets of New York City observed 84% of subjects who found a small amount of cash in a phone booth stopped to help a confederate who 'accidentally' dropped a stack of papers, compared to only 4% of those who found no money. A sizeable difference.

One of my favourite elements of feeling abundant is that it lifts us beyond survival into the realm of innovation. Feeling you have enough and may 'be' enough, creativity has room to blossom. In life and novels, the starving artist is romanticized, but I'm not convinced worrying about whether or not you can pay the rent contributes to a best possible work - unless the artist feels 'rich' in other ways.

Perceived or real, feelings of lack find their way into more than money, in what you do, self-worth, and how you experience life. You may conclude you're lacking in love, security, stamina, talent, status, having the right car, the right house, appearance (not thin enough, tall enough, pretty enough), youth, intelligence, desirability, etc.

Whether in more personal areas of life you see yourself as having less or not, we're all bombarded with the language and news of the day and end up feeling the weight of some yet to be named or impending lack. Trying to more fully understand Nature's dependence on the influence of cooperation, sharing, and generosity for survival - and, we are of Nature - I question the longevity of a movement or a people bent on thinking and expressing anger and threat and judgment too intensely for too long, imagining self-destruction in the form of sudden collapse. Is such negativity sustainable?

Whatever the reason for feelings of want or deficiency, when they belong to us, we're less sure socially and professionally, causing us to be more avoidant, more cautious and withdrawn - adding to the circularity of the self-fulfilling prophecy, with less effort turning into less reward, turning into proof that what we believed we were missing is ultimately real. Ugh.

Now the lift...

Abundance is a vibrant, generous, overflowing, life-affirming word, suggesting emotional, spiritual and relational fullness. It has a way of inspiring good deeds and thought in the form of gratitude, possibility, and willingness.

How can you foster and "recognize", as Emerson says, an abundant sense of life and all it has to offer...

• Every day, notice what you have more than what you think you need or don't have - distinguish between the words, 'want' and 'need'

• Pay attention to opportunities to learn and grow - we find richness and abundance in learning - be curious

• Spend time with positive people, books, and environments that encourage and lift

• Create a list of what you've been given - your ability to persist, your green eyes, your laugh, your friends, what you had for breakfast this morning, your mind, your creativity, the door you shut at day's end, the pet by your side, clean running water, legs that take you places, hands that work when you need them, people who treat you with kindness, rain and sun and breeze...

• Be generous - get rid of things you no longer use, take them to a second-hand shop or a shelter, anyplace where they can be used by someone whose needs are greater than yours - you'll walk away with less 'stuff' and a huge - abundant - feeling of freedom

• Take a walk in nature - a place where it's hard not to see and feel abundance

• Repeat the words, "I am enough", "I have enough," "I'm all I need to be", several times each day

• Limit exposure to 'news' to no more than one hour daily - remembering that what you put into your mind and body are doing much more than keeping you up-to-date - choose carefully and wisely

  
  

  The people in the study had the feeling of 'having' something, then engaged in an act of 'giving' something. What they found was not enough to buy a cup of coffee, but what's true of abundance or lack - it has little to do with what's measurable, and more to do with perspective when it comes to the meaning of 'enough'.

  
  

  Those with what we think of as wealth may continue to suffer an existence of 'not enough', or 'never enough', while those with little may experience life as full and rich - and then some..

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Until next time!

ah.