America’s New Breed of Freedom Fighters: Law of Attraction Guide for Democrats, 3rd edition by Evelyn Roberts Brooks - HTML preview

12. LOVE YOURSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE

Studies have shown you end up making about the same income as your six closest friends do. That's because we come into alignment with the people around us and subconsciously agree not to outshine them.

However, when you want to grow and expand and do more with your life, often times that same group of friends can be detrimental. If they don't support growth, if they disagree with your ideas, it can quickly become unpleasant. The most common reaction is to surrender, to give up on your plan and get pulled back into the circle. After all, it's far more familiar than the strange new country you had dreamed of visiting.

Now's your time to get out of a rut.

For example, if you have already made up your mind about someone, say to someone at work you don't particularly care for, and then someone else tells you a nice thing about that person.

What is your first reaction? I'll bet it would be to dismiss this new information as being unlikely, perhaps even a lie to try to change your opinion.

Depending on how open-minded you are and how fair you strive to be in your life when you are provided with a new concept to think about, you will either entertain this new idea about the other person, look at them in a different way, and question your own judgment of them – or else, you will simply dismiss the new information as being untrue, and congratulate yourself on sticking with what you see are the facts.

But the real fact is that you are operating from hidden beliefs that make it easy for you to keep going down the same road again and again instead of opening to a broader perspective.

From childhood, we're trained to nitpick. Most of us learn the criticizing and fault-finding habit easily. We start practicing it as soon as we are aware of it, and join in the fault-finding of our parents, siblings, teachers and neighbors.

It's what we do as humans, but only because it's what we learned.

You see someone walking toward you on the sidewalk and your mind instantly makes dozens of judgments faster than a spark of light. Her dress is too tight, I hate that hair color, she's got on too much lipstick, what an idiot, she looks like a cow chewing her cud, didn't anyone tell her she should never wear stripes….

What's that all about, anyway? It's the result of the fault-finding habit, which has no love in it.

It is learned behavior that you can change. You'll have to be strict with yourself to notice what you're thinking and deliberately choose a more pleasant thought.

Try it out and watch how much better you begin feeling. Love will pour through you and spill over to everyone around you, while lifting you up into a more glorious way of living.

Okay, let's pretend that exact same woman is walking towards you, chewing gum, wearing the same outfit. She hasn't changed her makeup and is still talking on the phone saying something you think is really idiotic.

Your old habit starts in immediately: Looks like she put on the lipstick with a trowel…

But because you've made the intention to find good everywhere you go, you catch yourself with that snide judgment, and you switch mental direction.

This doesn't mean you try to force yourself to admire the things your instantaneous judgment is saying "I don't like…" about. That would be false, and the resistance you'd set up inside would defeat the whole point of the exercise.

Instead, simply find something easy to compliment: Her hair is so shiny, what a pretty color blouse, I like her shoes, she has a nice smile…

Keep practicing until it becomes a habit to be a good-finder everywhere you go, with everyone you know, and the many billions of strangers whose names you will never learn. Don't stay on the surface as in the example above—find good in the actions of others and in things they say.

Part two: start paying compliments. When your eyes light up seeing a stranger's cute hat or sweet child, in passing (not in a creepy way like you are now BFFs), say, "I couldn't help noticing how great that hat is on you!" Again, don't feel you need to stop the person and try to strike up a conversation—think of yourself as a butterfly dispensing joy everywhere you go.

And watch how the joy in YOU grows.