....your goal is to feel good.Which is to say — be mindful of focusing on and talking incessantly about what you’re healing and why. I’ll explain what to do instead in the next 4 minutes.


Sure, it’s important to acknowledge what happened and what you need and want to address. That isn’t the end game though, is it? Doesn’t feel that great to explain away your power and joy, does it?

Awesome, now we’re on the same page. So if you aren’t focusing on your wounds, what then?

..how about a compelling vision instead?

It’s like this…

…healing heartbreak is a different journey than working toward a vision to enjoy your full, open, and connected heart. The latter includes healing your heartbreak, but that storyline can meander, especially if you start to identify with and build your life around it.
You can focus on your broken heart OR why it’s important for you to have a whole one.


Plus, if you focus on your gaping wound abysses, you’ll probably miss a lot of great things happening now. You could become so concerned with how and why you should feel bad, powerless, or lonely that you neglect to notice when you don’t.


Things will take the time they take and yet you’re the conductor of your attention. What you focus on determines the quality and progression of your days and life.


LET ME EMPHASIZE that focusing intentionally is NOT the same as ignoring what happened, how you feel, or what needs to be done.


Being intentional about your vision isn’t denial. It’s a commitment to SEE, FEEL, AND ACT in accordance with what is without getting mentally stuck on what you don’t want.


In low states, the mind may insist you can’t and won’t get anywhere good from your present problem. That makes things look and feel heavier and harder they may actually be. So heavy and so hard that you may not bother to try to improve things. I think we ignore what needs to be seen, felt, or acted on because we lack confidence in ourselves and life. We opt out of living fully because we deny who we are (an expression of the divine).


If you were assured that you were able, supported, even encouraged to live beautifully and richly, what would be so scary? No problem is too big for you because no problem is too big for the divine.


Yes, the path may be different than the one you have in mind. Sure, sometimes it hurts and seems wrong. Living in harmony with the divine does require a bit of humility.
You might notice I’m saying, ‘Surrender and accept what is.’ And earlier I said, “Hold onto a vision.”


Yes and yes. It’s both, man.

You continue to work toward your vision while you love and accept here and now as it is.

Healing isn’t the end, baby. It’s just the beginning.

Remember……your goal is to feel good.

The blonde is Paige, my baby sister, who lived on earth from 1/15/1990 to 8/8/2011

This is for you if you’re feeling or have felt a substantial loss. “Loss” isn’t reserved for death. You can feel it with opportunities, relationships, versions of yourself, phases of living, and, actually, change of all kinds.


I wrote these 5 strategies on the 11th anniversary of my little sister’s suicide. They’re ways I found to digest death and then living. Or maybe living and then death. It all depends how you look at it, as most everything does.


1. It hurts.
Let’s be real about it first, it f’n hurts, man. I spent the last decade trying to figure out the secrets to the universe and get beyond all pain. What I came up with is — sometimes things just hurt.


When something hurts, it seems important that you acknowledge it. I didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling when I lost my sister so I really didn’t. Processing hurt real-time seems to prevent you from spilling that pain onto other people and making more for yourself.



Over the years, I learned to prioritize be loving and supportive of myself when I’m hurting rather than think my way around it or deny it. You can’t anyhow. Denying how you feel is like when the Cat in the Hat tries to clean the pink ring off the tub. He gets the ring on the dress. Then from the dress to the wall. And so on.


When you aren’t with how you feel, those ‘disturbances’ will show up in how you communicate, what you eat, what you think is possible, and most anything else for yeeearrss. It’s ok that it hurts. It will evolve into something lighter and more manageable if you let it.


2. Mind Your Power
While I didn’t discover an end to all pain, I did find you can make more or less of it. Are you telling a story about why it shouldn’t have happened or how it’s wrong? More pain. Are you letting what is be what is and looking for ways to grow through it? Less pain. The way you think about things and how you talk about them can and will determine what happens next.


You still hafta feel what you feel, but you do have a choice to let it be ok. Let’s be real, not letting it be ok doesn’t do anything. Whether we like it or not, life includes loss. It’s up to you the way you want to think and talk about it, and what you want to do next.


3. Hey, sooo.. what are we doin’?
It seems incredibly useful to check-in and ask yourself what you’re really doing every so often. For example, guilt seems essential. And it is for as long as it takes for you to see you’d like to make different choices. After that, it’s counterproductive. Mourning a loss seems essential. And it is for as long as you do it naturally. After that, it keeps you away from everything that remains.


When you’re in the throes of emotion or thought, sometimes you lose touch with what’s actually happening. So ask yourself every now and then, what am I doing? What do I think that does? What does it actually do? What is my point? What do I value? What could I do for that?


4. Celebrate
There’s not gonna be another Paige (my sister), another high school, another whatever was. Each and everything is one of a kind. It wasn’t until this year that I realized I was holding onto the possibility she’d come back. I know it sounds wild, but somewhere deep inside of me I was keeping hope that I’d get her, or something like her, back. I can’t.


There’s no going or getting back. Loss is an incredible wake-up call to love what is while you can. Celebrate everything. Each life song only plays once. It’s a live concert, no rewinds or repeats.


5. A Higher Power
When Paige died, I didn’t have the interest or capacity to consider anything like god or faith. The only things I trusted were myself and that everything must happen for a reason. The life I lived after that loss, the somewhat reckless quest for solutions to suffering, ended up taking me on an intense journey beyond those ideas.


It culminated with a very personal experience of god, which to me is another word for life, the universe, spirit, the quantum field, and alllll that is. My content and work now come from that experience. My whole life does actually. I can’t put into words what transcends words, but I can say if you haven’t yet explored Who you are, who you really are, it’s worth it. Faith in god has been my saving grace.

Original content & love from Shaylee Edwards & habitbook.com

​August 8th is International Paige Day, the anniversary of my beautiful younger sister’s suicide. I always write, or almost always write, something to honor her life. Here are prior year tributes.

Stuck in a loop? Check your programs

As if life wasn’t strange enough, try this on for size — humans are programmable. Yup. You have been programmed, my friend. This operating software (OS) is likely running you and your life.


I say likely because, who knows, you might already be one of those empowered-in-the-present people. In which case your responses to life would be intentionally aligned with your desires and what’s correct for you.


If you aren’t there yet, you’re probably doing things both big and small that don’t match what you really want. How could you? Your programming is old, from people who aren’t you, and/or designed to keep you ‘safe’ in the familiar.


As a result, you could be reliving the same problems (in your life or head) over and over again. You might feel overwhelmed, uninspired, or just plain checked out. You might even notice you’re stuck in those patterns.


When I say patterns, I mean those feedback loops of life and you. You do something (or don’t) and life does something (or doesn’t). Or in the other order. Patterns are symptoms of programs. You might not be hip to the pattern, but you likely notice its results (or lack thereof).


Here’s a breakdown of a pattern of not doing what’s best for you in relationships:
Perceived cause: “I don’t say what I need or want.”
Perceived effect: “People don’t respect me. I end up doing things I don’t want to.”

The bad news with that last one is that it isn’t actually a ‘them’ thing. No matter how many times you’ve said or thought it was. It’s a ‘you’ problem. It’s a ‘you’ program. The good news is that ’cause it’s yours, you can change it.


Here the pattern that’s really at play:

OS cause: You don’t believe people can or will respect you.
OS effect: You don’t feel, think, act, or speak like they will.

See? Both you. Great news, huh ;) The underlying pattern is the result of how you’ve been programmed.


The problem OS code could say:

• your feelings aren’t important. Potential Code Error Source (PCES): maybe your parents weren’t emotionally available or stable.
• it’s not safe to be honest. PCES: maybe you got unreasonably punished for it once.
• life is about doing what you don’t want to do. PCES: maybe grandma said that every day.
• nobody really says what they think. PCES: maybe you watched a lot of 90s sitcoms.

Would you know you believe those things? Probably not. While we’re aware of some beliefs we /think/ we have, we aren’t aware of most of the ones in our OS. Mostly because our OS dictates much of what comes into our awareness, what we think about it, and what we think we can do in response. Can your OS see and evaluate your OS?


While a pattern seems visible, it’s really what you can’t see that is the pattern. They are patterns of perception and interpretation, basically the application of your subconsciously-held beliefs.


These beliefs constitute your OS and run your life automatically and often invisibly. They make decisions about what to perceive and how to perceive it based on who you believe you are, what you believe things mean, and what you believe is possible for you.


Many of the problems people consistently encounter are because of their OS. Programming includes beliefs about who you are which you learn in relation to other people, particularly as a child. You might have some like I did.


Here are two that kept me in some pretty unhealthy situations:
1. I have to adapt to things that suck.
2. It isn’t ok for me to have or express emotions.

Of course, I didn’t see those programs but they ran my life by filtering my experience and available choices. Yes, I definitely thought and said it was everything and everybody else’s fault first.


Think you have some not-so-great programming, too? Start by being honest about what isn’t working in your life, owning it, and becoming curious about what you must believe if you act/feel the way you do.


It takes a little willingness to undergo OS updates. They can be pretty uncomfortable at first. Just like with your phone’s OS, a big update will take a little time to get used to. You won’t do things the same way after it. Your perception will have changed and thereby so will what you see. It can be a lil awkward and unfamiliar.


Yet, if you know that the update is for your ultimate good, then it’s easier to work with the changes without being caught up in what was ‘lost’ or the discomfort of doing/being new.
Before you start to work with your OS consciously, you might be making on-top adjustments to your programs. It’s like adding programs on top of programs that don’t work so they can sorta work. These usually fall apart under strain or when the environment changes.


In my case, they busted at higher thresholds of success. My core OS included some hefty programming errors around what I deserved to have and that life was supposta hurt. Whoops.


Developing a presence practice can help you notice when things aren’t simple or natural. That would be a clue you’ve got some on-top adjustments that are compensating for underlying OS issues.


The moral of this story is pretty great. You’re in charge of your destiny. If you find you’re not generating results that work for you, you can do a lil work to find out what you need to believe for things to function better.


The fastest way to update your entire OS? Learn to love it exactly as it is. No kidding. This one belief — I love myself and my life no matter what — is unconditional love, the master code.
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Self-awareness
Trauma
Self Improvement
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