Elaine Grundy: looking for Urban Enlightenment: June 2009

Less than two years ago I signed onto a service on tut.com to receive daily ‘inspirational’ emails – I highly recommend it, they are brilliant, uplifting and always give me a giggle. When signing up, they ask you to put down your dream, and every now and again whatever you wrote pops up in the daily reminder email, cleverly weaved into the text of the message.

When I was signing up I hummed and hahed about what to write, at the time I was newly arrived in Singapore, just started teaching Reiki again and not really thinking about my work with two young children still at home. But I figured I had nothing to lose so I wrote ‘a flourishing Reiki Centre’, and had a giggle every few months when an email popped into my inbox asking me how I was enjoying my ‘flourishing Reiki Centre’.

Well two years is a long time in terms of Attraction, especially when you are honing and practicing – manifesting becomes speedier and easier with every try. Two months ago I set the intention to sell What Therapy.com an internet business I had set up to provide directory and information services on Natural Therapists in Singapore. The day I made the intention public, I found a buyer. That’s speedy!

Since that day, another email popped into my inbox, reminding me again of my ‘flourishing Reiki Centre’ and this time I was in a position to say ‘YES!’ to that reminder and promptly changed my business name to The Reiki Centre Pte Ltd. Who knows what will come of this, but now when those reminders pop into my email I’ll be reminded to go into my settings and tick the ‘received’ box and change my dream to the next BIG one :)

Not only has this process reminded me of the effortlessness of attraction, but also the importance of keeping the reminders going and of focusing on the WHAT’s and not the HOWs. Once the WHAT you want is clear and positive and exciting to you, the HOW takes care of itself in strange and mysterious ways! Wish me luck on now creating the ‘flourishing’ part!

I’ve just completed part 1 of the Solution Focus coaching certification run by the Academy of Solution Focused Training and I LOVE the concepts. I have been using them at home and on unsuspecting passer-bys with great success! The general idea is extremely simple: to start with the end in mind. Is that a massive revelation to you? Probably not very earth shattering, but if done very specifically, it is amazing how many of your problems disappear when you start to shine the torch on what you want, as opposed to what you DON’T want.

This is Law of Attraction at its finest, which is another reason I love this type of coaching, it refocuses you on what is working, and pretty much ignores what is not working. It’s not what we’re used to, and not what feels particularly natural, but when you persevere, its remarkable the results that fall out of this type of enquiry. Take my daughter for example, she’s 5 years old and terrified of bedtimes – she has bad dreams. So every night she lies with me and panics about all the bad dreams, monsters, and horrid lurking things about to attack her, obviously not a very good way to get to sleep! She is 100% focused on what she doesn’t want, her language says it all “I don’t want to go to sleep cos I’ll have bad dreams”. I don’t like bedtime because I’ll have bad dreams”, I don’t want to have bad dreams anymore!” Is all I get when I use general questions on her like ‘what’s the matter?’, ‘what’s the problem’, ‘what do you want?’.

So with my Solution Focus hat on I ask her the Goal-focused question which is ‘what do you want instead?’ She pauses and then says, “I want to dream about Princesses!” ‘What else?’ I ask her, “Fairies! And rainbows, and flowers, and unicorns…” And so we go on, and very soon she is fast asleep with a big smile on her face.

So simple = too simple? Try it on anything, any problem you are struggling with, ask yourself these few easy questions:

1. What do you want instead?

2. How will you know when you have what you want?

3. How will things be different for you?

4. What actions will you be taking that you are not taking at the moment?

Here’s a recent example from a client of mine:

Problem “I look at things so negatively, I always start to worry about things that haven’t even happened yet and probably won’t, it’s so draining - I can’t sleep at night, I want to stop all this! I don’t want to worry anymore.”

1. What do you want instead?

I want to be happy; I want to be positive about life.

2. How will you know when you have what you want?

I’ll wake up after a good night’s sleep with a smile on my face, I’ll look forward to getting out of bed and starting my day, I’ll be excited about my day and what I have to do. I’ll feel enthusiastic but peaceful.

3. How will things be different for you and your loved ones around you?

Oh that’s easy, I’d be much more pleasant to be with! I’d be smiling more and have more time for my family, more time for myself, at the moment I just lurch from crisis to crisis. I’d be calm, more focused – the smiling is a big one!

4. What actions will you be taking that you are not taking at the moment?

I’d definitely be taking better care of myself, my diet and probably doing more exercise – that always makes me feel great. I’ll have all my tasks organized so that I know what I have to do in the day instead of muddling through like I do at the moment, I’d probably actually have a planned schedule instead of this chaotic mess I have right now! I’d make sure I have some treats planned in my week to look forward to, like a spa treat or meeting friends for lunch – that’s an obvious thing that would start my day well….

Amazing, just by gaining more clarity on what you actually want, the steps for getting there also become really clear. After all, we all know what we need to be doing; we just get distracted by shining the torch in the wrong direction, often missing the obvious solutions sitting right under our noses.