Forgiveness and the art of paying attention

Last night I was up working late on a Server design for some new clients when I found I made a mistake in the original setup. As I didn't want to stay up the rest of the night redoing it all, I found a different way of accomplishing the same task. I proceeded to put in my design and got the system up enough to do the testing that I promised my boss I'd have done in the morning.

When I woke up, I received an email from my boss telling me to "Stop what I'm doing" and that I was "doing it wrong". I don't tend to like either of those sentences, especially in Engineering, but I carefully crafted my perturbed response. "First off relax" I said, then went on to explain what had happened and how I managed to work around it for testing purposes. I felt the reply was carefully planned to where I was standing up for myself, while still explaining the situation.

The reply from my employer did not support my analysis of what I said. It was simply a single sentence that read "stop the BS". Now at this point all kinds of dismay was flying around in my head so I asked myself how would a highly evolved conscious creator respond to this?

According to what I learned, the first think that is important when being criticized (unconstructively), is to be sure to not buy in to other people's negative outlook. Instead, turn what they say around into something you love about yourself (thank you Jeanette). This manifested itself in a way I did not expect. The minute I had that realization I looked over at the car next to me on the Interstate and it had a small bumper sticker that simply read "I (heart) BS".

This was to me, the universe offering some welcomed humor to the situation.

By the time I got to work, I had summoned up all kinds of wisdom for dealing with the situation with my boss. Including:

• Forgive everyone, yeah even that guy that cut you off on the way to work this morning
• Confront with the expectation that things will get resolved
• Display the kind of response you'd expect if the situations had been reversed

This helped me to get my point across without turning the situation into more of a confrontation then it already was.

When I got to the office and confronted my boss, I asked questions regarding that he was afraid and angry about. I did not accuse him of jumping the gun, though I felt that he had, the floor was open to resolving the conflict without one person having to bow to the other.

Later on in the day, my boss and I made another discovery. Turns out, he had spec'd out the hardware wrong and the whole architecture needed to be redone after all!

Instead of pointing at his earlier reactions to me, or responding to his screw up the same way he responded to mine, I saw the chance to display the calmness and understanding I expected when faced with my own mistake. I said "no problem" and quickly explained how I would make a couple quick changes to the architecture in order to accommodate the requirements without having to scrap the whole design.

Summary: When faced with nonconstructive criticism, we can either let it eat at us until we finally succomb to the failure we're made out to be, or just stay confident and focused until intuition points us in the right direction. Today that happened to me and I'm grateful for it! It made the whole day a great day. In my past I normally wouldn't have seen things quite that way.

Responsibility for our Emotions

"That guy really makes me angry". Sound familiar? Most people think so. I've been in too many situations where I felt that some one was making me angry, happy, sad, etc. The truth is, while people can do things we don't like, no one can make us feel anything. That's up to us.

About a year ago, if someone asked how I feel, I would have told them all about the feelings I didn't want to have and then go into massive details about how other people and situations were making me feel that way. I really had to listen carefully to what I was saying to hear it. When we have a philosophy that our emotions are somewhat dependent on outside influences, we use all kinds of words in our speech that accelerate the negative energy we feel.

Take this sentence as an example, "I really should start to work out more. I'm in such bad shape and I really want feel better about myself".

This is something people say to themselves or a close friend. Look at it again with the negative parts highlighted:

"I really should start to work out more. I'm in such bad shape and I really want feel better about myself".

The words in red are the ones that stand out and make this such a self-defeating sentence. I found that by doing instead of thinking, then radiating the feeling that comes from it, the sentence become something quite different.

"I've been working out more and I feel great!"

Law of Attraction savvy people will use affirmation statements to counter the bad vibes:

"I love my job"

"Thank God I'm Rich"

and so forth.

Next time you're out somewhere, think about the language that comes into your head when the guy in front of you cuts you off, or when you say paper and get plastic, or just when looking at the people next to you. Little shifts in the way we think could bring about big changes inside ourselves. "That guy must really be in a hurry" or "She must have thought I said plastic" could mean the difference between positive, affirming emotional radiation or the attraction of more of what you don't like.

What's working for me (present tense, I'm still exploring this) is at work. People around me have a lot of complexity to think about and little time to do it in. As a result, people tend to come off short tempered and can appear sometimes rude. Here's the big revelation with this one. Your workmates, bosses and colleges are not responsible for how you feel! You are.

That's what I've been saying to myself. My feelings are my responsibility and no one can take that away from me. By holding on to that, I've found that any distemper from the people around me is short lived, and I'm in a much clearer head to deal with the problem at hand. Also, others are starting to pick up on it and are beginning to see the same things as me. That everyone has the basic desire to work together as a team.

I read in another blog that we can't control other people, but we can influence their vibrations all the same. I have a hard time believing anyone wants to feel bad, therefore the positive vibrations we radiate can influence others around us weather we have a physical encounter with them or not.

The Story

Here's how it all started. Once during a holiday celebration, I found myself totally commenced in depression. I did however, take responsibility for it and started a quest to find out how the heck I was attracting this kind of stuff into my life.

What I found was that one of the most prominent philosophies I lived my life by needed some fine tuning. I used to believe that more then half of what happens to us is a direct result of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions we radiate. What I found is that it's not half, it's ALL!

I started reading books, articles and blog posts about the "Law of Attraction", the "Power of Intention", "Emotional Freedom Techniques", and everything else I could get my hands on that explained what I was seeing.

Here's how it makes sense to me. The realization that clinched the deal for me was the work of Albert Einstein. No, right away when people think of Einstein, a lot of things come to mind. The first of which is that infamous equation E-MC². Everyone knows that equation and that it is the basis behind Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but what does it really mean? An how did that simple equation knock the socks off the Physics world overnight?

The basics behind it is this. E is the symbol of Energy. M is equal to Mass, C is the speed of light. Energy is equal to Mass times the speed of light squared. The realization came when I realized that MC² is a formula that Physicists use to explain Matter. In other words, Matter is Energy!

We also radiate energy though our thoughts feelings and emotions. This is a measurable magnetic force that is measured in frequency, or "cycles per second". Therefore, if energy is measured in cycles per second and all these things are created by energy, then everything is based on a specific vibration. That was the thing that made it all come together for me. We attract to our life what we radiate. We can control our lives by the vibrations we produce.

That basic premise is what started me on my journey and the amount of knowledge I've been gaining from it has been changing my whole viewpoint in life.