How do I feel good

[The Protagonist]

So the law of attraction is based on thinking, feeling, and taking action. The big three as James Rey put it. Fine, I understand that.

I know what to think now, and I've changed my thought patterns accordingly.

I know what action to take and I've begun to take them.

I don't know how to successfully change my feelings, how to feel good. I am usually not feeling anything at all. I am not sad, but I am not especially happy. Usually I am weighed down with work so I feel slightly tired or stressed. How in the world do I feel happy? I know happiness is a state of mind, I just want to know how to reach this state of mind.

I do recall watching 'the secret' when Bob Proctor said that to feel happy I should think of my dog, or of a baby. But when I think of my dog, who I love, I don't feel good, I just feel tranquil.

I've thought of stuff that makes me happy, driving, talking to a friend but these things too don't necessarily make me feel good, they just make me feel nostalgic and slightly pissed that I'm not on the track or with said friend.

What has worked is feeling grateful to the universe for what I have, and all the positive things that happened to me today, but for sure there are more ways for me to feel..?

thoughts/opinions

[BelleEnchanted]

One thing that might help is if you broaden how you define or describe "feeling good". What struck me is your description of feeling tranquil when you thought of your dog, but you didn't think you were feeling good.

To me, feeling tranquil would be feeling good.

I don't think feeling good has to be equated with happiness, either (and happiness is so hard to define, it's so different for everyone). Happiness is near the top of the emotional scale, and yes, it definitely would constitute feeling good, but there are other feeling states as well that you might be able to add to your concept of feeling good.

You could also try taking a black and white approach to it - you either feel good, or you feel bad. So if you're not feeling bad, then maybe you're on the side of feeling good, even if it's only a little bit.

The other thing that comes to mind is to try out small actions and see how you feel. So, for example, when you want to feel good, don't just think about your dog. If your dog is around, give him a big hug, toss around the ball with him, feel his excitement and join in on his fun, enjoy his wet slobbery kisses. (I don't have a dog, so I'm just imagining all of this - but it sure sounds good!).

Belle

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by The Protagonist

I don't know how to successfully change my feelings, how to feel good. I am usually not feeling anything at all. I am not sad, but I am not especially happy. Usually I am weighed down with work so I feel slightly tired or stressed. How in the world do I feel happy? I know happiness is a state of mind, I just want to know how to reach this state of mind.

A simple example for you, drawn from my personal experience. Click here. (No, it is not a link to an MLM marketing site).

[Patricia]

You don't have to feel on cloud 9 all the time, like BelleEnchanted said, feeling good takes different forms and intensity. For me, whatever makes me smile is already making me feel good and the thing is that the more you allow small things to make you feel good, even if just a little bit, the more open you will be for other things to make you feel better, or to put it in the context of the LoA, the more things to feel good about you will attract into your experience - and that means you won't have to be so actively looking for things to generate the feeling. What worked for me was to pay attention to the things that naturally made me feel good throughout the day, I did that for a period of time and took mental note of those things, so whenever I find myself on the wrong track, I go do those things. I don't know if this is the internal conversation you have going on, but just in case, I will say: don't get too attached to the thought "I need to feel good" because there's a very specific feeling already associated with this kind of thinking, which is "I'm not feeling good now and, God, if I don't feel good things are not gonna flow..." and so on and so forth. Just identify what things, activities, reads, thoughts, whatever it happens to be for you, put a smile on your face, give them attention and focus and ALLOW it to grow from there, rather than try to push or force a state of mind.

Just my 2 cents based on what works for me.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Patricia

You don't have to feel on cloud 9 all the time

Oh. Was that what Protagonist was confused about?

Most definitely, you do not need to be in ra-ra happy mood to be manifesting successfully. If you look at Abraham-Hicks, basically they've put emotions on a scale with 22 items, like this:

1. Joy/Knowledge/Empowerment/Freedom/Love/Appreciation
2. Passion
3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
4. Positive Expectation/Belief
5. Optimism
6. Hopefulness
7. Contentment
8. Boredom

... [ going down to:]

19. Hatred/Rage
20. Jealousy
21. Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
22. Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness

When you are consciously creating your reality, where you want to be as as high up on the scale as possible. If you're somewhere in the top five, you'd be fine.

[skydust]

do what works for you. if feeling gratitude is what works then do that. what might work also, is to imagine how you would feel if you were happy. try to call forward in yourself the emotion of happiness, not necessarily directed at something, just the general feeling of joy and happiness. feel it. and then you can project this feeling onto your everyday things, but it would come from within you and not be dependant on external experiences or things or people in order to exist.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Oh. Was that what Protagonist was confused about?

I'm not sure, actually I used the expression to emphasize the concept of the feeling taking different gradations and forms, because when Protagonist says "they just make me feel nostalgic and slightly pissed that I'm not on the track or with said friend" it got me thinking that feeling nostalgic is sometimes such a good feeling for me, and I would certainly embrace it - depending on the context of the memory of course - and get in a good mood, even if it's not the happiest feeling I can generate. But now that I pay attention to it more closely, I think we can take this a step further and break it down to this:

@ Protagonist:

If a memory or a nostalgic thought makes you slightly pissed off:

1) You might want to choose a different thought or memory and
2) You are not focusing on being grateful for having had good experiences, instead, you are focusing on the absence of this particular experience in your life right now. In other words, the perception of this is what causes the emotion of being pissed off and if you're pissed off, you're not going to feel grateful, you will just remind yourself and focus on what you don't have. So, if bringing up memories lead you to focus on the absence of the experiences in your life (and I don't know if that's the case, but just in in case it is) you can either shift your perception in a way that you can feel grateful for these things while disregarding the perception of lack OR maybe using memories is not the best tool or approach for you to generate the feelings you're looking for - in which case you could go for a more "in the moment", experiential kind of thing, like listening to uplifting music, going for a walk, singing, or whatever makes you feel good in the moment.

[The Protagonist]

just wanted to say that all your ideas make sense, and thank you for the input, gave me a new lens to see things

especially the part about being grateful for what I have recieved

[renie408]

I would like to throw in here that one of the things I took away from reading some of the Abraham-Hicks stuff was that they said that anger was fine if it moved you up from despair and vengeful thoughts were fine if they moved you up from anger. I have had a lot of anger in me off and on. I would always try to just stuff it away because I was always getting the message that anger is 'wrong'. What Abraham-Hicks said was that while you don't want to LIVE in anger, if passing through anger or other negative feelings on your way up the scale helps get you moving, those emotions are actually positive in your case.

For you, tranquility is better than the flat lining you are doing day to day, so that is a good thing. I am a pretty emotional person, so I have managed to get to where I can buzz my energy up to this tummy-fizzing joy pretty quickly. But I have a hard time holding on to that feeling. You might arrive to that point more slowly, but having more stable emotions, be able to hold onto your feelings longer. Or maybe YOUR joy might feel different from MY joy.

Anyway, Abraham-Hicks has 22 different processes that you can use to help elevate your feelings in their latest book. You might try it and see if any of them work for you.

[renie408]

>>Oh. Was that what Protagonist was confused about?<<

Hey, where was 'smug' on that scale?