happiness – Pam Grout

Today I am brave. Today I am generous

August 19, 2019 52 Comments

“Turn your light on for those with no vision.”—Pharrell Williams

My last blog post about the “news being irrelevant” provoked a couple questions that I’d like to address. As always, I appreciate all your thoughtful comments.

Many years ago, I went to a bullfight in a foreign country that shall not be named (It was not Spain.) I left early because well, it didn’t seem fair. Before the matador even strode out in the ring with his red cape, the poor bull had been stabbed in the neck and endured six barbed sticks thrust into his shoulders.

I’m just like that bull when I consume too much news. I’m at a complete disadvantage because the “news,” which I often call “the olds,” plays on my emotions. It uses fear to grab attention. It’s often misleading, manipulative and shows a very tiny picture of what’s really happening in the world. I don’t need all that cortisol and other toxic chemicals flowing through my brain.

It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on. I just don’t think the news is the best delivery system for finding out.

More than anything, I long to spend my life being brave and generous. My intention is to bring out the light in myself and others. When I practice being grateful even for things like blue skies and singing birds, I’m better able to enact my intentions. It’s much easier being generous when I feel good about myself and about the world.

I feel quite confident in my ability to be an informed voter. I’m extremely aware of certain “realities” that are happening. But because I view them as temporary (there are always a gazillion other possibilities), I do what I can to shine my light.

For example, I donate money to an organization that works with immigrants. I display a yard sign in 3 languages that says, “Whoever you are, wherever you come from, I’m glad you’re my neighbor” and, every week, I take a couple young Mexican girls to get ice cream or to the movies or to paint pottery.

My job, as I see it, is to relentlessly present other data points. Even in my work as a reporter for People magazine, where, yes, I report on tornadoes and kidnappings and whole towns being washed away by floods, I witness the most incredible displays of generosity, the very finest of the human spirit.

No one protested or railed against dial telephones. Yet, for the most part, they disappeared.

Somebody created a better reality. That’s my commitment. What’s yours?

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Set the dial back to zero

August 23, 2018 20 Comments

“People who judge you are just not your people.”—Constance Wu

green bay training camp Just returning home after a few days in Denver (love to all the peeps who came to the playshop at the Halcyon Hotel) and then a quick press trip to Green Bay. I had a blast attending Packers Training Camp, finding a beer called Awesome Sauce and sampling cheese, beer, wine and chocolate. My career as a travel writer is, as I often say, a pretty sweet gig. It was the universe’s solution for my desire to see the world.

Anyway, I’m back home, plunging into a new assignment and getting ready to embark on the new book, the book that you, my friends, helped facilitate. Yes, it’s on A Course in Miracles and, yes, it will be fun, inspiring and life-changing.

Today’s ACIM 235 is a reminder that the Divine’s plan for all of us is perfect happiness. This is such a good lesson for us to feel deep in our bones.

It doesn’t say happiness on the weekends. Or on our birthdays. Or on other momentous occasions. It promises happiness 24/7/365/all the days of your life. It’s radical and it’s real.

To drive home the point, here’s an email I read 5 minutes ago.

“I don’t normally say this to strangers but, I love you! YOU have helped me change my life! I got E2, E3 and Thank and Grow Rich in audibles and have been listening to them over and over ad infinitum, for the last 3 or 4 months. I have been trying to recruit as many of my friends as possible, recommending the books or audibles, I have bought them for friends – I want to help add to the growing collective and give out as many red pills as I possibly can. I began this at the behest of my boss, with E2.

“I am so thankful to him for pointing me in this direction – I am so thankful to you for writing these books! You, Pam Grout, please, take just a minute to sit back, smile and bask in the solace of knowing that you are living your best life and by doing so, helping others to do the same! I have too many examples to thank you for but just off the top of my head, without giving any thought at all really, I mouthed along with you “I can afford anything I want, in fact, I am so prosperous, I never need worry again…” that week, OUT OF THE BLUE, I got a promotion and a substantial raise.

“Another, more important example to me than that, in referencing quantum nonlocality, I went to visit my mother’s grave over the weekend. She passed away last year from complications due to Alzheimers. I had a great conversation with her, told her I missed her but I knew she was in a better place and more importantly, wasn’t suffering, and I could never ask her to give that up and come back here just because I missed her. But I did want to ask one thing – just to let me know that she was ok. IMMEDIATELY after I finished that sentence, it started raining. It was kind of cloudy but didn’t necessarily look like it would rain, there were even patches of blue sky and sun shinning through. I now know I have a direct line to my mom. Pam, you have given me the tools I need to live my absolute best life, I can never repay you for that so in an attempt to show my gratitude, I will endeavor to pay it forward to anyone and everyone with whom I come in contact. Peace and happiness to you, Pam.”

And peace and happiness to all of you.

Signing off from North Lawrence.

Sink into happiness

May 2, 2018 30 Comments

“Magic is becoming the new norm.”— Bentinho M. Assaro

Forest-Bathing-1024x832 It’s open window season where I live which means some of my best teachers wake me up each morning with their chorus of joy.

These teachers (most people call them birds) are out there riffing on the day, blaring songs that will never be sung in just that arrangement again. They’re not reading self-help literature or wondering how to heal their childhood wounds.

Likewise, the sun rose this morning with a brand new palette of colors. It painted a one-of-a-kind vista unique to my GPS coordinate on this big stone hurtling through space. It’s not mad at the president or worrying about nuclear war.

The natural world is my best teacher.

Those cardinals and tree frogs trilling advertisement for mates? The squirrels using my fence as a tightrope? They’re my mentors when it comes to ACIM Lesson 122.

In a nutshell, it says, “clear your mind of all dead thoughts.”

The mother fox parading her kits alongside the road is not obsessing about work or whether or not her butt looks big.

Worry, anxiety, fear, whether or not your butt looks big—all dead thoughts.

Being sealed inside, glued to a smartphone or to a box with 292 channels—dead thoughts.

Forgiveness (which this lesson promises will give us everything we want) is simply letting go of all dead thoughts (and that’s anything that’s not happening right this very now).

Today, I’m going to go outside, listen to the soundtrack of nature, check out the new episode playing every hour in my backyard.

I’m going to follow my mentors in the natural world who neither toil nor sow, neither worry nor fret.

Dead thoughts be gone.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her new book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

Get on the enlightenment fast track

April 10, 2018 32 Comments

“Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book.”— WALT WHITMAN help-i-need-somebody1

A reader emailed me this morning to regretfully admit that, alas, she was unable to faithfully execute the hourly reminders requested in the Course workbook.

I had to chuckle because a) In 20 years of doing the Course, I have never once successfully completed the task myself and b) the only reason we’re asked to do that is to be reminded–our minds are like pinball machines. And we need help.

My favorite Course lesson is “I need do nothing.” I love this one so much because of my great aptitude at proving to myself over and over again that, despite my best intentions, my own efforts are futile. They simply don’t work.

But there is, as the Course tells us, a better way.

The better way is a four-letter word: HELP!!!

In ACIM Lesson 100, I learn the following:

1. God’s will for me is perfect happiness.

2. My joy is essential to the healing of the world.

3. And Super God itself is incomplete without my joy.

So anytime I don’t feel perfect happiness, I have to stop and realize that I made a decision that differs from my Source.

And since that decision was my best effort (again proof of my futile efforts), I just have to offer that magical four-letter plea: HELP!

3 thought-twisters that slow down fun and joy

March 6, 2018 32 Comments

“Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Chronic ecstasy is a learnable skill.” –Rob Brezsny

Merriam-Webster just announced the addition of 850 new words to their dictionary. My favorite, coined by a writer of The Simpsons, is embiggen (to make bigger or more expansive).

That’s what I think A Course in Miracles does. It embiggens my happiness.

In fact, ACIM Lesson 65 (My only function is the one God gave me.) encourages me to be single-minded in my pursuit of joy, to make this my one and only goal.

I know a lot of people can get hung up on the wording, but this lesson is very simple. It’s also very radical.

To believe that happiness, joy and fun is why we are here is a completely foreign concept to most people. As I said, it’s so radical that most people can’t even wrap their heads around it.

Which is why the Course suggests I set aside a time every day to reflect on how important my mission really is.

It also asks me to notice (and then eliminate) all thoughts, cultural paradigms and beliefs that interfere.

Here are 3 biggies that often get in my way:

1. It’s preposterous to believe you can be happy and have fun all the time. This is deeply-engrained cultural paradigm. It’s only true to the extent that I believe it.

2. I don’t really deserve to be happy and have fun. Otherwise, known as guilt, the belief that I’ve done something wrong and deserve to suffer. It often comes with the word “should.”

3. If I work really hard, I might deserve a little happiness and fun. Like on weekends. Or my birthday. Certainly not all the time.

So who’s with me? Who’s willing to take on the 24/7 mission of happiness and joy?

Why I’m the luckiest person on the planet, Episode 124

November 29, 2017 12 Comments

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual”—Henry David Thoreau

Facebook reminded me this morning of a memory from a year ago. It was a photo of my daughter and me riding horses at the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

While that was an epic moment and I’m over-the-moon grateful that I’m invited on so many over-the-top experiences, I’m actually feeling blessed because of all of you and the inspiring stories you send my way.

It’s as if I have my own custom self-help channel right in my inbox.

Yesterday, for example, a wonderful author named David Bugay told me that he and his wife decided to change their story about their neighbors. There’s an experiment in my book, E-Cubed where I encourage people to flip a long-held belief, to look for evidence supporting the opposite reality of whatever story they’ve been telling themselves.

I call it the Simon Cowell Corollary after the world’s most famous “judge,” because when we divide and label and judge everything, when we believe our stories are absolute fact, we lose half our options, half our personal freedom, half our energy.

So David and his wife, who moved to California from Michigan, had invested lots of energy into their story that people weren’t as friendly in their new town as they had been in the Midwest. They actually told themselves for a whopping three years that their neighborhood just wasn’t warm and welcoming. But what if that was just a story, what if that reality wasn’t absolute fact?

To test it, they decided to throw what they called a driveway party. They invited all their neighbors to come hang out in their driveway. Well guess what? Their neighbors turned out to be really cool and just as friendly and just as welcoming as their friends in Michigan.

“The driveway parties have completely changed everything,” David told me. “We have them every few months and we’re now all fast friends. Your books have completely changed our perspective and touched so many lives.”

Here’s another fun story:

“A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to come across your book, “E-Squared”. I loved it so much I started reading your “Thank and Grow Rich” book. I wanted to reach out to you to let you know just how much your books have impacted my life.

I have an upcoming trip to NYC, so I was hoping to get tickets to see one of my favorite talk shows, “The Chew.”

Well, after a few days of checking for tickets, a producer from “The Chew” emailed me asking if they could showcase one of my own recipes on their show. (I’m a food blogger.) I said “OF COURSE!!” A couple of weeks ago it aired on their show with my photo and everything! I emailed the producer to thank him for this amazing opportunity and also to tell him that I’d be visiting NYC this month. He replied back immediately and told me to let him know when I’m there so that they could get me into a taping. How miraculous is this?? I just wanted a ticket to the show, and I got even more!
angel
Last story today is from Japan. How cool is it that my books are also bestsellers in Japan. A reader asked for a sign (one of the experiments in E-Squared) and saw this while sitting in the park. Doesn’t get much clearer than that?

I know we tend to believe the secret to happiness is doing fun and enjoyable things. But the real secret to happiness is having fun and enjoyable thoughts.

Have a great hump day, my oh-so-inspiring friends!

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side.

The Universe and Me: a love story

September 19, 2016 161 Comments

“Accept but the joyous as truth.”–A Course in Miracles

I normally share miracles from readers here on the blog. And while this story involves readers, it concerns three miracles that happened to me.

It is only my conceit that believes you might have noticed, but I have been pretty quiet on social media over the past week. I’ve been hiding, so to speak, with my tail between my legs.

Here’s what threw me off my game:

I got an email from my publisher. They were concerned about “my brand.” I don’t know that I put too much weight in matters like “my brand.” I just want to give and love as much as I humanly can. The reason for their concern, it seems, is that some of the Amazon reviews for my new book have been less than stellar.

So I did what any creator knows not to do. I read the reviews. Never mind that 74 percent of them were five stars. But there were also some “bloody awful” reviews, to quote one of the Amazon headlines.

And, even though my spiritual practice is “In my defenseless my safety lies,” I began defending myself in my mind. How dare these reviewers misunderstand me? Against self-help? Against meditating? Against sports car? Anybody who knows me knows that not only am I a self-help junkie (I practically have track marks), I meditate regularly and I am committed to not being AGAINST anything.

Except for that one tiny habit of occasionally being AGAINST myself. I let my ego have a party in my mind. It brought in all the big decorations—shame, fear, depression. Heck, it suggested, maybe I should never write again. Or even leave the house.

But then the universe, who loves me so darned much, decided to send a life boat. Three life boats in one day. In the form of very clear signs. And to me, true miracles.

First, I got an email from a speaker who told me that, using the principles of Thank and Grow Rich (moving towards what makes you come alive, turning your life over to the big mystery, relaxing and having more fun) he’d started a new business and manifested $250,000 in income. Without, as he says, selling or trying.

Then, I learn that a reader in Argentina (hi, sweet Nelly) and a reader in Germany who met through Facebook started a possibility posse. They’re texting each other their three blessings each morning. It’s step two of the 30-day experiment in the new book. How cool is that!! International posses. Affirming my belief that, together, WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.

And lastly, I open my mail (my snail mail) and a beautiful woman named Kris sent me a several THOUSAND dollar tithe because my book, the “bloody awful one,” inspired her to follow her dream.

I literally jumped up and down and pumped my fist to the heavens. I kinda think the universe might have even high-fived me back.

So thank you, universe, for these very clear signs that indeed I am on the right path. And for affirming that you love me and that all I need to do is follow my joy, offer my gifts unashamedly and let you take care of the details.

Thank you, my dear friends (those who are still reading) for being such a great blessing to me. I love you all so, so very much.

P.S. The picture on this post was made by Beverley Densham, who makes Happy Kids Cards. She sent it to me (yet another sweet gift) through twitter. Here’s her website:

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

Becoming the Warren Buffet of Happiness

August 24, 2016 19 Comments

“I made the decision to never have another bad day in my life. I dove into a endless sea of gratitude from which I’ve never emerged.”–Patch Adams goldencat_motion

Somebody asked me about the waving cat on the cover of the new book. Maneki-neko, as the ubiquitous cat is known in Japan, is a lucky charm that waves in good fortune. I have one in the window above the rock that a Cook Islands medicine man gave me a few years ago, about the time E-Squared came out. He told me if I put it in the north corner of my living room, I would become a millionaire. Here’s the piece I wrote about this magical place.

Although the title of the new book is Thank and Grow Rich, it’s not really about financial capital. It’s about amassing five far more important kinds of capital: adventure capital, spiritual capital, alchemic capital, creative capital and social capital.

That being said, I got an email this morning from a woman in Montreal who told me she shared my book, E-Squared, with her hairdresser and “everybody else.”

Her hairdresser just called to thank her for the reading suggestion because, after 25 years of buying lottery tickets, she and her staff, after doing the Dude Abides experiment, won a million dollar lottery.

So you never know.

Here are a couple other fun stories that recently came my way:

“Since the story I sent you below, amazing miracles keep happening to me. I won a Staycation at the Epic Resort in Miami a few weeks after the concert tickets. Then at a conference, I won an American Express $100.00 gift card. This month of July has been great too. During the 4th of July weekend, I wrote in the sand on the beach, LOVE, HEALTH AND WEALTH and threw the shell I wrote with into the ocean proclaiming it! Two days later, I was walking out of the ocean after my swim and a $50.00 bill floated right in front of me! I was so happy! This week, I was in a work meeting and received a call out of the blue that I won Dave Matthews tickets for this Friday night. God is great!!! Now I am on the lookout for the millions just waiting for me to connect to its higher vibration!

(And here’s the story she sent me below)

“I just love you and all you are doing for positive changes to our world. I am so excited that I have to share this manifestation story. I have been on this thoughts become things for a few years and have been teaching my daughter Chloe the principals and practices of this amazing gift all of us have been blessed with. We have had some pretty amazing things happen to us since we have been focusing our thoughts, words and action on good things. Well this week Chloe and 4 friends won a Penthouse Studio VIP Party with pop star Austin Mahone and she found out that the radio station was also giving away concert tickets for another pop star this weekend. I told her since she is riding high on this happy gratitude energy vibration that she has a great chance to win those tickets. She started make-believing that she won those tickets since that is the fastest way to believing… and believing is the fastest way to receiving! WELL CHLOE JUST WON CONCERT TICKETS FOR ARIANA GRANDE concert in Ft Lauderdale for Sat night!!! This happened so amazingly fast since we just started make believing and praying a few days ago! Thank you so much oh gracious God! We certainly have been given the power and tools to change our energy field and live in the world of the wondrous where there is heaven on earth! Have a great weekend Pam, I know I will!”

Story #2:

“I have read your book E2 twice now and I have to say I’ve manifested some pretty incredible things – the first one being a Shark Dive in the Neptune Islands (SA, Australia) which I initially could not afford, but asked for as my unexpected gift from the FP. The second thing I focused on manifesting was a pay rise!! It materialized in 30 hours. Thank you FP!

I’ve done most of the experiments and they’ve blown my mind. Ecstatic to say I’m now plugged into the FP like my toaster is to the electric panel on my wall. Thank you, thank you, thank you for equipping me with these tools and for opening my eyes and mind.”

Here’s to all of us being equipped to open our eyes and minds.

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

The 5 kinds of capital that out-trump financial capital

March 30, 2016 84 Comments

“The spiritual lens—even just the nightly gratitude list–is starting to rewrite the story of my life. I feel like I have been snatched out of the fire, salvaged, saved.”—Mary Karr thank and grow

You might have seen my post on Facebook, where I gushed in glee about my new book. Hay House, my publisher, moved up the pub date (that’s publication date, not a day where I lift pints of hearty ale) from October to August.

It’s now available for pre-order so I posted the cover and wrote two sentences about my excitement. That tiny mention sold enough books on Amazon to move it to #1 in New Releases in New Thought. At least for a day. I was blown away.

That being said, I want you to know that I don’t view this blog as an advertisement or a marketing tool. In fact, yesterday, I paid to have all ads taken off my site. I figured it was the least I could do for those of you who so generously take the time to read my posts.

I write them out of sheer joy. I write from my heart and I view them as a gift to anyone who cares to read them. I’m not out to monetize this website.

Which is why I don’t use my blog to promote what’s known as affiliate programs. You know–those posts that have the same spiel, the same wording and everything, from five different people. While there’s a certain kind of mad genius in promoting someone else’s program or product in exchange for a percentage of sales, I choose to turn down such invitations because I don’t view you as “a list.” You are my compadres in spiritual mischief, my friends, my sounding board. If I write about something, it’s because I’m genuinely excited about it.

Financial capital, the goal of affiliate marketing, has glaring limitations. It’s fine, but it’s not why we’re here. The riches I talk about in my new book, Thank and Grow Rich, are not the kind you find in a bank.

One of the chapters, in fact, is called Becoming the Warren Buffet of Happiness. The book talks about amassing a different kind of capital. Five different kinds: spiritual capital, social capital, creative capital, adventure capital and alchemic capital.

We acquire these riches by getting on a frequency of joy and gratitude. By taking off the blinders that block the presence and the radiance and the unforced generosity of the universe.

My service is to this presence. And to you, my dear friends, who have put a little bit of trust in me. For that, I say thank you, thank you, thank you.

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and its equally-scintillating sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment

Why I believe in being unconstitutionally happy

February 5, 2016 15 Comments

“People and circumstances don’t make me happy. I can get there all by myself.”—Carla from my gratitude posse

life is too important to take seriously

When texting her three blessings a couple days ago, Carla wrote that she was grateful for “unconstitutional happiness.” She quickly amended it, explained that autocorrect changed what was supposed to be “unconditional happiness” to “unconstitutional happiness.”

Several of us texted back, “but we like unconstitutional happiness.”

Here’s why. The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, borrowing from the famous line in the Declaration of Independence, guarantees all of us the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Unconstitutional is my preference because pursuing happiness doesn’t work. It puts us in the position of being constant seekers. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of seeking, tired of waiting for that thing I’m supposed to find someday. Happiness isn’t far away at the top of some mountain. It is always right here, in the here and now. This moment.

We don’t need another book, another seminar, another practice. We got this. It’s etched into our DNA. The only problem, ever, is our misperception. What if we let go of all our illusions, our beliefs that there’s something we have to do? What if we just stopped and looked around and realized, “Wow! What a cool world I live in.”

I’ve posted this before (it’s from Matt Harding who I interviewed for one of my National Geographic books), but it’s such a great celebration that it bears periodic repeating.

Have the best weekend of your lives, my friends.