“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem
We have a choice. We can place our attention on “what is” or we can dream of what can be. By placing our attention on new possibilities, we animate a completely different future.
Here are the headlines I’m envisioning for today:
New Ebola cases in Africa fall to zero
U.S. Democrats and Republicans hug it out on the Senate floor
The Middle East celebrate 10 years of peaceful coexistence
Snows return to Kilimanjaro
Pam Grout appears on Super Soul Sunday
Tell me in the comments section below: What’s your new headline?
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 the just-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.
“Incredible things happen all the time when you buzz at the right level.” Overheard at Starbucks and shared by Eitan Tom Aitch
I’ve been thinking a lot about Hans Schultz. He is the fictional sergeant to Colonel Wilhelm Klink in the old TV series, Hogan’s Heroes.
Even though Schultz knew about the shenanigans of the Allied POW’s who were running Special Operations from Stalag 13, he was famous for proclaiming to his inept colonel, “I know nothing” in a clipped, German accent.
I repeat that line (complete with the accent) quite often. In fact, it has become an important piece of my spiritual practice.
I have learned that any time I think I’ve figured something out, any time I believe I’ve found the route to this intention or that dream, I promptly proceed to get in my own way.
My understanding is sorely limited. But when “I know nothing,” like Hans Schultz, I leave the gates wide open for blessings to rush in.
Last week, for example, I got an incredible response to my first post on The Daily Love. It’s a popular website run by Mastin Kipp, a young entrepreneur who recently appeared on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as one of the Next Generation thought leaders.
I happened to catch that episode, looked him up and discovered that, lo and behold, he grew up in my hometown. I decided that I wanted to write for The Daily Love and I did everything I could think of to interest Mastin in my “brilliant wisdom.” I even wrote an article about him in the local Lawrence magazine. I mean, c’mon, we talked in person.
Those initial pitches? That initial scheme I came up with for getting on The Daily Love? Futile. Nada. Didn’t work.
However, when I let go of my plan, repeated the Hans Schultz “I know nothing” and forgot all about it (“Set it and forget it” is a new mantra of mine), Madeline Giles, the editor of The Daily Love or the Love Curator, as she’s known, contacted me.
Out of the blue, she wrote to me, said she liked my new book and wondered if I’d be up for contributing to The Daily Love.
So, Hans Schultz, thank you for proving that inspiration and important spiritual practices can come from anywhere.
Pam Grout is the author of 16 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.
“Most people are as happy as they make up their mind to be.”
–Abraham Lincoln
Last week, I was talking with Mastin Kipp. He’s the 31-year-old whiz kid behind the popular website, TheDailyLove (TDL). You might have seen him on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as one of the spiritual leaders for the next generation. Although he now lives in L.A. and hobnobs with the likes of Tony Robbins and Kim Kardashian (she’s the one who helped get the ball rolling on his website, when she tweeted out to her 2 million followers, “You should follow this.”), he is originally from my hometown. His parents still live here, he came home for Thanksgiving right after the big Oprah wing-ding and so I decided to profile him for the local Lawrence Magazine.
My editor, who adores sidebars, said, “Ask him for some tips.” He gave me several, but the one I most resonated to was this: “The one thing we have control over is our thoughts, the meaning we give to events that happen in our lives. We can frame things in whatever light we choose and how we word the questions we ask ourselves is extremely important.”
For example:
“Is something the end….or is it a new beginning?”
“Is this a breakdown…or a breakthrough?”
As he says, “It’s a very powerful thing that we get to decide the meaning we give to things.”
So in honor of Mastin and my own evolving awareness, I’d like to share a couple reframed thoughts that have really blessed my life.
1. I am the Bill Gates of free time and flexibility. I’m a freelance writer so there’s no boss expecting me to clock in. I can travel whenever I want to. I can attend get-togethers in the middle of the day—like my spiritual entrepreneurs group—or lunch with a dear friend as I did yesterday for two and a half hours. Some people would panic without a regular job. I prefer to see it as having an abundance of time and a whole wagonload of opportunities to create new things.
2. I am OTT wealthy with an unlimited supply of creative capital. I have so many ideas I want to write about, so many books and TV series and articles I want to produce. And to my way of thinking, creative capital trumps the other kind of capital because mine is capable of producing the other kind of capital and is lots more fun.
3. I have fun no matter what. There’s no question that, as a travel writer, I get to do a lot of cool things—meet medicine men from the Cook Islands, hang with wealthy people at five-star resorts, eat every meal beside the ocean—but it doesn’t take that for me to have fun. My favorite recent example of this happened in December.
I was scheduled to go to Belize to bring in the “end of the Mayan calendar” at Caracol, a jungle Mayan city still being excavated. The night I was supposed to pack for my 6 a.m. flight, my back went out. I wasn’t able to go….at that time. So I lay in bed that first day in what some might describe as excruciating physical pain. I could barely get up to pee. But I, because of my commitment to fun and joy, actually had a stellar day. I was so happy–really!!! I decided to have fun anyway. I look back at that day as very important to my spiritual growth because I realized this:
Our thoughts are the only thing that separate us from having every single thing we could ever want.
Thank you, Mastin, for the reminder.
Pam Grout is the author of E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.
