Your Year of Miracles

Category: Energy

  • You Are Enough

    You Are Enough

    Today’s Miracle Moment is about how you are enough…

    So many of us struggle with believing that we are enough. We question if we’re good enough to go for our big goals, lovable enough to have the relationships we want, or capable enough to take a big leap of faith. In practically any area of life, we question our enoughness. Why is that? 

    For one thing, our culture is constantly pushing the idea that we’re not enough. We receive messages from advertising, entertainment, and even social media that leave us feeling we need to look different, dress different, or be different. Or if we purchase the latest fancy phone or new car, that we’ll be enough then.

    If you’re a woman, chances are that you struggle with this even more than men. A study at Cornell University showed that men overestimate their abilities and performance, while women underestimate both. Meanwhile, in the study, their actual abilities and performance didn’t differ.

    Women also struggle more frequently with feeling like an imposter. Another report showed that men apply for a job or promotion when they meet only 60% of the qualifications. However, women apply only if they meet 100% of them. 

    If we don’t actually believe we’re enough, we can fall into a very risky trap called The Perfectionist Trap. This usually leads to behaviors like being hypercritical of ourselves and others and beating ourselves up. This can leave us feeling completely stressed and overwhelmed.

    Here’s the truth: 

    You are MORE than enough. In fact, it’s been said that the probability of your being born is about one in 400 trillion. 

    Your existence is a complete miracle by mathematical measures. 

    When you start feeling like you aren’t enough, try the following visualization and breathing practice: 

    1. Imagine that there’s a channel running through you (because there is), and a funnel coming out the top of your head (because there is). That funnel connects with the entire universe!
    2. Feel a connection between the planetary circulation that’s constantly influencing the cells in your body and the star dust between the constellations out beyond our own planet system. Know that billions of bits of information are bombarding you every millisecond in the form of consciousness that is here for your interpretation. When you come into your body and open up all of this information, you’ll start to be able to operate as the filtering system that you’re designed to be.
    3. Take a big belly breath, inhale into the upper lobes of your lungs, inhale bigger than your body, and exhale in every direction. Then do it again. Inhale into your belly, inhale up into your chest, inhale bigger than your body, and exhale in every direction. 

    As you repeatedly take these deep breaths, you’re activating these very energies of higher consciousness.

    When you activate these energies in your body, you’ll find yourself naturally feeling that you are truly enough. You’ll find yourself leaning in and asking for what you need, rather than waiting for someone else to fulfill your dream for you. You’ll express what you think, rather than hesitating. You’ll have more courage to take the risk, rather than holding back. 

    There’s nothing that you are not, and you’re here to express and play in the beautiful delight of your wholeness.

    Let’s celebrate that instead of ever questioning again if we’re enough!

    “Treat yourself as if you already are enough. Walk as if you are enough. Eat as if you are enough. See, look, listen as if you are enough. Because it’s true.” – Geneen Roth

    Please leave us a comment sharing something you love and appreciate about your body.

  • How to Be Resilient in Uncertain Times

    How to Be Resilient in Uncertain Times

    Today’s Miracle Moment is about how to be resilient in uncertain times…

    We’re living in some of the most uncertain times in our lifetime. We can look around the world and see how people are experiencing extreme difficulties, traumatic events and adversities. This is a time where it’s incredibly important to find your inner resilience. 

    Nature is an incredible example to us of how to be resilient. Nature has the ability to bounce back constantly and to create new life. We can see this in all of the seasons, in weather patterns, and in the cycle of life. 

    One great example of resilience in nature is the emperor penguins. You might have seen the documentary about them years ago, March of the Penguins. 

    Year after year, adult emperor penguins walk over 60 miles in the icy, cold conditions of the arctic to breed. The female lays one egg and rolls it towards the male penguin, who then has the job of keeping the egg warm for the next four months until the egg hatches. The female penguins then leave the colony, and go out searching for food, and the males fast for four months as they keep the egg warm. By the time the female returns, the male has lost nearly half their body mass.

    Between the 60-mile trek in the drastic conditions of the Arctic and the four months of fasting, emperor penguins are facing extreme conditions, year after year, to keep their species going! 

    Even though it requires so much resilience for them to do so, the emperor penguins continue to make this trek. Why? Because their true nature calls them to do so. 

    Maybe we don’t have to lose half of our body weight or walk 60 miles in the Arctic to follow our true path, but we do have to face challenges and cultural pressures. We have to find a deeper reservoir of resilience within ourselves to keep moving toward our true path and our goals.

    If we can find a sense of passion and purpose underneath our goals, we can tap into reservoirs of resilience. 

    With the male penguin, breeding is so important to the perpetuation of the species. What if, like the male penguin, there was a feeling inside of you that was so important to nurture and cultivate in the same way?  

    This could be a feeling of an open heart, joy, adventure, or curiosity. As long as you keep that feeling alive and nurture it like the penguin nurtures the egg, then everything that comes your way will be worth it.

    Through connecting with the feeling state that’s most important to you to cultivate, you can find resilience and a strengthened ability to keep showing up to life. 

    You can also remember that there are infinite possibilities in each moment. If one door closes, there are an infinite number of options and possibilities available in this now. Continue to build your inner resilience that isn’t dependent on outside circumstances, and you will be able to create new possibilities and opportunities in your life.

    “Like tiny seeds with potent power to push through tough ground and become mighty trees, we hold innate reserves of unimaginable strength. We are resilient.” – Catherine DeVrye

    Please leave us a comment and let us know how you’re creating your inner resilience.

  • Love Your Body Now, Not Later

    Love Your Body Now, Not Later

    Today’s Miracle Moment is about loving your body now, not later…

    Your body is truly a miracle! Do you feel that? 

    Or do you find yourself judging your body and thinking it needs to change before you love it? 

    There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel healthy and energized. In fact, that’s a wonderful thing! But because of the messaging in our culture, we can spend our whole lives thinking that our bodies need to change. We believe our bodies aren’t good enough as they are, or that one part is too big or another is too small. 

    As a result, we can miss out on many of the incredible gifts that our bodies offer us. 

    Our subtle bodies have incredible energy centers that have the power to calm our minds in a way that our minds can’t do alone. 

    These energy centers filter all of the impulses that are coming from the universe to you. Dreams and desires can rise up through your heart, through your manifesting ability, and into your conscious awareness. They allow us to elevate our consciousness and connect with our true spiritual nature. 

    Here’s a practice to do when you find yourself in a state of judgment about your body:

    • Drop down from your head and start taking deep breaths in your belly.
    • Squeeze your shoulder blades together and drop them down. This will help you to anchor yourself right in the center of your body around your heart space. This also stabilizes the mind and allows it to pay attention to what’s happening inside the body.
    • Take deep, slow belly breaths low in the abdomen below the navel.
    • Slowly count to 10 and inhale.
    • Then count to 12 or 14 and exhale even more slowly.

    This breathing process allows for so much transformation to happen. Your nervous system can start to anchor itself and pay attention to what’s happening in the body. When our awareness is on what’s happening in the body, we can stay out of our heads, the place where judgments originate.  

    We then become present with life instead of making judgements about how things could be better or different, or should be better or different than they actually are. 

    You are beautiful and perfect as you are. 

    Simply by getting back into the body, you can start to experience the amazingness of what your body truly is.

    “And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’”– Nayyirah Waheed

    Please leave us a comment sharing something you love and appreciate about your body.

  • Let It Be Easy

    Let It Be Easy

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About How to Let It Be Easy…

    Do you ever feel like life is full of struggle, and you wonder if it’s possible for life to just be easy? In today’s Miracle Moment we learn about the art of letting it be easy from a very special creature that I (Marci) came across on my recent trip to Maui, Hawaii… the sea turtle!

    On Maui, you’ll often see the sea turtles’ heads bobbing in the water as they swim across the ocean. You can also find the sea turtles on the shore before sunset, when they come to rest after swimming all day long. And if you’re lucky enough, you might even see them swimming right next to you in the water, which I did a few times one day. The next day, someone gave me a gift of a little 3D magnet with a sea turtle on it. 

    Knowing that every animal carries a specific medicine and message for us, I was delighted to find out the special medicine of the sea turtle: 

    Turtle Medicine says: “Let it be easy. Struggle is not required.”

    Is there a particular area where you seem to encounter struggle again and again–perhaps in your relationships, finances, living situation, or job? Most of us have developed certain specific patterns of struggle in our bodies and minds.

    To shift this pattern of struggle, here’s a simple practice you can experiment with:

    • When you’re in the middle of a situation that feels like a struggle, practice releasing the muscle tension that you’re experiencing in that moment.
    • Breathe up and down your body and imagine that you’re opening your chest, opening your belly, and opening your solar plexus.
    • Then take a big belly breath and when you exhale, drop the breath straight down into the earth, as if there were a channel of energy that’s connecting you to the Earth. 

    This breathing exercise is powerful because it connects you to the Earth’s frequencies. The Earth’s energies are in “ease” rather than “struggle.” That’s what we want more of in our lives. 

    We can also look at how the sea turtles model “letting it be easy.” 

    Turtles go slow. They aren’t in a rush. Like the turtles, we can trust that no matter what, we’ll get where we need to be in perfect timing. 

    Turtles go with the flow. The ocean current is supporting them so they don’t have to work as hard. 

    We can go with the flow by listening to ourselves and honoring our intuition, which is our divine compass that can guide us and keep us in the flow of life. 

    And, turtles are great at following their internal rhythms. They swim during the day, and then when they need to, they rest on the shore. So if you need permission to rest and follow your internal rhythm, look to the turtles.

     “Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.” – Mark Black

    Please leave a comment and let us know which of these practices you’ll experiment with to help you “let it be easy.” We look forward to hearing from you!

  • Opening Up to Signs from the Universe

    Opening Up to Signs from the Universe

    Today’s Miracle Moment is About Opening Up to Signs from the Universe…

    Have you ever seen certain numbers appearing over and over again? Maybe when you look at the clock, it always happens to be 1:11 or 3:33 or 12:34. Or when you’re driving, you notice a license plate in front of you with the same numbers that keep showing up.

    There’s a pattern and tapestry in the universe that we’re each a part of. When we’re living in alignment with the laws of nature, signs start showing up in our lives in ways that can seem miraculous. 

    Noticing signs helps us affirm that we’re in the flow of synchronicity in our lives and this is part of living in the Miracle Zone. 

    Here’s an example from Marci about seeing signs: 

    “Having co-authored the Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul books, I’ve read thousands of stories about signs that people receive from loved ones who have passed on, so I knew it was possible. So about a week after my beloved father passed away at age 91, I said to my husband, ‘I’d really love to get a sign from my dad that all is well.’ 

    As we were sleeping that night, an alarm went off in the house. We looked at the clock and it was 3:33 am. Now, the number 333 has always been my husband’s and my special number (we often look at the clock and it’s 3:33), so already, we knew something was up.

    We searched throughout the house to shut off the alarm. We went into every room to check the clocks and it wasn’t the clocks. We checked and it wasn’t a fire alarm either, and we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from!

    Finally, we ended up at the table near the front door where we’d put my Dad’s picture and a vase full of beautiful flowers. I looked at my Dad’s picture and I said, ‘Dad, is that a sign?’ At that moment, the alarm stopped. It was bizarre. 

    The next morning, the contractors who were working on my house came. We asked them how this alarm went off, and they said that there was no possible way for it to go off — it wasn’t hooked up to anything.

    Incredible, right? We believe it was my Dad answering my request to send us a sign.”

    The more we open our hearts to receiving signs, the more that signs will regularly happen in our lives.

    Opening our hearts creates a gateway into the realm of life where signs show up. This open-heartedness can come through heartbreak, as Marci experienced when her Dad passed away. It can also happen through conscious choice. You can simply ask the Universe to send you a sign. 

    As we live with an open heart, signs can constantly flow into our lives and we can recognize that we’re in the flow and a part of the oneness of the Universe.

    Whenever you experience signs and synchronicities, open your heart and recognize that “I’m in the flow.”

    In those moments, pay attention to the sensations happening in your body. As you affirm your experience of being in the flow and recognize the sensations you feel that come with it, you reinforce the ability to be in alignment with signs on a regular basis.

    You’re affirming that you’re tapped into the natural and cosmic law. You’re recognizing your oneness with the universe rather than separation. And this allows even more synchronicities and miracles to occur.

    “When you ask for signs from the Universe, the Universe speaks back.” ― Laura Lynne Jackson

    We’d love to hear about your experiences with noticing signs. Leave a comment below to share with us!

  • The True Meaning of Abundance

    The True Meaning of Abundance

    There’s a lot of confusion about how to manifest abundance. You’ve probably heard tips like think positively, visualize abundance, or recite daily affirmations. Maybe you’ve tried some of these techniques for a while, but you didn’t see any big changes.  

    You might start to wonder, “What am I doing wrong? Is it really possible to attract abundance into my life?”

    The Universe wants to shower its infinite abundance on us. If that’s not what we’re experiencing, it’s because there is a conscious or unconscious block within. 

    And one block might be that we’re misunderstanding what abundance truly is. 

    People often look at abundance as something outside of them that they have to go out and get.  With this thinking, you’re inherently coming from a place of lack. All of your energy is focused on attracting what’s “out there,” like getting a new job or coming into a windfall. 

    The truth is that abundance is just energy and you are made of all the energy of the universe. 

    Abundance doesn’t come from outside of you–it comes from inside of you!

    Thousands of years ago, masters of consciousness said that one of man’s biggest downfalls was getting involved in the material world. This idea has been confused over the ages, leading people to believe that money was sinful. What they really meant was that humanity gets too involved in focusing on the outer already manifested world. 

    We’re on this planet to master our innate abilities as creators. 

    So how can you shift from seeking abundance in the outside world to creating abundance from within? 

    The vibrational frequency of abundance is a very high frequency. If we’ve been operating from a place of struggle and lack, we aren’t vibrating at the same frequency of abundant money flowing through our lives. Because our bodies are built to maintain homeostasis and to resist change, our bodies stay safe by staying in old familiar feelings. 

    By familiarizing your system with the vibrational frequency of abundance, love, joy, and satisfaction, you build new vibrational familiarity in your cells. Then, those patterns can become sustainable.

    Here’s a practice to familiarize your system to the vibrational frequency of abundance: 

    Notice any time that you have a feeling of joyfulness, love, and gratitude. Pay attention to what those moments feel like in your body and practice feeling them for no reason at all.

    Take a deep breath and breathe in the feeling of “That’s for me.” 

    The more and more that you practice feelings of abundance and breathe into those feelings, the more that you are building the circuits to maintain that frequency. 

    Remember, you have the power of the universe within you, waiting to shower its abundance on you.

    “As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance—an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love—then external lack is bound to be temporary.”  — Marianne Williamson

    Please leave a comment and share your experience practicing experiencing the feelings of joyfulness, gratitude and abundance! 

  • How to Help the World Through Getting in the Miracle Zone

    How to Help the World Through Getting in the Miracle Zone

    Today’s Miracle Moment is about how getting in the Miracle Zone is the best thing you can do for the world…

    During these incredibly unpredictable times, we’ve all experienced the effects of what’s going on in the world. As someone who cares deeply about humanity and wants to make a positive impact on the planet, you might be asking yourself, “What can I do to help the world?” 

    Here at Your Year of Miracles, we believe that the best thing you can do for the world is to first get into the Miracle Zone yourself.  

    Ultimately, we can only take care of others through helping ourselves first. Here’s a Buddhist teaching story that illustrates that. 

    There once were two acrobats. One acrobat was the teacher, a poor widower named Akil, and the other was the student, a young girl by the name of Meda. They performed every day on the streets in order to earn enough to eat.

    Their act consisted of Akil balancing a tall bamboo pole on his head while Meda climbed slowly to the top. Once at the top, she balanced there while Akil walked down the street. They both had to maintain complete focus and balance in order to prevent any injury from occurring and to complete the performance. 

    One day, Akil said to the young girl: “Listen, Meda, I will watch you and you watch me, so that we can help each other maintain concentration and balance and prevent an accident. Then, we’ll surely earn enough to eat.”

    But the wise little girl answered, “Dear master, I think it would be better for each of us to watch ourselves. To look after oneself means to look after both of us. That way, I’m sure we’ll avoid any accidents and earn enough to eat.” Sure enough, the little girl was correct, and that’s how they successfully did their act together.

    In this example, the young girl puts her focus on herself first, because she knew that it was up to her to maintain the concentration needed to successfully do their act. It was up to the teacher to maintain his own concentration as well. 

    This is true in our lives. Sometimes we get overly focused on how we can help everyone else around us, and our energy ends up being dispersed, distracted and diluted outside of ourselves. 

    By taking care of ourselves first, we can get grounded, centered, and available to contribute to the greater good.

    Scientific experiments are showing us that we can have an effect on our own DNA. Even more amazingly, experiments are also showing that our own DNA can affect the people around us, too. 

    The people and the environment around us respond to the vibrational frequency that we are emitting energetically–and that means our positive vibration positively impacts the world around us.  

    By dropping into ourselves and taking great care of our body, minds, and souls, we actually set up the vibrational environment that supports other people to do the same thing for themselves. And so, the more we get into the Miracle Zone, the more we support the whole world to do the same!

    We can support one another by responsibly being stewards of our own vibrational power to impact the world through the way we care for ourselves. 

    As you live your life more and more in the Miracle Zone, you’re creating an incredible impact on the people around you and around the world. 

    This week, we ask you to explore what you can do to take care of yourself so you can also be of best service to the world.

    “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Howard Thurman

    In the comments below, please share your experiences of positively impacting the environment around you by getting more and more in the Miracle Zone. 

  • Your Hidden Superpower for Manifesting Miracles

    Your Hidden Superpower for Manifesting Miracles

    Did you know that you have a hidden superpower for manifesting miracles?

    This is a superpower you use every single day, and in fact… every single moment.

    Your superpower is your attention!

    What we put our attention on is what grows stronger in our life. 

    Energy goes where our attention flows. 

    The challenge is, we might habitually put our attention and focus on what’s going wrong in our lives. This is due to how our brains are wired–to look for the problem!

    When our ancestors had to be on the constant lookout for threat, this part of our brains saved our lives. In our modern world, that part of our brains continues to be on the constant search for potential threats and problems. This instinct can still save our lives in times of danger, so it’s still an important part of our biology. However…  

    As we go for our goals in our everyday lives, we must consciously retrain our minds to focus on expecting positive outcomes rather than negative outcomes. 

    Otherwise, we’ll continue to attract stressful situations, as we’re a match for that vibration.

    One great way to retrain your mind is to put your attention on the miracles that are already showing up in your life. For example, in our Your Year of Miracles program, we give our participants a Miracles Journal at the start of the year so they can track their miracles all year long. This powerful practice retrains the mind to look for the positive and attract even more miracles their way.

    You can also give your loving attention to the miracles you want to manifest. Here are four ways to do that:

    1. Thoughts: Put your thoughts on what you want to manifest, not on what you don’t want to manifest. Worry is actively imagining what you don’t want to manifest. Be careful of what you feed your mind and be aware of how much negativity you are letting in. Be an optimist—someone who understands that there can be issues, but knows they’ll find solutions.
    2. Words: Words are powerful—choose them carefully! “I am” is one of the most powerful phrases in the English language. Speak of what you want to create rather than what you don’t want.
    3. Feelings: The success that we want lives in an energetic vibration, and our job is to align ourselves with that energetic vibration. We connect to that vibration through our feelings. A few ways to put ourselves into the feeling state of what we’re wanting to manifest are:

      Acting as if: Act as though your intention has already manifested–this helps you to become an energetic match to what you want to attract.

      Gratitude: As you feel grateful for each step along the way, you move into the energy of greater and greater success. Be grateful in advance for what you are intending, as though it’s already happened.

      Visualization: Imagining, seeing, and feeling your outcome anchors the energy of it within you. You can use visualizations or vision boards to help you with this process. 

    4. Action: We need to take persistent action to see our goals come into fruition. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, are the creators of The Chicken Soup for the Soul series and Marci’s co-authors. Jack and Mark were turned down by 143 publishers, but kept going because they knew this book had to be out there. Because of they persisted and didn’t give up, they made it to the 144th publisher, and that’s who took a chance to publish the book. The rest is history.

    Remember, just like any great superhero movie, your superpower can be used for good–or for evil. By using your hidden superpower for good, and focusing your thoughts, words, feelings, and actions on the miracles you want to manifest, you’ll be well on your way to seeing them (or something even better) manifest in your life .

    “Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.” — Mahatma Gandhi

    Let us know in the comments below which of the four ways you’ll practice using your superpower for manifesting miracles today! 

  • How Empaths Can Thrive In the Miracle Zone

    How Empaths Can Thrive In the Miracle Zone

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About How Empaths Can Thrive Inside the Miracle Zone…

    Did you know that being empathic is a superpower? “Empath” is derived from the Greek word “em,” meaning “in” and “patheos” meaning “feeling.” Being an empath means that you’re able to “feel into” so much of life–even into what other people are experiencing. 

    However, it sometimes doesn’t feel like a superpower. When you can easily pick up on the energies of other people and the external environment around you, it can be overwhelming and draining. Being so tuned into the outside world can often take us away from our internal sense of peace and wellbeing. This can make all of the events happening in our world today even more intense, because you’re feeling the effects of them so deeply. 

    If you can relate to being an empath or highly sensitive person, we want you to know that you’re not alone. We’re right there with you, and we have so many empaths in Your Year of Miracles community.

    To thrive in the Miracle Zone as an empath or highly sensitive person, first embrace your gifts.

    Your gifts include creativity, feeling connected to nature, and the capacity to love very deeply. You have the ability to sense and feel what’s going on in your life and be guided by your intuition. Empaths are often working on the frontlines of helping professions and want to make the world a better place–and this is an amazing gift for the world! 

    There are truly beautiful possibilities that are available to you through your empathic gifts. So how can you support yourself so that you aren’t consumed by the challenges of feeling everything? 

    It’s important to understand that our bodies are built for sensing and perceiving. In fact, our nervous systems are 100 to 10,000 times more sensory than they are motor. The problem is, if we live in our heads and we don’t come down into our bodies, that sensory input is too overwhelming. 

    To come into our bodies, we can go back to the breath.

    Here’s an exercise to support you as an empath to thrive inside the Miracle Zone: 

    1. The moment that you start to feel oversensitive, overwhelmed, or overstimulated, take a deep breath into your belly and exhale into the earth. Drop your breath through the tip of your spine and let it land two feet below you.
    2. Then, take another deep breath into your belly and exhale into the earth.
    3. Practice dropping and anchoring into the earth and doing “mula bandha,” which is contracting the muscles in your pelvic bowl and squeezing them as if you were going to the bathroom and you had to stop that stream. Keep them squeezed, breathe into your belly, and exhale down into the earth.
    4. Then inhale up from the earth into your belly and exhale right back down into the earth again.
    5. As you do this, bring your focus of attention onto yourself, rather than on the external environment. This is called “coming off of object and onto subject.”
    6. Next, you can experiment a little. Put your attention on something somewhere else in the room and see how your energy rushes over there to it. You can then call your energy back to you. Imagine breathing in all of those energies and exhaling them into the earth. 

    By grounding your energy through this breathing practice, you can overcome your overwhelm.

    As you practice this, you will feel like an entirely different person in the face of whatever is going on. 

    The beauty of this practice is that as you stabilize yourself, you can then have a stabilizing presence for those around you too. This will help you to stay in your own energetic space while still being open to what’s going on in the world from a place of groundedness and centeredness. 

    Most importantly, rather than being hindered by your empathic sensitive tendencies, your life experience will be enhanced by them. 

    “Everything that human beings feel, we feel. We can become extremely wise and sensitive to all of humanity and the whole universe simply by knowing ourselves, just as we are.” ~Pema Chodron

    Please leave a comment and let us know about your gifts as an empath or highly sensitive person. What are you grateful for? We look forward to hearing from you!

  • How to Soften Anxiety and Reduce Stress

    How to Soften Anxiety and Reduce Stress

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About How to Soften Anxiety and Reduce Stress…

    Many people are experiencing fear and anxiety about all the events happening in our world these days. So we’re going to share a method to soften anxiety and reduce stress so that you can live more fully and constantly in the Miracle Zone–the place of synchronicities and flow, where you’re creating the conditions of your life for the miraculous to occur. 

    In the midst of whatever is happening in the world, it’s important to stay grounded in the Miracle Zone and keep your energy strong and clear. Living in the Miracle Zone doesn’t mean that you’re not going to worry, or that there are never any worries in the world. It means that instead, you’re going to choose wellbeing, and choose to thrive and grow even in the midst of uncertainty. 

    We do this by staying in the present moment. Worry transports us into the future. Fear and worry are ways of consciously imagining something in the future that you don’t want to happen. So that’s not where we want to spend our time!

    The current reality is this present moment. If you can embrace appreciation and gratitude in the present moment, this will always help you to let go and release fears about the future. 

    Staying in the present moment doesn’t mean that you’re denying or ignoring any kind of feelings about the future, including anxiousness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It means that you’re coming present to what it is that you’re feeling. When you’re present to what’s real for you, you develop a sense of clarity, certainty, and groundedness that wasn’t there just a moment before. 

    And in that presence, you’ll find that there’s a sense of wellbeing that exists underneath what your mind is saying. It exists underneath all of the stories it’s writing and all of the bombardment that we’re getting from the outer world, especially during these times. All of it can fade away and you can recognize a version of who you are that is actually okay. 

    Once we acknowledge any feeling that we’re feeling, it starts to dissolve inside of this present moment. So we’re trading worrying about the future for this wonderful peace of mind that is found in this present moment now. 

    Here’s a practice for softening anxiety, reducing stress, and living more in the present moment: 

    Gently close your eyes, and take a breath into your belly and exhale. Take a deep breath in again and exhale. Bring all of your attention into your deep core, where your belly button is and just behind it and below it–right in there. And let go of the outer layers of your skin. The outer surface of your energy field–just let it soften–let it drop into the center of your brain, into your heart, and into this place deep in your core in your belly area and just be right there.

    There’s nothing else to think about or to do, but to just focus there. Notice that there’s a calmness that comes upon you. And if it does not feel calm yet, drop in a little deeper with your focused attention. Breathe a little bit so that you can feel where you’re living from, down in the belly. Drop all of your attention to your belly and relax in the belly. Then breathe, inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling, and notice that there’s a stillness in here.

    You can open your eyes slowly, but stay focused in this deep belly space. Stay present while keeping your eyes open. There’s the same sensation on the inside, but now you’re able to be present on the outside, keeping one part of your attention in this inner still presence. With another part of your attention, look around the room with the stillness and presence of being. You can engage in the outer world and be aware of what’s happening in this now moment while not leaving your awareness on the inside.  

    There’s a miraculous power in being present right here in this very moment. Because we’ve been habituated, it’s so easy to get anxious about the future and the things we can’t control. And it’s so vital to stay present for our own health and wellbeing. 

    We invite you to do this practice a few times over the next few weeks and see how different you feel in your life.

    “I am present and aware of this moment. It is full and it is great.” – Sega Belkis

    We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below and tell us about your experience of anchoring in this present moment.