I was driving down the freeway one day listening to a favorite Neal Diamond tape, not focused on much of anything, when I realized I had one of those funny little knots in my stomach, the kind that feels like there's a serious hole in your gut with a not-so-gentle breeze sailing through. Something was off base somewhere, and good old Expanded Self was sending me a clear signal to pay attention to my feelings. But since nothing came to mind, I decided to ignore it.
Big mistake!
I let my thoughts wander, paying little attention to the very obvious Red Flag I was feeling. Sure enough, my meandering thoughts wandered right into one of the loans I was in the process of closing. At that time I was running my own mortgage company, a business that finds the best interest rates for people who want to buy or refinance their homes, and then arranges for the funding and ultimate closing of the loan.
We were almost ready to close this young couple's loan when some sticky problems showed up I wasn't sure I could solve. That in itself was bad enough so near the finish line, but the worst of it was that these kids were really counting on this loan to end some of their grisly financial troubles. So here's my focus 100% on what I do not want to happen (the loan to fall through), I've got Red Flags of negative feelings flying all over the place—a little dread, a little guilt, a large helping of gloom—and I'm ignoring them! The results of that negative energy flow were immediate.
I had about one more mile of music before the tape player started eating my Jonathan Livingston Seagull cassette. About two miles after that I was squeezed right into a four-lane traffic jam from daytime road work. About twenty minutes and another mile after that, I get rear-ended (just rear-bumped) by some dude farther away in mad-land than I was. About ten minutes after that, I spilled the rest of my coffee all over a file of original loan papers. And when I finally got out of that mess and made it to a telephone, the lender told me the loan had fallen through.
Considering how I had been flowing my energy, I was hardly surprised. I knew exactly what had happened, what a dork I'd been, and exactly what I had to do … fast!
What had happened? What had caused that whole chain of pesky events? Was it just coincidence, a nasty string of unlucky circumstances? Not on a bet! It's how every single one of us has been creating our days since nursery school, focusing on all the stuff around us we didn't like, didn't want, and feeling helpless as we watched it get worse.
We've been living a life we felt was largely at the mercy of forces outside of ourselves over which we had no control. I mean, how many of us would take credit for having a lousy boss, being robbed, getting laid off, or catching the flu? And how many of us would not blame the government, or the economy, or our families, or the “system” for all that's wrong in our lives? Oh sure, we'll take credit for some of it, the things we've set out to do … and did. But would we honestly be willing to take responsibility for every last thing that's ever happened to us? Not likely!
There's a world of closet sufferers walking around this planet who will swear to you on their new Toyotas that they hardly ever have a negative thought.
They'll tell you their life is just fine, and that they're quite happy. Yet these are the same people who will tell you that life is never fair, it's full of trials, and that we must all learn to take our share of knocks. But yes, they're quite happy, thank you. Never got all they might have liked, but we must take life as it is dealt. So yes, they're quite content.
To which I say, “Bull!”
We cannot flow negative energy of any kind, in any degree, in any amount, and be happy. And that means anything from mild irritation, to normal no-feeling (flat-lining), to perpetual dread. It is a physiological impossibility to be happy with that kind of energy flowing out, because we're flowing two different vibrations that activate two different external (and internal) results.
Closet sufferers are victims, plain and simple, just as most of us have been at one time or another, viewing our world as the result of uncountable circumstances over which we believed we had no control. We've all been there, or are there. It's only a matter of how much of the victim myth we've chosen to buy into and live.
But we don't have to stay there. In fact, once you start to really see this magnetics business in action, it becomes pretty hard to ignore the glaring evidence: our lives have been molded by the daily flow of our energy, not by luck, fate, circumstance, or a rich uncle.
When you stop to think that we've spent decades questioning what's wrong with everything, therefore focusing on all the things in our world we didn't like, didn't want, or wanted to change, it's little wonder we've attracted such a barrelful of trials. No human being can be so continually disconnected from their Source energy and get to wherever it is they want to go.
So here's the flash: Continuing to live life as a victim of circumstance, forever focusing on what's wrong with everything and everybody, will never, ever, bring the life desired. It will only bring one thing: more of whatever it is we're wanting so desperately to change.
The recipe for creating anything is really quite simple. Take good or bad feelings (meaning positive or negative vibrations), bake with varying degrees of emotion to increase magnetism, and here comes what we've attracted, like it or not. What we have focused on, and how we have vibrated about it, is what we have gotten … from birth.
So if we've been in a constant search for ways to fix all the things around us we don't like, or even if we have allowed them to be there but still haven't liked them, then we've been in a constant state of focusing on what we haven't wanted. For years!
It takes only sixteen seconds to link up vibrationally to whatever we're focusing on. That's right, only sixteen seconds of pure, focused thought, good or bad, negative or positive. In that brief time, we start to vibrate on the same frequency as whatever it is we've been emotionally thinking about, which means we're ripe for attracting that thing, if we keep it up. Needless to say, we've all had an oceanful of things we've thought about over and over in repetitious sixteen-second segments, all those vibrations of frustration, and tension, and concern over the countless things we didn't want, didn't like, couldn't handle, didn't know what to do with, or thought we had to put up with. Which is why, for most of our lives, we've continued to attract more of the same. Charming!
Up to now, that's the fundamental way we've sculpted our lives, by this ceaseless attention to all the things we could do without, producing an unceasing undertow of negative tension.
Remember, I'm not talking daily rage here, just that perpetual silent murmur of “gotta fix it, gotta do it better, gotta make it right, gotta find a way” that's called either quiet concern or Knot-in-Gut.
And on the other side of the same coin, it's called “gotta accept it, gotta live with it, nothing I can do about it, like it or not.” Same thing, same vibrations.
This is why it is so important for us to have a broad understanding of just what negative emotion is, how covertly it works, how to spot it, why we keep having it, and, oddly enough, how truly vital it is to the process of taking control.
So please don't look at this chapter on “Negative” as negative. It's the secret component of getting us where we want to go.
Imagine being a youngster turned loose in the biggest, brightest toy store you've ever seen in this whole wide world, and being told you can help yourself to whatever you wanted. Wow! It's almost too far out to imagine, yet that's what our universe is, one gigantic toy store where anything we've ever wanted to play with is either already there for the pickin's, or waiting to be created. All we have to do is feeeeel what we want and magnetize it in.
Let's say, for example, that here in your magic toy store there's an exciting new job waiting for you. Or maybe it's your next house, the one with every conceivable luxury and more silly gadgets than you've ever seen. Around the corner there's a fantastic new relationship (or a polished-up old one), and hot dog! There's your updated body with all the appropriate corrections.
This is terrific! But where are all of these goodies going to come from? Are they just going to fall from the sky or come from our guardian angels in the outfield? No, they're going to come from you. To pull them in, all you have to do is want them with a gut-blasting, Feel Good vibration.
It's hard for us to swallow the concept that what has been in life has absolutely nothing to do with what can be. That's diametrically opposed to how we think things work. Yet what has been—or whatever is in our face right this minute—is simply the result of how we've flowed our energies in days gone by. It is not “the way things are.”
What has been is not a result of anything or anybody “out there,” nor is it a result of good or bad luck, a result of being a good person, a righteous person, or a sanctimonious ass. What has been has nothing to do with family, or government, or schooling.
What has been in our life comes squarely from where our focus has been. And a major part of our focus has come from antiquated beliefs, those smelly old philosophies that were pounded into our heads, or that we blindly accepted as reality from way back to toddler days. We were jammed full of them then and still are—archaic patterns of thought about what we think reality is, thought patterns that frankly belong in the garbage can.
One summer many years ago, I was dating an Episcopalian priest. For a long time I thought this guy was the be-all and end-all of the male race. He was tall, well built, handsome, about ten years my senior, bright, well educated, and came from a lovely New England family. Just my kind of guy.
Father Fred was a brilliant speaker, delivering educational as well as spiritual sermons, but his church was usually this side of empty. In an attempt to remedy the embarrassing situation, he would change his style, change his tone, change his organization of material, even change the altar dressings, but nothing seemed to work. People simply didn't like going to hear him nor being around him.
Those were carefree days for me. I was in my early twenties, hadn't really squared off on what I wanted to do with my life, and was finding my drinking to be more and more enjoyable. Since Father Fred apparently found the same degree of enjoyment in his imbibing, the two of us were having a blast.
But blast or no, something was beginning to rub me the wrong way. It was subtle, but never stopped. Over drinks, out for drives, immersed in parties, it seemed that no matter where we were or what we were doing, Fred was attacking something or someone in the church. It was as if he were obsessed. One night it would be a bishop, the next night it was something about his improper training, or low budgets, or the diocese's restrictions on “high” services. His attacks seemed endless. And they were starting to drive me nuts.
I was no psych student, but this was absurd. When I finally asked him about it, his very matter-of-fact response was, “That's the way I am. I have an ability to see what's wrong with things. The church is outdated and needs renovating, but it's not up to me to do it. I just have the talent to see what needs changing.”
Pretty soon I could see that Fred approached everything in life as a grievance, not just the church. The world was a mess, everything needed changing or fixing, but he was never the one to do it. In fact, he felt incapable of doing much of anything, which is why, I guessed, he was so obsessed with conducting his services as flawlessly as possible. There, at least, he felt he could excel, whether his church was empty or not.
But for all his blunderbuss, Fred was truly afraid of authority. “I can't because …” was his litany. He couldn't get a raise, a secretary, a better allowance for his parish, not even a guest speaker when he wanted to go away. He could only focus on the fact that it would never happen. So, of course, it didn't.
Poor Fred lived in a perpetual world of Don't Wants, believing the more he focused on them and stewed about them, the better chance he had of making them go away. He saw himself as a helpless victim required to submit to the greater powers that be who were waiting to snip his ecumenical rise in the bud. Looking back on it now, I can see why people didn't want to be around him. Although his sermons rarely reflected his negativity, folks intuitively picked up on his energy, and didn't want any part of it.
Again, this is an extreme example (they're the only ones I remember) of how most of us have lived, and yet … and yet?
These kinds of moldy old beliefs, such as the powerful ones Fred had concerning authority and fate, are our biggest roadblocks to purposeful creating because they come up and clobber us whenever we think we'd like to take another direction. You know the kinds I mean: you think you'd like to get a new job, and up shoots the highly charged emotional thought, “Oh I can't, because …”
Or a new car: “Oh I can't, because …”
Or a new relationship: “Oh no, no, no, I REALLY can't, because …”
They are our ancestors' values and ethics about “shoulds” and “if onlys” and “rights and wrongs.”
They are outdated philosophies from our religions that tell us we can't have a better life until we check out of here, or that “only through suffering can we hope to achieve the kingdom of God.”
They are convictions about accomplishment and success and working and earning.
They are beliefs that have compelled us to look forever for what's wrong with everything, convinced we must find ways to fix it all before we can move ahead: the job, the environment, our mate, the government, the schools, our kids, and mostly … ourselves.
“Gotta fix it, gotta fix it, gotta fix it; don't want it this way, don't like it that way, gotta fix it.”
Perhaps our most damaging beliefs, though, are the cherished ones we hold about how it's always the other guy's fault: our bonehead leaders, our drunken families, our horny boss. We blame with the constancy of the rising sun, thinking there's nothing wrong with that because that's how the world operates. We're certain that blaming makes us feel better, so we do it some more, and some more, and some more, never having a clue how destructive such negative vibrations have been—and are being—to our lives.
But here's the good news: no matter what today's parade of psychologists and counselors say to the contrary, we do not have to dig up all that useless junk to make life work our way. With some simple tricks of the trade, and the awareness that this is really no more difficult than paying attention to how we're feeeeeling, we simply learn to override all that moldy old stuff that's kept us imprisoned for so long, living an arduous life that we always thought was perfectly normal.
There's only one place negative energy—all negative energy—comes from: our Don't Wants. Sometimes we call it guilt; other times we call it fear, or blame, or worry, or doubt. But for now, so that we can stay out of all the hackneyed psychiatrists' junk, we're calling it all “Don't Wants.”
Hard as it may be to believe, the majority of our daily thoughts—and therefore feelings—are about things we don't want: big and little, here and there, now, back then, and in the future. This kind of thinking is endless, mostly automatic and unconscious, and horrendously restraining. Take a look:
We don't want to drive to work in bad weather.
We don't want to be late to work.
We don't want to displease the boss.
We don't want to have the drought continue.
We don't want to buy bad meat at the store.
We don't want to look bad.
We don't want to have our kids hurt.
We don't want to get the flu.
We don't want to get fired.
We don't want to stand in a long line.
We don't want get up in the morning.
We don't want any more bills.
We don't want to live in such a cold climate.
We don't want the light to turn red.
We don't want to get a divorce.
We don't want to fail the test. Etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Now, granted, one or two of those things listed are nothing but choices we're making in the moment, so they're not going to elicit much emotion from us, and therefore, not do much damage. But as inconsequential as the rest of those items may seem, they definitely are not. Focus on any one for any length of time, and you'll see it in your face before you know what hit you.
Even worse, the collective power of all the personal conscious and unconscious Don't Wants we spew out energetically all day long becomes the vibrational mixture that makes up our individual world. Like it or not, that mix is normally negative.
Take, for instance, all those stale cobwebs from our past, our “if onlys”:
If only I had had different parents.
If only I had gone to college.
If only I hadn't married that one.
If only I hadn't switched lanes.
If only, if only, if only …
If Onlys are simply the past tense of Don't Wants. “I didn't really want those parents.” “I didn't want to have to search for work without a degree.” “I didn't want an unhappy marriage.” “I didn't want such a poor paying job.” “I didn't want to get in a car accident, but I switched lanes.”
And then there are all those tricky Negative Wants, which are nothing more than Don't Wants in disguise:
I want to get well.
I want to get out of debt.
I want to lose weight.
I want to stop smoking.
I want our lousy marriage to shape up.
I want my spouse to get a better job.
You may think you're being positive by not stating a Don't Want, but where's your focus? It's taken dead aim on precisely what you Don't Want any more of in your life. And since we get what we focus on … hello! Here it comes to meet you.
Now I'd be the first to agree with you when you protest that you are not a negative person. Most of us are not—thank God—like Father Fred. We enjoy life the best we can. We thrill at the sight of a sunset. We toss small fish back into the water. We're pleased when friends get promoted. We laugh at our kids' unfunny jokes. We enjoy going out on Friday nights. We take pride in our accomplishments. We give credit where credit is due. We do what we can to bring joy into the lives of others as well as ourselves.
And yet, our endless life-focus has been on Don't Wants. We don't want to have to work so hard, we don't want our car to break down, we don't want this and don't want that all day long, which just magnetizes in more of whatever it is we're not wanting.
Let's say there's something about your job you don't like, or you drive a broken-down car, or you've got a mate who's driving you bonkers. And let's say you think about this Don't Want again and again. Well, each time you go back to that subject and add another sixteen seconds to it with some juiced-up emotions, you're not only growing it and adding more power to it, you're making it a whole lot easier to think about. Whoa!
Like cutting a trail in the jungle, you swack here, and swack there, and pretty soon you have a nice clean path on which to trek back and forth. So you do. On the same subject! You think about it, and think about it, and think about it until pretty soon it's so easy to think about, you can hardly get it out of your head. And before you know it, the very thing you haven't wanted to happen … has!
If you don't want—real bad—to have your new car nicked, you're a shoo-in to attract a matching vibration called “jerk-inparking-lot.”
If you don't want—real bad—unpleasant neighbors to move in next door, you're ripe for attracting nerds with barking dogs, and keeping them there.
If you don't want—real bad—any more problems with bills, those problems are sure to get worse.
If you don't want—real bad—to be alone for the holidays … all right, you get the picture.
Whatever you include in your vibration for sixteen seconds or longer is on its way to you, whether you like it or not. So when you're talking about all the things you don't want, and flowing out only sixteen seconds of feeling each time you talk about one of them, that thing has now become a part of you, part of your everyday vibration. Pretty soon you're living it … not liking it at all … vibrating it … talking about it … complaining about it … stewing over it … and making it an even stronger match to your daily vibration than it was in the first place. You are vibrating with the very thing you do not want.
Now that thing can't leave you. It is part of you. No matter how much you keep grumbling over it or worrying about it, it cannot leave! It is now included within your everyday vibration. And the more you live it, focus on it, and brood over it, the stronger your vibration becomes to match and hold this thing you want so badly to get rid of.
There's another problem. Remember the tuning forks where you ding one in a room and all others of a matching frequency ding right along too? The same thing happens with our thoughts. As you think more and more about something, you're not only attracting more of whatever it is you're thinking about, you're dinging and pulling in anything else—ANYTHING else—that just happens to be on a similar frequency.
The results could be anywhere from a bad case of flu to being fired, when what you were really thinking about was how you didn't have enough money to fix the roof. Now all of a sudden you're getting these cute little surprise packages of the same vibration— but not the same thing—as your Don't Want, and just as unwelcome. By thinking about one, you're sending out an open invitation to anything else that happens to be pinging on the same frequency. If it's a vibratory match, it can be yours, whether you were focused on it or not.
Didn't you ever notice that when one thing starts to go wrong, so does everything else? That's because the vibrations you're sending out are matching up with all sorts of different stuff on the same wavelength. By your thinking about that one thing over and over again, you're creating a spiral of thought that has now been made considerably bigger with heaven-knows-what-else swirling around in its magnetic center and headed your way.
For instance, think long enough about how you dislike your job, and you end up having a fender-bender, your sink stops up, you lose your keys, your refrigerator blows out, and you stub your toe. All from thinking over and over about just one Don't Want … your job … which, by the way, is now a whole lot worse than it was before.
Don't Wants can be huge or trivial, but either way, when we're focused on one or a hundred and one, we've got negative currents streaming out of us that are most definitely not going to magnetize back anything even remotely close to joy. They can't. They're on a vastly different frequency.
And so around and around we go, existing; that's all, just existing, holding ourselves apart from the higher energies of bubbly well-being which is our true state, and our absolute, irrefutable right.
Two things are certain: 1) Think long enough about something you don't want, and either you're going to attract it, or it's going to attract you, and 2) Think about a Don't Want with any amount of feeling behind it, and you will automatically attract other lousy happenings of a similar frequency.
So what do we do about all that? How do we change it? We surely can't watch every little thing we say or do or think all day long.
Don't worry, it's not that tough. All we need to do is go back to our magic genie, feelings, and learn to identify how it feels to flow “this kind” of energy, or “that kind,” and learn to recognize when we're feeling down or up, bad or good, zoned out with no feeling or really happy.
But let's back up here for a minute, to vibrations. Everything in the universe responds to vibrations; it is law. And with us here on this planet, that means touch, smell, color, taste, hearing, and … emotions.
When we feel joy, or passion, or love, or any other kind of exquisite happiness, those feelings are our interpretations of particular kinds of vibrations. On the flip side, when we feel feelings of anxiety, or guilt, or resentment, they, too, are interpretations of vibrations. And don't forget why one kind feels better than the other; one is close to our Source, the other is not.
We each are physical extensions of much, much more than what we see, extensions of a much more vast nonphysical Being—our Source energy—that just happens to be expressing Itself, right now, in a human body. When we vibrate in sync with that energy, we feel good. And vice-versa: when we feel down, it's because we are vibrating out of sync with that pure, positive energy.
Don't Wants mean we are out of sync. As we look at something and say, “I don't want this,” two things happen.
First, there's no way that Don't Want can possibly go away, because we're holding it in our vibration by our very attention to it. And second, we feel bad, down, low, nothing at all, or any other kind of feeling that is anything but happiness.
And so, the more in sync we are with our Source energy, the better we feel. And the more out of sync with our Source energy we are, the worse we feel. Or let's put it another way: feeling good is natural, but not normal to us right now. Anything less than that is unnatural, and sadly, quite normal to us right now.
Our primary problem with negative emotion is that we rarely think we have it. Yet, if we were flowing the high frequency of joy all the time, rather than any lower vibration which joy is not, we would be overflowing in such a profusion of prosperity, affluence, and success—not to mention sublime happiness, perfect health and well-being—that none of this would matter.
So here's the scoop on this state we call normal, which for about 99 percent of the time is nothing but negative vibration:
Negative vibration of any kind, of any intensity, from any excuse, means we've cut ourselves off from Life. We're existing, but not Living. Big difference!
Negative vibrations mean we've shut ourselves off from our Source.
Negative vibrations occur when we refuse to allow ourselves to think about what makes us happy.
Negative vibrations come from living with Don't Wants. And that's the only place they come from.
Negative vibrations mean we've slammed the door shut to our toy store. Not one of our heartfelt desires can ever manifest through the slow vibrations of Don't Wants. They are part of a different frequency called “joy,” so they stay away from us—way away—until summoned from the higher vibrations of Feel Good.
It's that simple. Our Wants are only in sync with the high vibrations of our Inner Being/Expanded Self, not with our negative vibrations. Because they will bring us pleasure (in whatever degree), the only vibration they match is that of our Original Intent, to be in joy. We cannot be thinking about what we don't want and expect to get what we do want. That's like trying to mix oil and water; mixing low frequencies with high frequencies will never happen. One will always override the other, depending on which is more dominant at the time. Even feeling moderately concerned (sort of our life story) shuts the door to abundance and well-being which is our God-given birthright.
So basically, we've been defeating our own purpose all along. Thinking it was important to be concerned about everything like the bills, the kids, grandma, the world situation, what we've been doing is generating this constant flow of low-frequency energy to withhold most of what we desire for ourselves, for others, and yes, for the world.
Here's another way to look at it: any emotion that's not in the family of joy is plain-old negative, and comes from lack … of something or other.
Think about it. Every negative emotion we've ever had, no matter how meek or well-hidden, has come from the lack of what we really wanted. Take blame, for instance. We blame someone or something for giving us what we don't want, which is only the lack of whatever it is we do want.
We're worried about losing someone or something, so we're fearing the absence of—the lack of—that someone or something.
We're fearful of things “out there,” because we lack the feeling of safety.
We justify and rationalize, because we lack someone's approval (including our own!).
We feel depressed, because we don't have something we want, even if it's nothing more than feeling good.
We feel anxious, because we lack the time or resources to produce.
Every negative feeling in the dictionary comes from lack. And thank goodness for that!
Say what?
Yes, I know, that sounds crazy. But how can you identify what you DO want unless you first know what you DON'T want? Can't be done. Only from a Don't Want can you know a Want, which means that every crummy experience, every ugly event, every unhappy moment, and every minor concern is the opportunity of a lifetime.
A Don't Want is a call to wake up, a call to come out of hiding, switch gears, and pull in real Life. So bless 'em all, every negative emotion you ever had or are having, no matter how abhorrent or commonplace. They're the most valuable assets you have, your springboards to well-being.
Granted, it's going to take a little getting used to the idea of cheering for something like stress. But hey, if you've got it (and who doesn't?) and can admit it and feel it, you've just taken the first and biggest step in learning to be a deliberate creator:
There are two kinds of Don't Wants; Universal and Personal, with Universal being the more common and the easier to spot.
Universal Don't Wants are worldwide dislikes, things no one on the planet wants any part of, such as empty bank accounts, sickness, poor relationships, unfulfilling jobs, misshapen bodies, low self-esteem, leaky roofs, broken-down cars, being robbed, being assaulted, being in a terrible accident, even global warming. That's enough for openers.
Personal Don't Wants are simply the mildly unpleasant things of life that bother only us, not always others; things we personally would prefer to avoid such as speaking up at a meeting, killing spiders, sewing holes in Junior's socks, or long-lasting jury duties. These happen less often than Universal Don't Wants because we don't expect them to happen that much, so they don't.
Let's say, for example, you're really angry at your boss (a personal Don't Want). On the way home you stop at the market, and sure enough, with the way you're vibrating, you get into the line with the snarly babe at the checkout counter. Some people couldn't care less, but today it gets your goat.
You keep on stewing about her on the way home—for well over sixteen seconds—to the point where you've started the thoughts running, the feelings going, and the vibrations moving.
You gripe about her over dinner for a lot more than sixteen seconds, doing a really good job of making that Don't Want vibration a part of you. You talk about her at work (great coffee room material) and tell your best friend the saga at lunch. Now is when you'd better duck, because the energy you've tossed out with such a specific focus on it has grown into a boomerang, and you can bet it's headed back your way.
The next night, out of spite, you decide to go to the store's competitor. You do your shopping, go to the checkout counter, and guess what? You bet! There's another cold-blooded checkout person in your face, magnetized right into your experience by all your attention to the very thing you wanted to avoid. You may be surprised, but you asked for it! You get what you vibrate; there is no other rule of life.
My friend Skip, a connoisseur of fine foods and restaurants, loves surprising his wife, Muriel, with fun, new places to eat. He had me in stitches recently (Skip's also a student of deliberate creating) as he unfolded his story of their trip to a colorful, intimate little place overlooking the water. It had the works: candlelight, a roving violin, even black-tied waiters.
They got settled in, ordered their wine, and as they were savoring the sights of the waterfront, a fight started in back of them. Just muffled noises at first, the voices grew louder and louder until every word of this lovers' spat was right in the middle of their cozy setting.
Skip and Muriel tried, without success, to ignore the fracas. It got so bad, so fast, that they both forgot about what was happening to them vibrationally. Although they didn't leave, with their energy merging so swiftly and surely with the couple's vibrations, they would have been better off if they had.
Skip started growling. He asked the maître d' to please get the couple quieted down. That didn't work. He bristled through the rest of dinner and grumbled about it on the way home. By the time they went to bed, both of them were grousing about it. But it didn't stop there.
For the next three dinners out, Skip and Muriel had—in this order—a bickering couple close by, a crying youngster, and a noisy drunk.
Finally they got it. They had been so deeply focused on what they didn't want, and were flowing so much energy to it, the Law of Attraction was working overtime to pull comparable vibrational circumstances right into their experience. Without paying any attention to how they were feeling, they had allowed a little Don't Want (no ruckus during dinner) to turn into a war.
Personal Don't Wants are usually not that serious, at least not at first. They come from our innate desire to experience the niceties of life, while Universal Don't Wants are deeply rooted and most often fueled from long-standing human fears and insecurities.
But it doesn't matter a diddly damn if a Don't Want is Universal or Personal, intense or mild, constant or passing. The point is to catch it, see it, feel it, or whatever else it takes to identify it … and change it.
Which means changing feelings from a Feel Bad to a Feel Good. Fast.