What an interesting day! I've been reading the Abraham-Hicks book 'The Astonishing Power of Emotions' which tells how, when we're navigating the river of life, we tend to turn our canoes 'upstream' and waste much time and energy fighting and going against the current.

And I've noticed that I do that too. Quite a lot actually! When we've got a 'grumble' about something in our lives, how many times do we perpetuate the thought by dwelling on it, or even sharing it with a friend or relative who is usually quick to agree with us that life shouldn't be like that or whatever. Or get busy, busy, believing that there's something we have to do to make things right. This then perpetuates the 'grumble' even more and aggravates the situation further. (Well, it would. The Law of Attraction simply can't work any other way.)

It turns out that thinking and acting this way is simply 'paddling upstream' and apparently "Nothing we want is upstream." We're fighting against the current, and our negative thoughts and worries then attract more things to make us feel negatively and worry about.

The new idea is to take our 'grumbles' (for want of a better word) and see if we can't find a thought that makes us feel better than the original thought about the grumble. So if, for instance, your grumble was about work, you could say you have a thoroughly horrible job (which may be true,) but at least the job pays your wages (which is a better thought.) And it gets you out of the house and makes you feel a bit independent. Or there may be other little things you could focus on that are good about your job. Suddenly, you're not feeling quite so bad are you?

The idea is to put ourselves in a space of allowing what is happening, to simply be. To realise that if we didn't hate our job so much we wouldn't have the desire to change it, and that desire could lead us towards many wonderful things if we let it.

To me, paddling downstream is like going with the flow. We don't have to struggle to get where we want to go, we simply allow it to happen. Yesterday I made a promise to myself to do this. Every time I find something to grumble about, I'll find something good about it. So today, when I was thinking about the fact that I hadn't had many bookings for my services this week yet, I remembered how well I've done so far this year for bookings. 'Cheery be,' I said to myself, and got on with what I was doing. Would you believe it? Well you would, because it happened. The phone started ringing, the emails came in and now I've got nearly as much as I can handle this week.

I believe that this is all down to my attitude and making a positive decision to let the river take me 'downstream' instead of fighting it all the way and struggling to find clients etc. I could have wasted all day emailing or phoning people up and got nowhere. Instead I simply turned around and paddled downstream. I changed my initial thought to a more comforting one and got on with the other things I had to do. And the Universe took care of me. And very quickly and easily too. Maybe you'd like to try it sometime…