Smoother Sailing Through Stressful Situations

February 23rd, 2008

Yesterday I explained how a change in my perspective made me a lot less easier to offend or stress out. But one of the most effective ways to deal with a difficult situation with another person is to avoid it before it happens. Using the law of attraction, it is possible to alter your vibration such that many of these situations are avoided, by changing your thoughts and perceptions.

The law of attraction states that what we focus on the most, we receive more of in our lives. Conversely, what we take our focus away from, will diminish. This can be used to make our interactions with others a lot smoother — whether there’s someone you can’t easily avoid playing an antagonistic role in your life, you want to have an easier time in crowds or traffic, or you have to deal with someone in a professional capacity you’d rather not. I recently used it to have the easiest time going through airport security and customs that I ever have, and I made sure to email and thank them for the smooth positive experience afterward (expressing gratitude is important!).

The key is to focus on what you want (as opposed to what you don’t want) which is the very best that person or situation can offer you. Your perception is key here: if your perception of someone is “nasty person,” can you really blame them for acting nasty? In reality people are complex and dynamic, and what makes someone “nasty” is your perception of their behavior. And perceptions can be changed…

If you have to interact with a person you’re not particularly fond of, take some time to reflect on their best qualities. Or express thanks to the universe (or your higher power of choice) for encounters with them that have been pleasant, or at least civil. It’s a well known behavior-modification technique with kids, that they eat up praise and compliments like candy, and will behave more often to get them, as opposed to focusing on their bad behavior. I’ll let you in on a secret: people never really grow out of this. So, if it would be appropriate to thank or compliment the person for something positive about themselves, I highly recommend it.

For less personal situations, I recommend sending some love and gratitude in advance; we’re all interconnected, so if the intent is there they’ll get it on some level. If you have to deal with a person in an authority position, reflecting on their humanity rather than their occupation, and visualizing the encounter being a smooth and positive one. If it’s traffic, thank the universe for open roads and courteous drivers. This can be extended to just about any situation you’d rather not be in, where other people are involved. Once you make these exercises into habit, you will begin to see your circumstances rearrange to remove the negativity — whether by improving the quality of the interaction, removing the person from your life, or allowing you to avoid the situation.

If you don’t see dramatic results immediately, don’t worry! Changing your vibration can take time, largely depending on what your prevailing mental habits are like right now. You can’t expect to do two minutes of visualization and have everything go swimmingly, if you’re spending the rest of the day bitching about every last source of irritation. But if you start putting consistent effort into changing your habitual way of thinking about people and situations, I can promise that your experience will rearrange to reflect it!

In the next post, I’ll share a technique I’ve developed that’s a bit more direct, for diminishing the influence of a person, or maybe just aspects of them that aren’t beneficial to you, in your life. I call it my “Esoteric Ignore Button.”