Avoiding ‘Ain’t It Awful’

As a culture, we seem to love gathering in groups to whine and moan about whatever we don’t care for in the world. On the phone, in person, by email, on Facebook – we love seeing the worst in our families, partners, bosses, politics or life in general. We call it ‘being realistic’ without considering what our reactions create in the greater energies of the universe.

Sometimes “ain’t it awful” is the only way we can express our utter dismay about current events like the school shootings in Connecticut. Obviously there are some events that have no silver lining. Yet even in overwhelmingly negative circumstances we can choose how we respond. We certainly have a choice about what we focus on, knowing that focus always expands those conditions in our lives.

In Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting, Lynn Grabhorn says that our emotional reactions actually determine most of our focus – and very often those reactions amount to “ain’t it awful”. Take a moment and count up how many times you thought, felt, or uttered negative remarks about the world around you. Pretty often, right? Every time we do that, we tug on the line that brings that problem more prominently into our lives. Thus, fear attracts what we fear, and rage excites more of the same. The end result is that your inner computers eventually crash.

Your inner bio-computers are designed to work on an operating system of faith and patience. You cannot run the correct programs on fear and doubt, which form the operating system of this world. On an energetic level, the perpetrators of the Newtown shootings, of the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and the Federal Building in Oklahoma City had exactly the impact intended: the resulting terror (which is amplified fear) took out the bio-computers of the entire country. We could no longer run the right programs because the US operating system was hijacked by fear. Although the media were simply doing their jobs, every time they showed pictures of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center or the destroyed façade of the Murrah Building, it made us feel sick and terrified all over again.

Every time those events and their aftermath – the incessant images, discussions, news reports and political fallout – induce us to say “ain’t it awful”, fear and doubt grow larger and throw our inner computers into further disarray. Those fears continue to block our ability to reset, to remember that we are still living in a universe of order and harmony, to keep our focus on what we want to be experiencing. No, that focus will not change what has already occurred, but it can change what happens next. For example, when you think about 9-11, do you go to the terrifying pictures? Or does your mind go to the rescue workers and their support teams who overcame so much to rescue those caught in the blast? In general, do you focus on the problem, or on the solution? And is that solution itself a reaction, or does it create a new, more positive possibility?

There is never anything to be gained by “ain’t it awful”, neither in the large scale nor in our immediate personal lives. To step outside the expected “ain’t it awful” takes some courage and quite a bit of practice, because the patterns of this world practically demand that we all join in that appreciation of ‘awful’ intead. To change this, we have to start with the small concerns – your noisy neighbor, the driver who cuts you off – and turn our thoughts towards the larger, brighter experiences that are just as available to us, all the time. From petty problems we get to work our way up to medium-sized situations like politics, and eventually find a way to cope with (say) school shootings in a way that takes us beyond “ain’t it awful” and into … what? At the very least, a larger perspective that overcomes our only-too-human pettiness and reminds us of the faith and patience that form our true operating systems.

So if you resolve on nothing else this year, see if you can do without “ain’t it awful”, even in the worst circumstances… I think you’ll find that will help keep your personal faith and patience on track, which will in turn make your inner computers stronger and more positive. At that point, it’s so much easier to find a higher solution.