I’m reading a book entitled Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia by Rob Brezsny.  First, the simple concept that the Universe is conspiring for you is genius – 1.  why hasn’t someone written this before?!

2.  How would your life change if you believed that when that shoe you’ve been waiting to fall does indeed fall, it would bringe you grace and blessings?

3.  How would you feel if in the middle of the things you define as “problems” you find yourself getting all excited because, as the wheel turns, the next thing coming is going to be better than anything you could possibly imagine?

4.  What if all the news we watched spread all the great things folks are doing for each other and only sprinkled in a bad news story now and then; or if the movies had a line of tension about how our problems help us grow and how life is a riddle that is begging us to solve it (instead of hide from it, or deny it, or complain about it)? [Micro-local news is the next new thing; start a local blog and report only good stories!]

‘The secret of life,’ said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, ‘is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life.  And the most important thing is – it must be something you cannot possibly accomplish .’   4.  What is that task for you? [Rob Breszny]

5.  When was the last time you saw a problem coming and said, “Oh! Goodie!! Time to stretch!!”

6.  Would it make a difference if you realize you don’t like the way your day is going and decided to celebrate because it can only get better?  And I mean REALLY celebrate:  time out, party hat on, candle lit, hands in the air in the victory sign!

7.  How would that presentation go if when someone says just be yourself you smile because they just helped you remember you can be any one of yourselves that you want – and you pull out the extroverted, happy speaker self that just LOVES this presentation stuff?!

8.  Can you remember a time that seemed awful beyond measure but in hind sight brought you unexpected gifts?  Write it down and carry it with you as a reminder.  My own experience was being in a battering relationship:  when I finally left it (at 34, after 17 years:   do the math – half my life), I grew into an understanding of empowerment that led to 20 years of community-based work in social justice and which now informs my one-on-one-coaching.

Pronoia can be fabulous fun if you allow yourself to start playing with it.

Next time you catch yourself reacting negatively, stop.  Take a breath.  Revise the cynicism or sarcasm or woe-is-me to wonder, adoration and gratitude.  See if you can feel the shift.  Watch what happens.

Then leave me a note so we can play the change forward.

Imagine a world built on pronoia.  All it takes is each of us making a small shift every day until expecting grace and blessings becomes our default.

Try it!  You’ll like it!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

The task of genius, and humanity is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the iracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously.  Henry Miller

Go to the ugliest or most forlorn place you know – a drugstore parking lot, the front porch of a crack house, a toxic waste dumpr, or the place that symbolizes your secret shame – and build a shrine devoted to beauty, truth and love…to put in your shrine:  a silk scarf; a smooth rock on which you’ve inscribed a haiku or joke with a felt-tip pen; coconut cookies or ginger candy; pumpkin seeds and an origami crane; a green kite shaped like a dragon…a rubber ducky; a bouquet of fresh beets; a print of Van gogh’s Starry Night.  Rob Brezsny