As I sit this morning, opening myself to what I want to share with you, I’m drawn back to solution-focused thinking – the ways in which we can look for the glass half full rather than half empty.  I am always deeply saddened when I spend time with people who have a habit of noticing what’s wrong rather than what’s right.  Emphasizing what we don’t have generates a greater sense of lack, which generates an even stronger emphasis on what we don’t have.  In the same way, noticing what we *do* have generates a greater sense of abundance and possibility, and emphasizes what’s going right in our lives.

This is quite different from taking a “Polyanna” stance, where we refuse to see problems that need our attention.  When we’re being like Polyanna, we ignore what’s right in front of us and then don’t take action that may be needed to resolve a problem, meet a challenge, or draw learning from a hurtful life experience.  What solution-focused thinking offers is a way to move through difficult experiences with awareness and an openness to what might turn out to be beneficial after all.

I’ve been engaged in a challenging situation lately, and have had many opportunities to practice moving through experiences focused on ease and flow rather than struggle and strain.  What I discover, again and again, is that when I don’t fight with what is, when I offer myself to the experience with curiosity and a willingness to move with the direction of the flow I’m in, situations resolve themselves more easily than I expect and I come through the experience less worn out than I think I will be.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to again notice what happens to the quality of your lived experience when you focus on what’s going right in your life, and when you pay attention to those moments when you struggle with what’s happening.  The stance of “no struggle” doesn’t mean to accept situations, people, or experiences that are unacceptable.  Instead, it means to be present to what’s unfolding in a way that allows you to see either the way through it or out of it, and to be able to notice the lessons it might offer along the way.

As with all the experiments, I invite you to play with this one.  Its gift to you is to notice any changes in the quality of your internal experience, of the sensations in your body, in your outlook on the day’s activities when you emphasize the glass half full.  Notice what happens when you focus on what’s going right, and hold an expectation that you can learn from any experience or situation that comes your way, even if you don’t like it.  Taking the stance that learning is always possible allows you to engage life’s challenges in a way that empowers rather than victimizes you.

And, as always, please allow any judgments to float on by without grabbing hold of them, and bring along curiosity as your constant companion.  The journey of living consciously offers constant opportunities to explore states of mind and qualities of being that either enhance or burden you.  As I’ve said many times, while you can’t control what comes at you in life, you are in the driver’s seat in terms of how you choose to move through what comes your way.