Case Number 27, Please, Howie...

"In simple terms, failure at anything. It embarasses me and I feel ashamed of myself. One of the things I was taught as a curtain-climber was that failure, or throwing your hands in the air and hollering, "I give up!," can get you attention and love. Wow, that's soooo twisted.

Of course, it's self-defeating attention. Sometimes even when the failure is required to learn, or it was a good thing the failure happened, I can get embarassed and feel ashamed. So, instead of fueling myself on shame, a big reason I'm in this group is to practice remembering how it feels to ask for what I need and succeed. Using all my instincts and skills. It's something I need to practice each and every day. Because my childhood experiences were so strong, I imagine I'll be in permanent practice.

One of the seemingly most silly things I've ever heard was from the ancient television comedy show, Laugh-In. Goldie Hawn started there. A punch-line they'd use was, "What you see is what you get!" Their writers never meant it in a metaphysical or self-improving sense, but it occurred to me one day that it's absolutely, irrevocably true. One converse of that I'd heard was Werner Erhard's, "What you resist, you become."

What I focus on is what comes to me. What I focus on, I'm magnetically attracted to because it needs me, too. That's what really attracted me to playing the fields of consciousness and my long-ago college degree in religion.

There are many ways I focus on what's necessary to be happy and do what's needed, and that's my most significant experience this past year. With affirmations, or takin' care of business, or mediation, or exercise (getting out to get in), or yoga, or racing, or putting a problem in  my Universal box for incubation, or flirting, or partying Mike-style, I can focus on what I need, and get what I want.

When I want it."