Before you take the action, check the vibe you’re doing it with. The underlying vibration will make or break the results you get …
That’s what I remembered on my way to the community meeting where residents were encouraged to speak up about slowing down development in our open spaces.
I asked myself if I was attending this meeting out of resistance to development or in support of our community values. Was I going to do battle with developers, or to add momentum to our preferred lifestyle? Because those are two different meetings.
It’s a question worth asking no matter what we’re doing, since the vibration behind it matters even more than the action itself.
Contentious community meetings aren’t the only time to check the vibe. There are two ways to do everything: one is with a helpful vibe and the other is with a not-as-helpful vibe.
That’s oversimplifying it, because there are more than two ways to do everything – but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just imagine two ways …
- You could cook dinner with joy and satisfaction, or with resentment and irritation.
- You could stop for fast food with relief and ease, or with guilt and judgment.
- You could go to work with gratitude or with resignation.
- You could take the supplement with confidence or fear.
- You could apply for the loan with desperation or possibility.
- You could step on the scale with curiosity and appreciation or with attachment and insecurity.
- You could accept your lottery win with joy and connection or with trepidation and overwhelm.
The action itself doesn’t dictate what the vibe is.
Back to my community meeting, I could attend out of frustration, ready to do battle and fight against what I don’t want. Or I could go as an actively engaged resident who knows her voice is valuable and expects to be respected as she speaks up in support of what she prefers, and plans to hear good news.
There are also two ways to skip the community meeting: One is out of hopelessness, disempowerment, pessimism or indifference; the other is out of trust and confidence in our natural well-being.
Someone who’s sitting this out might be helping more than someone who is actively pushing against. Someone who is ignoring the whole situation and just enjoying daily life can be a more powerful force for good than someone who is rallying the troops to do battle against evil powers.
The real question here is what vibration you’re engaging your actions with. Vibration trumps action every time, which means efforts don’t pay off when taken with contrary vibes in place. Make sure you’ve got good vibes flowing for the actions you engage.