The Trick to Having Everything You Want

It’s quite simple, when you realize it.

The other day I was lying in the grass with Riley, my parents’ dog, and I was feeling so grateful that she was there next to me, keeping me company. 

I’m so happy she’s here, I thought. How do I get her to stay here? 

Note that this dog does whatever the F she wants. She’s not a people dog, or a dog dog, she is independent and also kind of aloof. So “getting her” to do something you want is already pretty hard. 

After appreciating Riley’s company, I found myself naturally inclined to just love up on her. I started petting her, giving her a neck massage, speaking in a cute dog voice. It dawned on me that this is the real way to get her to stay: give her so much love, make her feel so good, that she wants to continue lying with me.

I could have alternatively put a leash around her neck and tied her up next to me so she couldn’t leave. Or if she got up I could have yelled at her to SIT! STAY! 

This is often what we do with dogs.

(And people, if I’m being honest.)

This is the ‘dominate and control’ vibe that has been the way of our world. We’re now moving into a partnership era, and this is the perfect example of how that can work. 

To partner with Riley instead of controlling her means to respect her free-will and just do what I can to make her feel good so that she wants to stay. 

And you can do this with anything in your life. 

If you feel good having potted plants in your home, you give the plants proper sunlight, water and love to thrive. They get the benefit, and so do you.

If there’s a person in your life that makes you feel loved, or always brings a smile to your face, it would be in your best interest to make sure you’re being a good friend/partner to them, so they value your presence too and stay in your life. 

If your job helps you fulfill your purpose in this lifetime, treat your work with respect and love, and it will continue to fill you up. 

These reciprocal relationships are the essence of nature and are the truest way to have everything we want. 

The second we try to control, dominate or avoid certain relationships, they start to erode. 

In fact, there was a study by scientist Masaru Emoto that showed that when you say nice, loving things to a bowl of rice, it stays fresher longer than the bowl that you yell at, and even longer than the one you ignore. His experiment shows that ignoring something is the most devastating treatment in a relationship. (His experiment has received some criticism for not accounting for possible human error, but it’s been successfully replicated by many people and also resonates with what I know to be true about how life works.)

If everything is energy, you want to keep the positive energy flowing in the relationships that you care about. When there is no energy towards a relationship, it starts to die. If there is negative energy, there’s still some life there (because within the negative energy is still the potential for positive connection), but it needs to be transformed into something positive for the real reciprocal relationship to add value to both of your lives. 

The positive energy we put into things we love flows from our hearts. It carries a specific vibration or resonance that can be felt by others and scientifically measured.

You know how you can walk into a room of people and instantly feel if there’s a bad vibe or positive, happy vibe? That’s resonance. When our hearts are filled with love, it emanates out to others and helps other hearts come into resonance too.

So when you give your love and attention to people, ideas, and things in your life, they receive it, energetically, and it feels good. And if something feels good for them, they should naturally want to invest in the relationship too so they keep getting that good feeling. This is reciprocity.

I believe that loving energy is biologically healing and regenerative. We already know that people who with strong communities and friendships live longer, healthier lives. Perhaps it’s because there is a more abundant flow of resonant heart energy that strengthens and regenerates cells. Consider how a mother will intuitively kiss her child’s cut or scrape. Could the loving energy from her heart, through her vagus nerve and into her lips actually help heal the scrape faster? Mark my word, I think we’ll see this proven in science soon!

So the bottom line is: take care of the things that make you feel good. Treat your people with love. Treat your animals with love. Treat the natural world with love. Treat your projects with love. And they’ll reciprocate the love back to you in more ways than you can imagine.

This is the secret to having everything you that truly fills you up. Simple, eh?

Practice: write down the things in your life that you are most grateful for, and ask yourself how you can give more love, nurturing and care to those things, to keep them thriving in your life.