Hi friends,

It's the final week of the How Not to Explode series. I hope you haven't exploded, though if you have I understand. This time of year can be overwhelming.

But this week, instead of focusing on overwhelm, we're playing The Rampage of Appreciation – a simple game where we deliberately focus our attention on the things that please us.

This practice comes from Ask and It Is Given, where it's shared as the first of 22 processes for raising your emotional state. The idea is simple:

Begin by finding something in your sightline that pleases you – something beautiful, useful, comforting, or silly. Focus your attention on it. Appreciate what you like about it. As you focus on these aspects, notice how your feelings improve, even just a little, and appreciate that shift. Then, find something else and repeat.

Throughout your day, make it your intention to notice what pleases you and let yourself acknowledge it. When you focus on what's working or what feels good right now, you gently move yourself into a state of allowing – more ease, more clarity, and more positive things will find you.

This can be a powerful manifesting tool, if you're into that kind of thing, and if you're not, it's still a tool that can help you feel better.

Many years ago, when I first learned of this process, I bought a cheap journal, and decorated the cover in a way that made me happy. Each day, I'd write down the small things I had noticed and appreciated: a beautiful flower, the unique color of a bird, a parking meter that still had time left on it (yes, this was a long time ago).

Writing it down helped me relive the feeling. I'd appreciate it again, which would put me right back there in that state of mind.

One time, a year or so after I had given up writing in this journal, I reread it. I tapped back into that feeling, which somehow then unfolded into a series of events that ended with me winning some money in the scratch-offs.
So basically...proof it works 🤣

A gentle note:
If this practice feels irritating or forced right now, don't do it. Sometimes you're not in the mindset for it, and that's okay. Just remember that this tool exists, and you can come back when your nervous system is more open to it.

How the Rampage Builds

Here's what matters:
Every time you appreciate something, you're essentially saying, "More of this, please." It's not coming from a place of scarcity, it comes from desire.

As you find one thing to appreciate, you naturally begin to notice another. As you appreciate that, something else follows. That feeling attracts another opportunity to experience appreciation. It becomes a loop.

This is what's meant by a rampage. Not a forced positivity, but a building wave of focusing, thanking and allowing. One thing leads to the next and before you know it, you're carried into a state of appreciation. Just start where you are and let momentum do the rest.

In closing:
Let yourself find joy or beauty or comedy in your immediate environment. Let yourself feel good when it happens. Let that feeling warm your body and spread – and stay with it for as long as it naturally lasts. And when it passes, don't be mad that it's gone, but know that it will come again. Give yourself credit for it being there at all.

Let these thoughts build momentum. Let the appreciation for what is carry you through your day.

I hope this is helpful. I love you.

xo,
Christen

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