Two powerful self-help tools for living your best life

by Health Experts · October 28, 2020

By Christina Connors

“Ho’Oponopono” and The Law of Attraction

It’s September, 2020 and I’m sitting on my couch in Connecticut feeling a little frustrated and concerned. As a global society, we are moving through a huge transformation and on top of that, we are in the middle of a pandemic that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. I recently asked myself “What can I do to help not only myself, but help others move through these times with grace and ease?”

The late Wayne Dyer said “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” I believe Wayne Dyer was touching upon the very popular idea of the law of attraction and the widely popular movie “The Secret.” But is it a secret? Maybe they were simply talking about the neuroscience of the human mind and how it is an energy field that responds to focus with emotion. If that were the case, then maybe the most important thing for us all to do right now is to focus our attention on what kind of world we want, and how we can participate in creating it rather than placing it on what we don’t want therefore creating more of it in our personal lives and in the world at large. So why does it seem more difficult to focus on what we want rather than the chaos in the world around us?

I became incredibly fascinated with the developing brain a few years back while doing research for a children’s animation project I was working on. While reading through tons of books and watching videos on neuroscience, mindfulness and the developing brain, I learned that as we grow, especially in our early years, our brain creates a unique circuitry and wires itself based upon our life’s experiences and what we focus on. We also inherited some of our ancestors’ wiring from way back when they were being chased by wild bears. My favorite mindfulness teacher named Shauna Shapiro did a Ted Talk titled “What You Practice Grows Stronger.” The more we focus our attention on something, the deeper the grooves (neural pathways) become and eventually become our default way of focusing, thinking and therefore creating.

I believe that what the world needs most from us right now is the discipline to notice when we are wanting to focus on what we don’t want, and deliberately redirecting our attention to what we want. By doing this, we can create new, healthy neural pathways and less of our ancient fight or flight pathways. Over time when we continue this practice, not only will our personal lives and the world around us shift for the better, our ability to focus on what we want becomes easier.

Healing and Forgiveness

When I find myself watching the news, or gravitating toward people’s behaviors that aren’t in alignment with the kind of world I want children to inherit, then I clean. Clean, you ask? Yes, clean. A few years back, I discovered an ancient Hawaiian healing and forgiveness prayer practice called the Ho Oponopono. When I practice the Ho’Oponopono, I find myself feeling lighter and less frustrated with what I see around me. It leaves me feeling empowered, knowing that I can make a difference merely by changing myself and my inner world of thoughts. The Ho’oponopono process is a petition to the Divine to remove toxic energies and fill the space after them with itself, i.e. Love.

Ho´oponopono is a great gift for humanity in these challenging times, and teaches how we can ask the errors in our thoughts, words and actions to be cleared at any time. This process primarily leads to the release of stressful, and unhealthy habits and therefore, making way for our dream life to reveal itself.

Hatred, problems, anger, sadness, and intolerance are not you. It is said that you can use the Ho’Oponopono on any problem and you don’t need to know the cause of the problem. It reminds me of lesson 5 in the teachings in The Course In Miracles which says “I am never upset for the reason I think”.

What kind of world do you want your children and your children’s children to inherit? What gifts or skills can you offer to help build a better tomorrow? Is there a cause that pulls at your heart strings? Now is the time to remember that you have all the tools you need within you, to become the best version of yourself and help participate in building a new, healthy, and sustainable world.

Just focus! Clean!