What's Your Vibe?

Have you found yourself persistently feeling down or lacking energy? Are events in your life making you feel bad without a clear path out? I’ve found that paying attention to my vibration helped me better deal with problems and feel better.

I used to approach things differently. If I felt bad, I would ask myself what I was feeling, and then why I was feeling it, and before I knew it, my mind had wandered off into a dark forest of all the things that might be making me feel bad at that moment.  And from there, the paths of self-doubt, fear, regret, resentment lead me down storylines that I repeated over and over again in my mind.  I would think about something someone said, for example, how it had hurt my feelings, what I wish I had said to her… and suddenly my feelings would be hurt all over again, I felt resentment and regret.  Then I would think about why my friend might have said something so hurtful, and suddenly I was feeling self-doubt and despair.  All this thinking didn’t actually get me closer to solving a problem or feeling better.  It didn’t put those emotions into proper context, it just gave them more power and left me feeling worse.

This is where the concepts of energy vibrations and the Buddhist concepts of mindfulness and detachment came to the rescue for me.  In order to properly acknowledge my emotions, it is okay for me to mindfully notice that I am feeling bad. But if I take the feeling with of a grain of salt, if I detach myself from it just a bit, maybe I can still notice what’s wrong enough, without wandering into the forest. And so instead I might say, “hmm, my energy vibration is low.  What can I do to raise it?” knowing that coming from a place of higher vibration is much more productive for problem-solving, should there actually be a problem to solve.  You see, my mind likes to think of every negative emotion as a problem to solve. But in fact, sometimes I am simply sad because I miss someone who has passed away, or I am angry because someone took my parking space. These things lowered my vibration, my feelings are understandable and worth acknowledging, but there is not actually anything wrong that needs to be or can be fixed.  Other times, I feel a nagging yuckiness that I can’t quite put my finger on, or a situation like the friend who said something hurtful – which may or may not actually be a problem that needs solving.  I’ve often found that once my energy vibration has been raised, the answers to those problems comes to me like a flash of inspiration, without any need to wander into the forest at all!  When I am filled with feelings of abundance, compassion, and self-love (all high energy feelings), the solutions I come up with are usually the right ones.  When my vibration is low and I am feeling sorry for myself, lacking understanding for others, or mired in sadness or anger, the solutions I come up with (if I even can) are often not the best.

So, what is energy vibration? What causes it to be low or high? How can you change it?

Your energy vibration is your overall state of being. Since you, like everything else, are made of energy, it is literally the frequency of your vibration.  When your vibration is high, you feel energetic, joyful, peaceful, loving. You find it easy to get things done that you need to do, to feel loving kindness toward others, to be compassionate with yourself, and to move forward.  You feel abundance and gratitude.  When your vibration is low, you feel stuck, emotions such as anger, fear, jealousy, resentment, and sadness take hold, you lose your patience with others and yourself.  You feel lack and helplessness.  Thinking in terms of general well-being rather than pinning down specifics, allows you to calibrate things throughout the day to raise your overall vibration and feel better.

What causes your vibration to be low or high is of course specific to you and your circumstances and environment.  Once you get used to paying attention to it, you will begin to notice the things that impact it.  And that will also give you the simple solution to raising your vibration – simply eliminate the energy-lowering things in your life and increase the energy-raising elements.  Here are just a few questions to ask yourself

• Are there certain people I interact with who always leave me feeling better?  Are there people I interact with who zap my energy or leave me feeling feel bad?
• How do I feel after I’ve checked social media or spent time watching TV?
• Are there certain meals that make me feel energetic or lethargic?
• Are there exercises or activities that leave me feeling ready to take on the world?
• Is there music that I listen to or things I read that lift my mood or bring me down?
• How does the quality and amount of sleep I’ve gotten affect me the next day?
• Are there things that I spend a lot of time thinking about that only get me down, especially things over which I have no control?  Are there things that make me feel joyful or creative when I think about them?
• Are there things in my environment – colors, smells, textures, light – that bring me joy? Are there things in my environment that have negative associations for me or that overwhelm me when I look at them?

Aside from identifying the things in your life that affect your vibration, it’s a good idea to have a few tools at your disposal that can instantly raise your vibration, for those times when you just wake up in a funk or find yourself feeling down in the middle of the day.  Make a conscious decision to raise your vibration, knowing that whatever is bringing you down is much more likely to be solved when you are coming from a place of high vibration.  And maybe sometimes you’ll find that there’s actually nothing wrong at all.

Here are some things that quickly and easily work for me

• Listen to music. There are certain songs that instantly pick me up (two that come to mind for me right now are Ain’t Got No Time to Lose by Charley Crockett and If You Want to Shout Out, Shout Out by Cat Stevens).
• Go outside. Leave your phone behind and just step outside. Take a few breaths of fresh air, notice the clouds, listen to the birds, find something beautiful and appreciate it.
• Meditate. I have a simple seven minute loving kindness meditation that is always guaranteed to make me feel loved and content. (My favorite source for quick meditations is the Buddhify app)
• Make a gratitude list. It doesn’t have to be a long list of everything you’re grateful for, just sit down and jot down the first three things that come to mind for which you are grateful. For an even bigger boost, tell someone in your life that you are grateful for them. 
• Be kind. Hold that elevator door, let that guy get ahead of you in traffic, call to check on a sick friend, hug a loved one, just give someone a smile. You’d be amazed how quickly the smallest act of kindness can raise your vibration (and someone else’s too!)

Try spending a few days paying attention to your vibration. If you feel that it is low, instead of investigating why or feeling helpless about it, make a decision to raise your vibration.  Begin eliminating or reducing things in your life that lower your vibration and make a habit of things that raise. You might be surprised to find how sensitive you become moment to moment to your energy wellness, and how keeping your vibration up soon becomes second nature.

Peace and Love,
Vera