Mindfulness Mondays 2: Peace
June 8, 2009 by dr. lam · 5 Comments
I was stuck in the airport in Vegas yesterday because of a change in my departure time that I was not informed about from my carrier. At first, I was flustered about it, especially when I was informed that every flight was overbooked for each successive hour. Rather than become stressed at a situation over which I had no control, I just let myself achieve a very deep calm and told myself whatever should happen will be meant to be so I sat in the corner of the airport lounge and plugged away on my laptop. At 3:20 pm right before they were closing the gate for the 3:30 pm flight and not having heard my name called for standby, I just went to check with the attendant when I could possibly fly. She said that she was sorry that all flights were booked that day but wait there was a seat open so she got me on the 3:30 pm flight. It was the first aisle seat in economy with one space open for my carry-on luggage. I got into Dallas 10 minutes before my mother’s flight 2 gates away from hers so that the limo could pick both of us up at the same time without her or me having to wait an hour or what possibly would have been two separate trips. It was in short a miraculous event. By the way, this is the second time that a seat opened up by a miracle when I needed to get home for my mother’s birthday a year or so ago and was told I was going to have to say in the airport for hours or possibly overnight in St. Louis but somehow that turned into only an hour or so. The lady exclaimed, “Wait, somehow I have one seat available. I have never seen this.” I got onto the plane within minutes of departure time.
Sometimes we encounter what appears to be a terrible situation and we lose our sense of calm and peace. I will quote an email I received yesterday from my EO colleague and friend Saint Clair who watched Wayne Dyer’s PBS special, Excuses Begone!, that I partially saw a week ago myself: “Let go and let God – Translation = quit trying so hard and just get in the groove. Groove = right thinking when connected with the infinite (God). We need to wake up everyday and focus on the fact that ALL things are possible. Peace, and strength is not something that needs to be sought. For it already exists within us at all times.”
My goal for EO this year is working on being calm and at peace. Our intention this week is to be grateful for what we have and to be at peace with our situation. Stay calm in a sea of turmoil.
The Power of Intention Part 7 of 10: Directing Your Inner Voice
March 10, 2009 by dr. lam · 8 Comments
An obstacle to intention is any manifest conflict that exists with our internal dialogue. Dyer likens this to the old Match Game in which newlyweds would try to guess what his/her partner thought or felt on a particular subject. We need to match our intention with our goal. As examples:
No Match: I hate my spouse who always acts rudely to me.
Match: I will see only love in my spouse and radiate that love to him or her.
No Match: I am poor and need money badly.
Match: I will attract abundance and be without want.
If our inner dialogue is filled with doubt, anger, despair, fear, we are holding onto a deep level of negativity that we need to let go so that we can be attuned to the universal condition of positive intention. We must achieve a peaceful inner voice and one that attracts abundance, love, creativity, i.e., in short the 7 faces of intention talked about over the past 2 weeks.
One way that Dyer talks about reaching a desirable inner voice is to meditate. We can start with the affirmation, “I want to feel good” and say it as we slowly breathe in and out and with our eyes fully closed. I have calmed nervous patients with a similar technique. I had a gentleman who came from Michigan for a scar revision and a lip reduction last week who was flustered and nervous given the fact that he had bad permanent lip injections and repeated scar revisions that failed. I don’t blame him. I put my hands onto his forehead and slowly spoke the words, “You are okay. I am right here. I want you to slow your breathing down and start to focus on the present moment.” I performed an exercise and asked where he wanted to be. He said the Maldives so we went there for a few minutes. When I came back into the room after the anesthetic had been fully in place, I asked him how he was doing. By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was already calm. He said, “I’m doing fine, doctor.”
Calm your inner voice. Feel your peace now. Exit your anxiety. Focus on abundance, love, creativity, and gratitude. Focus on where your spirit will take you. Focus on directing that inner dialogue toward a future that is bright and calm and, of course, a present time that is equally so. If you have 5 minutes right now, close your eyes and start to breathe slowly and deeply and focus on the Power of Now. Focus on gratitude and abundance. Focus on peace.
The Power of Intention Part 6 of 10: Gratitude
March 9, 2009 by dr. lam · 10 Comments
I know this is my third blog on gratitude over the course of blog writing, but that is how special I believe the intention of gratitude truly is. The feeling of gratitude is diametrically opposed to the feeling of scarcity. It tells you, “I have enough” and “I am happy” and further “I am thankful.” When we open our spirit in praise to our God for thankfulness, we can receive more. When we turn off the spigot of gratitude, we enter a darker world that is filled with anxiety about the future and of our current situation. The offering of gratitude falls fully in alignment with the intention of abundance. When we see abundance that we have, we should offer gratitude. That is the next logical step after seeing that we are in an abundant state rather than one of deprivation.
Even when we look at our past, we should look at it with gratitude. If you had a negative experience or you went through a divorce, there was a time and reason for everything. You learned from those things and be grateful that you are not there anymore. Too often we look at our past with resentment and resistance, but it is part of the fabric of your life. There was a time and reason for that person or those persons to have been in your life. Look at your past with an open heart and then you can focus on your present and future with gratitude much more easily.
Start with a simple exercise: what are you grateful for? For me, I am grateful to have a career that I am in love with. I am grateful for having wonderful staff that I care about and who care about me. I am grateful that my staff is talented in each of their own unique ways. I am grateful for the abundance and growth of my practice. I am grateful for my loyal readership of my blogs. I am grateful for being able to lead and touch many people even way far outside of Dallas. I am grateful that I have such wonderful, sincere, and motivated patients. I am grateful for the food that I partake, the health that I have, the clothes that adorn me. I am grateful for the love of my family, specifically my mother and sister. I am grateful to have precious in-laws like Matt who gives his love to my sister unconditionally. I am grateful for a building that was created from scratch and which embodies what was once only an immaterial dream. I am grateful that you are connected with me right now at this very moment that you are reading my words. I am grateful for the bounty that God has bestowed upon me, for the love that I feel every day, for the wealth of joy that floods my heart, for the personal growth that I experience every day, and for so much more that would fill volumes of written word.
What are you grateful for today? Stop for a moment, meditate, and enumerate all that you are grateful for out loud and to yourself. Follow forward this very day with the spirit and intent of gratitude and be thankful for your abundance.
The Power of Intention Part 4 of 10: Abundance
March 5, 2009 by dr. lam · 8 Comments
I think living in these times of perceived scarcity, this blog will have some degrees of universal relevance. I am not necessarily the best exemplar of this, but I am working toward an intention of seeing only abundance and that God and the universe will provide everything that you need in times of difficulty. Believe in the power of abundance and you will begin to see that you have more than enough for your needs.
When we read the newspaper (which I still do every day to keep abreast of world events), we get immersed in negativity and are controlled with the ideas of scarcity. Today, you can’t escape the news that we don’t have enough and we are limited by those thoughts. I truly have been blessed by all of you in that I am still booked out for 3 months and have overflowing abundance. I feel as if all of you out there are connected with me and are connected in a fundamental way to my practice and my staff because we are all in an extended family. I thank you for your loyalty to LFP and to me. You are all part of my family, and I want to encourage all of you to see the abundance in the universe rather than the scarcity.
I hope that this blog serves as an antidote to the negative press out there, a small oasis and a tiny beacon to all those who have ears to hear it. I believe that the manifesto of LFP is to seek and attain all that life was meant for you and designed for you. Of course, for all of you that are in a perceived state of absence whether it be health or finances, look at what you have and attract abundance by focusing on it instead of what you don’t have.
Rhonda Byrne’s book, The Secret, is obviously famous for collectively putting many authors’ ideas under one cover and discussing the law of attraction and how we attract abundance or scarcity by our thoughts and intention. I would like all of you out there to take a day (always start with an easy unit of time) and begin to see abundance in front of you, intend it deeply and attain that abundance. Today, go out there and look for all signs of abundance. Help another person out there who is focused on scarcity see his or her own abundance and be thankful for it!
Path to Joy II: Offering Gratitude
October 14, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
For all of you who have read Rhonda Byrne’s book, The Secret, you know the power of gratitude. With the Laws of Attraction out there, we tend to attract what we want. I had one patient of mine whom I did a hair transplant on and he told Emina, “Is Dr. Lam coming in?” She said, “Why do you ask? Of course.” He responded, “I don’t like to see him because he is just too happy all the time.” Obviously, we attract what we want. If we fear scarcity, we may attract it unwittingly. With an open heart of gratitude no matter what situation we are in, we have a chance at peace and happiness.
As many of you know, my father was sick most of his life. There is a good saying, “A healthy man has a 1000 wishes. A sick man has but one.” We oftentimes take physical health for granted and don’t offer gratitude for our health. We simply take it for granted. Try sitting in a wheelchair all day (just one day). Try lying in a hospital bed for 3 months straight. We must have gratitude for everything we have.
We talked about overcoming your fears yesterday in this blog. Today, here is one surefire way to do just that. Stop a moment in your busy day, silence yourself, pray and open your heart, and give thanks for the rich blessings you do not deserve but that you have anyway. Offer gratitude for what you have and what you were given. If you have a great spouse, children, co-worker, go to that special person and offer gratitude to that person for being who they are. Last week, I offered gratitude to Constanze and Marcy who work so hard to be my advocates on the front lines and who keep my lovely patients still coming through the door. Thank you!!!
P.S.: I have just surpassed 3000 forum posts! Thanks everyone for the questions.