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These Qualities Can Help You Thrive in a Chaotic World

By Martia Nelson, author of "Coming Home: The Return to True Self," * Reprinted With Permission

[* NOTE: By clicking on the title and buying this book from Amazon.com, you help support LPO.]

How can we respond to the recent world events in a way that supports healing and transformation? We can commit to becoming carriers of the qualities we most want increased in our world right now: loving kindness, compassion, healing, peace, well-being, forgiveness, caring, appreciation, connectedness, and so on. These are thrival qualities, qualities that come from and perpetuate a state of thriving. A commitment to bringing these qualities into your life makes you a "designated thriver".

We have a longing to make an evolutionary leap into a world dominated by mass thrival rather than the old, perpetual fight for survival. For that leap we need to recognize and activate the thrival qualities within ourselves so we can carry them forward into the world. We all have thrival qualities -- our spirit is made of them. But it is easy to lose touch with them when the high-sensation, survival qualities of fear and anguish are stimulated. So the world needs designated thrivers, people who, even when temporarily pulled off track, will bring themselves back to the path of thrival.

The terrorists and the media have gotten our attention by grabbing us with fear. To regain our course, lets become FASCINATED with thrival qualities and notice them at every opportunity: within ourselves, within others, and in the actions of our communities. Did someone speak compassionately to you this week? Notice it! Did that make you feel compassion for yourself and others? Notice it! Don't let any thrival incidents pass you by. Claim them and validate them. Use them. As we notice thrival qualities and feel them, they become more real. It is our way of unleashing them into the culture.

Thrival qualities can be the "headlines" in our future if we give them our attention now. The day after the New York and Washington, D.C. attacks, I saw a newspaper with a one-word headline: Horror! That is a word guaranteed to immediately engage our fears and plunge us into our issues about survival. By now we all have had our survival issues thoroughly activated and we don't need any more of that. Thrival is what we want and thrival is where we are headed. We need to thoroughly engage our thrival qualities so they can guide our actions and affect the actions of our leaders.

Choose a thrival quality that you want to cultivate as your gift to world healing. Then picture it as a real newspaper headline and let your body bask in the feeling of that quality. Do this for a full minute, three times each day. Start now. Listed below are sample headlines. Take a moment to let each one drop into you as you try it on. Then pick the one you're most drawn to, or let your heart show you a new one that will be even more empowering for you. Remember, read each of these words pretending that it is a real newspaper headline.

PEACE!

LOVE!

COMPASSION!

KINDNESS!

CARING!

HEALING!

WELL-BEING!

FORGIVENESS!

CONNECTNESS!

SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY!

APPRECIATION!

CREATIVITY!

With you in thrival, Martia Nelson

© Copyright, 2001, Martia Nelson, Visit her website for other articles