Upbeat Living: 8 Easy Steps to Clear the Energy of Your Home or Office

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Clear the energy of your home, Effective living, Energy of your home, Feeling energized, Feng Shui, Kebba Buckley Button, peace within, stress, UpBeat Living

© 2016 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.  

In Upbeat Living^sm, we want our lifestyle to be energized and joyful.  To feel our best, we should regularly check on and tune up the energy of our spaces.  So today’s topic is the energy of your home or office.  By now, you’ve probably heard of the idea of Feng Shui, the art of placing objects in your home, office, or other space, to optimize the energy in the space and in your life.  Maybe you’ve even dabbled in adding certain colors or objects to your space.  If so, you already believe in subtle energy fields, the circulating energy patterns that you can’t see.

But you don’t need to understand the complex details of the discipline of Feng Shui, to clear or otherwise adjust your home or office energy.  Especially if you are feeling stuck in any way, there are quick and simple things you can do to raise the energy, the feeling, of your space. At this writing, we are at the end of Summer and almost at the beginning of Fall.  This is a natural time of transition and evaluation. The other natural time of home energy transition is in the Spring, when people launch into Spring cleaning.  That is at time when people in cold areas open their doors and windows for the first time in months.  They “air out” their homes, and they clean and freshen all the surfaces and contents.  Perhaps they take a fresh look at what they own and what they would like to donate or replace.  Perhaps they add some bright seasonal décor. In hot areas like Phoenix, this naturally happens at the end of Summer.

When outside temperatures finally descend to below 80 degrees, people may suddenly open their front doors and find the air is cooler outside than inside—a pleasant, refreshing shock.  At that point, the home or office energy has been stale for a half year, and it’s time for a re-set.  Junk energy has been accumulating all during the closed-window season.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.

Shadow energy builds up when we don’t air out or tune up our space.  Now that the weather is mild, all the energy of stress, illness, fatigue, and discouragement can be aired out and cleansed away.  This is simple. It can take about 10 minutes of your time, plus an hour to continue letting the space air out!  Just follow these 8 easy steps.

1. Set your intention to clear and lighten up the energy of your space.
2. Open all the doors and windows. Leave the screen doors closed.
3. Light an incense stick or sage bundle. You’ll carry it around over a pan that catches the ash.  Any incense will do, coupled with your intention.  My favorite is Nag Champa.
4. Declare your intention and/or say a prayer. Try this traditional one, or write your own: “Visit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, this dwelling, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy.  Let Thy holy Angels dwell herein, to preserve us in peace. And let Thy blessing be upon us forever.  Through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
5. Go around your space repeating phrases about release, such as: “I bless and release all tired, ill, old, or stale energy.  I bless and release all pain, all emotional sludge, all discouragement, all stuck/ness, all unclarity, all brain fog, all distraction, and all outdated ideas of life and who I should be”.  Picture stale energy leaving through the open windows and doors.
6. Go around again, still holding the pan with burning incense or sage, and repeat phrases like this: “I refill this space with new, fresh, upbeat, encouraged, optimistic, can-do energy.  I declare this to be a space filled with radiance and wellness, vitality, fresh ideas, easy concentration, right action, inspiration, and best relationships.  I declare that this space draws the ideal friends, (clients, if applicable,) loved ones, energy, and income.  This is a place of peace, joy, and balance!”
7. Thank God/the Universe/Jesus/the Angels. According to your belief system, express great gratitude that these things are so.
8. Give the space an hour to air out, or more if climate and schedule permit.

Now simply repeat as desired.  You’ll notice the space feels lighter, and everything you do is easier.  And that’s Upbeat  Living!

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Energy – Peace – Meditation

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author.  She also is an ordained minister and has a natural healing practice. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br),and Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office.  Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.  
• For an appointment or to book Rev. Kebba to speak for your group, email calendar@kebba.com

 

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Upbeat Living: Beat Stress with The Serenity Prayer

Tags

Alcoholics Anonymous, peace within, Serenity Prayer, stress, UpBeat Living

© 2016 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.

Most people would say they have stress, and they need to beat stress; some are even praying The Serenity Prayer.   While many seek peace within, most don’t know the original version of what they think of as The Serenity Prayer.  If they did, many more people would use this Prayer, and more often.

First, here’s the form many people think is the whole prayer:

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

The prayer speaks to claiming your peace within through not trying to change what can’t be changed, through taking action where you can, and through discernment.  The prayer was made famous through 12-Step programs such as Alchoholics Anonymous.  But you don’t need to be a member of such a program to get a quick stress tuneup from it.  Read it through 3 times slowly, to start feeling your whole metabolism relax and start to release stress.

And still, this is only a piece of the complete poem by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971):

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

If I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life

And supremely happy with Him

Forever in the next.

Amen

The complete poem is more of a complete program for managing our life energies:  accept what is, make change as you can, enjoy what you can, know that challenges grow you, trust God, follow His will, reap the rewards of a happy life.  Are you feeling your peace within rising, and your stress draining, yet?  Are you thinking of putting a copy of the complete piece on your bathroom mirror?  If it moves you, why not?

For those who like scriptures, each of the concepts in the poem refer to specific scriptures, chiefly Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

And lean not on our own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge him,

And he will direct your paths.

 In other words, trust and let it be.

And finally, on a lighter note, we have this modern takeoff, The Senility Prayer (author unknown):

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked,

The good fortune to run into the ones I do,

And the eyesight to tell the difference.

I hope you chuckled at that one.  So how will you run your life this day?  Screen out what you can’t control, bless your lessons, and enjoy what you can.  Trust and let it be.  And that’s Upbeat Living!

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Energy – Peace – Meditation

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office.  Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com. 
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: bookings@kebba.com .

Worry Stress: Make a Decision Now

Tags

Kebba Buckley Button, peace within, stress, worry stress

© 2016 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.

Be honest:  do you have Worry Stress?  How much and how often do you worry?  When you get a good Worry going, do you have trouble stopping?  I invite you now to make a New Year decision to shift that.

My grandmother worried.  She worried about many things, from the smallest personal decisions, such as how to arrange which flowers, to the state of the Presidency, the economy, and world affairs.  However, she had a system:  she worried on schedule.  At a certain time each evening, she told me, she would lie restfully, a small AM radio playing near her ear, and she would worry for about an hour and a half.  If some worrisome topic came to her during the day, no problem.  She could and would set it aside until it was time to worry.

Most people are not that mentally organized.  They worry and stress and fret at any and all hours of the day, and sometimes at night.  They cannot concentrate on a task at hand, because they are distracted by their Worry Stress.  I have clients who say they wake up worrying and can’t go back to sleep.

So, how much happier and more energetic would you be, if you didn’t worry and stress and fret?  How much more would you get done?  How much better would you rest at night, and how much less tired would you be during the day?  How much less stress relief would you need?  Wouldn’t your life cost less and wouldn’t you have more money?  You would also be more popular.  People enjoy working and socializing with light-hearted people.

Possibly the most famous advice for worry was penned in many versions, by the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, as a prayer.  It is now widely known as The Serenity Prayer.  It asks for the wisdom to discern between things we can or cannot change.  If half the things you are worrying about are outside any of your control, are they worth getting stressed about?  Make a list of everything you ever worry about, and draw an arrow through the items that you can do nothing about.  Is it most of them?  Is it half?  Now, whatever your belief system or faith system, consider the power of mental boundaries to help you be wisely serene.  Can you set aside what is not worth worrying about?  If you are a person of faith, can you give those to God, and trust that Someone is in charge?

Consider this early version of Niebuhr’s prayer, from a 1937 Christian student publication:

 Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.

Is it in your control?  If not, set it aside.  Practice turning off your Worry Stress, nurture your Peace Within, and live as you were meant to live.

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Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office.  Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com. 
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: bookings@kebba.com .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bygones Stress: Getting Out of the Past

Tags

bygones stress, Kebba Buckley Button, living in the NOW moment, peace within, stress, Stress Management, UpBeat Living

© 2015 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. World Rights Reserved.

 

Fotolia

Whatever your belief system, I stand for your right to have Upbeat Living. I stand for your greatest health, fulfillment, happiness and success. The concept of Upbeat Living is doing what you can to support yourself in living your best possible life, starting now. And one element of that best possible life is understanding that you can only live in the one moment—the NOW moment.

Go ahead—try to live yesterday. I’ll wait.

Over it? Great! Or are you? How many times this week have you thought of a terrible thing that was done to you in a past job? How often do you think of past relationships and wish someone had treated you differently, or that you had treated someone differently? Today alone, what mistakes have you made in your job performance, that you thought of today and winced over? How many times this month have you thought of not having the childhood you wanted or the parents you wanted? All these things are actually living in the past. When you keep playing the mental videos from the past, you do two things that limit you: (1) you rehearse and relive the past, thus reinforcing your sense of wrong and unworth, and (2) you keep yourself from living in your NOW moment, thus moving on. Make sense?

Present-moment living, getting in touch with your now, is at the heart of effective living. When you think about it, there really is no other moment you can live. Now is all there is, and the future is just another present moment to live when it arrives. One thing is certain, you cannot live it until it does appear.

~ Wayne Dyer

Especially if you need a new direction, how will you choose that and move into it, if you are stuck in the past and not even actively living your present? You must let go of the past! Resolve to practice catching yourself when you go there, then gently turning your attention back to the present, with an eye to the future you are creating.

If you are a person of faith, practice turning your attention back to the future you are co-creating with the Divine. Consider this line from the Apostle Paul:

…One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.

~ Phil 3:13 (NIV)

 

Practice forgiving, blessing and releasing, and even finding gifts in the lessons of the past. Try praying for those who have wronged you, wishing them all the best—and God knows what the best is. And practice letting go, so you can get into your NOW. God has plans for you! Will you be there to participate in those plans? Or will you be stuck in your past?

Step toward your future now, by pulling yourself into your NOW moment, and truly living there. Get past your past.  Are you in?

 

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• If you enjoy this post, please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column! You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma! Due to a recent FB change, our “likes” look low. Thanks for your help!

Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office. Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: calendar@kebba.com .

 

 

 

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.

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AGNT, Kebba Buckley Button, Martin Luther King Jr., nonviolence, peace, peace within, Peacemaking, Season for NonViolence, SNV

© 2015 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. World Rights Reserved.

 

© Etien – Fotolia

 

 

On January 21, 2013, U. S. President Barack Obama took the Oath of Office for the second time.  He held in his hand the personal Bible of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That’s the Bible the King family normally keeps in a glass case. That’s the one with Dr. King’s handwritten notes in the margins. That second inauguration also fell on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  The day was first signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, to honor the civil rights leader.  The date was selected as the third Monday of January each year, to be close to Dr. King’s birthday, January 15th.  The holiday was finally adopted by all the States as of 2000.

 

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?

~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was a pastor known for nonviolent methods of creating social change, especially working against poverty, racism, and violence.  He lived in a time difficult for some to imagine, when there was great stress between Blacks and Whites in this country.  There were separate hotels, restaurants, and water fountains for Blacks. Blacks had a hard time riding buses, at least in the fronts of the buses. Blacks couldn’t vote. Some Blacks in relationships with Whites suffered violence or death. During these years, an organization called the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK, committed many acts of hatred, cruelty and destruction in the name of White Supremacy. They were famous for wearing white cloaks with pointed hoods and burning crosses on front lawns; also burning homes and churches.

In contrast, Dr. King led peaceful protests and marches to draw attention to the need for equality. Some of the demonstrations were met with hatred, tear gas, and high pressure water hoses. In part due to the work of Dr. King, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, and the next year, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now the law said it was illegal to discriminate against anyone, based on their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And now the law prohibited racial discrimination in voting. However, not all in the U.S. agreed with equal rights.

Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968, having traveled there to support striking African-American sanitation workers seeking rights.  He is remembered for poetic and strongly inspiring speeches, such as the “I have a dream” speech.  In that speech, he said,

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’  I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…

In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill that made Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a National Day of Service.   Organizations and volunteers now match with each other for needed service, on the federal website, MLKDay.gov.  The site can also connect volunteers with opportunities for service throughout the year. As Clinton said at his second inaugural address, “We must be repairers of the breach.”

On President Obama’s second Inauguration weekend, Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Dr. King said, “Everyone is important, no matter how you define yourself.  We have to finish the work of Dr. King.”

Each year, the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) celebrates a Season for Nonviolence (SNV), from the anniversary of Ghandi’s death to the anniversary of Dr. King’s death, January 30th to April 4th.  The SNV offers opportunities to explore the qualities and actions of nonviolent solutions, leading to peace prevailing on this Planet.   Together, let us celebrate Dr. King and the strides made as a result of his work.  Together, let us celebrate the good works of good people around the Globe.  Together let us celebrate the question, “What are you doing for others?”

For more on the work currently being carried forward in Dr. King’s name, visit the King Center for Nonviolent Change, http://www.thekingcenter.org/.  For more on AGNT:  http://www.AGNT.org.

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If you enjoy this post, please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column! You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma! Due to a recent FB change, our “likes” look low. Thanks for your help!

 

Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office. Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba Buckley Button to speak for your group: Calendar@kebba.com .

There’s Healing and There’s Curing

Tags

arthritis, curing, healing, HIV/AIDS, Kebba Buckley Button, Oriental energy healing, oriental energy therapy, peace within, stress, Stress Management, UpBeat Living

© 2015 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM. World Rights Reserved.

 

From a photo by Nikki Zalewski, Fotolia

 

Is there something in your body or your life that you wish were healed? Today I went to a meeting of the Healing Ministry at my church. It’s a large Episcopal Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. The lay Healing Ministers shared stories of healings they had experienced, and we discussed dimensions of healing.

 

I like to focus on the positive, the Upbeat Living, the joy… all the Highest and Best. Not the past or the pain. However, today I was moved to share with this loving group my most dramatic healing story: mine. Here it is.

 

When I was 26, one evening, I began to feel cranky. I thought “[H]ow odd! What’s going on?” My body replied that the large joints of my hands were burning. I thought, “[N]o problem. Mom has had mild arthritis since my age. I’ll take aspirin, like she does.” Oh no! Within a year, I was burning from head to toe. And there was a terrible stiffness with the pain. Over a few months, my joints began to enlarge and I could hardly use my hands. I would be needing a wheelchair by my mid-thirties, and there would be no marriage or children. As an engineering manager, I went at potential solutions like a freight train. I learned nutrition, controlled my diet, and took up oriental energy healing, primarily Jin Shin Jyutsu.

I learned there are many approaches other than medication, to beat a painful condition.

 ~Kebba Buckley Button

When I was 33, I was at a party, and someone was talking about her arthritis as though she had married it. She was obsessed with it, in love with it. But that’s another column. I heard myself saying to her, “[W]ell, when I had horrible crippling arthritis, I found several things really helped…” From there, I have no memory of what I shared with her, because I was so shocked to hear myself speak of my hellish condition in the past tense. It had finished leaving sometime over the previous few months! I learned that just because you have a condition doesn’t mean it has to be progressive. Just because you have a diagnosis doesn’t mean you have to keep it. Later, as my joints actually healed and shrank, I learned that just because you have organic body damage, it doesn’t mean it can’t reverse. These were huge revelations to me. Now, at 62, most days, I have no pain of any kind whatsoever. People take me for 45.

 

The opportunity to experience that crippling condition was a transformative gift in my life. I became so fascinated with natural pain solutions that I left engineering and morphed into an energy- and spiritual healer. I became an ordained minister, a spiritual teacher, a stress management trainer, and an award-winning author.

 

In the 1980’s, the AIDS epidemic hit Phoenix. I volunteered at the Malta Center, a community healing organization funded by an arm of the Catholic Church. We served HIV/AIDS patients and their loved ones, without regard to their income. We comforted and listened. We helped the clients organize the practical help they needed. We had Red Cross classes on understanding HIV/AIDS. We had funeral planning workshops. We had a lot of funerals. I had extraordinary conversations with many people experiencing the embrace of AIDS, and with their families.

 

I learned that I had friends who had been HIV-positive for 10 years, with no symptoms at all, even fatigue. I learned that some AIDS patients got very close to the Divine in their last weeks. I learned that some seemed to go into a state of Grace in their last weeks, in complete harmony with Life, the Universe, and God. Some said their lives were healed, and then they passed on. They weren’t cured, but they were healed.

 

Today, the Clinton Initiative and other organizations stream pharmaceutical protocols to many countries, and HIV is not the frightening specter it once was. Do you want healing? Let’s remember:

• There are many approaches other than medication, to beat horrible pain and other health conditions.
• Just because you have a diagnosis doesn’t mean it gets to rule your life.
• Just because you have a condition doesn’t mean it has to be progressive.
• Just because there was never a medical protocol before doesn’t mean there won’t be one soon, if you like medical protocols.
• Just because you’re not cured doesn’t mean you can’t be healed.

Live your life.  Don’t fear health labels.  Maintain your miraculous body the best you can.  It’s your life:  be there.

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If you enjoy this post, please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column. You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma! Due to a recent FB change, our “likes” look low. Thanks for your help!

 

Energy – Peace – Meditation

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office. Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com.

• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: bookings@kebba.com .