--Franklin Delano Roosevelt,



Speech, Aug. 14, 1936

If life's little events seem to build up and swirl around your head like the pesky little insects that flit about on hot summer days, then it's time to learn some simple steps to de-bug your mind and achieve a more balanced, joyful life.

Just as you consciously or unconsciously open the door of your heart and mind to negativity, you can consciously restore your heart and mind to embrace happiness and find peace. We simply need to find a way to climb out of the rut we've placed ourselves in and draw out our innate talents instead.

We refer to those irritating little life events as "GNATS: Going Nuts About Stuff." Everyone gets a case of "gnats" once in a while. Some people have daily attacks, and those can paralyze you and block you from happiness just as easily and effectively as fear. If you want to attain fulfillment in your life, you have to undertake a journey of self-discovery that will let you discover how to master these life-draining "gnats."

We fall prey to these spells when we let in negativity. Although we know it makes no sense, we do it anyway - it's just the way our untrained energy behaves. Once the negativity arrives, and if it is left unchecked, it stays there and feeds on itself and grows, just like any other living organism.

The solution to achieving life-long happiness is learning how to excise the GNATS so they don't exert any power over you. Just as a malignancy is cut away from healthy tissue, we can cut the negativity away from our healthy energy. Our emotional self has an advantage over our physical being, because our emotional being is capable of regeneration.

A De-Bugging Exercise

When the GNATS attack, immediately sit quietly, close your eyes and slowly and regularly breathe. Breathe in what you feel is the missing part of your heart and mind, breathe out what you do not want. For instance, if you are upset, breathe in peace; if you are angry, breathe in joy, and then breathe out the anger or the upset.

This exercise is about energy. It is not about moving air in and out of your lungs, though that alone is helpful. This is about restoring your spirit to its completeness, not about lowering your blood pressure, which will happen automatically as you restore yourself.

This is an undertaking that also fulfills the principle of the 23rd Psalm: "He restoreth my soul." Permit yourself -- and empower yourself -- to renew your spirit that will allow you to celebrate your life.

Congratulations - You have just taken another step on the road to "Power Living!"