Several years ago, I noticed that without giving it much thought, I had started signing off my monthly email music newsletter with “Stay Tuned,” before my signature. At the time, it felt correct but innocuous, and nothing more than “keep an eye on this space, as there’s lots happening.” Which, to be fair, is usually true, and this space is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
But what I wasn’t paying as much attention to at the time was the many meanings of staying tuned. Certainly as a guitar player I am often tuning and retuning the instrument to account for the various travails of climate and life. And as a therapist, I’m often counseling clients about “staying tuned” in other healthy personal ways that usually have to do with self-cafe, and paying attention to their feelings. And this, for me, is where it all starts to get pretty interesting.
We know that the universe runs on vibration, and that our somewhat puny human senses are only able to pick up on so many of them. Much of the light that exists is lost to us, sadly, and yet we still perceive a world full of vibrant color. Same with sound and smell. There’s no doubt that my dogs can hear and smell things I cannot, but that doesn’t mean those vibrations/smells don’t exist. I’m just not tuned to them, because my sensors work differently.
Humans have this amazing guidance system whereby our emotional reality (feelings of the moment) always follow our thoughts. You know this implicitly, and watch: First, imagine a delicious physical experience you’ve enjoyed. Maybe it’s a long shower, maybe it’s in the bedroom. Just bring it to mind for a moment, and notice how that memory feels….Now remember a time when you’ve stepped in dog poo. And what that was like.
Your feelings do a 180, right? From ooh, delicious ….to ewwww gross!!! Just by reading a few words, which trigger a few thoughts and memories, which have strong emotional connections. Knowing this fascinating thing about our brain-body connection, we can use this same mechanism to “tune” ourselves towards feeling really good, nearly all of the time.
Without going too far down the rabbit hole here, you’ve perhaps read my other writings or simply are familiar with things like the law of attraction. It’s the most powerful law in the universe and simply states: like attracts like. If I show up to my first day at a new school wearing a particular band t-shirt, I will, by the end of the day, have connected with at least one or two people who also like that band. They will have seen the shirt and said hello. Same goes if I join the chess club. Or hang out by the dumpster smoking cigarettes. Wherever we go, we have a vibe going on, and we are likely to meet others with a similar vibe going on. Like attracts like.
When it comes to things manifesting in our lives, we get what we think about whether we want it or not. Knowing this, I spend a lot of time paying really close attention to what I let myself think about, based on how it feels when I think about it. I used to spend hours paying attention to the “gigs other people were landing that I was not,” feeling crappy about my musical trajectory. Then I learned to stop focusing on that. Instead, I paid more attention to the gigs I was getting, or the ones I wanted to some day get, and let my emotions follow those better feeling thoughts. Because the law of attraction doesn’t miss, and if I can already get myself feeling good and hopeful (even if the current reality of gigs is not where I want it to be), then the universe brings me more and more and more reasons to feel good and hopeful.
Learning to feel gratitude for future blessings is the most powerful magic in the universe. The more I practice it, the better I feel in this very moment. And then, lo and behold, the great gigs start coming in too. And by that point, they’re just the cherry on top. Because I was already feeling great, staying in tune, by purposely focusing on things that feel good. Even if they are things that haven’t yet manifest yet.
I keep looking around the corner, and feeling for what’s coming. And I’ve never been happier. And more excited. I encourage you to join me. It just takes practice. Stay tuned.