Awesome Dudette asks: “Our family friend, Lori, has had a difficult life in many ways (tough divorce, now a single mom, trouble finding nice men). In other ways she is very, very blessed, but she doesn’t see it.

She is one of the most negative people I know. Over the years I have watched her become more and more bitter and resentful over pretty much everything in her life. She seems angry and just so pessimistic. She sees only the bad and seems blind to all the good around her.  As a result her mental and physical health has deteriorated. She believes that her issues are genetic and that “she’s falling apart because she’s old” (she’s only 45!), and that she has to be on medication for the rest of her life.

We want to help her so, so badly!  We’ve sent her your articles, and Law of Attraction books like The Secret, etc. She has never shown any interest whatsoever.  Lately she seems to resent us more because we seem “too happy” to her.

Do you have any tips or ideas for us to help her?”

Well, Awesome Dudette, believe it or not, this is a common problem. When we find some of the answers we’ve been looking for and we finally experience these good emotions, we want to shout it from the rooftops and heal everyone. We essentially become the equivalent of LOA touting Jehovah’s Witnesses or Law of Attraction missionaries (or possibly well meaning drug pushers). This is normal. When you find something great you want to share it with everyone. Especially when they’re unhappy or sick and you know that if they only gave this stuff a try, they’d be just as happy as you now are.

She can’t hear you

The problem is that when someone like your friend is vibrating in a low, unhappy, sickly place (like a 3 on a scale of 1-100) and you’re bouncing around on a happy, shiny 85, SHE. CAN’T. HEAR. YOU. Your Level-85 words are on a frequency that her Level-3 ears can’t hear. It’s like you’re speaking Japanese to an Italian dude. You can talk all you want and you can scream louder and louder, it won’t help. He’s not going to understand a word you say. And neither is your friend.

No matter how well meaning you are, pushing articles and books and conversations of how she needs to raise her vibration on her, will only piss her off. It’s not interesting to her because she doesn’t hear the same thing that you do when you listen to this stuff. She isn’t having the same epiphanies and insights as you. The information doesn’t resonate with her.

But that’s ok.

Happiness is not a destination

You have found clarity and happiness and you found it in a way that worked for you. The problem is that you think happiness is like a destination – one that you can now help others to find. But it’s not. Happiness is relational, like all emotions. This is where it can get a little bit complicated, so let me explain:

If you’ve read the post Life After Death, Or How Life Is Like A Video Game (and if you haven’t, I strongly suggest that you do), you’ll remember that there’s you (the little, human you, the avatar) and then there’s the BIG YOU (your inner being, who you really are, your soul, the brain in the jar). All of the experiences you have in the physical realm cause the BIG YOU to keep rising in vibration. So, the vibration of the BIG YOU is never fixed, but always changing. Your emotions tell you how far away the little you is from the vibration of the BIG YOU.

The closer the little you is to the BIG YOU, the better you’ll feel. In other words, the closer you are to your desires, to being Who You Really Are, to what YOU want (not society or your friends or anyone else), the happier you are. You will find your happiness when you meet up with the vibration of the BIG YOU.

So, getting back to your friend Lori, let’s say that BIG LORI is currently in Australia and little lori is trying to make her way there. She’s 100.000 miles away from Australia, which is large distance, so she’s feeling anger and resentment. She’s nowhere near where she wants to be, so she’s feeling bad.

The BIG YOU is in Paris and the little you is visiting the Eiffel Tower, so you’re feeling great.  You’re in Paris, and there’s no distance between the BIG YOU and the little you. Happiness abounds. When you try to get your friend to join you, it doesn’t go well. This is because she’s not trying to go to Paris and even if you get her to come there, she’s still not going to be anywhere near Australia, so she’s still not going to feel even close to happy. In fact, the more you keep trying to drag her to Paris, the more pissed off she’s going to get. Not only do you assume that you know how to get to where she wants to go better than she does, but you think that your destination and hers are the same. They never, ever are. We each get our own destination and that destination is always changing (that’s what keeps this game interesting). So, even if and when we do find it, we’ll never get bored. There will always be a new adventure.

So…you’re saying I can’t help her?

Nope, I’m not saying that. I’m just explaining why what you’ve been doing so far hasn’t worked. Using Geography. Because I care about your education. You’re welcome.

You can help your friend, but not in the way you’ve been trying to do it. Basically, the only thing you can do is to take a big spotlight and shine it on Australia so that it’s easier to see. And then you have to allow your friend to make her way there. You have to be patient. You can’t give her a lift. You can’t drag her across the sea. You can’t go to Australia yourself and make her a map (because then you’d be really far away from the BIG YOU and you’d be unhappy).

So, what does that mean in real life terms?

Stop sending your friend articles and books. You’ve done that now and if she begins to resonate with them, she’ll start to read them. They’ll be there for her if she wants them.

Stop trying to cheer her up or trying to get her to be happy. That will just annoy her (as you’ve noticed).

Focus on how you feel. Make sure that you don’t let her unhappiness affect your happiness. If it does, you have another opportunity to clean up your own vibration. Why do you need her to feel a certain way so that you can feel better? Eh? That’s right. I went there.

Focus your attention on the energy of who she really is. That means:

• See her as happy. Her inner being is happy. If you see her unhappiness, you’ll add energy to that. But if you focus on her happiness, you’ll add energy to that vibration. You’re shining a spotlight on Australia.
• See her as capable. She will make her journey in her own time. She’s just as powerful as you are, even if she’s hurting right now. She does not need saving. She does not need your help. Don’t be condescending, even if it comes from a really good place.
• See her as already having completed her journey. See her at the finish line. She’s not only happy, she feels really good about herself. She’s healthy and beautiful, confident and self-assured.
• See her for who she REALLY is. Focus on the beautiful light that’s shining from within her.
• Listen to your intuition. This will be hard because you care so much about her. When in doubt, back off. If someone is meant to say something to her that will help her have a breakthrough, the Universe will make sure that it happens. You don’t need to help.  The Universe is doing just fine without you.

I get that what I’m asking you to do is not going to be easy. You care deeply about your friend and you want to help her. But here’s the thing:

“You don’t get to pick who you can help.”

People  have to be a vibrational match to you before they can hear you. If they aren’t, you can’t help them. If your friend is still in your life, that means that she’s still a close enough match to be in your vicinity (unless you’ve been forcibly keeping her in your life while she’s been trying to get away from you, which would cause her to have an enhanced negative reaction to you). If you’ve set the intention to help people, then the Universe will bring you people that will be helped by you, just by you being who you are. The skills you’ve gathered in your life, the vibration you’ve achieved, the connection you have, these things will come together and you’ll intuitively say or do just the right thing at the right time. You may not even realize how much you’ve helped someone, in fact, you generally won’t. Because it will seem normal and natural to you, but the person you affected may have just had a powerful shift. They were close enough to you to hear you, and were affected positively by you.

You can’t force someone to change their vibration so that they’ll be a close enough match to you for you to help them. Let the Law of Attraction bring you together with the perfect people, and trust that your friend will be brought together with those who can help her. Keep giving energy to the highest possible version of her, and it will make it easier for her to find her way when she’s ready (not before, and you don’t get to determine the timeline). And above all, know that even though right now she’s in pain, this is part of HER journey not yours. You can’t live her life for her or anyone else.

I actually covered several really complex topics today, so if you’d like to read up a little more on some of them, you may find the following posts interesting:

Helping those who don’t want to be helped (Why pushing your help on others is a bad idea. Including a personal example.)

Why Having Empathy is the Last Way to Help Someone (Why feeling bad for your friend doesn’t help, but actually hurts you and possibly her)

How to Inspire Someone (Want to REALLY Help her? This is how)

Can Other People’s Vibrations Affect You? (This will explain why your friend is getting so pissy about your happiness. This article is also available as a video here.)

Vibrational Discord Explained (Technical-ish explanation behind the concept of your emotions being related to the distance between the BIG YOU and the little you. With graphics, for your enjoyment.)

Have you had experiences with trying to help someone who was in a completely different vibrational place than you were? How did it go? Did they eventually come around?