I’ve recently noticed something in many people: a scattered, overwhelmed feeling in their energy. It’s like watching someone try to hold water in their hands—everything spilling through their fingers. This often comes from reading too much news and letting it sink too deeply into their hearts and minds.

Some people insist they must let the news define how they feel. But think about this: the news is just a collection of pictures, words, and feelings packaged to tell one particular story. What if you could tell the story differently?

When you let someone else’s narrow, often gloomy story into your heart, mind, and soul, you’re giving away something precious—your power to choose. When you begin to choose your own thoughts about yourself and your life, you take that power back.

Practice 1: Notice What You’ve Let In

Right now, pause and place one hand on your heart. Take three slow breaths. As you breathe, notice: What news stories or negative thoughts are you carrying in your chest? You might feel them as heaviness, tightness, or a knot.

Just notice them. You don’t need to fix anything yet. You’re simply becoming aware of what you’ve been carrying around, like noticing you’ve been holding a heavy backpack.

Understanding How the Universe Actually Works

Why choose your own reality when the world seems full of problems? Because everything in the universe follows one basic law: resonance.

Think of a tuning fork. When you strike it and hold it near a piano, something magical happens—the piano string with the same note starts vibrating and making sound on its own. The tuning fork and the piano string are resonating. They’re matching each other’s vibration.

This is exactly how your life works. Your thoughts, feelings, and focus are like tuning forks. They vibrate at certain frequencies. And the universe responds by resonating—by bringing you experiences that match those vibrations.

Practice 2: Feel Your Own Vibration

Think about something that worries you from the news. Notice how your body feels. Does your chest tighten? Does your stomach clench? Does your breathing become shallow? That’s the vibration of worry.

Now think about something you love—maybe a person, a pet, or a beautiful place in nature. Notice how your body shifts. Does your chest open? Do your shoulders relax? That’s a different vibration—the vibration of love.

You just proved to yourself that you can change your vibration simply by changing where you put your attention. This isn’t pretending. It’s using one of the universe’s fundamental laws.

The Choice That Changes Everything

People who don’t understand resonance will think you’re naive when you choose to focus on what you want instead of what you fear. They believe the outside world must force them into a limited future. Maybe that works for them. But you have the right to align with the energy of your preferred reality.

When you actively choose your thoughts and your state of consciousness, you’re not denying reality. You’re using a higher principle—the same creative principle that the universe itself uses.

Think of it this way: A pebble on the side of the road can’t choose its experience. The wind, rain, and passing cars happen to the pebble. But you’re not a pebble. You have consciousness. You have the ability to direct your attention and choose your vibration. This is your birthright as a creative being.

(Though if you want to learn about stillness, a pebble makes an excellent teacher!)

Two Types of Resonance

When you don’t make conscious choices, you’re still using resonance—but you’re using it passively. You’re like a guitar string vibrating because something bumped into it. The news, your worried friends, the overwhelming events—they all bump into you, and you vibrate in response.

This is reactive resonance. You become a victim of whatever energy hits you.

But when you choose your state of consciousness—when you’re guided by your intuition, your heart, and your soul—you’re using creative resonance. You become like a musician deliberately playing a note. And the universe resonates back to you in harmony.

This creative resonance is closer to how the universe was made. Your soul and your intuitive mind are living expressions of the same creative force that made everything. When you use them to choose your reality, you’re not being naive. You’re aligning with universal truth.

Practice 3: Shift from Reactive to Creative

Place both hands on your belly and take five deep breaths. With each breath, imagine you’re breathing into your own center, your own core, your own inner home.

Now ask yourself: “What do I actually want to feel right now?” Not what you think you should feel based on the news. What do you want to feel?

Maybe it’s peace. Maybe it’s hope. Maybe it’s simple contentment. Whatever it is, imagine that feeling as a warm light in your chest. Let it grow with each breath. You’re not pretending it’s there. You’re choosing it into being.

Releasing What You’ve Absorbed

When you feel fragmented or confused, you’re experiencing a natural response to too much stimulation. Don’t blame yourself. But know that you don’t have to stay stuck there.

Here’s something crucial to understand: When you took the news into your heart and mind, did you realize you could also release it? Most people don’t know this is possible. They think once they’ve absorbed something, it’s stuck in them forever.

But energy is just energy. It flows in, and it can flow out.

Practice 4: The Mist Release

Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Think about a news story or belief that’s been weighing you down.

Step 1: Notice where you feel it in your body. Your chest? Your stomach? Your shoulders? Just notice.

Step 2: Imagine that feeling as energy—maybe it looks gray or dark to you. Maybe it feels heavy. However it appears to you is perfect.

Step 3: Now imagine that energy becoming lighter, like airy mist. See it beginning to lift out of your body with each out-breath.

Step 4: With each exhale, watch the mist drift farther away, getting lighter and lighter, until it dissolves into nothing—like morning fog disappearing in sunlight.

Step 5: Notice the space where that heavy energy used to be. Feel how much lighter you are. This emptiness is not nothing—it’s possibility. It’s room for what you actually want to create.

Step 6: Gently breathe into your inner lightness, and with each breath you feel the comfortable lightness spreading enjoyably through every part of your body.

Repeat this whenever you notice you’ve absorbed something that doesn’t serve you.

What About Compassion and Reality?

Some people will say: “Just because you released that energy from yourself doesn’t make the problem vanish from the world. Aren’t you being uncompassionate? Aren’t you ignoring reality?”

Here’s the truth: You’ve released negative energy from one person—you. And that matters more than you might think.

Imagine a room full of people, and everyone is holding a candle. If half the people blow their candles out because they think it’s more realistic to acknowledge the darkness, the room gets darker. But if you keep your candle lit—even if others criticize you for it—you’re holding light for everyone.

When you clear your heart and mind of external chaos, you’re not abandoning the world. You’re holding a steady vibration of balance and health. You’re resonating with the solution instead of the problem. And this makes a real difference, whether others understand it or not.

Practice 5: Being the Light

Think of a problem in the world that troubles you. Don’t push it away—acknowledge it.

Now ask yourself: “What quality would help this situation?” Maybe it’s peace, kindness, clarity, courage, or love.

Close your eyes and find that quality in your own heart. Feel it as a real presence—maybe a warmth, a color, or a sensation. Let it grow stronger with each breath.

Now imagine that quality radiating outward from you like light from a candle. You don’t need to send it anywhere specific. Just let it radiate. This is how you hold positive resonance for the world.

You’re not ignoring the problem. You’re contributing the solution at the level of energy and vibration. This is real. This is powerful. This is how change begins.

Small Shifts Create Big Changes

This inner energy work may seem subtle. And it is. But subtle doesn’t mean weak or unimportant.

Think about how a river carves through rock. Each drop of water is subtle—you could barely feel it on your hand. But millions of subtle drops, flowing consistently in the same direction, can cut through solid stone over time.

Your conscious choices are like those water drops. Each choice to release negative energy, to choose your vibration, to focus on what you want instead of what you fear—each one is subtle. But they accumulate. They build. They create momentum.

Real shifts add up. And before you know it, your whole life begins to resonate differently. Problems that seemed impossible start to have solutions. Opportunities that were invisible become obvious. People who match your new vibration begin to appear.

Practice 6: Your Daily Resonance Ritual

Each morning, before you check the news or your phone, try this simple ritual:

1. Place your hand on your heart. Feel it beating—that’s your life force, your connection to the creative power of the universe. Gently breathe into your heart’s living energy.
2. Ask yourself: “What kind of day do I want to create?” Not what you think will happen based on yesterday or the news. What do you want?
3. Feel that desired day in your body. If you want a peaceful day, feel peace in your chest. If you want an inspired day, feel inspiration tingling in your awareness. Spend just 60 seconds really feeling it.
4. Imagine this feeling radiating out from you into your day, like ripples spreading across a pond.
5. Say (out loud or silently): “I choose this vibration. I am creating this reality.”

This takes less than two minutes. But those two minutes set your energetic tone for the entire day. You’re not just hoping for a good day. You’re resonating it into existence.

Trust What You Feel

Your body already knows how to do this. Your heart already understands resonance. Your soul has always been connected to the creative force of the universe.

You don’t need special training or years of meditation. You just need to remember what you’ve always known: that you are not separate from the creative power that made everything. You are that power, expressing itself as you.

When you choose your thoughts, your feelings, and your focus, you’re not being naive. You’re not denying reality. You’re using the fundamental creative principle of the universe.

Others may not understand. They may call you unrealistic or uncompassionate. But you know better. You understand that by holding a clear, positive vibration, you’re doing something profoundly helpful—for yourself and for everyone.

Practice 7: Connecting to Your Divine Essence

Sit quietly. Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly.

Breathe slowly and ask yourself: “Where do I feel most alive in this moment?” The answer might be a warmth in your chest, a tingling in your hands, an openness in your throat. Trust whatever you feel.

That aliveness? That’s your divine essence. That’s the part of you connected to everything. It’s always been there. It will always be there.

Breathe into that feeling of aliveness. Let it expand. And from that place of connection, ask: “What wants to be created through me today?”

Listen with your heart, not your mind. The answer might come as a feeling, an image, a knowing, or just a sense of peace. Whatever comes is exactly right.

This is you, connected to the creative force of the universe. This is you, ready to resonate your preferred reality into being.

You Are Co-Creating Heaven on Earth

Every time you choose to release what doesn’t serve you, you create space for what does.

Every time you consciously choose your vibration instead of letting the news choose it for you, you align with creative power.

Every time you hold a steady frequency of peace, love, hope, or joy, you’re radiating that frequency into the world, making it easier for others to find it too.

You won’t lose your mind. You won’t lose your connection with reality. In fact, you’ll connect with a deeper reality—the reality that everything is energy, that like attracts like, and that you have the power to choose which energy you align with.

Your choice matters. Your vibration matters. Your willingness to stay centered, clear, and connected to your own divine essence matters more than you know.

Know that your choice in these matters is helping to co-create heaven on earth, by resonating it into being in this very moment.

The Invitation to Imagine Your Future in a New Way

So here’s my invitation to you:

Start small. Pick one practice from this article and try it for just three days. Notice what shifts. Notice what opens. Notice how differently you feel when you’re choosing your vibration instead of letting others choose it for you.

Trust your own experience more than anyone else’s opinions. Your body, your heart, your soul—they know the truth. They know you’re connected to something vast and creative and loving. They know you have the power to choose.

And when the world feels overwhelming, remember: you’re not a pebble being pushed around by forces beyond your control. You’re a conscious, creative being with the power to choose your vibration and create your reality.

Use that power well. The universe is waiting to resonate with whatever you choose.

Joel Bruce Wallach