“You’ve got to beat the drum
that makes you feel good
when you beat it." 

— Abraham, Esther Hicks 

This gem of wisdom was gleaned from this quote: “We cannot focus upon the weaknesses of one another and evoke strengths. You cannot focus upon the things that you think they are doing wrong, and evoke things that will make you feel better. You’ve got to beat the drum that makes you feel good when you beat it. And when you do, you’ll be a strong signal of influence that will help them to reconnect with who they are." 

It has been said often by many that there are only two motivations on earth: pleasure and pain. In other words, we do things because we know it will bring us pleasure in varying degrees, and we avoid things that give us varying degrees of pain. Run toward something or someone, or run away from it or them.

So how do we focus on pain and receive pleasure? It can be done, and even become habitual, but that is sort of insane. That’s not the way it really works. And so, as we focus on a friend’s pain, or a co-worker, or something in the community, or on a national or international plane, it doesn’t make us stronger, and we cannot really help that or those that we are wanting to help. All we do is join them where they are and feel what they are feeling.

It’s like someone being in a pit and we want to help them out and so we jump down there with them to comfort them, and now we are both in the pit. We help people through our personal strength, not our sympathy. We help people best by being the best example of well-being. We help best by leading, not following. That is also the loving way and the compassionate way.

In perhaps better words, we serve others by being in alignment with ourselves, by allowing them their own feelings without us insisting that they feel different, or how we think they should feel. We put our focus on what is good, what we can appreciate in the other, regardless of the relationship. As we do that, this is unconditional love, because we are letting go of how we think they should be but they’re not, and we are focusing on who they really are beneath the surface. We exude unconditional love from our Inner Source of strength, and that Source is always available for us to line up with.