10.09.07
Posted in Law of Attraction, Make Your Life Easier, Manifestation, Paths to Bliss
at 2:22 pm
I’ve pretty much always been a die-hard fan of the idea that action is what brings results (not surprising considering the world we live in operates on this idea for the most part). First, you plan and set goals. Next, you employ discipline by taking action towards those goals. Finally, you react to circumstances and with luck and flexibility you will meet your goals and get results. It’s completely logical and very satisfying because there’s a lot of control in that process.
There’s a lot about that process that did not produce feelings of happiness for me though. Many times, the whole planning thing eluded me because I didn’t actually know what to do or how to plan for what I
wanted. Often the action that I thought I should take wasn’t fun or reinforced a story that didn’t feel right to me. Sometimes even if I had planned and taken action, the results didn’t come or didn’t conform to my expectations. I began to believe that there was something wrong with how I was approaching the process or with my discipline or with the goals I had set. I lost confidence in my intuition and got stuck in a big “I don’t know” cycle: I don’t know how to plan for this, I don’t know what steps to take, I don’t really know what I want, so how can I plan or take action, if I can’t take action I can’t go anywhere, I’m stuck but the only way to get unstuck is to do something, etc. Yuck!
Lately, though, I’ve discovered that the most liberating, happy-making thought I can have is “I don’t know.” It’s a big leap, I realize, but the reason “I don’t know” is so hard is that typically we attach fear to it as if not knowing will bring us misery and only knowing will bring us what we want. But what if we don’t have to know anything? What if good things can happen to us without knowing how and when they will come and without knowing exactly what we want? What if doing something is beside the point? (How does that thought make you feel? A little scared at not having control over the process maybe? Good! That’s exactly where I’m poking you. Poke. Poke.)
The Law of Attraction (1. Ask, 2. Answer, 3. Receive) says that if you ask for something and then come into alignment with it, you will have it every time. At no point during this process do you have to know anything.
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09.27.07
Posted in Law of Attraction, Manifestation, Positive Thinking, Visualization
at 10:44 am
I was reading an interesting article about focused attention and Roger Federer (probably the best player in tennis if you’re not a sports type person). I found the link at a blog I like to read and he liked the article because it deals with Federer’s ability to “save” his concentration for his matches. I thought it was an interesting idea, so I went and read it and found a gem that totally relates to the Law of Attraction. First, here’s the quote (emphasis mine):
Federer has inspired an army of purple prose-writing editorialists to write encomiums to his play. Often the questions he is asked tend to come with a subtext of, “Your genius far exceeds these other guys, huh?” 
Further, writers tend to explain his dominance as a form of better thinking. But, during the U.S. Open, Federer often downplayed the amount of thinking and conscious effort he needs to put into playing tennis. It’s as if he’s trying to say, “Guys, I just go out there and play my game. I’m not a ballet dancer or an aeronautical engineer. I’m a tennis player, and I react to what happens out there.”
At this stage of his career, Federer more and more resembles Pete Sampras in his approach to winning. It’s not about the other guy, it’s about what you know you will summon from yourself at times of need. I suppose winning as much as those two guys have builds something more than confidence, something like faith.
Federer has that faith (and so did Rod Laver, judging by some fascinating comments Rosangel put up on the “Simply the Best?” post). And he’s less strategic than many analysts would have you believe. He’s not out there thinking all that consciously about slicing followed by the deep topspin forehand followed by the dropshot. His is an athletic genius, after all, and as he says, “it goes too fast.” Instead, he uses his mind to make sure he’s ready to concentrate at those crucial moments he is so good at identifying, and once there, doing what comes to him. That’s what I think he meant when he said, after Isner, “it’s all in the mind and it’s all in the moment.“
My favorite part of that is that it’s not about anyone else, it’s about what we know about ourselves. And further, it’s about unwavering focus on what we know. We’re all not Roger Federer, obviously, but we all don’t want to be great tennis players either. This is a great reminder to evaluate what we know about ourselves and what we want. It’s important to throw away all those thoughts that don’t make us feel good and selectively focus on the thoughts that make us feel great and empowered. Once our attention is focused more on knowing that were capable of doing, everything we set our attention to than on what we specifically need to do, the details will take care of themselves.
By focusing our attention selectively that way, our manifestation process becomes a question of what (what we want) not how (what the Universe does to bring it to us). (Say that to yourself a hundred times: I need to focus on what not how. What not how.) One thing I’ve been saying over and over to myself when I worry about something is, “I don’t know how this is all going to work out, but I know it will. The Universe always says yes.” and I stop worrying. (Sometimes for about ten minutes and then I say the same thing to myself again.)
What do you know about yourself? What are some of the things that you naturally assume? What can you do to tweak those things to make each moment better for yourself?
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09.20.07
Posted in Make Your Life Easier, Manifestation, Positive Thinking, Quick Tricks
at 12:40 pm
Your job is to be happy.
Sometimes I have negative emotions about the consequences of how I’m spending my time. I feel like I should be more productive or doing different things that traditionally lead to the results (in this case, income) I desire. I know from a deep place inside of me, though, that living a traditional life will not give me the same kind of fulfillment.
This is the affirmation I use when those negative emotions and thoughts pop up: My job is to be happy and employer is the Universe who always pays me what I ask for. That reminds me to keep doing things that make me feel good, and to ask for A LOT.
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08.18.07
Posted in Law of Attraction, Make Your Life Easier, Manifestation, Paths to Bliss
at 11:48 pm
So you’ve been working hard reaching for better thoughts and facing your fears. Or maybe you’ve been working hard at thinking about reaching better thoughts and facing your fears. But things still kind of suck, but you don’t want to think about how they suck because that would just make it worse right? But if you’ve been working hard and things still suck at some point they either have to turn around or you will start to doubt that you have control over things after all. And you really, really don’t want to doubt things. But they keep creeping in and just when you thought they were going to get better, they kind of got worse.
So then you wonder if this is the “healing crisis” you’ve heard about—where during the healing process, things get worse before they get better because you’re getting at core beliefs. Healing or not, it’s definitely a crisis. You’ve got bills to pay and work to do and a life to live and what if this whole line of reasoning is bullshit? And then you struggle to nip that line of reasoning in the bud. But damn, it’s not fair how easy it is to slip into a terror spiral, but how hard it is to claw your way to a positive thought. Why is that anyway? And while you’re on the subject, why are doughnuts really bad for you, but twigs and leaves are great?
“Why can’t things be easy?” you ask. Where’s your found winning lottery ticket? Where is your miracle? How long do you have to work at being happy before you’re actually happy? How long do you have to pay for old mistakes? Why can’t you watch The Secret or read Think and Grow Rich and then automatically get it and never have to struggle again? Why couldn’t you remember what you knew before you were born? Why are you so far from where you want to be? How long are you going to have to imagine where you want to be instead of looking around at what is?
If that sounds even remotely familiar, I have an answer for you. It may not be what you want to hear, you may wish you knew me in person so you could drive to Denver and smack me. That being the case, I’ll work up to it by saying that all of those questions are my questions. So if they’re familiar to you, know that we are soul mates. The answer is a poem dedicated to me. So here it is:
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05.16.07
Posted in Law of Attraction, Manifestation, Paths to Bliss
at 7:50 am
I’ve been running into a lot of good posts about striving to reach a state of allowing–a place where you’re happy where you are and look towards what’s coming with anticipation. For me that has been the most challenging part of the Law of Attraction. I’m great at wanting things, but balancing contentment with wanting more has often alluded me. I wrote a long comment in response to this post about raising my vibrational state and I thought I would reproduce it here:
The “allowing†part has always been the most challenging part of the process for me. There is this contradiction between being happy with now while avoiding thinking about the reality of the things I want to change. And how do I think of a better thought about something that stresses me out?
There are a couple of things I’ve found that help me come to terms with the idea of reaching a state of contentment while trying to feel better. First I work on the contentment part: I meditate on the idea that things are the way they are for a reason and I pair it with the idea that the Universe loves me and wants me to be happy so nothing in my life is here to harm me. Rather, everything is here to help me grow and become a more complete person.
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02.21.07
Posted in Manifestation, Paths to Bliss, Visualization
at 1:51 pm
When we’re trying to work towards our happiness and what we really want, it really helps to have something to visualize–whether it’s a new job, a new house, a great vacation, a goal, or something fun. For the past month or so, there has been synchronicity in my life telling me that I needed to make a Dream Board. A Dream Board makes your dreams physically present with you which in turn builds even more energy towards them. You’re saying “I want this and I can have it!” It is also a lovely reminder of all the things that are in the works for you and a wonderful way to snap into happiness by looking at them.
What is a Dream Board Anyway?
A Dream Board is a piece of foam, cork or strong poster board where you put pictures and cut outs and messages that represent the things you want. If you want a new house, you can put a picture of your dream house on the board. If you want a new job, you can put a description and/or a picture that represents the kind of job you want or the way you want to feel about your job. By creating a Dream Board, you are opening yourself to everything you put on it because you are physically reinforcing your desires and arranging your priorities.
How Do I Make a Dream Board?
I found these instructions from Colette Baron-Reid (she has a video in the members section):
- You’ll need a large (at least 3′ x 3′) piece of foam, cork, or strong poster board; a glue stick or thumbtacks, and scissors.
- Put a border around the area where you will be putting your dream images. This tells the universe that whatever you put inside the border is what you want to create.
- Put a picture of yourself in the center.
- Put a spiritual symbol on the top that reminds you of spirituality. It can be anything–as long as it makes you think of spiritual energy.
- Put a statement of your highest good.
“This or something better now manifests for me for the highest good in divine appropriate timing.”
- Cut out photos and pictures of things you want to manifest. Accompany by affirmations.
- Hang your board somewhere you see it often.
- Turn it over to the universe. Affirm it as if it already happened and say thank you.
Some Things to Think About
The guidelines above, are just that: guidelines. You can (and should!) interpret and bring personal intuition to the process to make it meaningful to you. For example, my husband and I took a black foam board and glued some colorful paper to it while leaving a border of the black foam board instead of actually drawing a border. For nebulous goals that didn’t necessarily have a pictorial representation, I wrote out a list of feelings (when I reach this goal, I will feel like …). When the picture didn’t quite capture what I was going for, I wrote on the board to clarify.
The clarifications and intentions behind what you put on your Dream Board are a critical part of the process because you will bring what is on the board into you life at some point. This is the “be careful what you ask for” disclaimer. It’s important to make sure you want what you’re asking for and that your intentions behind the dreams you put on the board mesh with your life and what you really want.
Have fun with this process. This is a powerful way to place an order with the universe and make breakthroughs in your life. My husband and I want a new house and are having a lot of fun picking out furniture and imagining what kind of house we want. We’ve been to furniture stores and we put pictures of furniture we like and a house we like on the board. We put a picture of vacations we’d love to take. It has really been a joyful process.
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02.19.07
Posted in Manifestation, Paths to Bliss
at 12:15 pm
Odds are fairly good that if you’ve come across this site, you have heard about the Law of Attraction at least in passing. (A lot of the resources I mentioned in my previous post are related to the concept of the Law of Attraction if they don’t talk about it directly.) Basically, the Law of Attraction is that we attract everything in our lives to us through our thoughts. That means the wonderful things and situations and people and the hard or discouraging things and situations and people are in our realities because we drew them here with the things we think about. The three steps to the Law of Attraction are:
- Ask (which you cannot help doing–asking is having a desire)
- Let it go (the universe does this part, don’t worry about how)
- Allow your desires into your life (this means be happy and content and expect that they will come)
The idea that we are entirely responsible for the things in our lives is a wonderful and frustrating idea. On the one hand, if we train ourselves to expect only good–only prosperity, only good luck, only happiness, only laughter, only love–we can have all of those things all the time. On the other, most of us are not used to expecting only good, but we are used to blaming others for the negative things in our lives. When I learned about the Law of Attraction and when I talked with my friends and family about it our first reaction was a mixture of wonder and anger. We were excited about the possibility of drawing happiness and all the things we want to us, but we weren’t used to processing the bad things in our lives as a function of what we thought.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I’ve been reading books and listening to people, and a huge step in maintaining happiness as a daily practice is by finding contentment in how things are right now. By affirming statements like “I’m in debt” “I can’t find a job” “If only X happened, I could be happy” you are reinforcing the things you aren’t satisfied with and postponing your happiness.
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01.29.07
Posted in Manifestation, Paths to Bliss, Visualization
at 11:38 am
Speaking of visualizing and living intentionally, I ran across* a wonderful application called the Intention Engine. It is a free tool that helps you flesh out your desires and set an intention to manifest them. Sometimes I say that I want something and I picture myself having it, but I don’t spend a lot of time really thinking about it, creating affirmations for it, or putting the time into the manifestation. The Intention Engine is a great way to spend some time and really focus on what you’re trying to manifest. You name it in several ways, you speak intention for it, set a time frame for it and you can describe a scene for it. The Engine then helps create affirmations and gives you tools to focus on what you want and then release it to the universe.
Good stuff!
[*Jodee Bock posted about the Intention Engine on her blog Miracle a Day, thank you!]
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