There are some professions and careers that are propelled by disagreement. Lawyers and politicians are obvious examples. Scholars and researchers disagree with their predecessors, write theses and get PhDs. Members of religious factions sometimes take their disagreements to the point of killing or being killed. The list goes on. This contentiousness seems to include almost everyone, it is remarkable, therefore, that for over a hundred years, there has been a near consensus on how a person can attract abundance into their lives From the British author Wallace Wattles writing in the early 1900s, to Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone a generation or two later, to those who today are publicizing what is surely the world's worst kept "Secret," the basic principles and practices have remained the same.
Here's my own personal 5 step Cliff Note's summary of how to transform your life by attracting all the abundance and prosperity you desire. This is a blended distillation, combining elements of all those listed above.
- Know what you want
- Establish habits of affirmation and visualization
- Get enthusiastic--no, make that passionate--about having what you want
- Take action
- Monitor your thoughts and feelings
Knowing What You Want. This, actually, is harder for some folks than you might think. Of course, everyone has a ready answer, such as "What I want is a million dollars." But this doesn't tend to work. As Bob Doyle in his excellent online program "Wealth Beyond Reason" has eloquently pointed out, having a million dollars actually doesn't change anything. Money that isn't exchanged for something, is just paper. Better to think beyond the pile of cash, to what the cash can do for you. Even better, is to identify precisely and in detail what your new, abundant, transformed life would actually be like as a lived experience. And by the way, state when you want this transformation to take place. Give yourself just enough time to make it believable, but push it too far off into the future. Goals that are too distant are likely to become hazy. They lose their power to motivate because they don't impress themselves sufficiently on your present. Worse, they may even be forgotten.
Establishing Habits of Affirmation and Visualization. This practice is what keeps your vision alive. More important, as Napoleon Hill, Stone, and the presenters in the film "The Secret" all concur, the habitual re-creation in the present of your desired future state actually draws that state towards you, provided--and this is important--that your visualizing and affirming is accompanied by strong emotion. The next topic will provide a few more details on this.
Many people may be uncertain about how to start their routine of affirmation and visualization. Fortunately, there is a wealth of information of the subject. "Creative Visualization; Using the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life," by Shakti Gawain had its 25th anniversary edition...which puts the original publication "in the days of the flower power" to use an amusingly inept phrase from Abba. Since then, she has gone on to write other books and workbooks which will certainly be helpful to many. If you feel yourself astrally challenged (I certainly have), you may prefer to begin with "Creative Visualization for Beginners," by Richard Webster. You can then move on to other helpful titles such as "A Practical Guide to Creative Visualization: Manifest Your Desires" by Osborne Phillips and "Create Your Own Affirmations" also by Gawain. (These titles are all available in our online store "The Dog Pound.")
Books in this genre and their authors have been hilariously lampooned by comedians such as Al Franken in his Stuart Smalley persona. This is not wholly unwarranted. There's a lot of new age huckstering still going on out there. All the same, as a tool visualization--along with affirmation, its accompanying activity--are time tested and ultimately practical. Go ahead and be skeptical, but try it on anyway and see what it has to offer.
Get Passionate About Having What You Want. The idea here is that your emotions charge your thoughts and visions with energy. Throughout the last century, it was taken for granted that this energy was an effective force even though the actual process was not understood. Today, many Law of Attraction mavens are turning to quantum physics to advance the notion that this energy is real and interacts with the vast unbroken field of energy which is the universe at its most fundamental level. What they are saying is that, following the principle of "like attracts like," the energy you infuse into your vision of your desired future actually functions like a magnet pulling that future toward you. Now, a theory is a story someone has mistaken as a fact, but whether you buy this particular explanation or not, it does appear that passionate desire joined with thought is more effective than thought alone. So...get yer geeter heated.
Take Action. Believe it or not, there is actually some debate on this. There are those who think that the Law of Attraction is so powerful and the universe so efficient and economical in the way it delivers, that the actions we take in pursuit of our goals may actually be counter-productive. Saner voices prevail. When you know want, get busy.This is when the left brain comes into its own. Draw up your lists, set deadlines, be S.M.A.R.T. But also be open to the possibility that there may be better ways to get where you're going.
Monitor Your Thoughts and Feelings. Change often can feel difficult. Resistance to change is common. Family, friends and loved ones may be deeply skeptical. But the most powerful source of resistance comes from your own thoughts and feelings. This is especially true with mid-lifers who over the years have deeply ingrained patterns of thought and behavior.
There are two ways that negative thoughts and feelings slow us down--or stop us dead!--in our efforts to change. First, we can talk ourselves out of even trying. We offer ourselves a host of plausible-sounding excuses. We tell ourselves that we're too old or that the risk is too high or that it won't make any difference. Probably, this is nothing more than anxiety-ridden defensiveness. Listen, be grateful...and move on.
But there is another way in which monitoring your thoughts and feelings is vitally important if you subscribe (as I mostly do) to the theory known as The Law of Attraction. Here's how this works.
Thoughts and feelings are energetic. This energy is actual, even measurable, and as such it
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