I want you to stop what you’re doing right now and relax with me for just a moment. For just a moment stop worrying about all the pressure you’re under, the current economic crisis, the bills you have to pay, the family drama you have to endure…
And for just a moment, imagine your perfect life. Does it seem like a daydream? Something unattainable? A fairytale? Well if you’re bruised and battered by life you probably think so.
Many people completely give up on their hopes and dreams and settle for the life they have… created by their circumstances. But what if I told you it doesn’t have to be that way? What if you were not only given permission to dream again, but had the “tools” to actually see what you want most become a reality before your very eyes? Seem too good to be true? I wouldn’t blame you if you said “yes.”
But, it’s not. And in this article, I want to give you some PRACTICAL and PROVEN things you can do right now that will significantly impact your life for the better. Willing to give it a shot? Good.
First you need to understand what’s at work in your mind and how your imagination is CURRENTLY helping to create your present reality. You see, what you imagine on a consistent basis tends to become a reality. That’s because your subconscious, which doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s vividly imagined, starts to work to make what you think about consistently a reality. Especially when you feel very strongly about something.
Ever hear the old cliché “a self-fulfilling prophecy?” That’s what’s going on with you. When you consistently imagine negative outcomes and circumstances, that’s what your subconscious works to make real for you.
But the good news is it works the other way too.
When you consistently imagine what you want most (more wealth, better relationships, weight loss, etc.), your subconscious is there to make it real.
But how do you do that? Well, here’s a tried and true 4-step strategy you can begin using right now to change your life for the better. Here we go…
1. Repetition
The key is to regularly repeat your “daydream” to yourself every day. You can write it on an index card and carry it with you. You can make up a little story or poem or song about it and repeat it to yourself (that’s what I do; I make up affirmation jingles for myself). Close your eyes and imagine what you want for a few minutes each day. And when you do, you want to…
2. Be the Star
Play your dream like a movie in your mind. Be the star. See yourself doing or accomplishing or enjoying what you want most. Enjoy it. Make it yours. You’re the director. Create the movie you want most and watch it unfold. And while you do that, make sure you…
3. Flood It with Emotion
It’s critical that you FEEL what you want most. The key to unlocking your subconscious mind’s potential to bring you good things is to repeat strongly-felt desires over and over. That’s how you’re subconscious knows what to focus on. But in addition to feeling it, you also want to…
4. Make It Vivid
The more detailed and colorful you can make your desire, the more focused your subconscious will be in making it a reality for you. Make it as specific as possible.
There you go. If you will commit to practicing this 4-step process, you’ll soon begin to see what you want most beginning to unfold before your very eyes. Start with something small, like breaking an annoying habit, and build your confidence. You’ll soon feel the exhilaration so many others have felt at finding the keys to obtaining real happiness.
Now all you have to do is DO IT – and that’s where most people fall short. You have to do it every day. It doesn’t have to be work though. As I said earlier, make up a story or song or poem or jingle that you can repeat to yourself. Make it something you enjoy. That’s what I do. I’ve made up these affirmation jingles (just like the jingles you hear on radio and TV), and I sing them to myself – feeding myself positive thoughts all day long. The best part is it requires NO work or special time. They just get stuck in my head and once they are anchored there, my subconscious does the rest.
Go ahead. Give it a try – you’ll thank me for it, I promise.
In Part 1 of this article we discussed why most affirmations end up on your desk gathering dust or in the waste basket. It stands to reason that what you put your attention on most of the time is what you will get. That’s the main theme of the Law of Attraction as made widely known in the Secret. So, this makes a lot of sense and we get excited and write a long laundry list of affirmations about what we want to see happen in our lives. I know I did. I wanted to lose weight, I wanted to get along better with my kids, I wanted to grow my business exponentially, so I wrote all that down and started to write them and repeat them every single day. For a few days, maybe even a week and then my subconscious would start feeding me every reason in the book why I should stop this foolishness right now. We also learned that the reasons for this were two fold
1. We can’t get past our belief filters in our subconscious minds long enough to make the affirmations stick – this is was covered in Part 1, and
2. We don’t really know how to handle negative situations or how to put the brakes on a negative tailspin, so when we start feeling this way, we abandon our affirmations because if they were working we wouldn’t feel this way, right!
There are lots of things that can happen in a day to set us up for one of those downward tailspins. You get up on the wrong side of the bed and it’s all downhill from there, right? That used to happen to me a lot. I used to have a saying, “I’ve earned this depression and I’m going to enjoy it for awhile.” What a crazy belief, but believe it I did. Somehow I really thought I was getting something out of being nasty and grumpy. But the Law of Attraction states that what you spend most of your time thinking about and focusing on is what you will get. You can probably guess that I was getting lots of reasons to be nastier and grumpier, that’s for sure.
But, when you look at the other side of the coin, the more you can focus on what you want to have in your life, the quicker it will come to you. If you can focus on it with emotion and feeling, well then, so much the better. So it makes sense that the more time you can spend feeling good and keeping the dark clouds at bay, then the easier it would be to bring about your desires.
So most teachers of the Law of Attraction stress that you need to control your thinking and CHANGE your negative thoughts to positive ones. Just DO IT, right? But that is not as easy as it sounds. The usual recommendations are affirmations – been there done that – some wonderful books to read or beautiful meditations (which I love to do), but it is not normally easy to drop everything and find a quiet space to meditate, or find the perfect passage in a book to help you in the moment. These are all long term strategies, but it’s rare to be in the middle of a crisis situation and be able to stop RIGHT NOW and meditate until you feel better.
In times like this, you can’t wait for the right quiet moment to come along to work on your feelings later. You need something to grab onto RIGHT NOW, in the very moment that you realize the tailspin is starting. You need to have a tool available to you that will literally turn your emotions around, just like flipping a switch on and off. That’s what you need to find.
Most people have been suffering in their negativity for so long that the idea of changing their thoughts in an instant seems literally impossible. But my suggestion is to put in some thought today, this minute when you are feeling pretty positive, about how you might flip the switch the next time you are feeling down and out. What could you say or do or sing that might turn it around on a dime. Get something stuck in your head – a little jingle or something that the minute you recognize that – “Geez, here we go again” – you can say – “NO, not this time.” Something that you can apply without giving it any thought, it just goes on autopilot. Something that your ‘Belief Detective’ won’t recognize as an affirmation. Song lyrics are great for that because you suspend your disbelief when you are singing. You don’t have to believe the words, it’s just a song.
So the moral is – be prepared. Think about it right now, while you are reading this. Don’t wait until the next time that life hands you lemons to wonder why it is happening again and again. Take the bull by the horns and be ready with your own secret weapon. You’ve been to the Pity Party enough times and there’s nothing there for you any more. Be ready!
If you have had any interest in personal development in the last few years, you probably have of the Law of Attraction which was brought to the mainstream publics attention in the movie, ‘The Secret.’ This law of the universe basically states that what you focus on and give attention to is what will show up in your life. If you want something and really Believe that you have it, you will begin to take the necessary actions to make it become a reality. There is an old saying that says “I’ll believe it when I see it”, but that couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is, once you really Believe it, then you will most definitely See it.
Our magnificent brains process and store every single bit of information that we have ever learned or experienced. When it comes to learning new things, the way our brain learns new things is by REPETITION. Think about it. How does an actress master the dialog in a play – repetition. How does an athlete become the best at what they do – repetition. Everything we’ve learned, from times tables to walking and talking has been learned by repetition. So it would seem reasonable that if you want to teach your brain to believe differently, the way to do it would be by repeating what you now want to believe about yourself and your life.
That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If you keep repeating something over and over to your self, your subconscious mind should start to agree with you, right? So we start to use Affirmations. Affirmations are simply statements you make about what you really WANT to believe. Almost every personal development expert on the planet has recommended affirmations and THE best tool to ‘Fake it ’til you Make it,’ and keep up the positive attitude, because the repetition of the affirmation is teaching your brain how to think.
Still logical isn’t it? If we just repeat our affirmations over and over and over, we should all be healthy, wealthy and wise, right? Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? So….Why aren’t we all fabulously wealthy if we know this should work? Because we just DON’T DO THEM on a regular basis or for long enough. There are two reasons for this:
1. If we don’t see instant results, we have a hard time actually believing what we are telling ourselves, so we give up in disgust, and
2. We don’t know how to instantly turn things around when we are thrown into a downward spiral when something happens to upset our plans, and we have no anchor to grab onto, so we stop trying, telling ourselves that ‘this doesn’t work.’
The main reason we don’t keep doing daily affirmations, even though we know repetition is the best way to learn is that the affirmations are aimed at changing deep rooted beliefs. It’s not the same as changing your nail polish. Most of our beliefs about ourselves were deeply implanted before we were 7 years old. So if you have a deep belief that money is the root of all evil for instance, you can affirm that you are a millionaire all day long and all you will echo back is ” Who are you kidding?” it won’t take long before the average person gets bored, too busy or out and out frustrated long before the affirmations can start to work.
Now if you did keep on practicing diligently, you would eventually see a change, but since you belief filters won’t allow you to change instantly, most people give up in frustration far too soon. But it’s really not your fault, at least not your conscious mind’s fault.
You see, we really are of two minds, our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. So what it comes down to is that your subconscious mind – the one that breathes for you and keeps your heart beating – has been running the show all of these years, and it likes you just the way you are, even if it is broke, sick and miserable. It’s got being YOU down to a tee and doesn’t take kindly to being told that it’s doing it all wrong. It has you wrapped up in the shell of your ego – who you believe you are – and it will put up a royal stink if you try to change. So you say statements like “I am a millionaire” – and it comes back at you with “Yeah Right!” This belief filter, or ‘Belief Detective’, as it were, ironically really thinks it is helping and protecting you. If you can’t get past that filter, then your affirmations are doomed to fail.
So…what you need to do, right now while you are reading this, is to start to think of a way of bypassing the belief filters that stop your affirmations in their tracks. How do you do that? Why not try putting your affirmations in a song. Song lyrics are non threatening to the subconscious mind because you suspend your disbelief while you are singing, much like you might do when you see a movie (Ever seen Shrek?). Besides, once you get a song stuck in your head, you usually sing it over and over and over and not get bored with it, feeding your subconscious on autopilot,. Give it some thought right now and stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll discuss more about how to instantly change your negative attitude.
I’ve been working so hard and long the last couple of years learning to manage my energy and trying to get the word out to the world about AttitudeZapz!, I sometimes get surprised that life can happen and we forget all about being conscious and present. I’ve been persistent about staying in the NOW, because I have a dream and my heart’s desire to help others like me, and my Jingles always bring me around no matter what.
Anyway, I’ve had to be especially vigilant lately to keep myself positive. With a full time job, a family, the holidays, the boys home from school, my doggies, my daughter’s horses and building this dream, sometimes I feel like I’m on the go 20 hours a day. So last Sunday I decided to just take a break and watch my Super Bowl Champion Giants take on the Eagles and move on to another Super Bowl. Ahem….
Silly I know, but I’ve been a fan since I was 7 years old and they did win the Super Bowl out of nowhere last year – it could happen. I’ve worked so hard on myself and changed my life so much in the last 2 years, it was almost a shock to find out that I could get so irritated about a football game, but irritated I did get. At least I did not throw anything like my dad used to do when I was growing up (and they lost a lot back then, so that was a common occurrence). No one else in my family is a Giants fan, but they all know how much I love them. My husband even bought me a jersey for Christmas which I was proudly wearing (along with the socks my son gave me).
By the beginning of the 4th quarter, when they Giants lost possession after that 4th down debacle, I had had it. They all kind of looked at me in shock, because I don’t think I had been that upset in a long time – weird, huh? All of my great advice that I keep giving myself and others went right out the proverbial window. I was “stupid Giants this and stupid Giants that” when my son (trying to be helpful) says – “Sounds like you are Having a Bad Day, mom, so Get Over It.”
He was quoting my very own lyrics from “Having A Bad Day”. Not so long ago my first reaction would have been to go for the juggler vein with a comment like that, but yesterday, it really opened up my eyes in a way that had not been opened before. It is beyond amazing how we can let even the silliest of circumstances control how we feel and act and react– without a single conscious thought about what kind of vibration we send out. Really something to ponder and think about.
Forget about the big things, what little things do You let control how You feel? I’d like to hear.
Finally, I’m alone. With all of the boys home from college for the holidays, it has been impossible to find even a few minutes to be alone to try and meditate. It’s been “Mom, where’s the Wii remote and Mom can you make me a snack” now for several weeks. I’ve really been feeling the need, but just couldn’t get away. But today, everyone is gone, even hubby. So I go into my office, shut the door, settle down in my comfy chair and put on my headphones…Ahhhhhh
This bliss lasts approximately 3 minutes before I hear the dogs, Snickers and Sam whimpering and scratching at the door. I try to ignore them for an additional 2 or 3 minutes and finally decide to get up and open the door and let them into the room.
Back to bliss…..for about another 3 minutes before I feel a cold nose rubbing up against my hand and a tentative lick for good measure. Ok, I can ignore that and back to bliss – not so much. Snickers (my jumbo mini dachshund) thinks I might be dead, so she decides to jump up in my lap and give me a good tongue lashing just to make sure I’m still alive.
Now that they are sure I’m still breathing, they decide to leave me alone, but within another minute or two, someone happens to walk by out on the sidewalk 200 feet away and “we must bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, to let them know we are in charge here.”
By this time I’ve about given up, but know that I only have a limited window of opportunity to get this darned meditation done. Focus, Debbie Focus…. like I am Genghis Khan and I’m going to conquer this meditation or else.
The next thing I know, I hear one of the boys yelling from downstairs, “Mom, what’s for dinner?”
I can’t believe it, I went and slept away my entire meditation time. Oh well, I guess I must have needed the sleep more. Time to stop feeling sorry for myself, so it’s best to “Get Over It.” That’s why I have my jingles.
Having A Bad Day
Here’s a thought – Maybe I should write a meditation jingle. Hmmm….
