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!
Excited, nervous, petrified. Those were the emotions I was going through as I walked into the WUSA TV 9 studio on Monday morning, December 22, 2008. I was scheduled to be interviewed on live TV for the very first time and I was doing my best to hold it together, but feeling very much like Alice in Wonderland. I was escorted back to meet the Producer, the lovely Janet Terry, and as I reached out to shake her hand, she exclaimed “Uh Oh! You are supposed to be here tomorrow.”
I was so embarrassed. How could I have made such a mistake? I felt like a balloon deflating and my first reaction – what I would have done back in the old days – was to turn tail and run. I wanted to go hide and lick my wounds, but deep down I said NO! and I started silently singing “I trust that everything comes to me Perfectly.”
So I smiled and said, OK, I’ll come back tomorrow. They invited me to hang around and watch the show anyway and it was an amazing and really beneficial experience. I got to meet Howard Bernstein, who would be interviewing me, and chat a bit with him behind the scenes. He made me feel very comfortable and I was able to actually BE Alice in Wonderland in the TV studio without having to worry about my interview.
It turned out to be a very valuable experience and I felt a renewed sense of excitement with a little less nervousness as I was escorted into the studio on Tuesday morning. As I reached out to shake Janet’s hand a second time, I jokingly asked her if I really was scheduled for today. She replied “Well, yes and no.” Turns out there was a gigantic water main break in Washington DC that morning, and people were having to be air lifted from their cars by helicopter. It was a totally different atmosphere in the studio as people were being rescued and thank God no one was seriously injured.
They invited me to stick around just in case, so I got to be a behind the scenes witness to a breaking national news story. I got to meet Andrea Roane and Angie Goff as well. Not at all what I had expected, but it was all very exciting and even though I did not go on, I really felt that it was all happening the way it was supposed to.
So, Wednesday morning I arrived back in the studio, and by now they knew me by name. Howard Bernstein yelled, “Debbie, you came back – today’s the day!” I was still a bit nervous as the time came for the interview, but much less so than I would have been on Monday. It went off without a hitch, and Howard even made me sing “Attitude of Gratitude” acapella and it was in tune!!! I would definitely not have been able to do that on Monday.
It was a wonderful, fantastic experience and I want to thank everyone at WUSA TV 9, especially Howard Bernstein, for making me feel so comfortable giving me such a exciting, fun memory. Hope I can do it again sometime.
The moral of the story is that we don’t always get what we want when we want it, sometimes we get something even better Here is a gift for you so you remember that everything comes “Perfectly”
I’ve always felt that there was something that I should be doing.Something that would make an impact, help people, change lives.But I could never figure it out.I tried and tried to find out what it was.I tried several businesses that were supposed to help myself and others get free, but I was a dismal failure at each and every one and I never felt I was really helping anyone or doing anything that would make a difference.With each business failure, I sank deeper and deeper in depression, believing that maybe this was all there was for me.Nothing special – special was only for special people – not me.
Then about 2 years ago in desperation, I finally decided that maybe I didn’t know everything, and maybe there was something to all this Personal Development stuff I kept hearing about.I started to pay attention and to read and listen and attend some calls and some seminars.I started to look at myself from the inside out.I started to practice visualization and believing in myself and what I learned about the universe and life and myself and why I am the way I am was nothing short of amazing.However head knowledge is quite a different thing than knowing it in your heart and your gut.
The stuff I learned made sense, but most of the practices and techniques I learned were either difficult or boring or repetitious or too time consuming or you had to set aside special quiet time (where my family of 6 and 2 dogs left me alone – Ha, Ha, Ha), or they were just not convincing.I consciously knew that I needed to change the way I thought, the way I focused on my goals or nothing was ever going to change, but the work was a lot harder than I thought it would be.I kept asking “HOW, HOW, HOW do I change?”
I remember thinking early on that there must be a better way that isn’t so hard.Wouldn’t it be great to find a way to help make these deep changes without having to be so darned disciplined all the time?I’d tried any number of techniques and practices and spent a good deal of money in the process and I still wasn’t any closer to making the changes I wanted to make.I got really, really, really depressed.I mean lying on the floor, boo- hooing, sobbing “What is wrong with me?” kind of depressed.This went on for awhile until one day I just took a stand against my depression and said “NO damn it.I’m not going to let this win.Right here, right now, in this very moment, I CHOOSE to be happy – Do you hear me?I CHOOSE to be happy, right here, right now!”
And from that, a little tune popped into my head
Right here and now
I am happy
Don’t cha know?
I’ve been set free
I started singing it over and over again and again and again.Day after day.It wasn’t work.It had gotten stuck in my head and I just kept singing it. And I suddenly realized that I wasn’t so depressed any more.I felt better than I had in a long time so I kept on singing.Shortly after that, it dawned on me that maybe this was it.Maybe this was the better way for me to change.It was fun and easy.I started to make up all kinds of little jingles for myself for different things I was feeling.I shared them with my daughter and one day she said “Mom, what if these could make other people feel better the way they’ve made you feel better?”And then I suddenly realized that maybe this was not only the better way for me to make the changes I needed to make – maybe this was the something I’d always felt I should be doing.Maybe other people would be able to benefit and use these little jingles to help them change as well.
That’s what started it all.Was it all a piece of cake to bring this idea, this dream to fruition from that moment on?Not hardly.It’s been a labor of love and that always means putting yourself out there and subject to criticism and there are always people ready to do just that.It’s been a lot of ups and downs and work and frustration and you name it.All the stuff it takes to build your dream.But through it all, I’ve just kept singing and singing and singing and now I offer this to you with the truest of hope that you too will use these to change the way you think and act and follow your dreams.
Do you feel that you harbor beliefs about yourself that are sabotaging your success? What if there was a way to get past the Belief Detective that is guarding those old beliefs and not allowing you to become the person you want to?
Most people don’t realize that the beliefs that we hold about ourselves are really the sum total of all of the assumptions, conclusions and explanations we’ve bought into starting when we were babies. They have become the filters by which we see and perceive our world. They have become so much a part of who we “think” we are, that we don’t even question their “truth” anymore, when in fact they are not the truth at all.
Many times two children can grow up in the same household, in the same environment and end up with vastly different beliefs. How can that happen? It happens because the individual’s beliefs are based on how they interpret an environment, not on the actual environment itself. One child may grow up feeling neglected because their parents worked a lot. They may end up being needy and always seeking love because they felt rejected. The other child may become fiercely independent because they believe that they learned to stand on their own two feet. Same environment, different interpretation, different beliefs.
Since beliefs are the foundation upon which we build our view of the world, its difficult to move forward in life and to break through barriers if our beliefs limit us. They define our world, and anything we do that challenges a deep-seated belief meets with great resistance. I know for me, it feels like an internal tug-of-war! It seems like I have this Belief Detective, and anytime a belief feels threatened, it retaliates.
I’m sure you’ve experienced a time in your life when your negative beliefs have kept you stuck. If you believe you always get the short end of the stick, that’s what you will get. Your subconscious will help to prove you right by giving you examples of how you always get the short end. But in truth, we all have many positive beliefs as well or we’d never get anything done. Most of these beliefs lay hidden in our subconscious and we never even know they are there until we try to do something that threatens that belief. Then trying to change them becomes very challenging.
Sometimes old beliefs that no longer serve any purpose dissolve on their own and are replaced with more productive beliefs. (YEAH!) Our work, then, is to uncover and remove the negative beliefs that no longer serve us and are holding us back from achieving all that we desire.
So how do you go about changing these beliefs? Well, first you have to realize that your beliefs, no matter what they are serve some purpose for you. Maybe they keep you safe, maybe they prove you right. Your subconscious wants to help you keep the status quo, so every time you try to change a belief, the Belief Detective stops you. In my case, I started using affirmations, which are positive statements which help to reprogram limiting beliefs. But they were statements aimed at my beliefs so my Belief Detective sabotaged my efforts by making me bored, tired or just too busy to do them. It’s very tricky. I had to find a way to bypass my Belief Detective.
Although I experimented with a variety of techniques including hypnosis, visualization, meditation, and more, with some limited success but I still could not seem to get past the excuses. What I finally found that worked for me was setting my affirmations to catchy tunes. You know how you can get a song stuck in your head that just won’t go away? Well, I took advantage of that and put my positive statements to short jingles and went around singing them all day. I called them AttitudeZapz!
Do you ever remember arguing with yourself about song lyrics? Probably not! It has also been proven scientifically that when the critical mind, or the conscious mind is absorbed in the music, the uncritical subconscious mind, just receives the affirmations without filtering them. So there’s no voice inside your head saying “Liar, liar.” And because once you get these stuck in your head, you can sing them mindlessly and you don’t even have to wonder if you believe the words or not. They just slip easily into your subconscious mind.
So finally I’d found a way to bypass the Belief Detective. Because of that one little thing, I’ve grown by leaps and bound and you can too. You can do the same thing with your own affirmations if you want to, or if you don’t feel that creative, try AttitudeZapz!, and your Belief Detective will soon be out of a job!
Welcome to my blog. Here you will find the musings of myself and many others concerning the topics of attitude, affirmations, beliefs, manifestation, law of attraction, The Secret and getting what you want out of life. There is a saying that goes “If you are not growing, you are dying.” Those are your only two choices, so I for one want to continue to grow and learn everything I can about these topics and more. I’m not a prolific writer, but I will post here when I feel that there is something worth getting out there. I hope you find some worthy material here.
I’ve always felt that there was something that I should be doing. Something that would make an impact, help people, change lives. But I could never figure it out. I tried and tried to find out what it was. I tried several businesses that were supposed to help myself and others get free, but I was a dismal failure at each and every one and I never felt I was really helping anyone or doing anything that would make a difference. With each business failure, I sank deeper and deeper in depression, believing that maybe this was all there was for me. Nothing special – special was only for special people – not me.
Then about 2 years ago in desperation, I finally decided that maybe I didn’t know everything, and maybe there was something to all this Personal Development stuff I kept hearing about. I started to pay attention and to read and listen and attend some calls and some seminars. I started to look at myself from the inside out. I started to practice visualization and believing in myself and what I learned about the universe and life and myself and why I am the way I am was nothing short of amazing. However head knowledge is quite a different thing than knowing it in your heart and your gut.
The stuff I learned made sense, but most of the practices and techniques I learned were either difficult or boring or repetitious or too time consuming or you had to set aside special quiet time (where my family of 6 and 2 dogs left me alone – Ha, Ha, Ha), or they were just not convincing. I consciously knew that I needed to change the way I thought, the way I focused on my goals or nothing was ever going to change, but the work was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I kept asking “HOW, HOW, HOW do I change?”
I remember thinking early on that there must be a better way that isn’t so hard. Wouldn’t it be great to find a way to help make these deep changes without having to be so darned disciplined all the time? I’d tried any number of techniques and practices and spent a good deal of money in the process and I still wasn’t any closer to making the changes I wanted to make. I got really, really, really depressed. I mean lying on the floor, boo- hooing, sobbing “What is wrong with me?” kind of depressed. This went on for awhile until one day I just took a stand against my depression and said “NO damn it. I’m not going to let this win. Right here, right now, in this very moment, I CHOOSE to be happy – Do you hear me? I CHOOSE to be happy, right here, right now!”
And from that, a little tune popped into my head
Right here and now
I am happy
Don’t cha know?
I’ve been set free
I started singing it over and over again and again and again. Day after day. It wasn’t work. It had gotten stuck in my head and I just kept singing it. And I suddenly realized that I wasn’t so depressed any more. I felt better than I had in a long time so I kept on singing. Shortly after that, it dawned on me that maybe this was it. Maybe this was the better way for me to change. It was fun and easy. I started to make up all kinds of little jingles for myself for different things I was feeling. I shared them with my daughter and one day she said “Mom, what if these could make other people feel better the way they’ve made you feel better?” And then I suddenly realized that maybe this was not only the better way for me to make the changes I needed to make – maybe this was the something I’d always felt I should be doing. Maybe other people would be able to benefit and use these little jingles to help them change as well.
That’s what started it all. Was it all a piece of cake to bring this idea, this dream to fruition from that moment on? Not hardly. It’s been a labor of love and that always means putting yourself out there and subject to criticism and there are always people ready to do just that. It’s been a lot of ups and downs and work and frustration and you name it. All the stuff it takes to build your dream. But through it all, I’ve just kept singing and singing and singing and now I offer this to you with the truest of hope that you too will use these to change the way you think and act and follow your dreams.
Over the last several years, I’ve been studying just about everything I could get my hands on in the Personal Development arena. One of the most important things I’ve learned from everyone from James Ray, Jack Canfield, Joe Vitale, Bob Doyle, Sandy Forster, Bob Proctor and many more is that if you focus on what you want and persistently and consistently tell yourself that you have these things, you will come to Believe it. Once you Believe it, then you will be inspired to take the actions you need to take that will bring what you want to you. Hence the saying, “When I Believe it, I will See it”.
When it comes to the way our brains learn things, REPETITION is key. Think about it – how did you learn your times tables in 5th grade math – repetition. How does an actor learn his lines – repetition. How did we all learn to walk and talk – repetition. So it stands to reason that if you want your mind to believe in a different way than it currently believes, you are going to have to teach it how to think that way by repeating what you want to believe.
Great…that makes sense. The more you repeat something, the quicker your subconscious should start to agree with you. So in comes Affirmations. Affirmations are just statements about what you WANT to believe. They are touted by just about every self help expert as the way to “Fake it til you make it”, because essentially you are just repeating over and over what you desire to believe.
OK, that makes sense too. If we all keep repeating affirmations, we’ll all be rich and happy, right? Sounds simple enough. So then……. Why aren’t we all rich and happy? Because we DON’T KEEP DOING THEM!! I certainly have tried many times. I’ve written impassioned affirmations, I’ve recorded them, I’ve done Power affirmations, I’ve listened to meditation CD’s with affirmations, subliminal affirmations, affirmations with binaural beats…I’ve done it all. But every time, after a week or two, the time required to continue to do these became a chore – I just didn’t Believe what I was telling myself and I couldn’t see anything changing so I would stop doing them. I think this is what happens to a lot of people. But it’s really not your fault, at least not your conscious minds fault.
You see, your unconscious mind or your ego can be your worst enemy. It likes you just the way you are – warts and all. It doesn’t see any need to change, it hates change and when you are trying to change by stating things like “I am wealthy, healthy and happy”, the unconscious “Belief Detective” I call it, immediately responds with “No, we’re not. We’re broke and depressed and I think we’re coming down with the flu. Besides, this is SOOOO boring”. If you can’t get past that “Belief Detective”, or at least realize what is going on, your unconscious mind will win and keep you broke, sick and depressed. Ironically, this is how it thinks it is protecting you. Gee, Thanks!!
Furthermore, many teachers have also taught that what we think about predominantly is what we get. 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, so much the better. Dr. Robert Anthony (Secret of Deliberate Creation) teaches that what you need to do, more than anything is find a way to Flip the Switch when you find yourself thinking a negative thought, or one of doubt or worry or fear. Just Flip Switch he calls it. My first reaction when hearing that was “So, HOW THE HECK do I do that?” I understand the need to keep positive, but how do you change in the moment – in the NOW – from fear and doubt to happiness and joy. That’s the 64 bazillion dollar question. It’s almost like you need to actually have a Switch implanted that you can reach out and Flip at will. Hmmmm…
Well, that’s where these AttitudeZapz! come in. Have you ever heard a tune on the way into work or have you seen some silly commercial on TV and the tune has stuck in your head all day long no matter what you did? We all do that. It’s just stuck there and you can’t get it out.
Sooo…What if that tune that was stuck in your head was an affirmation jingle? What if it was fun and catchy and a no-brainer? You don’t have to stop and take time to write affirmation statements10 times. You don’t have to stop and take time to read them or listen to them. You don’t have to stop and take time to meditate on them by listening to a CD or subliminals or anything (although all of these things are good and will definitely work, we just WON’T DO THEM). It’s already stuck there in your head like a secret weapon.
All you need to do is listen to the jingle a few times, catch the wave and get it stuck in your head and it stays with you all day long. You walk down the hall at work and sing your Zapz! You are struggling with a problem and while you’re thinking you sing your Zapz! You are cooking dinner or changing a diaper or paying your bills – and you are singing your Zapz!. You are depressed about something and you suddenly remember that you need to be present in the Here and Now, so you JUST Flip the Switch by singing your Zapz! And here is the best part, when was the last time your “Belief Detective” made a stink about song lyrics? No arguments, the affirmations just seep into your unconscious little by little, smile by smile, Zapz! by Zapz!
Here is a gift for you so you remember that everything comes “Perfectly”
