Your Happiness Control Panel

What if there was a happy pill with no side effects? Would you take it?

The pursuit of happiness is so fundamental to Americans it is in our Declaration of Independence. The question is, who has it and where do I get mine?

What if I told you happiness has a location.

Not a geographical location. Yes, some people find happiness vacationing in a big city, beautiful beach or breathtaking retreat. Happiness has a physical location in or around your body. When you feel happy, or when you remember feeling happy now, where is it easiest to feel in or around your body?

I feel a warmth that rises up from below my chest and lifts the front of my body. But every body’s way of feeling happy is unique and different.

If you let yourself think about it, there is more than one flavor of happy. Content happiness feels different than in love happiness or newly fulfilled happiness. The happiness you feel when you remember a highlight childhood moment differ from the happiness you feel when someone you love accomplishes something amazing.

I love to watch small children and young animals. When they are happy, they are very intensely happy. Some of them shine the happiness is so concentrated within their tiny bodies.

At some point we are taught that rewards come from diminishing that joyous exuberance. What if the opposite is true? What if the primary prerequisite for success is happiness? What if your fulfillment is dependant only on how much exuberance you defy society to let through? What if you CAN do it and you DO have what it takes?

Until now your happiness control panel has probably been on the outside. You feel happy when good things happen, or when you’re around people you like, or when people approve of you. This is in effect giving the control panel for your happiness over to the outside world when actually the control panel is inside.

Once you know where you feel happiness the most in your body, and you take a few minutes to notice in detail the different flavors of happiness and where you feel them in your body, then you can build your happiness muscle by practicing a flavor of happiness every moment you remember you get to choose how you feel. Every moment you are conscious enough to remember that your happiness control panel is on the inside, remember where and how you feel happy. Think of your happiest moments — real and imagined. Build that happiness response until more happiness comes back to you.

It is, after all, an inalienable right.

You ARE Getting What You Want, so Stop Complaining!

Sometimes my cat cannot make up her mind. She sits by the backdoor like she wants to go outside, but when we open it for her she either stays motionless or turns away. My cat has no responsibilities aside from grooming herself. She has no mortgage, no children, no car, no need to purchase and procure food and certainly no aspirations of contributing to a better world. If she sometimes does not know her own mind, I definitely think we should forgive ourselves our inconsistencies.

The Law of Attraction says “Ask and it is Given.” Yet, I could easily look around my life and say: “well, yes, it is a wonderful life but there is a list of things I know I’ve asked for that has not yet been given.”

There is a deeper brilliance here.

We are greater than our conscious asking. Our conscious minds can process 5-9 chunks of information at any one moment while our unconscious minds process much, much, much more in that same moment.

When we think we are asking for one thing, but our life experience is demonstrating that we are in fact asking for something else, we are experiencing an inconsistency that can be easily explained by including the unconscious mind.

Take, for example, a person who consciously is asking for financial freedom. This person loves the ease and power of independent wealth. Perhaps he has been pursuing this desire for years, yet in spite of steady work and strong desire in that direction his financial reality falls short of his high flying goals.

We’ve already established that this person IS getting what he is asking for, so what could be held in his unconscious that would not permit the financial gains that he has consciously been seeking?

There are many common cultural beliefs about money that could have been adopted somewhere and someway by this person. These include but are not limited to:

o   Rich people are bad, mean, selfish or evil

o   I might lose precious relationships in my gain of money

o   Too many people would want things from me. Overwhelm and fear of responsibility.

o   I might have trouble deciphering my true friends from people who admire my wealth.

o   I could betray my family (if they are not rich) and not be accepted by the rich, either. Fear of losing my tribe.

o   Money requires sacrifice.

o   I am not worthy or deserving.

o   I don’t know how to handle it well enough.

o   I would be bored if I did not have to work.

o   All my bad traits would overcome me – gluttony, addiction, selfishness – if I had no external limits.

o   And so on.

 

Unconscious beliefs are not the same as what you know to be true. You may look at a belief in your own unconscious and say, “That is obviously not true.” There are mountains of beliefs we hold in our unconscious that are not true here and now. They may have been true somewhere for someone, but we never bothered to check back and upgrade what we placed there.

So what do you do about old, unconscious beliefs?

Upgrade them!

There are plenty of simple yet powerful methods that people use to upgrade old beliefs. The most important one is to consciously identify what you have been holding there, and notice what is more true based on who you are now and all that you currently know about the world.

Here is a list of methods you can use to upgrade old limiting beliefs:

1.   Write them down, and then write what is more true.

2.   Spend time every day noticing how you ARE getting what you want, and what is beautiful, pleasurable and good about it.

3.   Write down what you might lose if you get what you want. This is a great way to uncover hidden beliefs.

4.   Purchase my workbook Powerful Communication: Discovering the ABC’s of your Unconscious Mind and use the skills to upgrade old beliefs.

5.   Schedule a session with me or someone like me who specializes in upgrading old, unconscious beliefs.

The worst thing that can happen is you’ll realize you’re happy where you’re at!

Happy Manifesting!!!

The Power of Yes

Years ago I took an improvisational comedy class in LA. The first thing we learned was “Yes, and….”

When you’re on stage with no costumes and no props and you’re creating a compelling scene for the audience, it is an essential skill. Imagine your partner begins a scene saying: “Wow! That elephant is wearing a tiara!”

If you then say, “That’s not an elephant, it’s a gorilla!” the audience is confused and no cohesive scene has begun.

If however, your partner says, “Wow! That elephant is wearing a tiara!” and you respond, “Yes, and so is the woman riding him!” then the two of you have begun to create a compelling scene the audience can follow.

“Yes, and…” is useful all the time in almost every conversation. “But” tends to have an off-putting feeling. It tends to negate what came before it. Replacing “but” with “yes, and…” is a great way to maintain rapport and gently lead others to your point of view.

“I agree with you, but let’s look at my idea.”

Much more likely to get a receptive response is: “I agree with you, and let’s look at my idea.”

When you’re working with the law of attraction, “Yes, and…” becomes a handy tool in the toolkit.

The vibration we give off is a soup of everything we habitually think and feel. To see improvements in our life, we need to upgrade what we are thinking and how we are feeling.

I see a lot of people who have read or seen a little about the Law of Attraction trying to repress or suppress negative emotions or undesirable thoughts. I don’t want to think about that, they tell themselves. However, just moving your attention away from something does not take it out of your vibrational soup or the whole of the vibration you are offering. The empowering thing to do is to walk up the emotional scale a little bit at a time so that you leave that thought or that feeling in a more harmonious place.

“Yes, and…” is a powerful way of doing this.

For example, imagine there is someone in your office, or in a networking group who rubs you the wrong way. Whenever you think of him or her, your stomach tightens up, your breath becomes shallower and your thoughts turn angry, resentful or critical. The suppressive or repressive response would be to tell yourself not to think that way, or to try and think of something else quickly. The “Yes, and…” response would begin by acknowledging what you have been feeling.

“Yes, this person is annoying (frustrating, wrong, etc.) AND I have a reaction whenever I see him/her AND I don’t prefer the reaction I have AND I would like to go to the office (or other location) and feel comfortable and good regardless of who is there AND there are other people there who I do enjoy AND I don’t know what this person’s problem is AND it’s not my job to figure it out or change them AND I wonder if as my attitude changes this person will shift AND it would be really great if he/she just went away AND I can imagine this place free of him/her AND I would feel really comfortable there AND I like the opportunity to upgrade my reactions and how I feel AND….”

To summarize, “Yes, and…” is a simple and powerful tool that can be used in any conversation to maintain and improve rapport and to easily get your ideas across. While working with the Law of Attraction, “Yes, and…” is a simple way of shifting your point of attraction on a particular subject simply and easily. The beauty of “Yes, and…” is it acknowledges the starting point, wherever that is, and effortlessly opens the doorway for more. Enjoy!

 

Walking up the emotional scale.

Some people find the law of attraction difficult to believe. They cannot imagine a connection between how they are vibrating and what happens “to them” in their life. I understand why. From the time we are small children, we are encouraged to hide and deny our feelings. We are taught the way to fit in and succeed you is to conform, and many times conforming means forcing yourself to do things you really really  don’t want to do. Then, we get used to it and it becomes normal.

We have been at war with our feelings, battling to keep them down. Then, “out of nowhere” there is this “Law” that says how you feel right now the most important thing!? Preposterous!

Brilliant! And, what a challenging frontier!

So, the habitual self denial we thought was keeping us safe is actually only holding us back. (Disappointing or liberating? — You choose.)

Being true to yourself is instead being true to the greatest good of all (and you get to see it that way when you believe it.)

Marianne Williamson has that wonderful quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is we are powerful beyond measure.”

In an unconscious way we have known our emotions offer us great power and because of our desire to fit in and conform we have feared that power.

In my work as an NLP Practitioner, I occasionally come across someone who is so uncomfortable with their emotions they work very hard to avoid them. They have to be gently coaxed towards them, like a young child towards a very large (but gentle) dog. Many addictive behaviors are us waging war with our own emotions — actually our own power! No wonder it has been such a battle!

Imagine a man or woman on a white screen. He or she is facing you. Now, notice the lights change. Instead of the body of that person, you begin to see a glow. There is a bright golden-white glow through the central column of where the body was — a line like a spine right through — but the glow continues outward in many colors like a rainbow or rings around the moon.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

When we suppress and deny our emotions we wrap that center of light with duct tape a bit at a time until less and less light is shining through. In a way you can say that is the process of ‘aging.’ However, when we honor and allow our emotions to 1. be and 2. Immediately start to dissolve, release and lighten; We unwrap the column of light a little at a time.

“For once in your life let your soul shine through.” Bee Gees

Music is vibrational language. Have you noticed how a love song sounds so much better  when you’re in love? The music we like plays emotional vibrations we are comfortable with and prefer.

So let’s say you’re someone who has done some self-awareness work: meditation, yoga, holistic healing techniques, self-inquiry, and you can usually identify how you feel in any moment — if someone asked you. It is still not easy to really move that emotion up the emotional scale, or to a lighter, freer feeling place. Of course, Esther and Jerry Hicks do a wonderful job talking people up the emotional scale. Their bi-weekly cd’s are a fantastic way to hear, feel and learn that.

In addition, there are a number of ‘technologies’ just emerging — like Holographic Communication – that give you step by step procedures to dismantle old stuck emotional vibrations and tear chunks of old duct tape right off. The Marriage of Spirit by Leslie Temple Thurston teaches a highly effective ‘technology’ called: polarities, squares and triangles. NLP also offers excellent clearing techniques. Core Transformation, originally from Connirae Andreas of NLP Colorado is another powerful and leveraged skill to uplift your vibration.

For me, the difference between painstakingly directing your thoughts and applying the above technologies is as huge as the difference between doctors who used leeches and doctors with modern, state of the art operating rooms. Only with these technologies, you are the only one who can fully and properly apply them for you. Personal responsibility is a pre-requisite for emotional success.

The only thing to fear is fear itself.

“The only thing to fear is fear itself” was said by Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945). John F. Kennedy made the phrase popular for another generation in a well-quoted speech.

What does this mean, and how does it directly apply to our day to day success and happiness?

First, it is important to notice that emotional reactions are cross-cultural. Why are American films so popular? Because they invoke strong feelings in people everywhere all around the world. There may be differences in cultural perspective, ideology or experience, but emotion communicates everywhere.

It does not matter if your American, Egyptian or Italian — if you feel fear your body will contract a little and your breathing will become more shallow. Since fear evokes the fight or flight response in your body, you are less likely to make a really good decision while feeling fear, unless the best decision happens to be to run away very fast. (Good perhaps in the jungle, less valuable on Wall Street.)

What happens when you feel confident and happy? Does your body lengthen up a little bit? Do you feel your stride get longer? Do you see more in your peripheral vision? Most people say yes, yes, yes.

We lose our footing when we feel fear because we think it means something. We mistake the sense of foreboding as coming from OUTSIDE instead of INSIDE where it actually is. Our emotional bodies are like a giant harp — so huge you can only play a few close notes at a time.

So, the feeling of fear not only has distinct body language and facial expressions, it also has a distinct feeling or vibration that is like a note we feel.

Emotions are information, so the feeling of fear does offer information. It is NOT however a punishment or a predictive message like our minds sometimes pretends it is. Fear is usually indicating that you are somehow in conflict with yourself. Either you are telling yourself a story that is not true and scaring yourself, or you are doing something that is somehow in conflict with what you believe. Either way, simply stopping and taking a deep breath does a lot to restore truth and clarity.

Fundamentally, fear is a product of the mind. (You feel fear or not by what you’re thinking, right?) Since fear is a product of the mind, it is imaginary. All fear is always imaginary. You were imagining it, and you can breathe and laugh and hope your way into imagining something more appealing right now.

Lenny Kravitz got it right with “Let Love Rule.”

Yet Haddaway adds an important question with “What is Love?” (To see Lenny Kravitz’s latest video click here.)

So, let love rule. Let love rule. Let love rule.

What is love?

I could fill at least one good novel with my adventures in the search for love. Possibly a trilogy, because my search for love spanned continents and languages. It took me high up toward the top of mountains and  deep into caves the earth. I looked into many sets of eyes in my search for love. I applied myself to many good deeds. I even conformed in my search for love. All temporary. All fleeting. Love is either here or it is not here.

So, a practical, applicable definition for love.

1. Love is an inside experience.
2. Love has its own recognizable vibration or feeling in your body when you actually are feeling Love.
3. Love is generative. It multiplies and creates more of itself.
4. Love is fearless. Courage is a heart full of Love.
5. Love and Truth are in harmony together.
6. Love may feel vulnerable at first, but in fact it is highly protective because it attracts more of its own.
7. The best way to receive love is to practice being it.

Now we know what is Love, why let it rule?

First, an experiment. Next time you are about to meet a new animal or small baby, before you enter the space: Stop and open your heart. Find the feeling of Love however you can get there and let the warm vibration expand from within you. You will be amazed at how sweetly most animals and small children will recognize your congruent intention. Even better, you will see that aspect of them amped up and will have the best possible experience with them.

I suppose it is true with all people, yet I find it most easy with animals and small children.

Imagine if Love ruled the world. Everyone just ‘woke up’ to the fact that Love is freely available and a conscious inside choice. AND any other choice just hurts the one who is feeling it — it offers no balance or retribution to perceived wrongdoers. SO love serves me because it attracts more love to me.

The Hindu Goddess Lakshmi (Shri) is goddess of wealth and abundance AND Love and devotion.  Hold THAT lens in front of your eyes and notice how it changes your view of the world.

The person who most needs your love in this world is you. When we are full we have lots to give and plenty of support. When we soften and accept ourselves we create a tiny permission for others around us to do the same. When you marvel at the beauty and perfection in your life you invite more in. Love is a moment to moment experience. You ARE you own love generator. Do you have permission to turn yourself on?

Media you consume impacts what you attract.

What do you want to attract? If you wrote a list of 100 things you love to have around you like gorgeous weather, friendly considerate people, interesting things to see and do, good news, exciting upcoming events, beauty, happy laughter, good smells, open views, free time, helpful people, supportive people, inspiring and engaging people… (Your list of course, tailored to you) I would then challenge you to find significant amounts of any of those 100 wonderful things on media news. However, the media stations serve us — at least in the sense that they give us what we will watch the most.

In the old model, reporting bad and shocking news made sense. You could call attention to those areas most in need. However, there is a flaw in the reasoning.

The Law of Attraction applies NOT to how good we think we are for thinking about those less fortunate (no matter what your mom said). The Law of attraction applies to how we are vibrating — the emotions that pulse and pattern through us moment to moment day to day. We create more of what we are already vibrating for ourselves first and for everyone else as an automatic byproduct. It is actually pretty cool, because it changes the basis of what is a good person.

We have had so much conflict and so much rebellion because of the old definition of being good. Think of the basic teenage complaint: they have to go against what they want for themselves to follow a larger structure or set of rules. In the old way of thinking you followed those external rules to keep you safe because older wiser people found them tried and true. So each of us in some way has been a tied up bundle of what-I-want-they-say-is-bad-but-what-I’m-supposed-to-do-is-miserable.

The Law of Attraction frees us from all that and makes being good much simpler. Good feels good. Good feels good because good feelings are actually contributing to the vibrational soup in an uplifting way. We best serve humanity by joyfully serving ourselves. It is one of God’s great ironies.

“We become what we think about”. Earl S. Nightingale

As you are watching news or other programs, and as you are reading the paper or even a book, begin to notice what vibrations are amplified inside your body as you watch or read. Notice: is this improving my vibrational soup? Is this bringing me more of what I want? If the answer is yes, stay with it. If the answer is not yes, well, how badly do you want it?

Satisfying my needs.

As an undergraduate at Yale I majored in psychology, and in my second year I was deeply struck by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

He noticed how, throughout history, humans have moved up a hierarchy of needs from survival needs like food, sleep and stimulation through five phases to self-actualization. He also noticed that while we live in a time and place where self-actualization is possible, different people conduct their lives at different levels of the hierarchy.

Self actualization is defined as the basic force that drives a person onward to serve a destiny or cause greater than him or herself. Examples of some more famous self-actualized people in history: Gandhi, Tomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Nelson Mandela, and many, many more. Self actualized people, according to Maslow, display more highly refined qualities like: independence, playfulness, effortlessness, uniqueness, honesty, aliveness and trust.

Always an ambitious one (I was, after all, at Yale) I committed in that moment to ‘becoming self-actualized.’ Which I immediately tied in my mind to Joseph Campbell’s much loved edict Follow Your Bliss. My mission in life became to be the best ME possible.

Great idea, but what is the best me possible, and how do I get there?

Those two questions led me on a decade long journey which includes — thankfully — the wonderful Law of Attraction work of Jerry and Esther Hicks.

Many people who saw The Secret movie speak about the Law of Attraction as if it were a way to get stuff, or basically to satisfy Maslow’s first need in the hierarchy; body needs. The Law of Attraction has much, much more to say. The Law of Attraction, when you dive deeply enough, is saying: you don’t need stuff because you’re being taken care of anyway and as you relax and allow everything you want will come to you.

Recently in a evening teleconference, Bashar spoke about the human mind as the receiver and the perceiver but NOT the conceiver. The human mind is NOT AND NEVER WAS the author of your life. You’re just observing the magic of greater forces at work sometimes successfully imagining you have control.

The Law of Attraction only really makes sense when you connect it to the idea that there is more to you than you think. Specifically, you are mostly non-physical intelligent energy working in great concert with a vast and mentally unfathomable universe. You are a single operative in a vast army of Light, and you are strictly on a need-to-know basis. Most things, frankly, we just don’t need to know. The Law of Attraction teaches the Art of Surrender, or the development of softness, of Yin energy, of Prana (breath), of conscious connection with your greater self. The challenge is not how vividly you can imagine what you want so you can prove to yourself it works by then bringing that specific thing to you, no, the true challenge is to remain open enough and trusting enough so the vast magnificence of the universe can bring you the unimaginably wonderful.

stop torturing yourself and Get On with Living.

Trust is not a four letter word, but we act as if it were.

Is there anything more frightening (or delicious) than softly dissolving into liquid trust? Are you someone who effortlessly and easily relinquishes control? (If so you’re really really rare.) We keep secure boundaries around ourselves as if what is inside needs to be protected from what is outside. We police our thoughts and actions to avoid conflict, criticism or punishment from the outside.

Who is this outside anyway?

I am by no means the first to write or speak there is no outside. At least as far as your relationship with what you want is concerned. Yes, there is an outside experience, but it is SO HUGE and INFINITE with possibility, you really can glide through your own tiny sliver and only encounter more and more of what you enjoy.

Think about it this way. Wherever you are sitting or standing, notice the room you are in. Then, still aware of yourself in the room, sense the size of the city around you and all the bustling of people just in your city. Then, still aware of yourself in the room in the city, expand to the state or province you are in. At this same moment an entire state of people are be-ing. You can continue (staying centered in your own body in your own room, expand to include the country, the continent, and the world.

The simultaneous abundance of each moment is unimaginable to my mind. When I reach as far as I can go, I still barely approximate the richness, texture and variety of what is actually happening.

For me, this amazing variety inspires trust. It hints of our intrinsic value; each person a perfect puzzle piece of a earth-wide puzzle. Of course, what is perfect for me already IS. Of course what I am doing/saying/being is GOOD and OK. Of course I am surrounded by good people who are the right match for me. Of course my life keeps getting better over time. Of course things always work out for me. Of course I can have what I want.

It is easy to imagine that in the rich vastness of opportunity in the quantum field of potential we call the outside world, what is perfect for you is not only OUT THERE it is CALLING YOU TOO.

Unforgiveness and the Law of Attraction

Who in your life bugs you? How about that person who did you harm? What about the groups of people who are simply mean, stupid or wrong?

No matter who or what fills in the answer to those questions for you, your unforgiveness only hurts you.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the feeling of resentment. I certainly have been. Resentment feels like a burning — uncomfortable like stomach acid. How about anger. Do you have more energy or less after you get angry. I certainly have less. Of course, it is unhelpful to deny emotions like resentment or anger, and impossible to be sober in the world and never feel them. What is helpful and possible is to notice areas of unforgiveness and begin to soften them inside you.

It doesn’t matter how awful the other people are, who they murdered or the terrible wrong they are doing, your resentment and anger only ever hurts yourself. Even if you are a shining example of good deeds and a responsible and giving person, any areas inside you that burn with resentment or tremble with fear limit your ability to receive what you want according to the law of attraction.

It seems much easier to follow the old model of right action. If I do good according to the rules I will be rewarded. However, it is easy to look around the world and see that being good according to a set of rules rarely pays off, and when it does it is usually has come at too great a price. In fact, many people who seem to not be doing good at all reap all sorts of benefit all over the place. No, there is something much deeper at work here: The Law of Attraction.

Reasons to forgive:

1. Lightness.
2. Ease.
3. Things work better for me.
4. That person or situation loses the power it had over me — I get my power back.
5. Greater health and well being.
6. Unforgiving only hurts me and has no impact on the person I am unforgiving.

Many times we resist forgiveness out of fear of repeating the same mistake. Oh, that person took advantage of me, and if I forgive and let it go then I am a sitting duck for a repeat performance.

This is a logical argument, however totally incorrect. When we hold onto something unpleasant from the past we increase NOT decrease our chances of repeating the same story again. That to which is like itself is drawn.

Our greatest power to change the world around us is NOT outside through action, but inside through attitude, understanding and emotion. Give yourself a break, practice forgiveness wherever you can and see what happens.

Beyond visualization: the art of congruent intention

I remember hearing Bashar say “You are always 100% certain, even if you’re using 60% of that certainty to doubt.”

Have you ever seen a dog chasing its tail? It’s head is only inches away from the goal but never catches it, since every inch the head moves forward, the tail does too.

That is what we are like when we try to use visualizations or affirmations we don’t believe.

By all means use visualizations and affirmations since done correctly they are like healthy food for the body or good fertalizer for soil. But believe first and foremost that 1. you can have what you want and 2. you deserve to be or have it and 3. the outcome that is truly best for you is best for everyone.

How do you know when you are believing a visualization or an affirmation?

First, it feels really good or at least like relief.

Second, you aren’t looking for confirmation outside because you already feel it inside.

Finally, what you are asking for is congruent with all of you and not just a deprived, hopeless or victimized part of you.

How do you know when something is congruent with all of you?

First, it feels really good or at least like relief.

Second, your heart sings when you think about it (even if it’s only for a pure, clear moment before the old programmed guilt kicks in).

Finally, you find yourself compelled forward whether you think you want it or not.

Bashar calls it: “The path of least resistance.”

Abraham-Hicks urges us to: “Go with the flow.”

The great American mystic Joseph Campbell said: “Follow your bliss.”

My fortune cookie from the other night says: “Look for the dream that keeps coming back, it is your destiny.”

When I was working one on one with people using NLP for business and personal success, the common theme that most stood out to me was how each person had a dream somewhere inside them that they had convinced themselves they could not have. The funny thing as an observer from the outside was that each person’s dream was totally unique and completely perfect for them. It became almost hilarious to see people deny themselves from what is obviously perfect for them.

However, as with all truths of the mind we come to a subtle but important distinction. The bliss Joseph Campbell was urging us to follow is not a big-picture idea like “modeling” or “real estate,” but a moment-to moment cultivation of those things that please us naturally, effortlessly and anyway. By the path of lease resistance we find ourselves in who knows where, except that wonderful took us here and more is on its way.

Law of Attraction is more than Positive Thinking

There is more to the law of attraction than positive thinking. Let’s say you imagine your dream house. In your mind’s eye you walk through the rooms and notice the layout. You appreciate the light and the view and even imagine the paintings on the wall in great detail. However, the whole time part of you is appreciating what you are imagining and a nagging, internal part is doubtful. What are you creating? A mix of appreciation and doubt is what you are creating. Some of what you want can come through and some cannot.

It pays to be clear about ideas like positive thinking and optimism.

For our purposes here positive thinking can be defined by thoughts (images and sounds) that correspond to simultaneous good feelings. If you are in escrow on your dream home, and you are marvelling at the almost amazing sychronistic events that got you here, and you are congratulating yourself on a job well done and finding yourself elated at the idea of furnishing and decorating the new place because you know the money for it is all here, you are demonstrating an example of positive thinking. Positive thinking is either happening or not happening in any one moment.

Optimism is a little bit different. The basis of optimism is a knowing and a certainty that no matter how circumstances look, “things always work out for me.”  If you have proven for yourself over time that everything always works out for the best — and usually better than I expected, you are likely to find the silver lining quickly in any situation. Optimism is seen where there is a foundation of trust is self and the universe. Optimism is forward looking and determined to find the pearl. Optimism is a practiced attitude — even orientation.

To keep in shape you exercise almost every day. To keep your vibration or mind/body/emotional system in shape you practice positive thinking and optimism every day until the momentum of the natural joy and love within you take over and you open yourself up to really ride life.

What if none of us came here to conform, fit in or marginalize our dreams? What if we all came here for the unique experience of being something almost unplanned and fully undiscovered? What put-aside dreams are you ready to start enjoying now?

Byron Katie’s The Work is simple and powerful belief-changing material. To see her work with someone is amazing, yet the foundation of her work is four simple questions:

1. Do I really know that (what I do not like) is true?
2. Can I really know that (what I do not like) is true?
3. How do I react, what happens when I believe that thought?
4. Who or what would I be without the thought?

When you take even fifteen minutes to let those questions really resonate within you, until you feel the answers rise, you have in a short moment completely rewired an old mental pathway or program and are one step closer to freedom.

This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare

The real secret to the law of attraction illustrated by Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz

The real secret to the law of attraction is circular.

Everything we want, we do, or we chastise ourselves for is based in a desire to be happy. Yet, when we get what we want or accomplish a goal the happiness tends to be fleeting before we settle back into our old ways of wanting the next and the next again. As you can see, circular (like a dog chasing its own tail.)

We all want to be happy, and to feel happy, and to look happy to others (aye, there is the rub.)

Rather than trying to get off the wheel by stopping desire (long term, an impossible task & such struggle!), the law of attraction says: You already have what you need to get what you want. Be happy here and now no matter what.

Like Dorothy, we already have the ruby slippers on our feet. If you remember in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy lands on a wicked witch the moment she arrives in Oz, and immediately inherits her magical ruby slippers. Dorothy, entirely naive of her own power, goes on a long and dangerous journey to find outside help. After several misadventures she finally earns the assistance of the Great and Powerful Oz. However, Oz has no powers. He informs her that she has had the power to get what she wants all along. In that instant, she is home.

We have not yet discovered our own power. Particularly, our power to be happy here and now no matter what.

Instead of claiming our power in the form of alignment with our inner authority and trust in and love for ourselves, we have been acting as if the goal of life is to please an outside authority.

Joseph Campbell said it really well. In his filmed interview with Bill Moyer, Campbell talks about a subtle but all informing difference in the creation myths of the east and the west. He described both creation myths as almost identical. However, in the west God created man as separate from himself and in the east God poured himself into man. In the west there is separation from an external God while in the east God is also within.

Why is this important? Remember, Dorothy faced her death in an effort to win the favor of the Great and Powerful Oz, only to discover that she had the power the get what she wanted all along.

Most of the external authorities we have been trying to please are actually memories and voices in our own heads that in reality have no power (except that we lend it to them.)

What is the way out? Well, it is really more of a non-doing that a doing.

Have you ever played with the toy called “chinese finger torture.” You place one finger from each hand into either end of a long tube. Once they are in there you cannot get them out no matter how hard you try. In fact, the more you struggle the tighter it binds. At first it is funny, and then….

Well the way out of chinese finger torture is just like the way out of putting off your happiness — you relax and let go. To release your fingers from the toy, you have to soften your muscles and gently push your fingers towards each other — a move that feels like you’re digging deeper in. However, as you do the toy releases and then, again, it is funny.

If there is something in your life you’ve been feeling bound up by, or that you’ve been struggling with a lot — do the opposite of what you’ve been trying and begin to soften around it. Forgive yourself bit by bit for getting yourself here, and each tiny inch towards center is you that much closer to the bind fully and completely letting go.