As you shift your inner self, you begin exerting new forces on your outer reality. It takes time for the various elements of your reality (your relationships, finances, daily routine, etc) to reveal the cumulative effect of these forces and to shift themselves around to achieve equilibrium with your new vibe.

Old opportunities will dry up. New opportunities will begin to appear.

Invitations that once attracted you will seem boring, while others will become interesting to you.

People will change how they relate to you. Some will become more distant while others will zoom closer.

Things you used to tolerate will no longer be tolerable for you. Things you used to merely dream about will begin to seem possible for you.

This is also a test of sorts — to see if you’re really committed to holding the new vibe. If you allow the old reality to get the better of you, and you swing you back to the old vibe due to feelings of guilt, regret, fear, attachment, and so on, you’ll simply reinforce the old reality and cancel the shift.

This can be a very chaotic time to endure, but stay the course and it will pass.

It can also be a lonely time because you’ll most likely be going through this shift by yourself. This doesn’t mean you’ll be saying goodbye to all your previous relationships, but you may be relating to those same people a little differently on the other side of this shift. How this plays out depends on the nature of the shift. For instance, if you’re shifting to a more abundant vibe, you’re likely to repel people who are deeply mired in a scarcity vibe, but some people in your life may find your shift exciting and may be supportive in watching you go through it.

Also, during the shift you may want to stay focused on the new vibe until you’ve had a chance to reach the other side in physical reality and re-ground yourself there. Sometimes, but not always, it’s just a little simpler to go through these kinds of shifts without being too heavily influenced by other people.

Watching your reality rearrange itself right in front of you can be a bit disorienting at first. I liken the experience to moving to a new city. When you first arrive, it takes a while to familiarize yourself to the next territory. For me it usually takes about 3 weeks before I feel like I’m used to it.

You also have to loosen your attachment to the old city and say goodbye to it in a way. Otherwise you’ll want to cancel the move.

It can be hard to predict which aspects of the old city will still be present in the new one and which you’ll essentially be leaving behind. There will be some experiences you can recreate there and others that you need to let go. You’ll also discover new experiences that simply weren’t available in your old city.

Once you’ve moved, you can still go back and visit the old city, but it won’t feel the same once you’re firmly established in your new residence. You’ve been looking at your old reality from a new perspective.

It’s extremely tempting to cancel the move along the way, especially during those first two weeks. It takes a big inner commitment to shift your vibe and let your physical reality catch up, just as it takes a big commitment to move to a new city. Some vibrational shifts are so big that they’re akin to moving to a new country with a different language. Expect it to take longer to adapt to these bigger shifts as well, perhaps months or even years instead of weeks.

If you’re truly committed to the shift, then stay the course. Your outer reality will catch up eventually. Just be prepared for a bit of chaotic restructuring along the way. Do your best to relax and breathe through it. Keep going back to your new vibe and reinforcing it, even when it seems like your outer world is screaming at you.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

How do I respond to this?

First off, these people are right. It is easy for me to share my thoughts on abundance. Even the words on abundance are abundant.

I could make it sound more difficult if you think it would help, but I’d have to fake it.

At one time it was a real challenge for me to hold the vibe of abundance. I had every reason not to: bills piling up that I couldn’t pay, 6-figure debt coupled with a low income that didn’t cover my basic expenses, creditors calling 10 times a day, falling behind on my rent, an unreliable car, a grossly negative net worth, less than $100 total in the bank, using a cardboard box as a piece of furniture, and… a pregnant wife.

Mired in Scarcity

Many people hold the belief that if you look around and can point to sufficient evidence of scarcity, that this is a good enough reason to consider abundance to be an unrealistic pipe dream for the time being.

That belief looks pretty good on paper. Obviously if you’re surrounded by evidence of scarcity, you’re in a situation that’s very likely to make you feel a sense of lack. Who wants to deal with collection agencies? Who wants to have their car break down? Who wants to get evicted?

Aren’t these negative experiences?

Let’s buy into that mindset for the sake of argument. Let’s assume that these experiences are negative, or at the very least undesirable.

Maybe a Zen master would be able to find peace among such turmoil, but you probably aren’t a Zen master, and neither am I.

So let’s just accept that it sucks to be in a situation that’s contrary to what you want.

The Horror, the Horror

Being in a scarcity situation is like watching a horror movie. You get dragged into the plight of the characters, so you feel their tension and fear. It’s difficult to watch such a movie and not be sucked into its emotional reality at least to some degree.

You could sit there watching that movie, trying not to feel anything, but what if it’s a horror movie marathon? Eventually you’ll be drawn in by one scene or another, and you’ll feel something. You probably can’t maintain the concentration to feel good or neutral the whole time you’re there, not with those movies playing right in front of you on a gigantic screen.

Same goes with real life. If you’re surrounded by a seemingly negative situation, how do you avoid feeling negative? You can try to feel positive for short bursts of time, but eventually the situation will suck you back in.

What do you do in such situations?

Change the Channel

Leave the theater. You’re not obliged to watch the entire horror marathon.

Maybe you think you have to sit through the whole thing because you bought a ticket. Can’t let it go to waste, right? But if you’re not enjoying the experience, why stay?

If you find the horror situation thrilling and compelling, and you want to ride it out, feel free. But if you’ve truly had enough and you’d rather do something else, then leave. There are no guards forcing you to stay put.

Now you can’t necessarily leave every aspect of your real life behind in an impulsive instant, but you can summarily abandon the old energies that no longer interest you. You can turn your back on whatever bugs you.

Even if you feel rooted to your seat during the horror marathon, you could pull out your cell phone and engage yourself with its tiny portal. You could choose to ignore what’s happening on the big screen. You won’t be sucked into the movie experience nearly as much if you do that.

You’re not obligated to give your attention to the negative scenes that are playing out in your life. If you don’t like what’s playing, don’t watch it — unless you truly desire the thrill it provides.

If you feel you must show up physically, then check out mentally and emotionally first. Give the bulk of your attention to something that’s more interesting to you.

Ditch the Bad Movie

What can you give your attention to instead of what you don’t want? Give your attention to what you want. If you don’t know what that is, then focus on anything that attracts you more than your current reality. Turn your back on whatever isn’t working in your life. Leave it behind like you’re walking out on a bad movie.

Some people will probably complain when you do this. Ignore them, or poke fun at them, but don’t let their whining get you down. They’re part of the bad movie experience, at least for now. They may come around later, but if they’re reinforcing a scarcity-based role for you, it’s best to abandon the whole production, no matter how much you like the other actors.

You’re perfectly capable of defining, creating, and then holding a vibe that’s completely out of sync with your current physical reality. This is precisely what conscious growth is.

Many people seem to believe they can’t do this, but they can. You do it whenever you change the channel on the TV or switch to a different website. It’s as easy as pushing a button. You simply shift your attention from one experience to another.

This is how you shift from scarcity to abundance. Commit to leaving the whole scarcity movie behind. Ignore it completely. Change your attention channel to abundance.

When you walk out, feel free to make a stink about it: “Scarcity, you suck! Worst movie I’ve ever seen. So repetitive and boring. I want a refund. Zero stars!”

Cinema Abbondanza

What’s playing in the other cinema?

Instead of just horror movies, you can enjoy comedies, romances, adventures, and more. The abundance theater is more modern, with crisper video and audio and comfy seats. Best of all, the floors are free of cinemuck.

To enter this theater, pretend you’re already there. Manufacture the experience in your body and mind. Create the laughter, the excitement, and the lovey-dovey feelings right where you are.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the abundance vibe is appreciation. It’s similar to that feeling you get when you just finished watching the best movie ever. What does that feel like for you? Can you reload such a feeling right now? How would you do that?

There are lots of ways to load up positive vibes. Some people do it by listening to their favorite music. Others like to visualize their desires as real. Some like to dance and sing or move their bodies around a lot. It’s really not complicated. If I asked you to load up a positive and abundant vibe, how would you do it? And how would you hold that vibe for at least 10 minutes?

Vibes and their realities are mutually reinforcing, so if you have a reality that’s congruent with a certain vibe, then all you need to do to maintain that vibe is to keep noticing the reality it’s connected to. If you’re in a scarcity situation, all that’s required to maintain scarcity is to keep noticing it. So it’s very easy to perpetuate scarcity once you’re there.

When you’re in an abundant reality, it’s equally easy to keep perpetuating abundance. Your reality will keep delivering more evidence of abundance.

But when you want to switch to a new reality and a new vibe, you can’t keep looking at the old reality since that will just reinforce the old vibe. You have to create the new vibe and/or a fictitious version of the new reality somewhere else on the side. You can do this by using your imagination and by carving out a location in time and/or space to plant the seeds of your new reality.

Plant the Seeds of Abundance

So first plant the seed of your new reality. Wedge it into your current space-time. Then keep watering that seed as you extend it in both time and space… until the new vibe has infected your reality to such a degree that it becomes the dominant vibe.

My preferred way of doing this is to dedicate a block of time each day to vibrational shifting work. I’m working on some fairly significant shifts for myself, so I’m currently devoting a good 1-2 hours per day to this.

I find it’s best to do this first thing in the morning, so as soon as I wake up, I instantly start thinking about the new reality I wish to experience. I load up the corresponding vibes and begin to experience them. It’s easy to do this in the morning since there’s nothing to distract me. I remind myself of some new desires, and I visualize them in a variety of ways. I imagine how I’d feel if I was already there.

This is not a complicated practice, so don’t act like you’re clueless as to how to do it. Be clueless and do it anyway.

As I go through my day, I try to extend this vibe further and further into my day (time extension).

When I went running this morning, I continued doing the visualizing and listened to some of my favorite music. After my run I sat in a park and appreciated the sunrise. I held that sense of appreciation for several minutes because I know I’ll expect that I’ll feel very appreciative when I’m physically experiencing my new reality, so that’s a congruent vibe to create now.

The very first day I start working on a new vibe shift, I may only hold the new vibe during my dedicated morning session, and if I’m lucky I’ll briefly reload it a few more times during the day if I can remember to do that. After several days of practice, I might be up to spending 30-50% of the day congruent with the new vibes. And I keep building up from there until the new vibe becomes so dominant and habitual that I barely even notice it — after a while it just feels normal.

Land and Expand

As I begin a new vibe shifting process, I try to keep planting ever more seeds throughout each day. Again, the morning is the easiest for me because it’s quiet, and I’m not distracted by anything else, so it’s not that difficult to plant the first seed there. But in addition to that, I’ll keep trying to attach this vibe to other parts of my day, as if I’m trying to infect my entire daily routine with a new thought virus.

When I unload the dishwasher, I reload the vibe. When I make food, I reload it. When I get into my car and put on my sunglasses, I reload it. When I sit down to do some writing, I reload it. When I write my to-do list for the next day, I reload it. I do this over several days, so eventually I create at least a half dozen daily triggers for the new vibe.

I have enough practice at this that it’s not too difficult to remember to do it, but if you find it difficult, then feel free to use physical triggers. For example, you could put up sticky notes around your environment to serve as reminders to load the new vibe whenever you get a chance.

This really doesn’t take any extra time because I just keep doing whatever I’d normally do, but I shift the vibe I experience while I’m doing it. So while I’m making a meal, for instance, I’m taking the same actions, but I remind myself to notice what an abundance of food I have and how awesome that is. I think of how easy it is for me to get more food if I need it. I think of how much I’ll enjoy the meal. I think of how much I enjoy sharing meals with my girlfriend. I think about experiencing different kinds of foods while I’m traveling and how much I enjoy those kinds of experiences. And so on.

Once I’ve planted the easy seeds, I keep watering those while I work on planting seeds in more challenging soil. When I’m sharing a meal with people, I pause and load up my new vibe mid-conversation and then continue from there. If I catch myself feeling frustrated, I pause and load up the new vibe. Eventually I’m doing this sort of vibe shifting perhaps 20 or more times per day, every day.

Basically I’m trying to infect as much of my daily reality with the new vibe as much as I can. Day after day, I’m gradually overwriting my old vibes and replacing them with new ones. The old vibes are congruent with my old reality, the one I’m ready to leave behind. The new vibes are what’s needed to attract the new reality that I’m ready to create.

Patience, Grasshopper

I’ve been through this process many times before, and I not only trust it, but I also enjoy it immensely. It’s a lot of fun once you get used to it.

After first I felt pretty frustrated by how long things seemed to take. But eventually I shifted my attitude about that, and I quite enjoy the anticipation of seeing the old reality shift to become my new reality. It reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Homeward”, where Worf and his brother have to move a group of people from one planet to another without letting the people know what’s happening. So they transport the people onto the holodeck and then program the holodeck to gradually transition the terrain from that of the first world to that of the second, as the people within the simulation seem to be walking a great distance.

As I do this vibe shifting work, I love to watch my reality gradually shifting day after day. I get super curious to see what elements of the shift will show up each week. At first the shifts seem fairly minor, but eventually I look back and realize that I’ve traveled a great distance from when I started, and my current reality bears little resemblance to the old one.

Time-wise it normally plays out on a schedule that looks something like this: At first nothing seems to be changing in my outer reality. It’s purely an inner shift, and it seems like what I’m experiencing has no resemblance to what I’m imagining. The new vibes are totally out of sync with my current reality. But within a few days, some minor synchronicities start popping up. Then gradually the external reality begins to change in small, almost trivial ways. People start acting a little differently towards me. I start getting new ideas. My behavioral patterns start changing a little. Usually after a week, it’s obvious that something’s up, but I can’t point to any serious results yet. After a month, I’m clearly seeing evidence of change, but I’m still not there yet. After about 3 months, I’m firmly grounded in the new reality, and now I can just coast to stay there.

I’m only a couple weeks into another round of vibe shifting work, so I’m in that early phase of enjoying seeing all the subtle shifts that are now coming each day. My work patterns are shifting, as you may have noticed by the shift in my blogging frequency this week. I’m going to bed and waking up at different times. My interactions with others are changing. I’m not trying to create these changes through deliberate action; the behavioral changes result from holding a different vibe for much of the day.

I’m enjoying the positive anticipation of what’s coming up as well as the mystery of how it’s playing out.

It is easier to trust this process when you’ve been through it a few times. It’s very much like planting a seed and knowing that it will grow into a plant, given enough time. At first you may not believe that a little seed can become a large plant, so perhaps you take a small leap of faith and trust a gardener who says that’s just how it works. Maybe you plant the first seed, and nothing happens. The gardener tells you that you have to water it, or it will die. You try again, and it still doesn’t work. The gardener reminds you to plant your seed out in the open sunlight, not in a dark room. Eventually you follow the gardener’s advice accurately enough to see the plant sprout. Once you reach that point, it’s easier to trust the process because then you can see the physical progress week after week. But when you first plant each seed, you have to keep watering it and trusting that the process is working even though you can’t see the evidence yet. It will eventually sprout.

When you’ve planted your new vibrational seeds and watched them grow into a whole new reality for you to experience, enjoy, and appreciate, rest assured that people who haven’t successfully grown those crops yet will ask you how you did it. Then when you tell them how it’s done, don’t be too surprised when they reply: Easy for you to say! ;)

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

If I see someone in emotional pain, I also see that within them is a seed of joy that they’ve simply lost touch with. I can understand why they’re feeling bad (empathy), but that doesn’t mean I have to feel bad with them (sympathy with the lower self). Instead I’d rather feel good as I watch that seed of growth within them expanding through the contrast they’re experiencing (sympathy with the higher self).

This doesn’t mean being heartless. It means using the heart a little more accurately — to connect with a person’s inner strength instead of their temporary projections of weakness.

Feeling bad that people are suffering isn’t much of a remedy. For some it can be part of a process of healing, but the feeling bad part isn’t a necessary component (unless you believe it is and therefore make it so).

If people insist on suffering by resisting expansions in certain directions, allow them to do so. All suffering is temporary and will eventually end, not because those particular expansions cease but because people will eventually change how they relate to such expansions. This shift frees up trapped energy, thereby making new expansions possible.

The best thing you can do with your energy is to focus it where you’d like to see further expansion. Personally I’m not that interested in increasing the amount of suffering in the world, so I largely ignore it. I’m much more interested in expanding other aspects of life such as creativity, abundance, playfulness, a sense of purpose, fascinating technology, openness, honesty, courage, expressions of affection (hugs, cuddling), lucid dreaming, traveling, and of course hot sex with Canadians.

If you choose to participate in the expansion of suffering, you’re free to do so, and no one will stop you. Lots of people seem to find it interesting enough to dedicate a significant part of their lives to it. Just as there are people who can’t fathom how I could ignore suffering, I find it ludicrous that so many are able to ignore Canada.

While some may convince themselves that it’s a good idea to pay more attention to suffering, I shall continue to focus my attention upon the expansion of yumminess, and I’ll leave the committed sufferers to their own preferences. If you think it’s better to focus on suffering, I suggest you welcome the frustration I cause you as part of the expansion of suffering that you’re inviting. Happy to help out!

If on the other hand you wish to help me co-create the further expansion of yumminess, then let’s pour our collective energy into what we want to see more of in the world, and withdraw our attention from what doesn’t inspire us.

What inspires you? What would you like to increase and expand in this reality?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

When I did the opposite and paid more attention to what was lacking in my life, I experienced a variety of scarcity-based experiences — sinking deeper into debt each year, being kicked out of my apartment due to lack of rent money, not being able to afford what I wanted, feeling stressed whenever my car broke down, always buying the cheapest items and having them break easily, etc. That place of being was compelling enough to capture my attention for a while, but after a number of years there, I got bored with it and decided to try out the abundance mindset to see what that’s like.

I would often read books or listen to audio programs that went on and on about the abundance mindset, but I figured that was easy for them to say because they were already living it. What if you’re not living it? Usually their recommendation was to start wherever you are, and some would insist that abundance is a mindset you can create regardless of your starting position. I didn’t really buy into that notion at the time, but mainly because I was desperate to try something new, I opted to give it an earnest effort for at least a few days to see if it made any difference. It’s not like what I was doing before that was working, so I figured it couldn’t hurt, and it might help lead me into new territory where a solution could be found.

I began by focusing on feeling grateful for what I did have, like being able to enjoy running along the beach or watching a sunset. I turned my attention away from lack as much as possible. I did my best to ignore my debt, my unpaid bills, and my creditors for a while. Obviously that created some consequences, and I further dealt with those consequences by largely ignoring them as well.

This is really a key point that I don’t want you to just overlook. It wasn’t just that I began to focus on abundance thinking. I also did my very best to ignore anything in my life that suggested lack or scarcity. I stopped looking at my bills. I stopped answering the phone since most of the calls were from creditors. I ignored my debt and stopped making credit card payments altogether. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But when I paid attention to those things, they would just bring me down and make me start thinking about what wasn’t working.

This shift of attention soon created external shifts in my reality. I became more creative, released a new product, and started making a lot more money. A year later I was debt free, partly from going bankrupt, which was a good thing because it wiped out most of my debt, and then I paid off the rest mostly in one fell swoop with an advance I received for a game I licensed to a publisher.

I continued to expand upon this mindset of abundance over time. I imagined enjoying time abundance too. I imagined being more generous, first with my money, but then I felt even better about being generous with my time and creativity. I donated thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to non-profits. I wrote articles for free and hosted discussion forums for free. I didn’t do these things to get any particular result. I did them because I just felt motivated to do them. When I held onto that abundance vibe, I didn’t have to push myself to contribute anything. It just flowed out of me without really trying.

I’ve since created a massive body of creative work and gave it away to the public domain, and I continue to add to that collection each month. This month I started doing microloans as well and encouraged others to join our team, which has been making new loans every day.

I never would have done these things if I was focused on lack. The vibe of lack didn’t make me feel particularly generous; it merely made me project generosity as something other people should do more of, or something I should get around to “in the future” (which of course means never).

There is value in having experiences across the spectrum of scarcity to abundance. I’m glad for the experience of scarcity since it helps me understand and appreciate abundance more deeply. For example, I enjoyed my recent trip to Paris that much more because I know what it was like to not being able to afford such a trip and having it seem like an impossibility. Every day I spent in Paris, I felt grateful to be there. I didn’t take anything for granted.

Through personal testing I came to see that overall I prefer the abundance vibe to the scarcity vibe. Abundance is a better fit for who I am.

I neither require nor expect others to make the same choice I did. Lots of people find growth lessons in the scarcity vibe, and I have no doubt they’ll continue to explore it. I’ve tested that vibe and that mindset enough to know that it isn’t such a good fit for me. I’m happier and more fulfilled on the abundance side. But I wouldn’t be so sure of this if I hadn’t had those scarcity experiences first.

Many times when I write about abundance, there are people who will take issue with it. It’s interesting to see how they project a boatload of assumptions onto me and then argue with their own assumptions. Some seem to think that abundance is wrong. Others want me to pay more attention to poverty.

I pay little attention to poverty, scarcity, and lack, not just in myself but in others as well. My focus is on abundance, gratitude, generosity, appreciation, etc. If you believe that what I’m doing is not enough, it’s because you feel what you’re doing isn’t enough. If you’re in resonance with scarcity, then “not enough” is something you’ll see wherever you look.

When you view one side of the spectrum through the lens of the other, your perceptions are greatly distorted. Just as scarcity may look upon abundance as greedy, excessive, selfish, elitist, narcissistic, etc., so can abundance look upon scarcity as lazy, wimpy, foolish, childish, stupid, etc. But these perspectives aren’t helpful to us… again, because they’re distorted.

You can only understand the options available to you when you experience them from the inside. And yes, this does mean that you can’t really understand an option until you’ve experienced it to some degree. From the outside looking in, you can get curious, but you can’t really gain much insight.

You’re free to do as I’ve done and test different mindsets/vibes to learn which set of experiences you prefer. You have laid out before you a whole spectrum of possibilities to explore.

Try to avoid the mistake of judging or condemning someone else’s position on this spectrum. Don’t expect others to change their mindset just because you have issues. If you feel resistance towards what others are experiencing, look to your dissatisfaction with your own vibe. Then remember that you have the power to make the shifts you desire, if you’re willing to embrace those shifts fully and completely instead of resisting them.

I’m quite pleased with my choices thus far, even as I continue to explore new points along the spectrum of possibilities. I’m fully aware that some people object to my choices and would prefer to see me focus more attention on problems like poverty. From the perspective of scarcity, they want me to change what they’re unwilling to. They want me to join them in their feelings of being not enough. From within the lens of scarcity, this may seem like a reasonable request, but from the perspective of abundance, it’s a rather silly thing to do.

The response to such requests is predictable if you understand how both mindsets work. Scarcity criticizes abundance for being not enough. Abundance finds scarcity’s request silly and so enjoys amusement at the entertainment value of it; additionally abundance is appreciative of the reminder of the contrast between scarcity and abundance. Scarcity doesn’t get its request satisfied and hence validates its experience of not enoughness; it can continue to live in its world where abundance is greedy and unresponsive to its needs. Abundance ends the interaction feeling appreciative; scarcity leaves feeling frustrated. This is a perfectly congruent outcome from all perspectives. Each vibe creates the experience that harmonizes with it.

A few people have been amusing me lately, which I’m grateful for, and I in turn have been doing my part to frustrate them.

If you desire to shift from scarcity to abundance, how do you do that? There are many techniques that I’ve shared in the past, so I won’t rehash that same content here. A good place to start is to watch the Creating Abundance videos. I actually apply this to an even greater extent today than I did when I created those videos in 2009. Now I’m spending much more time each day doing this kind of vibrational work because I find it extremely powerful.

This morning I woke up at 3:30 and then spent a good 2 hours imagining different aspects of my life as I want them to be and getting a clear lock onto the vibes that are consistent with my desires — the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes I believe I’d be experiencing if all my desires were physically real right now.

Then throughout each day, I do my best to hold onto these new vibes as much as possible. When I catch myself slipping into a vibe I wouldn’t likely experience on the side of my new desires, such as frustration or worry, I stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath, and reload the vibe I desire. Or if I’m tired and can’t do this very well, I just take a break to distract myself.

I continue to practice this because I find it very effective. Not only do I attract and enjoy more of what I want, but my new vibes also become increasingly repulsive to those whose vibes are incompatible, while becoming more attractive to those with compatible vibes and desires — people with whom I can enjoy co-creating abundantly.

If you’re in resonance with scarcity, it’s normal to be frustrated and annoyed by my posts on abundance. You wouldn’t want to be amused or inspired by them, as that could be a symptom of a developing abundance vibe. Even curiosity can be risky.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

When you observe financial well-being in others, especially very lavish well-being, do you sometimes condemn it? If you do so, you’re simultaneously condemning your own well-being.

This doesn’t mean you need to praise those aspects that don’t resonate with you, but don’t waste your energy on condemning them. Instead, turn your attention to the aspects you can appreciate, and this will soon attract more well-being into your life.

Notice that if you desire greater abundance while thinking negatively towards those who already have it, you’re putting out conflicting intentions — I want more abundance; I hate excessive abundance — which means you cannot and will not progress. You’ll merely continue to manifest lack.

Think of someone who enjoys a degree of abundance that bothers you on some level. Perhaps imagine a wealthy corporate CEO that got paid what you feel is excessive compensation, even as their company lost money. Imagine this CEO spending that money lavishly — fancy cars, expensive vacations, a huge mansion, a staff of servants. Now look for a seed of appreciation within that imagery, and expand it.

Do you find it difficult to appreciate someone in this situation? If so, then approach it from a different perspective. Imagine that someone who lives on less than $1 per day and who doesn’t have access to clean water and reliable meals is doing this same exercise, and she has selected you as her example of lavish living. Your lifestyle seems incredibly abundant to her, far beyond anything she’s known during her life and seemingly unattainable for her. Would you expect her to judge you harshly for having what she does not? Would you have her condemn you as a heartless and greedy bastard? How would you like her to feel about you?

Now return to the original exercise. Put yourself in the place of that CEO. To you this lifestyle feels normal, not lavish or excessive. As you see it, so many others are living in lack and scarcity. You know you can’t help them by joining them in lack. You can be generous with them of course, and you do so to the degree it feels good, but you don’t want to give so much that it disempowers them, do you? Instead you would rather inspire others to create their own happiness, assisting them where you can but being careful not to rob them of their own creative power.

People do not want to see you in lack, but they cannot rob you of your power either — that is something you must learn to develop. Do not fight against the abundance you desire, especially when you see it in someone else. Instead, think of relating to this more abundant person as you would want someone in greater scarcity to relate to you — as an example of hope and potential, not a perfect or flawless example, but an example nonetheless.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Lately I’ve been wanting to see if I could actually touch one… not in an aggressive way but by keeping myself in a very pure-of-heart state and inviting them to connect. They can dart around very quickly, so if they don’t want me to touch them, there’s no way I’d be able to.

About a week ago, one was flying in circles around my head about 12 inches from my face, but that’s the closest she came. I was trying to get her to land on my finger, but I wasn’t even sure if that would work. Hummingbirds have such little feet that they seem to like perching on the thinnest twigs, and my finger might be hard for them to grip (without injuring me, that is).

Then yesterday I was finally able to pet one for the first time.

A friend stumbled upon a hummingbird sitting cozily in her nest in a tree, just a few feet from my backdoor and right at our eye-level. I’d never seen that nest before. It was a tiny nest, just big enough for the hummingbird to sit in it with her head and beak hanging out on one side and her tail feathers hanging out the other side.

I said hello to the hummingbird and asked if I could pet her. She didn’t say no, so I figured she was okay with it.

She seemed very content as I gently ran my fingers along her back.

Then after a minute or two, she flew up and hovered around the nest, as if to invite us to take a closer look. When we looked in the nest, we saw that it contained two tiny eggs. We were both adorified. I smiled and told the hummingbird there’s no need to worry and that her eggs were safe.

This morning I went out to see if she was still there. It’s very windy out, so I wasn’t sure if she’d be in the nest. Sure enough, she’s still there, presumably keeping her eggs warm. I pet her again, and as soon as I did so, she opened her beak as if to say hi.

I’ve never been able to pet a hummingbird before, so I think it’s really cool that this intention was able to manifest. It only took a few weeks between setting the intention and seeing it manifest.

To me this experience also has a special symbolic, dream-like meaning. Lately I’ve been feeling super happy and joyful; everything in my life is flowing beautifully. I’ve also been eating 100% raw for the past 2 weeks, which often leaves me feeling blissful. Hummingbirds are a symbol of joy, so symbolically it’s like I was able to touch joy directly instead of just having it circulate around me.

I don’t know if this post will hold any meaning for you, but it was a happy experience I wanted to share. Hummingbirds are really cute.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

One of the top requests in that survey was for a product on the topic of Life Purpose. In reading through the many hundreds of comments, it became clear that a lot of people still feel they’re drifting, and they need more help bringing a sense of purpose to their lives, so they can feel centered and at peace with themselves — and so they can feel they’re on a path to making a meaningful contribution instead of being stuck in unfulfilling situations.

Another thing that stood out was that people want more than how-to information. They need help motivating themselves to go through the process. So even though I’ve written a good deal about life purpose in the past, and many people have found it extremely helpful, it isn’t enough to get everyone to the place they’d like to be — the place of having a deep-rooted connection to one’s life purpose.

I started working on a product along those lines because it seemed like a good place to start. Many other aspects of self development stem from clarifying your life purpose. I completed the product outline, which I expected would become a 6-10 hour audio program. But when I reviewed the outline, something didn’t feel quite right about it to me. It didn’t feel like this was really “my product.” I felt like I was using a semi-forced process that wasn’t my normal process for creating inspired content.

I acknowledged to myself that I was out of flow, so I put the product on hold for a while, worked on other projects, and took a weeklong road trip through California, intending to come back to the project a little later with a fresh perspective. I pondered whether I should take the product in a different direction. I didn’t want to scrap it because I know there’s a need for it, but I’ve learned over the years that it’s important to trust my intuition when it comes to such matters.

Synchronicities

During this time I received an email from Dr. Brad Swift about a new product he was releasing on the subject of… you guessed it… life purpose. I was already familiar with Brad’s work because I reviewed his book Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life in 2007, and we’ve kept in touch over the years. Life on Purpose is simply the best book on life purpose I’ve ever read, and it deserves the rare honor of maintaining a solid 5-star average rating on Amazon.com.

Brad’s new program is called the Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach. It’s an online video-based course where Brad personally guides you through his 6-step Life on Purpose process one lesson at a time. All the videos can be streamed online, and the course includes a PDF workbook and some bonus material.

I went through the entire program in May, and I loved it. I had to chuckle at the synchronicity because this was essentially the product I was trying to create. My ideas and processes were different of course, but the end benefits would be the same — to help you bring a clear sense of purpose to your life and to fully ground it in your daily actions, so that you’re truly living on purpose.

I also thought to myself, Well… that was easier than I thought. I intended for the creation of a certain product, and here it is. I didn’t even have to record it.

So first, I received the lesson I seem to keep needing to learn — to create from a place of inspiration and not to try to force creativity. But beyond that, I also got a lot of value from Brad’s course. If you visit his website, you’ll see my testimonial there. That was actually part of an email I sent to him to tell him what I thought of the course, and I was happy to have him include it on his product page when he asked if that would be okay.

Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach

I don’t think of this as an info product because it’s not primarily a course to put new knowledge in your head, although that is a part of it. The program guides you through a process that’s all about you, so it has more to do with gaining self knowledge and understanding.

One step at a time, you’ll be guided to reveal your inherited purpose (your fear-based false purpose that masquerades as your true purpose), then to discover your true purpose, and finally to ground your true purpose into your life so you can enjoy more happiness and fulfillment.

This course goes well beyond the point of forming a clear statement of purpose. It provides many tools and techniques to help you begin living congruently with your purpose and to shift away from stuckness as well as your inherited purpose.

I read Brad’s book and loved it; however, I gained much more value from his Virtual Video Coach. I was a bit surprised because I figured it would simply be a video version of his book. It does cover a lot of the same ground as the book, but I experienced the material in a totally different way. Brad has a very centered and peaceful way of communicating, and watching him on video is (in my opinion) a much better expression of who he is than words on a page.

I’m not going to go into detail about all the features and benefits of the course because you can find all of that information on his website. I think it would be more authentic to simply share how the course affected me.

Doing vs. Being

For many years I’ve had a pretty clear sense of my life purpose, and I like to think I’ve been doing a good job living it. I feel fulfilled most of the time, and I’m very pleased with my current direction. My normal experience is to feel that I’m in the flow of inspiration, and I seldom feel stuck. My life has been working very well, and it seems to be getting better each year.

Here’s the purpose statement I currently have on my About page:

to care deeply, connect playfully, love intensely, and share generously;
to joyfully explore, learn, grow, and prosper;
and to creatively, brilliantly, and honorably serve the highest good of all.

It may not mean anything to you, but I still get a surge of emotion each time I read it. I think it does a job of succinctly summing up how I wish to live and what inspires me most.

This purpose statement has worked well for me over the years, but Brad’s course gave me another way of thinking about purpose. It didn’t replace my current purpose statement, which I still love, but it gave me another perspective I hadn’t considered.

Instead of thinking about purpose in terms of doing, Brad encourages you to think about it in terms of being.

I think one of the reasons my purpose statement has worked so well for me is that it incorporates beingness, and it isn’t heavy on the doingness in a way that might make me feel pressured or stressed. If your purpose is only about doing, then when you aren’t taking action, you aren’t on purpose; that creates a pressure to be doing, doing, doing… even when you’re feeling burned out. I agree with Brad that it’s better to define your purpose in such a way that you can feel happy and fulfilled at all times, not just when you’re taking a lot of action. I figure I must be doing something right because I often feel very grateful even when I’m just running errands or hanging out with friends.

Fortunately my current purpose statement translates fairly easy to beingness. “To care deeply” means to be a caring person. “To connect playfully” means to be a playful person. “To joyfully explore” means to be an explorer.

I liked considering my purpose statement through the lens of being. It helped me recognize that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I can always be living on purpose. I don’t always have to be doing something specific.

But there was a greater benefit beyond this. Brad’s insights encouraged me to reinterpret my goals, projects, and tasks from the perspective of beingness. I reviewed those items and asked myself, Who am I really desiring to be here?

My original purpose statement addresses the questions of what and how. I also have an intuitive understanding of the why. But it doesn’t really address the question of where. Where do I ultimately see myself living on purpose?

This is a fairly general question, but it gave me a lot of clarity. I thought about why I’m in Las Vegas and what I can do here specifically. I thought about where in the broad field of personal development I most enjoy working. I thought about what kinds of situations and positions I enjoy most.

There are so many facets to this exploration that I’m still exploring it — which is actually a part of my purpose: to joyfully explore. But I’ve already gained more clarity about some “locations”, or states of being, that I enjoy most.

One place I enjoy is being in the increasingly overlapping space between technology and personal development. I feel perfectly comfortable in both fields. I liked being one of the first people to leverage blogging technology to spread personal development ideas. Now it’s commonplace, and there are lots of people leveraging tech to promote PD. I think that’s wonderful.

I feel right at home in this tech-PD space. I like having an online business, and I regard the Internet as my digital home. I also love exploring personal growth and sharing it with others. Brad’s course gave me the clarity to see that positionally speaking, I love having one foot in the tech world and the other foot in the PD world, and I look for ways to further connect the dots between them.

Another location I love is the space of connecting deeply with people face to face. I like that I can discuss topics like life purpose or subjective reality with people shortly after I meet them. I like “breaking the ice” by recognizing that there never was any ice to begin with. I enjoy maintaining an open and approachable posture; I can’t always do that online due to the overwhelming numbers, but I’m at least able to do it in person most of the time. To me, being in the space of an intimate connection with someone is a very joyful place to be.

When I remind myself to simply be in these places, my life flows very easily, and I feel happy and fulfilled. Interestingly, this focus on being has led to a lot more action.

For example, by reminding myself that I love being in the overlapping space between tech and PD, I’ve been devouring tech company biographies lately, coming up with new ideas for how tech and PD could continue to merge. I’ve also made some tweaks to my website, so it’s serving up pages more efficiently than it was a week ago.

By reminding myself that I enjoy face time with people, I arranged a meetup in a local park last Sunday. About 14 people showed up. I brought a bunch of my discs that I use for disc golf, and several of us had fun throwing them around; that was my way of expressing “to connect playfully”. I’m also working on booking more workshops for the Fall, which will bring even more people together in the same physical location, where all of us can connect playfully and learn and grow together.

The irony is that I don’t feel like I’m really doing much, but I’m getting a lot more done than usual. I’m not trying to force anything. I just focus on where I want to be, and action flows effortlessly from there. I’m enjoying this really nice flow right now.

A few days ago, I was talking to Erin on the phone and she said something like, “I can tell you’re in a really good place right now. I’m not sensing that you need to change anything. You seem really happy right where you are.” She’s right.

Being in the right place is very powerful. When you’re in the right place — for you — the doing part follows naturally from it. You don’t have to push yourself to take action or fight against procrastination. When you’re in the right place of beingness, life automatically supports you.

More Distinctions

What I shared above is only one of many powerful distinctions I got from Brad’s course. Although he presents a 6-step linear process that’s easy to follow, I personally found that the course had a very nonlinear, expanding-in-all-directions effect on me.

If you watch the videos and do the workbook exercises in a straightforward manner, you’ll arrive at the point of having your own statement of purpose and a deep grasp of what it means. You’ll also begin living in alignment with that purpose, watching your life take on a positive new direction.

Don’t be fooled by the seemingly linear nature of the course, however. It’s a lot more than a step by step process. I found that several points really stuck with me, such as Brad’s coffee mug analogy, and got me thinking in new directions about other parts of my life such as my goals, projects, and actions. I started thinking less about to-dos and more about “Where do I want to be right now?” Once I figured that out, I discovered to my delight that the right actions flowed rather easily from there.

Let me conclude simply by saying that I highly recommend this course, and I think you’ll gain a lot by going through it — even if you think you’re already pretty clear about your purpose.

If you want to bring more purpose, meaning, and fulfillment to your life, you can’t go wrong here. Brad is definitely one of the good guys in this field, and I genuinely expect you’ll gain a lot from his program. It even includes a better than money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose by trying it.

I completed the course in less than a week, although you can certainly go through the lessons more slowly if you want time to integrate them one by one. An hour or two a week would be a very reasonable pacing.

To learn more, visit the Life on Purpose Virtual Video Coach page.

Well, that was an easy product to get out the door. What’s next?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Many people say that happiness comes from within, and while that’s true in the long run, there’s also an experiential side of happiness. I’m sure you’ll agree that some experiences put a smile on your face more than others. It may be a learned response in most cases, but there’s still an effect.

Even money can contribute to happiness to an extent. You’d probably be happier receiving an unexpected financial gift as opposed to an unexpected bill.

So I’ve been looking at some recurring activities in my life and asking myself if they’re positively contributing to my long-term happiness. As I’ve been going through this process, I’ve been making a lot of changes, and they’re really beginning to add up. My daily rhythms changed quite a bit in the past six months or so.

Identifying and Eliminating Dead Weight

One of the easiest places to begin was to start identifying and eliminating dead weight. These are activities that aren’t really too debatable — I’m pretty clear that they aren’t doing much to increase my long-term happiness. They may generate some momentary pleasure, but in the long run, the gains are probably neutral or negative. Or they might be only marginally positive, such that it’s easy to see that there are better ways to spend my time.

Here are some of the bigger dead weight items I’ve identified and have dealt with so far:

Email – I used to spend a lot of time processing email, but when I asked myself if it was contributing to my happiness, that was an easy no. While I haven’t eliminated it entirely, I have reduced my email volume by at least 95% during the past year. Now I typically receive less than 10 emails per day, and most of it is personal and comes from just a handful of people I’m close to. I wouldn’t say this change did much to increase my happiness directly, but it did give me a sense of relief. I experience less stress and overwhelm as a result of not feeling that communication obligations are piling up 24/7. It may not be a perfect solution, but it’s significantly better than what I had before. Some days I’m able to process all my email in less than a minute. Other times I can go a day or two and not process email at all. That is a REALLY nice feeling.

Social Networking – I enjoy some aspects of social networking, but to really get good value from it, it can take a serious time investment. Your mileage may vary of course, but that’s been my experience. Keep in mind that if you do one hour of social networking per day, that’s the equivalent of working a full-time job (40 hours per week) for over 2 months — every year. You can easily start a profitable web business in less time than that. So I scaled back by quitting sites like Facebook and Linkedin, and I’ve been happier as a result. I still participate in the forums here, but this community doesn’t have the same kinds of admin problems I had to deal with on Facebook.

Cable TV – I used to have cable TV, but I didn’t watch it much, so it was an easy decision to drop that too. Later I dropped a streaming video subscription I had with Netflix. Partly I used it to watch educational documentaries, but I can’t say it made me any happier, so I decided to let it go. I can always go and rent a one-off documentary if I want, but I decided it was best not to have the streaming service because I don’t want to get into the habit of watching documentaries regularly. They may have educational value, but overall this isn’t an activity that increases my long-term happiness. I’d rather read more books instead.

Possessions – I gradually purged some possessions that I accumulated over time, mostly by giving them away. If a possession doesn’t increase my happiness, what’s the point in keeping it?

I made these changes one at a time for the most part. This gave me time to adjust and to see if I wanted to maintain the change. In each case I did.

I would say that overall, just dropping the dead weight didn’t increase my happiness per se. It simply cleared some space, thereby giving me more opportunities to invest my time differently.

Making Big Changes

Dead weight is fairly easy to identify and slightly harder to eliminate, but it’s a good place to begin. However, you also have to tackle some bigger items. For me the biggest item I had to face within the past two years was my marriage.

When I first got married, it did increase my happiness, but over time as Erin and I grew in different directions, I had to admit that I’d probably be happier letting go of the marriage. It took years to have enough certainty about that decision, but with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easier to see that it was the right choice. As many people conclude who’ve gone down a similar road, it was hard but it was worth it.

It wasn’t Erin’s fault that the marriage was making me unhappy. I chose to be married, and I had to awaken to new possibilities. I see the experience as a test of sorts. Was I willing to choose happiness?

Another change I had to make was my lifestyle. I wanted to travel a lot more, but that was going to require some adjustments. Last year I traveled about 3 months out of the year. This year I’d like to exceed that.

And yet another change I’m currently undertaking involves remaking my social life. Due to the popularity of my blog and my pre-existing local friends, I’ve had the opportunity to be socially lazy and still enjoy a rich and abundant social life. Invitations would come my way no matter what, so all I’d have to do was filter and respond to them. Although this might seem like a good situation, and I enjoyed it for many years, I reached the point of wanting to head in a different direction.

My old social life was too easy, and so I wasn’t getting much growth out of it. Another issue was that because I had so many friends in different cities, I ended up spending more time online maintaining those connections. I also ended up with a lot of friends I’d only see once or twice a year.

I realized that while this certainly wasn’t a bad situation, ultimately it wasn’t increasing my long-term happiness. It was only maintaining my existing comfort zone.

To be happy and fulfilled, I need more of a challenge. I also need to focus more on local friends that I can hang out with face to face instead of people spread all over the world, where I’ll have to use technology to keep in touch with them. Let me backtrack by saying that I still like having non-local friends, but since I run an Internet business, I need my social life to be more weighted in the offline direction to balance things out. Otherwise I feel like I’m spending way too much time on my computer or cell phone.

My old social life was probably 80% non-local and 20% local. This year I’m working on rebuilding it with the opposite percentages. For example, I went to a local vegetarian meetup this week, a group that I’d never been to before. I’m also pushing myself to start up more conversations with people when I run errands, partly to remind myself to think locally when it comes to my social life — as opposed to talking on my cell phone or texting someone while I’m in a city filled with potential friends.

This shift is turning out to be a challenge, not because I have anxiety about it but because the non-local mindset is so ingrained in me from 16 years of doing business online. I almost don’t know how to think locally. It’s so much easier for me to think globally. Thinking locally is almost an alien concept for me. Sometimes I feel like I’m connected to the Internet at all times. So grasping the right mindset is a tough challenge for me. As strange as it may sound, sometimes the Internet and various online communities feel more solid to me than the city of Las Vegas. Or perhaps that won’t sound so strange if you’ve been to Vegas.

It’s pretty obvious to me that face to face socializing increases my happiness more than online socializing. Even the best online social experiences just can’t compare to a game of disc golf… or a massage… or a night of dancing.

I’m enjoying this challenge, but sometimes it’s hard to get a handle on it. Since my social life is so different now than it was a year ago, I often feel ungrounded in this new place. It’s going to take some time to get used to it.

If you find yourself in a situation where you aren’t seeing your long-term happiness increasing, then perhaps your path to greater happiness lies in a different direction.

You can be happy. You definitely have the power to create that. It’s just a question of whether or not you’re willing to step up and claim that happiness. The alternative is to project your unhappiness onto others and blame or resent them for contributing to your unhappiness.

If you’re unhappy in any situation, it’s up to you to step away from it. Don’t blame the situation or the people within it because they won’t bend over backwards for you. You may be making them just as unhappy, so while you’re blaming them, they’re also blaming you.

Big changes can be very difficult to undertake. You may need to deal with many consequences, which can be unpleasant in the short term. I understand all of that. It may not be easy. Transitions of this nature can be pretty tough. You may shed some tears along the way. But in the end, you’ll emerge in a much brighter place. Escaping a cocoon isn’t supposed to be easy — it’s the process of struggling to get out that makes you stronger for what lies ahead.

Interacting Complexities

One thing that stunned me — much to my delight — was that as I began eliminating some non-contributing items, I discovered all the different ways they interacted with each other, creating a webby quagmire of stuckness.

For example, interacting on social networking sites increased the volume of email I received. This meant even more time in front of the computer, which made me more tired in the evenings, so at the end of the day, I might want to veg out and watch a movie instead of doing something more fun and interesting.

Also, when I canceled some services I didn’t need, it meant fewer bills to pay and more money saved. Financially this wasn’t particularly impactful, but over time it adds up. Why spend money on things that don’t make you happy?

Each time I let go of something that wasn’t making me happy, another part of the surrounding web gave way. I didn’t have to deal with everything all at once. I just tackled one little piece at a time, usually focusing on the most obvious next item to handle.

You probably have some ambiguous activities in your life, where you aren’t sure if they’re contributing to your happiness or not. Don’t worry about those just yet. Start with the most obvious changes — the ones you’re fairly certain about.

After you deal with the obvious items, the ambiguous ones will tend to reveal their true nature. For example, at first I wasn’t sure if watching documentaries or not was increasing my happiness. But when I freed up more time for other activities — and when I felt I’d watched enough documentaries that I was beginning to feel like I was watching re-runs — I realized that they weren’t really increasing my happiness. I’d rather learn about the world through travel, direct experience, and reading.

When you run out of obvious items, then deal with the more ambiguous ones. These are the items where you keep saying to yourself, “I wonder if I should quit/cancel/leave/drop X.” Yes, you should!

Remember — you can always drop activities temporarily to see how the change plays out. Try it for 30 days. If you don’t like the result, you can always go back. You can even shift back and forth a few times to get a better sense of the contrast between life with the activity and life without it.

This is fairly easy in practice. Just start paying attention to the stuff in your life and the activities that consume your time. Stop and ask now and then, “Will this increase my long-term happiness if I keep doing it?” If the answer is no, then let go of that one thing, whatever it may be.

Enjoying the Silence

When you drop some of the noncontributing clutter from your life, it creates more space. Life becomes simpler and less noisy.

You can certainly fill that space with something else, and you probably will in time, but there’s no rush. It’s nice to just enjoy the silence at first. Don’t feel that you need to rush to replace one activity with another. Allow yourself some do-nothing space.

With less unhappy clutter in your life, your sense of well being can increase, and your stress can decrease. Let this happen and notice it. Notice how good it feels not to have to deal with things that weren’t making you happy anyway. Give yourself some time to adjust to their absence.

Then take some time to consciously decide what activities are worth adding to this newly created space. You might choose not to add anything. Or you might add a new hobby that makes you happy, like learning to play the guitar or reading all the best books from your favorite authors. Or you might add a new goal like starting an Internet business on the side.

After making so many cuts, I now feel like I’m swimming in an abundance of time and space. I feel less pressured from the outside-in. Now I’m feeling more pressure from the inside-out as I ponder what new activities to add. I feel the urge to branch out and explore and experiment.

Adding Happy Activities

When you’ve cleared enough space and you’re ready to add some new activities, I would caution you to take your time. There’s no rush to get everything perfect on the first try.

Start with the most obvious items. If you know you get a lot of enjoyment from a certain activity, add it to your life. Then watch your happiness increase.

As the weather started to warm up, I added disc golf back to my life. I barely played at all last year — maybe once or twice during the whole year. But I have a fun time every time I go out and play, and a game usually takes less than 2 hours with 4-5 players in a group. It’s a social activity as well, and I like being outdoors in the sunshine. So I decided to get back into it about a month ago. I contacted some friends and set up a game, and we played. Now I’m playing on a regular basis again. It’s a fun thing to look forward to each week. This was an easy item to add to my plate, and it creates value for others as well. We always have fun no matter how badly we play.

The tricky part is not forcing it. When your life is overflowing with extra time, there’s a temptation to fill it with something ASAP. But you have to be careful about doing that because whatever you fill it with could easily turn into a long-term habit… perhaps even an addiction. So you don’t want to fill it up with things like watching more TV if that isn’t increasing your long-term happiness.

As I ponder what other activities to add, I’ve been mostly sticking to safe, familiar activities like reading and meditation. They’re “safe” in the sense that they don’t create major long-term commitments. I can always choose to spend less time on them when I discover a better option.

Right now I feel like I’m in that funky space between intention and manifestation. I’m intending a much richer LOCAL social life, but it hasn’t shown up physically yet. I’m getting a better sense of what it feels like, but I’m still working on getting the right vibe for it. Partly that’s because I haven’t yet created a clear enough vision of what it might look like.

One thing I’ve been considering is creating and/or hosting some kind of regular meetup or social group in Vegas, perhaps a weekly gathering for locals who are into personal growth. I found some meetup groups along those lines on meetup.com, but nothing that looks all that exciting yet. Many of the listed groups look dead… or they focus on very limited topics… or they were obviously created as a marketing outlet for someone. I’m not interested in doing this as a professional thing. I’m simply considering it as a way to bring like-minded people together to have fun experiences.

Maybe we could even do some cool group activities together like hiking in Red Rock Canyon (only a 10-minute drive from my house)… or do a Free Hugs event on the Strip… or do a group tour of the Grand Canyon. One local friend has been reminding me that I agreed to go skydiving with him, so there’s another option for those who like facing death.

I have the time to do this sort of thing now — and I must admit it sounds a lot more fun than emailing and Facebooking. At this point I’m only musing out loud, but if there are any locals interested in this sort of thing, feel free to share some feedback in the forums about it.

Although there’s this feeling of being a bit up in the air when you’re between an intention and its manifestation, it can be exhilarating too, especially if you love surprises. You never know when another synchronicity or unexpected event is going to smack you upside the head… like yesterday when I had the strong urge to go work on my laptop at a local coffee shop, and when I get there I see Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman there too, doing his Coffee with the Mayor thing that morning. I didn’t feel any desire talk to him, but his presence gave me a ridiculously easy opening to chat with other locals hanging around.

This is still an ongoing process for me, but I figured I’d share what I’ve learned thus far. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve discovered is that pursuing happiness is a happiness-increasing activity itself. If you start taking deliberate steps to increase your happiness, you can feel happier just by doing that, and your outlook for better long-term happiness improves as well. There may be some emotional rollercoastering along the way, but it’s worth it for the long-term benefits.

Is Happiness Selfish?

I know some people think it’s selfish to pursue your own happiness.

Unfriend them.

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

The first method is to define your outcome and then dive right into massive action. Adjust your approach along the way, and keep going until you get there. This approach is easy to begin, but as Robert points out, you’ll typically run into serious resistance down the road. Very often such goals get derailed long before they’re achieved. Sound familiar?

The second method, and the basis of Robert’s book, consists of 5 steps:

1. Ask and answer the question Who am I?
2. Ask and answer the question What am I intending to attract?
3. Ask and answer the question How will I feel (when I experience what I intend to attract)?
4. Let go of attachments
5. Take inspired action

With this second method, you don’t set an intention or a goal until the second step.

Who Are You?

What I like about Robert’s method is that it begins with deepening your sense of self.

When it comes to setting new goals or defining their desires, lots of people struggle to figure out what they want. They focus on the external aspects of manifesting or goal achievement, and they get stuck because they don’t know how to choose between the limitless possibilities of what can be created in the external world.

One reason people struggle here is that they don’t have a very strong sense of self. So they latch onto desires that come mainly from external influences, but those desires may not align with the person’s best self image.

Earlier this month I attended a 3-day conference for entrepreneurs. As I expected for this kind of event, it was heavy on the product pitches and upselling. After each speaker finished presenting, some attendees would go to the back of the room and buy whatever the speaker was pitching. But how many of the people who bought those products are really going to follow through?

If they were to ask the question Who am I? and answer it seriously, would part of their answer truly be, “I’m a successful real estate investor”? If not, then why did they spend $500 on a real estate investing program?

For a fraction of those purchases, perhaps there is a strong alignment between the product and the customer. But the rest of those people were most likely acting on impulses that don’t align with their inner selves, and the result will be predictable — a year later that same info product will still be in the shrink wrap.

The worst part is that some of those people will beat themselves up for lacking the discipline to follow through on their purchases, when their real mistake was that they made a bad purchase that didn’t align with who they really are. Instead of making a conscious and intelligent choice, they got sold. Their desire was dictated by an outside influence.

How many bad decisions of a similar nature have you made over the years? What’s piled up in your closets, garage, hard drive, etc?

External Influences

It’s very easy to set goals and intentions that don’t align with who you are. This is a very common trap, so don’t feel bad if you’ve been stung a lot. There are certainly plenty of marketers who will influence you to make unwise decisions. Just turn on the TV, and there will be people trying to influence you one way or another. Or simply go out and talk to people. You’ll be subjected to external influences automatically.

Not all of them are profit-driven or sales oriented. Even friends and family can influence you to do things that don’t really align with who you are.

Those influences aren’t going away. They’re always going to be present in your life to some degree. But when it comes time to set some serious goals and intentions for yourself, this is when you need to step back from those influences and be present with yourself.

Even though you can’t entirely escape external influence — short of moving to a deserted island, that is — you can take steps to limit your exposure by turning down the volume, so to speak.

This is one reason I decided to shut down my online contact form last year, and it also played a role in my decision to quit Facebook last month. I wasn’t trying to run away and be anti-social. I love interacting with people, especially the growth-oriented people who tend to reach out to me. However, things got to the point where so many external influences were urging me to go in different directions (write about this, speak about that, help me with this) that I began to feel like a pinball in a pinball machine.

I felt that I was inviting in so many external influences that I was losing touch with my inner guidance. It became difficult to listen to myself and to make good decisions because my mind was constantly cluttered with thoughts injected by other people. I felt busier than usual but less productive at the same time.

Some external influences can be very positive, but the total summation of lots of disparate influences isn’t usually harmonious. It can be quite discordant in fact. Imagine what your life would be like if you tried to say yes to all the external influences that request something of you. Your mind would be overwhelmed with shoulds.

Often we soak up these influences subconsciously without even realizing what’s happening. Then when we sit down to get clear about our goals and intentions, we end up regurgitating some of those external influences as if they’re our own goals. Our intentions become cluttered with too many items that aren’t a good match for who we really are on the inside.

How Do You Feel?

Step 3 of Robert’s process is to ask yourself how you’ll feel when your intention becomes a reality. This takes some careful thought. The surface impression may be, “I’d feel happier.” But if we consider the full range of consequences of the intention, the true answer may not be so rosy.

When we make a mistake, then we usually discover the truth of our feelings later on — when we try to take action. We may also suffer from mixed feelings that lead to self-sabotage and procrastination.

Our feelings can be a powerful guide to our true selves. They can be very difficult to decipher, but overall they do a pretty good job of pointing us in the right direction, if we stop and take the time to listen to them carefully.

Socially I love to interact with people who read my work, but when I had so many communication channels open for people to contact me (my online contact form, Facebook, Twitter, our discussion forums, live workshops, in-person meet-ups when traveling), it got to be overwhelming.

The external influences mostly pushed me in the direction of being more accessible. You should have a Facebook page. Add a fan page too. Have more meet-ups. Post more inspirational tweets. Write another book. Do an interview with me. And so on.

That seemed like a reasonably positive direction at first. Accessibility is a good thing, isn’t it? Surely it’s better than inaccessibility, right?

But when I actually followed this path, my feeling about it became less and less harmonious.

Sometimes I liked it. It really is nice to connect with so many cool people. But sometimes I felt poorly about it. The communication seemed endless and overwhelming. I didn’t like having to perform so much triage just to keep up. I felt conflicted. Was I on the right path with all of this accessibility, or was it a mistake?

I couldn’t really make sense of those feelings because the volume of the external influences in my life created so much mental clutter that if I tried to tune in to my true self, I’d most likely hear other people’s thoughts playing back to me. It was hard to tell which thoughts were really my own.

Do you have any situations in your life right now where you’re suffering from mixed feelings? Are you facing a difficult “Should I stay or should I go?” type of decision? It could be that the reason you struggle to find clarity is that you’re being bombarded by discordant external influences, making it nearly impossible to discern which thoughts are really yours.

Is This Really Who I Am?

When you notice that some part of your life doesn’t quite feel right, I think it’s wise to pause for a moment and get in touch with your true self. But in order to do that, you may need to turn down the volume of external influences.

When I finally turned off enough of the external input that was coming at me each day, a wonderful thing happened. First, I felt relieved. After a few weeks, I began to experience much greater mental clarity about my goals and intentions. Planning ahead became significantly easier. My workflow sped up.

As the noise died down, I could clearly see which new goals and intentions were congruent with my true self and which were more like thought injections being pushed upon me from the outside in.

I often like to do a simple meditation where I visualize a room with two chairs facing each other. I imagine myself sitting in one chair, and I invite my highest and best self to sit in the other chair. Sometimes I invite my future self, the version of me that’s 5 years older. This works well either way, but lately I’ve been getting the best results by tuning into an alternate-reality version of my present self. His reality is the one in which I’m the happiest and most fulfilled. The most important element of this meditation is that I’m consulting with another version of myself that I feel is wiser in some way.

Then I imagine having a chat with my other self.

The main value in this exercise isn’t about getting specific answers to questions. The value lies in connecting with my true self and getting a better sense of who he really is. What kind of a man is he? What does he value most?

When I understand who my best self is, then I have a clearer sense of the man I wish to become. This understanding makes it easier to set good goals and intentions. When I set goals with this level of understanding, I’m more likely to follow through on them because they’re well aligned with the kind of man I most desire to be. They may be very difficult goals, but I’m less likely to experience self-doubt about my desire for them. I just know they’re right for me.

An example of such a goal was when I decided to quit the computer gaming industry in 2004 and start a new personal development website. Obviously that turned out pretty well. Because the goal was aligned with my best self, I didn’t suffer from self-doubt. I knew it was the right path for me to pursue.

My lower self likes to ask What should I do? But each time I ask that question, I get different answers, depending on which external influences happen to be the loudest or most infectious at that time.

I find that a better question to ask is: What would he do? where “he” refers to my best self.

When considering different possible paths, I can ask myself, Does this help me align more closely with my best self? If the answer is no or probably not, then I know it’s a path I should reject. If I pursue such a path, I won’t feel good about it, I’ll doubt myself often, and I’ll encounter a lot of resistance along the way. But if it’s a path that does align well with my higher self, then I tend to experience wonderful flow and fulfillment.

The key idea here is to set goals and intentions very carefully. You can waste a lot of time and suffer unnecessary frustration if you try to pursue a path that doesn’t align with the person you most desire to be.

Embracing Paradox

When I imagine my best possible self, I love what I see. He has all the qualities that I value most. He’s strong, disciplined, confident, and brave, but he’s also loving, caring, compassionate, and gentle. He’s tenacious but flexible. He’s brilliant but intensely curious. He’s focused but spontaneous. He keeps his life simple, but he gets a lot done. He prefers a lifestyle far from the norm, but he can still connect well with people.

In my present day reality, I often struggle to balance these different aspects. My best self, however, is able to blend them harmoniously into a perfect whole. The more I take the time to understand who he is and how he’s able to integrate all these seemingly paradoxical qualities, the more clarity I have about my own path of self-development.

A while back I was hanging out with a good friend who’s a successful tech investor. At one point during our conversation, he said to me, “Steve, you’re a bit of a paradox. I mean… on the one hand, you’re a successful entrepreneur, and you’re also very smart. But on the other hand, you’re not an asshole like many other entrepreneurs and smart people I know. You actually care about people, and in-person you’re very friendly and easy to talk to, but most people who are like that can’t build a successful business that makes money.” Then he went on to explain how he considers himself a paradox as well, and he explained how it helps him to embrace these seemingly conflicted elements.

I think the real truth is that the paradox is only an illusion. External influences condition us to believe that we have to be one way or another. Fictional characters such as what we see in movies and TV are often depicted in ways that make us think that if we develop some positive qualities, then we must sacrifice others. Real human beings are richer and more complex than any fictional character, no matter how well developed that character is.

If we aim to be strong and powerful and successful, then supposedly we must be less loving, less caring, and more cold-hearted. If we want to be heart-centered and loving, we must be less ambitious. If we want to be very disciplined, we can’t be impulsive or spontaneous.

Have you ever bought into such nonsense? I certainly have.

For example, if I post a tough love article, then according to the feedback, I must be a hard-ass kind of guy… since obviously only that type of man would write such an article. It amuses me to think there are people who actually believe that’s the kind of person I am, as if I go around every day trying to do everything in a tough-guy manner.

If I post a compassionate and heart-centered article, then the feedback tries to get me to believe that I must be a very sensitive man… since obviously only such a man would write something like that. But to those who’ve already concluded I’m a hard-ass, then I must be having an off day.

I think the apparent paradox isn’t really a paradox at all. The truth is that good qualities can blend together beautifully, just like different instruments can be used to create delightful music. You don’t have to choose between being a percussion instrument and a string instrument. You can be both at the same time.

After my last blog post about the survey, someone posted in the forum discussion thread, “Who are you, and what have you done with Steve?” Apparently my character isn’t allowed to conduct surveys. I apologize for going against my programming.

This really is the sort of programming that gets injected into our minds, often without our conscious awareness. Others expect us to behave a certain way, and they communicate their expectations to us, either directly or indirectly. Over time their expectations mesh with our dominant thoughts, and their expectations become our expectations of ourselves.

At some point it’s a good idea to back away from all these influences, clear your mind, and get to know the beautiful paradox that is your true self. The more you understand that person, the easier it is to set goals and intentions that are achievable — and enjoyable — for you.

The Practical Benefits of Self-Knowing

When you deepen your connection to your higher self, you gain many real-world practical benefits. One very powerful benefit is that you can get yourself unstuck where you’ve previously felt stuck.

For many years in my marriage to Erin, I struggled with the decision Should we stay together or break up? No matter how much I thought about it, journaled about it, or sought advice, I couldn’t get to a place of clarity about it.

Why couldn’t I get clear? Perhaps the main reason was that I was paying too much attention to what other people thought. My mind was cluttered with input from Erin, from friends and family, from authors I’d read, from people whose opinions I respected. Some of that was direct feedback, and some was just a general impression of how the other person would likely react.

But those external influences were incongruent. Some said stay. Some said go. It was impossible to weigh them against each other or find peace among them. They could never agree. Since these outer influences had infected my thinking, I couldn’t achieve any real clarity within my mind. I always felt internally conflicted, when the truth was that I was infected with too much thinking that wasn’t my own.

What got me past this place of stuckness was to pull back from allowing outside influences to get into my mind. I took time to deepen my connection to my best self. I didn’t ask him whether Erin and I should break up or not. I knew that would be a bad question to ask that would just bring up all the mental clutter again.

Instead, I took the time to understand the kind of man he was — the kind of man I desired to become. Fortunately, this was relatively uncluttered territory because I didn’t have many external influences telling me what kind of man I should be in great detail.

Once I understood who my best self was, I set a new intention from that base of clarity. I intended to attract into my life relationships that were congruent with my becoming my best self. I remained open to the possibility that my marriage might be transformed into that kind of relationship, and I also accepted that I might be guided to pursue a different path.

This led to some tumultuous changes, and the outcome wasn’t what I expected, but it certainly took me down a path that helped me do a better job of aligning with my best self. I didn’t achieve perfection of course, but it’s definitely been a step forward, and I’ve been happier and more fulfilled as a result.

Taking Action

When you really get to know yourself, and you set goals and intentions from that place of knowing, it’s easier to take action because you’ll feel a positive pressure to get moving. If the action part seems unreasonably difficult or if your intention seems to be lost in limbo with no signs of manifesting, perhaps you picked a bad goal to begin with.

What’s the point in setting a goal anyway? Why bother to invest so much effort into it?

The point is to use goals to more fully become your best self.

When I look back on all the goals I’ve set and achieved, the real gain is how my goals sculpted me as a person. Those are the best payoffs. If I didn’t set and pursue goals vigorously, I’d be more fearful, timid, shy, and socially awkward. I’d be less energetic. I’d be lazier. I’d be less confident in myself. My self-esteem would be much lower. I wouldn’t care about people as much. I’d be more focused on survival than contribution. I’d be a hell of a lot less happy.

Take a look at your best self. What is s/he like? Can you clearly describe your best self’s character, personality, attitude, and beliefs?

Do you notice the contrast between your current self and your best self? When you see the contrast, use it to set new goals and intentions that will help you align with your best self.

If you see that your best self is braver than your current self, set a goal that will compel you to face your fears and build your courage muscles.

If you see that your best self is more friendly and social than your current self, hold the intention to develop better social skills. Go out more. Set goals that will compel you to socialize more. Join a club.

If you see that your best self enjoys great abundance while your current self wallows in scarcity, ask your best self how s/he got there. What goals could you set to create more abundance in your life? What bad habits could you release?

The answers are inside you. But sometimes in order to hear them clearly, you have to tell the rest of the world, Shut the hell up!

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Playfulness

The most important aspect of manifesting money is to approach it from the right heartset. Think of your heartset as the overall vibe of your relationship to the activity of attracting money. How would you describe that relationship? Is it greedy, needy, excited, hopeful, etc?

If you approach this process from a place of neediness, clinginess, scarcity, or too much seriousness, you’ll most likely fail. That’s the right vibe for attracting nothing — or for making things worse by attracting unwanted expenses — but it’s not the right vibe for attracting money.

So if you come at this from a place of saying, “I really need $1000 to pay my rent next month, so I’m going to focus hard on manifesting it via the Law of Attraction,” well… good luck with that. But I’d bet against you.

A slightly better vibe is that of hope, but this is still a pretty weak vibe. Hope won’t get you very far.

A much better vibe is to come from a place of curiosity and experimentation. Go into a state of childlike wonder. With this vibe you may begin to generate some interesting results.

An even stronger vibe is to generate feelings of playfulness and excitement. This is a great vibe for manifesting money. In the next section, I’ll share a story to illustrate how I do this with my daughter.

Knowing

When you want to manifest money, it’s important to know that it’s already there. If it’s hidden at all, it’s hiding in plain sight, waiting for you to notice it and pick it up. This applies whether we’re talking about cash found on the ground or opportunities that will generate cash.

Know that the cash and the opportunities are right in front of your face. You just have to adjust your “eyes” to see them. You do this by shifting your vibe — your frequencies of thought and emotion — to one that’s capable of detecting the money.

It’s fun to think of this vibe-shifting process as shifting dimensions, as if you’re tuning in to a different perceptual frequency spectrum. That other reality was there all along. You just couldn’t see it before because you were tuned in to incompatible perceptual frequencies, frequencies that made the money invisible and undetectable by your senses. Maybe you were stuck on the red part of the spectrum, while the money was hanging out in the blue part.

Obviously your senses pick up a lot as you go about your day, but you only notice a puny fraction of all that input. In order to manifest money, you need to tune your senses to bring to your attention useful input that you’ve been subconsciously dismissing as irrelevant background noise. This tuning process takes some time, but you can definitely do it.

Lately I’ve been teaching my daughter Emily (age 10) how to manifest coins. I do this by turning it into a game. When we’re out walking together, I challenge her to see if she can find more coins than I can.

The first time I did this, she was really bad at it. I found several coins during our walk together, often coins that she walked right past without even noticing. Instead of finding coins, she didn’t notice anything. The coins didn’t register within her perceptual reality.

Later on she began noticing things that were close to coins, but not coins. She found bottle caps, paper clips, scraps of paper, and coin-like smudges on the floor — everything but coins. I kept pointing out to her that there are coins everywhere, but you have to tune in to the “coin abundance frequency” to see them. Each time I found a coin and showed it to her, I could tell it was gradually helping her tune in to the right perceptual frequency.

One reason she was bad at this game was that she was tuning out the possible existence of coins everywhere she walked. She just didn’t think there could be that many coins hiding in plain sight. By demonstrating to her that the coins were indeed there and that she was simply failing to notice them, I helped shift her beliefs. She stopped thinking of the game as something outside her control (relying on luck or chance), and she began thinking of what she could control (her open-mindedness and attentiveness).

At first when she would walk past a coin, and I’d pick it up and say, “Look at this, Emily. There was a nickel there, and you walked right past it! Your eyes definitely saw it because you were looking in that direction, but the coin didn’t register in your mind. You still need to adjust yourself to the right vibe. Remember — the coins are everywhere! You just have to command your eyes to notice them.”

Initially this surprised her. She could dismiss it as luck… or as some kind of trick… or as a momentary lapse of her part. Then when it kept happening, it began to frustrate her. I helped her shift that frustration to amusement by pointing out that she was really good at finding bottle caps and smudges, and we had some laughs about that. She just needed to adjust her mind a little bit more to notice the coins.

Finally she began to accept that yes, there really are coins everywhere, and she only has to notice them. It seemed like she was beginning to tell her eyes and her mind to get with the program and start noticing the coins.

Emily has a competitive side, so I played to that by challenging her to find more coins than me, which boosted her motivation and desire to get good at it. She knows that technically it’s a fair game, and she even gave herself an advantage by walking in front of me, so she could be the first to spot new coins. And since she’s only 4’9″ inches tall, she’s a lot closer to the ground than I am.

Gradually she got better at the game. We went out yesterday and played again. In an hour of walking around some hotels on the Vegas Strip, she found 46 cents: 1 quarter, 3 nickels, and 6 pennies. In that same time, I found only 6 cents. She won the game for the first time and was pretty excited about it. And of course I gave her lots of accolades for it, so as to encourage her to keep improving.

I dare say she’s probably better at finding coins than I am now. She now knows there are coins everywhere, but she also really gets into the playful and competitive spirit of the game, which is much more exciting for her than it is for me. I think partly she likes knowing that it’s a fair game that either of us can win, and there’s no reason she can’t be at least as skillful as I am.

When it comes to creating a vibe of playfulness and excitement, children can easily be more masterful than adults. This is the same vibe we need to recreate as adults in order to manifest whatever we desire.

It may sound silly to do this as an adult, but it’s a game worth playing. When you’re out with friends sometime, have a contest to see who can manifest the most money. You may not get too excited about finding coins, but you may generate some excitement about trying to best your friends in a silly contest. That silliness will actually help you get the right vibe, thereby improving your ability to manifest money.

Detachment

People often get confused about the relationship between desire and detachment. Aren’t they diametrically opposed? How can you have both at the same time? Isn’t desire a form of attachment?

No, these aren’t in conflict. They coexist perfectly.

Let me ‘splain.

Desire is about what you wish to create. You could describe this vibe as passion, excitement, or even lust. It’s a delicious pool of emotions you summon by focusing on a new target. The stronger your desire, the better, so amp it up!

Detachment, on the other hand, is about how those desires ultimately manifest for you. When you become too attached to when and how your desires show up, you screw up the manifesting process. Instead of holding the vibe of playfulness and abundance, you start sending out signals like concern, worry, and stress. Don’t do that!

Would you become stressed and worried if you couldn’t find enough coins on the ground? Would that vibe improve your performance? No, that would only lower your performance.

When you notice that you’re getting frustrated, pause, breathe, and go back to the desire side. Hold that vision of the creation you wish to experience, and wallow in the positive sensations of being there in your heart, mind, and spirit. Know that physical reality will soon catch up, as long as you keep holding the right vibe.

When you feel moved to take action from a place of passion and excitement, not stress, then go ahead and let those actions flow through you. It will seem to be more work to stop yourself — you’ll feel like you’re chickening out and holding back if you stay still. Follow your impulses. But don’t worry about the immediate results of those actions. There may be some twists and turns along the way.

Power

When manifesting money, it’s especially important that you don’t give your power away to money. This negates your creative ability, and the money probably won’t arrive if you do that. This is a VERY common mistake.

You can’t effectively wield the power of manifestation by believing that you can manifest something you desire (i.e. money) while simultaneously believing that something you desire has power over you (i.e. money).

If you want to manifest money, you CANNOT believe that money is a power source. Money cannot give you wealth or abundance or happiness. It really can’t give you anything. Money just sits there — all the power comes from you. If you believe that having more money will give you any additional power at all, then you’re actually holding the vibe that says, “I’m too weak to attract money.” You’ll have to get a job instead.

Think of it like this. If you want to manifest money, but you believe that money is its own power source, then deep down you’re giving money the power to say no to you. If money has power, then it can refuse to show up.

Instead of this crazy wrong approach, in your mindset and heartset, you must KNOW that you’re completely 100% dominant over money and that money is completely 100% submissive to you. You’re in total command of it. If you order it to show up, it must obey you. It has no power of its own. It cannot refuse you.

When you manifest money, you are COMMANDING it to come into your reality. You’re the CREATOR. Money has no choice but to obey you, but only if you wield your true power. If you give your power away to money, then you empower money to deny your requests. Money will say, “Well, if you’re letting me decide, then no, I’m staying over here.”

If you approach money like a power source of its own, then by trying to manifest it, you’re really trying to overpower it, and in such a contest you’ll usually lose. That contest, however, is completely internal — and pretty much insane. It’s like trying to arm wrestle yourself. How can you win? It’s a false reality you’re projecting because you aren’t ready to fully wield your own power yet.

Remember that money is nothing but a number. Or it’s pieces of metal and paper. How could it possibly be more powerful than a conscious human being such as yourself?

If you think that once you have money, you will become stronger, you’re crazy. Absolutely deluded! More likely — if you actually did manifest money from that kind of vibe — you’d grow even weaker. This would be a bad outcome for you, even though it seems like what you want. You’d be a weak-minded, weak-hearted person with more money, and you’d still see the money as more powerful than you, even while it’s in your possession. You’d then become attached to it and afraid of losing it because you’d still mistakenly see it as a power source. It would become a source of security for you, a constantly vulnerable one. The more money you had, the more paranoid you’d become about losing it. This would really mess you up big time. So be very, very glad that you naturally attract less money when you think of money as a power source. If you invite money into your life from that crazy frame of giving away your power, then money will become your Master, and you will be forever its slave. Don’t even go there!

If money has no power, then why manifest it at all? In truth, you don’t need to. But if you wish to manifest money, then do it as a game. Money is a just toy you can play with. Get excited about the experience of manifesting money, but don’t put any attention into what you’d do with the money once you have it. It’s merely a number.

If you desire something you think money will give you, then focus on that desire directly, not on the money you think you need to get it. Money may or may not be part of the manifestation process.

Only focus on manifesting money directly if you’re capable of seeing the money as a plaything, like a video game score. It’s only something to manifest for fun, not something to get all worked up and stressed about.

Once again, do NOT give your power away to money. You must know that money is completely powerless. All the power is within you, never out there.

Upgrading

When manifesting money, start small and work up to larger amounts. See it as a score you’re aiming to increase, but don’t put larger amounts on a pedestal by assuming they’re more difficult to manifest.

I started with manifesting pennies in the Summer of 2006. Then I graduated to nickels, dimes, and quarters. I focused on quarters for several weeks. Then I progressed to dollars to $100 to $1000 to $10K to $50K. Overall it took less than a year to go from manifesting pennies to manifesting $50K. After that point I become more interested in non-monetary manifesting and had some especially fun times with manifesting in my social life — friends, mentors, and other yumminess. In fact, I honestly feel that manifesting money is a bit boring compared to all the other cool stuff you can manifest. It’s like playing a video game and obsessing over the score. That can be fun for a while, but eventually you want to focus on more interesting aspects of the game world.

If you can get good at manifesting coins, you can manifest larger sums too. The process is the same. Only some limiting beliefs of yours may stand in the way. But as you gradually upgrade to larger sums, you can collapse those false beliefs.

Once Emily gets good at manifesting coins and feels comfortable and confident with it, I’ll start challenging her to manifest larger sums. She may not find money on the ground as often, but it will show up in other ways.

Money comes to you through the filters of your beliefs, but you don’t have to change your beliefs radically. You just have to open enough of a portal in your beliefs to allow different sums to come to you.

Coins may be found on the ground while you’re walking around. Bills will sometimes be found on the ground too. Larger sums may manifest in the form of exchanges, business deals, inheritances, inspired action, and other ways. Assume that those larger sums are right in front of your face, staring at you and screaming at you to notice them. You just have to tune your vibe to the right frequency to pick them up.

I’ve noticed that as I’ve shifted my vibe to manifest larger sums of money and to manifest new experiences in other parts of my life, I seem to fall out of resonance with manifesting smaller sums. I’m not as good at manifesting coins as I was in 2006. That’s because my vibe isn’t tuned in to the coin manifesting frequency as much. These days I’m spending more time using the LoA to manifest cool social connections and travel experiences. I’ve tuned my vibe to focus on that part of the perceptual frequency. I also feel more excited and playful about manifesting in these other areas as opposed to adding to my financial score.

Congruency

Every relationship in your life contributes to the overall vibe you’re putting out. This includes all the different ways you relate to money.

For example, if your job sucks and doesn’t pay you very well, and you try to manifest money on the side, that probably won’t work so well because each time you go to work at your job, you risk re-triggering the vibe of feeling financially under-appreciated.

This is where lots of people get stuck with the LoA. They put out conflicting vibes every day. They may visualize having more money and feeling abundant and grateful, but then they go to the grocery store, and they buy cheap, low quality food because in the back of their mind, they’re saying to themselves that they can’t afford the good stuff. And that naturally cancels out the vibe of abundance, so the result is no change.

If your current circumstances cause you to emit conflicting vibes, then even as you go through the motions of acting in accordance with a scarcer financial situation than you’d like, keep your vibe focused on that of abundance. The best way to do that is by holding the heartset of gratitude. So even if you buy cheap, low-quality food, hold the vibe that you’re grateful for it and that you appreciate it. Feel appreciative that such food exists and that it’s within your budget. And then look at the high quality stuff, and emotionally invite it into your life. If possible, find one way in which you can splurge for higher quality items, like buying a few organic apples, and feel grateful that you can do that. And when you eat those apples, really enjoy them, and intend to receive more of the same.

But do NOT beat yourself up for not being able to afford what you desire. That will only lower your vibe.

Do like I did with Emily when she kept finding bottle caps and smudges. Praise yourself for succeeding at what you’re already manifesting, and then command your senses to adjust to a more abundant part of the spectrum of reality. Be patient with yourself — you’ll get it.

Whenever you start feeling bad about your financial situation, see that as a form of feedback. Let it become an immediate trigger to refocus on your desires. Say to yourself, “Okay, obviously I don’t want this. So what do I want instead?” Then think about happier alternatives; allow your mind to go there, and let the resulting new vibe flow through you.

Manifesting money is a fun challenge. It’s definitely doable if you approach it from a place of playfulness, knowing, and power. It does involve some discipline, but the discipline is mental and emotional, not physical.

You aren’t going to let a 10-year old girl kick your ass at this game, are you?

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina