Slide Into Your New Reality

Did you ever see the TV show Sliders?

In that show a group of four people would “slide” through a portal between dimensions, spending each episode in an alternate version of earth. For example, they might enter a reality where the Nazis won WWII. Or in another reality one of them might be a famous performer.

Another TV show that can give you the right idea is Quantum Leap. In that show a man spent each episode in someone else’s body in an alternative time and place.

Imagine you’re a Slider or a Quantum Leaper, and you just slid through a portal into your new desired reality — into that new YOU as well. You’re already there living it. The whole reality already exists in some alternate dimension, and you’re now experiencing it as real.

Put yourself in the shoes of that new person. Witness through his/her eyes how s/he goes through a typical day. Imagine that you’re in an episode of Sliders or Quantum Leap.

What time do you get up in the morning? Who’s sleeping next to you? Where are you? How do you feel? What do you eat for breakfast? What do you do in the morning, afternoon, and evening?

You must imagine yourself as already being there. You want to reach the point where it feels natural and normal to be there. After all, this is your reality, isn’t it? So of course it will feel normal in a way. You’re already used to it.

Initially the Sliders/Leapers were freaked out when they entered the new reality. It took them a while to figure it out and understand it. Eventually they got used to it and were able to get things done within that reality.

This is what will happen when you visualize a new reality for yourself. At first it may seem like an alien environment. You’ll have to play around with it for a while before you get used to it and it starts to seem normal to you. It’s very important that you push beyond that freak-out phase. You must shift from thinking about your visions as FANTASY to seeing them as REAL.

A good movie to watch is Being John Malkovich. That will give you more insight into how to slip into an alternate reality and imagine life through the lens of your new character.

Ideally, visualizing your future should be very much the same as remembering your past. Just as you would recall and mentally review what you did yesterday, that’s how you want to imagine your new reality. What are the highlights of your typical day, and how do you feel about them?

Notice that emotional memories are much stronger than routine events. Such memories can draw the past back into your present, but they can also draw a powerful future into your present if you create powerful new memories of the future.

Partial Visualization

One of the most common mistakes people make is that they fall into the trap of doing partial visualizations. They only imagine one or two aspects of their new reality but not the entire big picture. Or they’ll imagine something that makes them feel a certain way, but it wouldn’t actually be a part of their desired reality.

For example, you may imagine seeing a pile of cash on your table and counting the bills. A lot of people suggest this exercise as a way of manifesting more money. I think it’s a lame idea though.

If you really had financial abundance, would you actually have a pile of cash currency in your home? That seems unlikely. If you were already living it, playing with your money or obsessing over it would be silly and immature. That’s the sort of thing someone would do only if they weren’t already living it.

Partial visualizations manifest partial results. You may attract part of what you want, but it will be unstable because you’ve only locked on to some, but not all, of the necessary frequencies required to shift into that new reality. You may be able to visit it briefly, but you won’t be able to stay long.

When I was around 24-25 years old, I read the book Think and Grow Rich, and I started doing partial visualization exercises to attract more money into my life. I imagined having about half a million dollars as a pile of cash on my bed. I felt the texture of the bills with my fingers. I saw it as very real and imagined what it would feel like to have that much cash all at once.

Sometime after that (I don’t recall how long — a few months maybe), I entered into a new game publishing deal with a total advance of $675,000. I soon received the first installment in the form of a check for $50,000, which was the biggest check I’d ever received at that point in my life. It appeared that my intention had manifested.

However, this situation was incredibly unstable. The publisher turned out to be extremely corrupt. First, they screwed up the deal with seemingly insane delays and nonsensical decisions. Then they unilaterally breached our contract. And finally they tried to sue me (unsuccessfully) to recoup the $50K advance. Looking back, it appears that their goal was to tie up my team’s project so that it wouldn’t hit the market… while they had another team developing a potentially competing game. The initial $50K I received was spent on early development for a game that was never released. In the end I was left with a busted project and more debt than when I started. If I could have afforded the legal fees (which I couldn’t at the time), I may have been able to successfully sue them for breach of contract, but that simply wasn’t how I wanted to do business. I wanted to spend my time making games, not giving depositions.

Years later this same publisher was publicly exposed for a massive accounting scandal, and the company and several officers were sued by the SEC. If I recall correctly, their CEO was fined $10 million and had to step down. That came as no surprise to me and many other developers who worked with them.

Not a good manifestation!

Although it seemed promising in the beginning, this attempt to manifest money completely imploded and left me worse off than when I started — aside from learning some very tough lessons, which in retrospect turned out to be quite valuable.

I hope you can learn from my mistakes here and not succumb to the trap of partial visualization. In order to manifest your desires, you need to lock on to the total package of frequencies and the full range of emotions that you’ll experience in your new reality. And one of the best ways to do that is to get really, really clear about what you want.

Complete Visualization

Don’t just visualize one small part of your new reality, such as having more money come to you. Visualize the entire alternate reality you wish to enter, in as much detail as possible.

It’s okay to focus on one area of your life at a time. I personally find it rather difficult to visualize a whole new life for myself that covers career, finances, health, relationships, my daily habits, spiritual development, personal development, etc. So I generally focus on one area at a time, but I do my best to make sure it’s congruent with my desires in other areas too.

A few years ago I focused on creating financial abundance. Then I worked on social abundance (having lots of friends). Now I’m working on intimacy abundance (creating deeper relationships). All of these parts of my life are working beautifully right now. This process definitely works. Sometimes it works so well it scares me a bit.

Career and finances are good areas to visualize together since most people generate income via their careers. Don’t just imagine yourself having more money. Put in some detail about what is sustaining that flow of money. How is it being maintained?

My initial attempts to manifest money flopped (or made things worse) because the big picture was incongruent. I was trying to pull money out of thin air, figuring it would come to me like magic. Well, this isn’t magic… not really.

Similarly, in the area of social abundance, I didn’t just manifest friends with magic. I had to see the big picture. This required thinking about what kind of friend I’d be. I thought about the kinds of friends I wanted to attract, and then I imagined what kind of friend I’d have to be in order to attract them to me — and to maintain good relationships with them. This made it clear that I had to work on myself too in order to step into that new reality. I had to become a better friend to others so I’d be worthy of those new relationships.

I know some people who are working really hard at manifesting new relationships. But all they do is imagine the other person coming to them and loving them. That’s a partial visualization, and it fails consistently. Honestly I don’t think I’ve seen this approach ever really work out. People do attract new partners this way, but the matches aren’t very compatible.

Suppose you’re trying to attract a new woman by visualizing her in your life. She’s everything you desire. She’s a perfect match for you and absolutely amazing as a human being. You can’t help but fall in love with that new reality.

But will she fall in love with you — realistically? A new reality is something you’re going to make REAL — it’s not a fantasy!

If you think your new reality is too good to be true, then well… it is too good to be true.

What do you have to offer this woman? She may be YOUR best possible match, but are you HER best match as well, or will she have better options than you? Will she have to compromise her values and settle for less than she’s worth to be with you? Will you really be able to maintain a relationship with someone like that? Are you worthy of her?

These questions can hit people like a ton of bricks because they reveal our inadequacies. But we still need to address them.

When you visualize your new reality, you must imagine yourself BEING the kind of person who can attract and hold on to all the good stuff you wish to manifest. That means you’re going to have to work on yourself and grow into that kind of person.

I know one woman who’s been trying to manifest the perfect relationship for years. She goes on a lot of dates, yet she remains perpetually alone. It’s obvious to me — and to many who know her — why that’s so. The simple reason is that the man she desires wouldn’t find her attractive at all. I can’t even see that being a remote possibility. She’s a kind-hearted person with a successful career, and she doesn’t have a problem getting dates, but her personality is a total mismatch for the kind of man she wants. She doesn’t fathom what such a man would find attractive in a relationship partner, so she lives in denial of the fact that he wouldn’t be attracted to her. So she’s always dating people where there’s no two-way chemistry. If she keeps doing what she’s been doing, she’ll either remain alone indefinitely, or she’ll eventually settle for an unstable connection with someone she doesn’t find attractive or who doesn’t find her attractive.

In the area of career and finances, what kind of person will you have to become in order to attract and hold on to the abundance you desire? What will it take to be worthy of that kind of flow?

When I was in my 20s, a $50K sum was too much for me to hold on to. I could attract such a sum on rare occasions, but I couldn’t retain it. It would slip through my fingers like water.

Eventually I stopped doing partial visualizations and began seeing the big picture. I realized I’d have to become a man who was worthy of abundance. This may mean something different to you, but to me it meant that I would need to be a kind and generous person who created a lot of value for others. That felt congruent to me. If I were a greedy bastard who was all about me-me-me, I’d feel I didn’t deserve that kind of flow. In my visualizations I felt really good about centering my career around service to others, and I could see that this would be consistent with attracting and perpetuating a constant flow of good stuff through my life — money, good health, low stress, loving relationships, fresh opportunities, etc. The total package just made sense to me.

I had to work a lot on myself to step into that new vision of me, but it definitely worked. In the past five years, I’ve put out enough free content to fill a couple dozen books. That feels really good to me. And resources flow to me so easily that I simply take it for granted that I can relax and enjoy whatever I want to experience in life. This works because it’s a congruent and stable situation. I use my creativity to put out a lot of value for others, so naturally I receive a lot of value in return. But in order to reach this place, I had to go through many internal shifts to step into this new reality.

In the area of social abundance, I do my best to be the kind of friend that’s worthy of having amazing friendships. I support and encourage my friends to pursue their dreams, but I also love to joke around and have fun. Consequently, I attract and maintain relationships with like-minded people. I’m really good at attracting people who are loving life, who enjoy helping people, and who are very encouraging and supportive of me too. And I naturally repel people who wouldn’t make good friends for me.

In order to manifest what you desire, the total package must be congruent. There must be harmony between what you’re attracting and what’s attracting you. Too often people fall into the trap of trying to attract something that would naturally repel them, such as trying to manifest a flow of money without creating any value, or trying to attract a loving relationship without becoming a loving and attractive person.

This is largely common sense, which many people seem to lose sight of when trying to apply the Law of Attraction.

Will a health nut be attracted to a lazy couch potato? Will honest, conscious business people want to do business with someone who creates little value and is in only in it for the money? Will an adventurous growth-seeker be attracted to someone who’s timid and security-minded? Even if these situations were to manifest, they’re unstable and usually won’t work out very well unless there’s a strong attraction in some other area to compensate.

Manifestations can occur very RAPIDLY and POWERFULLY once this harmony is achieved. But until that happens, results tend to be minimal or negative.

Write It Down

Imagining your new reality can be tricky if you try to do it all in your mind.

You may find it helpful to sit down and write out what it will be like to experience your new reality, in as much detail as possible.

For example, if you want to attract a certain type of person into your life, write out a detailed description of that person. Then you can use that as a guide when visualizing. Another option is to create a vision board by assembling a collection of photos or images (physical or digital) that helps you imagine the big picture.

I recently stumbled upon an old journal entry where I wrote out several pages describing in detail what I wanted to experience in life. My life at the time was nowhere close to that reality. I put an incredible amount of detail into it, even including personality descriptions and physical attributes of imagined people, such as how tall they were or that they wore contact lenses or were left- or right-handed.

What really freaked me out is that there is now a person in my reality who matches someone I described about 95% accurately. This person was not on my radar at all when I wrote this journal entry. I wrote it in February 2001. My life was in a completely different place back then.

Most of what I wrote about back then has already manifested. I’m now living it. Other parts of my reality have shifted so much that parts of my vision that seemed so far away are not nearly so distant now. I can actually see steps that would make more of them possible and realistic. The big picture is sliding towards me.

I was talking with Erin about this last week, and she asked me, “Why did you put that kind of detail into it? Why did it matter to you that an imaginary person was near-sighted?”

My best answer is that I found that a copious level of detail made it easier to see it as real. The vision became more believable. If the new reality is to become real, the people within it must be real too, not imaginary archetypes. Real people have height and weight. They may be near-sighted or left-handed. They may have pimples or unshaven faces. They wear certain types of clothes. They have unique personalities.

If you suddenly slid into your new reality, you would instantly observe all of that detail. It would be right in front of you. So put it in front of you now. Create it in your imagination. Clarity creates believability, which gives rise to stronger, crisper vibrations than fogginess.

It takes practice to get good at this, but the more you practice, the richer and more vivid your visualizations will become. That richness makes it easier to lock on to the new emotional states you’re aiming to create.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Is it possible to use the Law of Attraction to manifest true abundance in your life, including financial abundance, social abundance, and more? Absolutely, it is. In this 35-minute video (split into 4 individual clips for posting on YouTube), I explain why people so often fail in this area, and I give you a simple two-part method to make it work for you. I also share some stories and examples from my own life to help you internalize these ideas so you can apply them successfully.

There are several video clips of me on YouTube already, but those were all recorded by others, including some interviews that people have done with me. This is the first time I’ve intentionally recorded a video to share the kind of ideas I might otherwise cover in an article or podcast. So please consider this my first official video blog.

I recommend that you watch all 4 clips back to back if possible (35 minutes total). I broke the video into shorter clips because of YouTube’s 10-minute limit. I wanted to post these on YouTube instead of another service since it’s the most popular one, and I already have a YouTube channel (stevepavlinadotcom). Feel free to subscribe to it if you’re a YouTube member.

This video was recorded in HD by the way. Enjoy!

You can watch the videos one at a time below, or use this playlist link to automatically watch them in sequence on YouTube.

Creating Abundance (Part 1 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 2 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 3 of 4)

Creating Abundance (Part 4 of 4)

I’m a total newbie at video, and this was my very first time using iMovie — or any video editing software for that matter — so please be kind.

I hope you find these insights on creating abundance helpful. If you’d like to see more videos, I’m open to suggestions for additional topics to cover.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

The cubicle is the antithesis of doing work you love. Virtually no one pictures a cubicle when they think about doing what they most love.

The cubicle is where you end up when you fall out of harmony with what you love.

The only way you can be stuck in a cubicle is by giving your power away to it.

A cubicle has no power over you. You can empower the cubicle, but it can’t empower itself.

To complain about a job you dislike is an act of giving your power away. You chose the job, and you can just as easily choose to stop showing up.

Think of it this way: If you and your cubicle got in a fight, who would win?

Still not sure? How about this: You plus a chainsaw vs. the cubicle plus a chainsaw. Who’d win?

If you decide to leave the cubicle, it is powerless to stop you. You could smash the thing to pieces just for spite.

So the only one keeping you trapped in that cubicle is you. You’re there by choice. You’re there because that’s the life you chose to create.

“But I need that cubicle because I need money,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to money. Money is nothing but a piece of paper… or a number on a computer screen. How can something so lifeless and inanimate have any power over you whatsoever?

If you and $1 million cash got in a fight, who’d win?

Not sure? Ok, try this: You plus a flamethrower vs. $1 million plus a flamethrower. Who’d win?

Is that even a fair fight? You could repeat it for a thousand matches and win every single time.

“But I have bills to pay,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to your bills. You do realize you don’t have to do that, don’t you?

What is a bill? It’s a few pieces of paper at most.

You vs. your bills in a fight — who’d win?

Can you see who’s stronger here, or do we need to arm each of you with a paper shredder to be sure?

“But I need a roof over my head and food on the table,” you say.

Now you’re giving your power away to the roof and the food. Those are inanimate objects.

Who’d win in a fight between you and a house or you and a ton of food? I think it’s clear that you’re the fiercer opponent in those matches, and unless you do something stupid and slip on a banana peel, an easy victory is yours.

Follow this chain of making and busting excuses for as long as you desire. You’ll still end up at the same place. Each rationalization is just another instance of giving your power away.

Giving your power away is stupid. Who would use their creative powers to create a trap for themselves and then complain about being stuck in the trap afterwards? That wouldn’t be very bright, now would it? I mean… you’d have to be really, really stupid to do something like that, wouldn’t you?

Do you realize that you don’t actually have to give your power away to anything? Really you don’t.

You don’t actually have to create a trap for yourself, fall into it, and then spend years complaining about the trap.

It’s not like your traps are very strong anyway. A cubicle isn’t a particularly strong cage, now is it? You can walk away from it this very second, and it’s powerless to contain you.

An unfulfilling relationship isn’t much of a cage either. Again, it’s easy enough to just walk away.

Even now, you have the ability to withdraw your power into yourself and reclaim it.

That power is your creative ability. Your power allows you to bend reality to your will. If you want to experience a different reality, you have the power to create it.

If you desire a roof over your head and food on the table, you can use your power to create that.

If you desire to have bills in your life and also have them be paid on time with ease, you can create that reality too.

If you desire to have money flowing through your life, that is also within your power.

And if you desire to live your life outside a cubicle, then once again you are strong enough to make that happen.

Do not make excuses. Do not complain about your situation. Complaining and excuse-making are acts of using your power to create what you don’t want.

Whenever you complain about anything, it’s because you do not understand the true nature of power.

Do not pretend you are powerless. You are stronger than any excuse.

Use your power to constructively create what you want. Focus your will upon your desires. Withdraw your thoughts from helplessness and hopelessness.

Realize that you’re the creator in your reality. If you find yourself in a cubicle, who created that reality for you? Who used their willpower to walk up to the cubicle and sit down? You willed that into existence. You thought about it. You felt what it would feel like. You fed that potential reality your power. And so you manifested and experienced it. But you didn’t have to. You never had to. And you never will have to.

Look around your life and notice all that you’ve created. You did all of that. Your repeated applications of power constructed the reality you are now experiencing.

Celebrate that realization. See the good in what you’ve created. Remember the thoughts and feelings you summoned to create it. Do not give your power away by pretending that you didn’t create it.

You may have created much that you no longer desire to experience. In that case, focus your creative energies elsewhere. Stop feeding your power to what you’ve already created, and begin channeling it toward what you now desire.

You cannot uncreate what you’ve already created. Well, maybe if you use the flamethrower. But you can re-create your reality into that which you desire to experience.

Imagine being in the place of experiencing a reality that you created. Actually you’re already there. You’re experiencing that every day. But now imagine yourself enjoying a reality that you very much desire to experience. You can create that too.

What if you don’t know what you’ll enjoy? How do you know what to create next?

Well, start with what you know. If you know you aren’t thrilled with what you have right now, then pick a direction and target your creative energies there. If you know what you’re experiencing right now isn’t what you desire, then the most foolish thing you can do is to use your power to keep re-creating it.

Explore. Experiment. Create new experiences for yourself. It is only through exploration that you will hone in on what you most desire. Be willing to fail.

Celebrate your creative failures. Celebrate those times when you created something you didn’t like. Those experiences are your greatest teachers.

When you know you’ve created something you don’t like, learn from that contrast. Ask yourself, “How does this help me understand what I truly do want?”

If you know you don’t want to spend your life in a cubicle, how does that help you? It helps you better understand what you do want. It suggests other places to explore.

Based on your reaction to cubicle life, perhaps you will see that you desire to spend more time outside. You desire more freedom. You desire to manage your own time without having to be at a certain place at a certain time. You desire to physically get up and move around more. You desire fresh air and sunlight and moonlight. You desire to be with people who are on fire with passion and happiness, not with people who are slaves.

Observe your creations. Take credit for them. Take full responsibility for what you’ve created. And then learn from them. Allow yourself to have an emotional reaction to what you’ve created. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you bored with it? How do you really feel?

When you observe the life you’re living, are you blissing out? That’s a sign you’ve created what you truly desire. Or are you bored or frustrated or stressed? That’s a sign you missed the mark and need to try again.

Use your emotional reactions to what you’ve created as a way to re-orient yourself in the direction of new desires. Then withdraw your power from the creations you no longer wish to experience. Realize that you created all of it and that you now have the power to create something else.

Now focus your power in that new direction. It doesn’t have to be a perfectly crystal clear direction. It just has to be a path with a heart, something that feels good to you, something you’d like to explore.

If you can’t find a path that feels good, then look for a path that feels better than what you’re already experiencing.

That path with a heart is a path that requires courage. If you haven’t chosen a path that requires courage, you’ve chosen to create another trap for yourself. In the end you will only create more of what you don’t want.

True desires pull at your heart. But if your application of power has been rather weak, then the mind will resist these desires. This conflict between head and heart is called fear. Fear is what you experience when you turn your inner eye to see the path with a heart, but your mind doubts you have the power to create it and have it feel good.

When you see that path with a heart, it’s okay to feel fear and tension. It will take time to re-awaken your power and apply it to the pursuit of that path.

Imagine power and energy flowing forth from you. Flow your power toward your desires. Imagine them as real. Use your power to create them in your mind and in your heart. See your creations as real. Feel your creations as real. Know that this is an act of creation.

Be careful not to feed your power back to your undesired creations. Let the old creations die. Let go of the cubicle. Disconnect from the unfulfilling relationships. Channel your power toward your desires only.

If this is difficult for you, then strive to minimize the amount of time you spend feeding your power to what you don’t want. Go on a power fast in those areas. Starve out those creations. Keep pulling back and withdrawing more and more of your power into yourself.

Notice when you are channeling energy to something you don’t want. You will know it’s happening because you will be feeling negative emotions. When you notice this happening, withdraw your power and re-channel it toward something you desire. You will know it’s happening when you experience positive emotions. Feeding power to your desires feels good.

Enjoy the unfolding journey as your new desires begin to manifest. Keep following the path with a heart. Turn your body, mind, heart, and spirit in the direction of your desires. Keep facing toward them as much as possible, as you turn your back on that which you no longer desire.

Do not pretend to be powerless. Such behavior is unbecoming of conscious beings.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

He said he that he felt just about everyone could train to be a decent singer, but the main challenge was that people don’t hear themselves the way other people hear them, so their pitch is off. They hear one pitch in their heads, but what they’re actually singing (and what other people hear) doesn’t align with what they think they’re singing.

It immediately struck me that this is a great analogy for why some people struggle so much when trying to apply the Law of Attraction. The vibration they believe they’re putting out doesn’t match what they’re actually putting out. What they perceive in their heads isn’t what other people perceive coming from them.

For example, I occasionally meet people who are struggling financially, and they tell me about their efforts to apply the LoA. They tell me about how they shifted their vibration (thoughts, feelings, actions) to align with financial abundance, but they’re still manifesting scarcity. Some of them are on the verge of concluding that the LoA doesn’t really work.

However, from my perspective, it only takes a few minutes of conversation to see that such people are still broadcasting scarcity through every pore. How can they not see it? How can they kid themselves into thinking they have a mindset of abundance when it’s so obvious to me they’re still stuck in a scarcity mentality? Their mannerisms and choice of words always betray their true vibration.

It’s the same with singing, isn’t it? The way you sound to others and the way you sound to yourself may not match. So which one is the true vibration you’re putting out? When it comes to singing, the truth is represented by the sound waves emanating from your mouth. It doesn’t matter what you’re hearing in your head.

Many people don’t realize that this is how the LoA works as well. Your true vibration isn’t what you’re thinking or feeling in your head. Your true vibration is what you’re broadcasting out to the universe.

Discovering and Correcting Vibrational Discordance

Your thoughts and feelings are not equal to your vibration. They’re merely effects of your vibration, but they get filtered through your beliefs. If your beliefs aren’t aligned with truth, then your inner perception of your vibration will be a distortion of your true vibration, so you won’t perceive yourself accurately. You may think you’re resonating with a certain energetic frequency like abundance, vitality, or love, when the truth is quite different.

How can you become aware of your true vibration if you can’t blindly trust what you’re thinking and feeling?

The solution is that you need to create a feedback loop, whereby you can observe yourself objectively to get a better sense of what you’re actually putting out. This will help you make adjustments to correct inaccuracies in your internal self-image.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s important for singers to record themselves singing and to listen to the playback. This helps them hear what’s really coming out of their mouths. If they’re singing off-key, they will hear it in the recording, and then they can make adjustments. A talented deaf singer is an anomaly because something other than direct audio feedback must be used for training.

You can use a similar method to discover and correct your own vibrational misalignments. Record yourself, either with audio or video. Video is best because it gives you more information.

Record yourself talking about your finances. Record a conversation with your significant other. Record yourself interacting socially with friends and family. Record yourself giving a speech. Record yourself working at your desk. Then watch the playback. I guarantee that if you’ve never done this before, you will be surprised. It’s a very eye-opening experience.

If you record video, watch the playback once with video and no sound. Then listen to the audio only without looking at the video. You will pick up different insights. With no sound you can observe your body language. With no video you can pay more attention to your voice tone. This will help you see if you’re being congruent on all channels or if you’re sending mixed messages. For example, are you speaking confidently while your body language broadcasts insecurity? That would indicate that your true vibration is mixed as well, and that will surely affect your results.

Another thing you can do is invite someone else to observe you. This may take some courage, but it’s a great way to discover new truths. It’s especially helpful to get feedback from people who are already emanating the type of vibration you would like to integrate.

Ask someone who’s already enjoying financial abundance to listen to you talk about your finances for a few minutes. Ask someone who has a loving relationship to watch you interact socially with others. Ask someone who’s very healthy and fit to watch you eat and prepare a meal, do your exercise routine, and listen to you talk about your health habits. Then ask those people to give you brutally honest feedback.

We all have blind spots, myself included. In order to become aware of those blind spots, we need to take a step back and observe what’s really coming out of us. What are the real frequencies we’re broadcasting, and how do they compare with what we think we’re broadcasting?

Making Adjustments

Once you have a chance to observe yourself, make some changes based on your new distinctions. Make the gross adjustments first, and then work on the finer adjustments.

In many cases objective self-observation is the key limiting step. The challenge is to become aware of your shortcomings and to see yourself accurately. Once you’ve done that, correcting those actions can usually be achieved via basic trial and error. Make changes, record yourself again, and notice how it looks. Keep cycling through this feedback loop until you can observe that you have it right. Depending on the nature of your challenge, it may take some time to get where you want to go, but at least it’s doable.

When I did a lot of computer programming, there was a built-in feedback loop. I always had the opportunity to observe the output from the computer code I’d written, so I could identify bugs and make adjustments many times per day. But in some areas of life, such as in our human relationships, the natural feedback loop plays out much more slowly. However, you can still gain a lot of information by paying attention to your immediate results and your objectively observable momentum. If you claim to be resonating with financial abundance, but your present reality is that you’re sinking into debt and unpaid bills are piling up, something isn’t right. When you see that your results are out of alignment with your intentions, those are the best places to start investigating.

Do your best not to blame the Law of Attraction for your personal failings. That cannot possibly help. If you aren’t getting the results you intend, you need look no further than your lack of vibrational alignment. A lack of results means that you haven’t hit the right frequency to manifest your intentions yet. You’re still singing off-key. You may think you’re hitting the right notes, but if you haven’t observed your own output via objective means like recording devices and consultations with others who are already experts at those frequencies, how can you really know what frequencies you’re actually broadcasting? You can’t know!

If you want to get better at applying the LoA, you can’t simply go scouring through your thoughts and feelings, hoping to get everything perfect on the inside. You can’t create a good feedback loop entirely in your mind. It’s too easy to get lost in a tangled web of belief filters. You need to pull back, don your observer cap, and see yourself from the outside looking in. Get out of your head and your ego, and diagnose the problem holistically. Only then will you be able to apply a holistic solution that actually works.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

I bought cheap food in bulk (I used to eat a lot of ramen noodles). When I needed furniture for my home office, I bought the cheapest particle-board furniture I could find and assembled it myself. I bought cheap shoes from Payless. I got hand-me-downs from relatives.

I wouldn’t always buy the cheapest items available, but I tried to get the best value as I perceived it. I didn’t want to overpay for anything.

This felt good to me in general. I liked that I was conserving cash and making my money last. My needs were adequately met.

Even as my income increased and I could afford better quality, this habit continued for a while.

Reconsidering value

One day I was browsing the bookstore, and I came across a story from Donald Trump. He noted that he used to be very value-conscious (i.e. cheap) like me when buying clothes. That was a long time ago, so I’ll paraphrase the story as best I can remember.

Donald thought it seemed wasteful to spend $1000 on a pair of shoes when a $100 pair was just fine. The same goes for expensive suits. But he could easily afford the more expensive items, so one day he decided to buy a pair of those uber-expensive shoes. To cut to the chase, he found them to be of significantly higher quality in ways that surprised him, so much so that he questioned whether they were perhaps the better value all along.

That story struck a chord in me for some reason. It made me curious. I began to wonder if some of the more expensive items I’d been shunning were actually a better value in the long run.

I had to admit that many of the cheap items I’d bought in accordance with my value-conscious mindset often didn’t last very long. The cheap shoes I bought always wore out in 6-12 months. It was pretty impressive if they lasted a full year. Cheap appliances typically broke within the first few years if I used them regularly, sometimes sooner. I ended up throwing many items away and replacing them. Every year or two I had to buy a new wristwatch. I wondered if those cheap items were intentionally designed to break down after a certain while.

I also considered that there were other areas of my life where I wasn’t as cheap, and I noticed that I got better performance in those areas.

For example, one area where I wasn’t cheap was computer equipment. In college I bought the best PC I could afford, a 486-DX 50mhz with a 250MB hard drive and a Super VGA monitor. I think I paid around $2500 for it (cash, not credit), which was a lot of money for me at the time. I could have spent less than $1000 for an adequate machine. I also splurged for the Borland C++ developer package instead of the much cheaper Turbo C++.

When I did contract work as a game programmer during my final semester of college, all of the computers at the game company were slower than my home PC. Thanks in part to my speedy computer, I programmed four games during college, which were published as a Windows arcade pack shortly after I graduated. Between my contract payments and future royalties, I estimate that I earned about $50 per hour for that programming work, which was very good money for a student. My fast PC more than paid for itself. Had I tried to save money and get a better “value,” it would have probably backfired on me. I wouldn’t have been as productive working from my apartment, so I might have missed out on this opportunity.

As I reflected on my various consumer experiences, I began wondering if I was being too cheap overall. Perhaps I was missing other opportunities by focusing too much on saving money.

Understanding lifetime value

Later in life I began to experiment. I figured I could afford to spend a little more money on the basics, if only to satisfy my curiosity about the difference in quality.

Instead of buying shoes for $30 or less, I bought shoes that were $90+. This meant I could afford shoes that were made without animal-derived materials (Vegetarian Shoes is the brand). Those were the most durable shoes I’ve ever bought. I have a pair of tennis shoes that’s around 4-5 years old now, and I wear them often. They’re starting to look run down, but they’re still in reasonable shape. A pair of $90 sandals I bought at the same time still look almost new. I’ll probably get another 10 years of use out of them if not more.

To my surprise these “extravagant” purchases actually saved me money in the long run. If I stuck with the cheaper options, I’d have gone through 5-10 pairs of tennis shoes and probably a few pairs of sandals by now.

Buying what you truly want vs. compromising

How often do you buy what you really, truly want regardless of price? How often do you compromise and sacrifice what you want to get something cheaper?

What would happen if you stopped fussing over price tags and started buying exactly what you wanted regardless of cost?

When Erin and I moved into our current home two years ago, we bought some new furniture. Instead of going cheap or looking for the best possible value, we decided to identify what we really wanted, regardless of price, and then as long as we could reasonably afford it, we’d buy it. Fortunately it was easy for us to agree on every item, as we seem to have similar tastes in furniture.

We didn’t have limitless cash, so we gave ourselves a furniture budget, and once it was gone, we’d be done buying furniture for a while. If that meant we couldn’t buy all the furnishings we wanted, we were okay with that. We figured we’d rather have less furniture and buy only those items we really wanted instead of filling our home with compromises. We could always buy more furniture later once we replenished our cash.

At one furniture store we bought their most expensive dining room set with a beautiful marble table top. We also bought one of their most expensive bedroom sets with the very best mattress we tested. The commissioned salesman who helped us was practically having an orgasm. We overheard him excitedly telling one of his buddies, “These guys are buying all the most expensive stuff!”

This was the first time we bought the type of furnishings that we really, really wanted — without compromising. If one item was $500 less than a comparable item that seemed a little bit nicer to us, we’d spend the extra money and buy whichever item we liked best, regardless of cost.

We couldn’t afford to furnish our entire home that way without depleting our cash to an uncomfortable level (or going into debt), so we left some areas of our home very sparsely furnished. If we had bought furniture using our old value-driven mindset, we’d have easily been able to furnish and decorate the entire house, but it would have been filled with compromises.

This was a very interesting experience for me. When the furniture was delivered and set up in our home, I noticed that I felt much differently about it vs. how I used to feel about all our old hand-me-down furniture. I felt so appreciative of it. I was very grateful for it. Moreover, I used to hate shopping for furniture (or anything else for that matter), but I absolutely enjoyed that shopping experience. The salesman certainly enjoyed it too.

To this day when I sit at our dining room table, I can’t help but notice what a nice table it is. Although we bought it two years ago, I never take it for granted. I still comment to Erin about what a great table it is. This surprises me. I’d have thought that by now, my enthusiasm for this table would have worn off, but it hasn’t. You’d figure I’d be accustomed to it by now. Nope. I feel grateful every time I sit down at it.

The same goes for our bedroom furniture. Our bed is so ridiculously comfortable, and I sleep much better on it. It feels great no matter what position I sleep in. We still have our previous mattress in our guest room (a “value” purchase), and I can’t sleep on it anymore. It just doesn’t feel right to me. I still tell Erin how much I love our new bed even though it isn’t new anymore. When we lie down to go to sleep, I’ll often exclaim, “I love this bed!”

As I mentioned in my previous article, we recently bought some more new furniture. Again, we decided to get what we wanted — no compromising! We went back to that same furniture store (it’s RC Willey if you’re curious) and bought a new couch, some recliner chairs, and some small tables. The couch replaces an old 13-year old couch that was falling apart, and the recliner chairs fill in one of those spots that was essentially vacant for two years. At one point we were trying to decide between two different types of recliners. Recliner A was $400 and was comfortable and definitely suitable. I’d give it an A-. Recliner B was $550, but it was a lot cozier to me. We bought two of Recliner B without giving serious consideration to the price difference. It was the very best recliner we found.

We put these recliners in the sitting area of our master bedroom. I just love them. They’re so comfortable and cozy. I smile whenever I walk past them. The headrest can even be adjusted to two different positions. One position is good for relaxing; the other is good for reading.

Similarly we bought the most expensive three-piece sectional couch that the store carried. I appreciate it whenever I sit in it. Erin and the kids really like it too.

When I used to compromise and go for value purchases, I’d never have these strong feelings of appreciation and gratitude when I got the items home. Why should I be grateful for something I didn’t really want? If the item was just okay but not great, I’d end up taking it for granted. It was just a thing to be possessed.

But when I buy what I really want, regardless of how much it costs, I feel a special connection to the item. It feels good to have it around. It gives rise to feelings of abundance. It feels like a manifestation of my desires, not a consumer purchase.

Enjoying abundance

What do you think it’s like to live in a home that’s filled with stuff you really want? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s wonderful. It feels very abundant. Whenever I walk around my home, it’s like the furniture is broadcasting positive affirmations. “You can fulfill your desires.” “You deserve abundance.” “You are successful.” “Life is good.”

Compare this to living in a place filled with compromises. Mixed messages are broadcast instead. “You’re a person who settles.” “You can’t always get what you want.” “You need to save money.” “You cheap bastard!”

Now, do you think it makes a difference which environment you live in day after day? You bet it does.

When I walk around my home and feel those good feelings, it’s very motivating. My life feels very abundant. I feel more creative. I’m more motivated to make a contribution. When I feel that the universe is supporting me so lovingly, I feel naturally inclined to give back.

The old way was more stressful. My home would feel comfortable but lacking. Instead of enjoying what I had, I secretly wished I could replace it with something better. There was this nagging feeling of incompleteness.

My house isn’t perfect. There’s still some old stuff that gives me mixed feelings here and there, but I’m gradually transitioning away from that, and it feels good to do so.

This experience has made me more understanding of why so many highly successful people have lavishly decorated homes and offices. They’re simply creating and experiencing what they desire — no compromises. When they get what they want, it helps them enjoy a more abundant state of being, whereby they can be more resourceful and creative.

On the other hand, if you live and work in an environment that doesn’t match what you really want, you’re sending yourself a different message. You’re proclaiming that life is limited and that you’re powerless to fulfill your desires. You’re settling for something you don’t really want. Is that going to lead to happiness? No, you’ll always fall short.

Years ago I’d have thought that paying top dollar for the very best was extremely wasteful. I had major issues with people who lived like that. How dare they live in luxury while so many other people don’t even have their basic needs met? What a cruel and wicked thing to do! But now I see it in a totally different light. I recognize that compromise is out of alignment with the principle of Love. It’s not the nature of life to deny your desires, but we always have the power to live in self-denial in accordance with our beliefs. To fully align yourself with the principle of Love, you must figure out what you truly want and give yourself permission to connect with it.

Releasing your blocks to abundance

Does it ever bug you that people who live in the lap of luxury are capable of much greater generosity than you are? (This used to bug me a lot.)

How does it feel knowing that such people can donate millions (sometimes billions) of dollars to charity without sacrificing anything they truly desire?

Can you do that?

Do you know for a fact that such people would have achieved this same level of giving if they denied more of their desires? Do you ever claim they should do without certain luxuries so they can give even more?

Did you ever consider that this type of thinking could be a symptom of your own lack of abundance? Have you ever thought that the ability to give so much may be a result of getting past self-denial and compromise? Is it possible to fulfill all your personal desires and become uber-generous at the same time — no compromising? Is it possible that either-or thinking might be sabotaging you from achieving either of these goals?

Desire is a very personal thing. Be careful not to compare yourself to others. Bill Gates may desire a $40 million mansion, while Warren Buffet is just fine living in a modest home. Obviously they can both easily afford any kind of home on the planet, but their desires are different.

How to afford what you truly want

I suppose the big question you might have is, How can I possibly afford to get what I want?

What if what you want costs a lot more than what you have available to spend?

I’m not suggesting that you go into debt and live beyond your means. Here’s what I do recommend:

Make fewer purchases for starters. When you do make a key purchase, be willing to spend whatever it takes to get what you really want. Buy less stuff, but go for top quality.

Raise your standards for each individual purchase. Ask yourself, “What would I buy if money were no object? What would I buy if I could easily afford anything? What do I actually want, regardless of price?”

Get clear about your true desires. Forget about the price tags for a moment. Admit to yourself what you really want. Stay in that higher vibration of fulfillment and abundance, and stay out of the lower vibration of compromise and scarcity.

Instead of buying three items that are compromises, pool your resources to buy one item that you truly want, and do without the other two items for a while… at least until you can afford what you really want there as well.

Suppose you want to buy a new cell phone. Which phone and plan would you select if you won a contest that guaranteed you any phone you wanted with a lifetime plan of your choice for free?

When you’re thinking about making a purchase, forget about the money at first. Don’t try to determine value in terms of features vs. price. Instead, see if you can identify the very best item in accordance with your desires. If you could snap your fingers and have any item you desire for free, what would it be? Sometimes you’ll pick one of the most expensive items on the market, but other times the item that best fulfills your desires will be a simpler, less expensive model.

How can I afford it?

Once you’ve identified what you really want, then take note of the price. If you can easily afford it, go ahead and buy it. It’s what you want after all. Don’t block yourself. Don’t be a cheapskate. What do you think money is for anyway? Do you think you’ll get more joy out of life by staring at your bank balance?

If affording the desired item seems like it would be a financial challenge, then ask yourself, “How can I afford this?” Is it really out of your league, or is it possible that you could earn it? If you come up with a way to intelligently afford the item, then make it so. Don’t hold yourself back.

Could you afford the item by having a garage sale to get rid of some of your old junk? Could you put in a few more hours at work? Could you pounce on an opportunity that you’ve been dismissing? Could you come up with a way to create and deliver more value, thereby boosting your income? Could you acquire the item creatively, such as by bartering for it.

Do NOT obsess over the price of the item. Do NOT worry about whether or not it’s a good value relative to your income.

Obsess over your desire instead. Hold the intention to acquire the item with ease. Imagine that it’s already yours. Picture yourself enjoying it. Feel grateful for it in advance. Think about how much you’ll appreciate it.

If you do this right and avoid blocking yourself, you’ll find that something rather amazing happens. The money you need may simply show up in your life. A new opportunity may present itself that makes it easy to get the money. The item itself may come into your life through an expected turn of events. The item may go on sale, making it affordable for you.

Be watchful for synchronicities related to the item. Follow them.

Desire acts like a magnet. Once you tune into your desires, allow your desires to manifest. Don’t block yourself by returning to thoughts of scarcity. Don’t assume you can’t have what you want. Don’t think about settling for a less desirable substitute. Know that what you want is already coming to you.

As far as the universe is concerned, there’s no difference between a $10 item and a $10,000 item.  The reason the $10K item seems more difficult to manifest is because of your beliefs. You believe it’s harder to manifest, and so it is.

Start small

Begin with purchases that cause you to stretch a little but which you can easily afford. Start with purchases that aren’t going to make a major dent in your finances.

When you go out to eat, order what you really want, regardless of price. If you want an appetizer, drink, and dessert with your meal, get them. Get used to ordering off a menu without even looking at the prices.

When you go grocery shopping, buy what you actually want, even if it raises your bill a little. Stock your kitchen with the healthiest, tastiest foods you can find. Buy less food if you have to, but don’t settle for cheap junk just to save a few dollars. If you go cheap, you’ll likely be eating lots of wheat-, corn-, and soy-based products with different flavorings added. Avoid phony foods that add natural flavors, artificial flavors, sugars, salt, and coloring to make them look and taste better than the mush they’re really made from. Cheap foods create the illusion of variety, fooling you into eating a very limited and unhealthy diet. Spend more on fresh, organic produce to get real variety. Which items would you buy if you had a pre-paid shopping spree?

Cheap items are cheap for a reason. Quality has been sacrificed to lower the costs, and creative packaging makes it look more valuable than it really is. For example, if you buy regular white vinegar off the shelf in a grocery store (the cheapest vinegar you can get), be aware that you’re buying a product that’s actually made from a coal tar derivative. Use it to clean your house, but don’t put that stuff in your body if you have a modicum of intelligence. The same goes for buying cheap products that include “vinegar” on the label such as the cheap name-brand ketchups and salad dressings. Buy only real food. If you can’t afford to buy real food, grow it yourself for pennies on the dollar.

When buying clothes, go for quality over quantity. Get outfits that are durable, that fit you, and that look good on you, even if you have to pay more for them. If you go cheap, you’ll pay for it in the long run.

If you’ve never shopped for top quality before, it may feel uncomfortable at first. Stick with it. It gets easier over time.

As you gain comfort with small purchases, up the ante a bit. Keep progressing to bigger items. Gradually condition yourself to believe that you can afford anything you want.

Appreciation and gratitude

When you get what you want, receive it with gratitude. Take time to appreciate it. Enjoy it fully.

Give yourself the message that you can have whatever you desire. You just have to identify it and claim it.

This is how to live in harmony with abundance.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Do you admire and respect them? Do you speak highly of them?

Or are you suspicious of them? Do you criticize or attack them?

What’s the true role of these people in your life? What do they represent?

Subjectively speaking, your relationship with the most successful people in your reality represents your relationship to success itself. Those people represent your potential and how you feel about it.

I use the term “relationship” to mean your general attitude toward people who are ultra-successful. It doesn’t matter if you know them personally because your relationships are all in your mind anyway.

If you don’t know any very successful people personally, but you still hold strong opinions about some of them, that is very telling as well. It indicates that you don’t have a close personal relationship with your own success potential.

On the other hand, if you count highly successful people among your closest and dearest friends and family, that’s equally telling. It suggests that you have a close personal connection to your own success potential.

Birds of a feather

Objectively speaking, successful people flock together. You really don’t see highly successful people all by themselves, surrounded by those who have a negative attitude towards success. The movers and shakers in any field tend to be friends and often hang out together.

Similarly, people who have a negative attitude toward success flock together as well.

If you want to get a better picture of your own relationship to success, look to the people you hang out with. Do you befriend a lot of successful people? Or do you hang out with those who resent them or who are envious of them? This will give you a good picture of your relationship to success itself.

It’s all too easy to say that you have a successful attitude, but if you keep company with those who shun success, you’re incongruent.

Successful and unsuccessful people tend to repel each other, at least in terms of forming close friendships. One reason is that unsuccessful people are constantly complaining. They’re veritable fountains of grievances. They do it dozens of times per day, usually without being aware of it. If you ask them what they think of any random celebrity, it’s a virtual guarantee they’ll focus mainly on what they don’t like about that person.

Successful people, on the other hand, are constantly talking about their dreams, goals, and projects. This doesn’t mean they’re blindly optimistic about everything. They simply have a strong tendency to focus on what they want. They inspire and motivate themselves, and they inspire and motivate each other.

When you put the two different types of people together, you have the unsuccessful people talking about their grievances, which annoys and disturbs the highly successful people if overdone. Initially a successful person may try to help out by offering advice or mentoring. But when s/he observes that the unsuccessful person applies none of it and comes up with excuses to maintain the status quo, it’s an immediate turnoff. The successful person will usually bow out and go where his/her talents and skills are appreciated.

Similarly, you have the successful people constantly yabbering on about their goals and dreams. This annoys the unsuccessful people to no end. They can’t stand it. They’ll often try to “help” the successful people by cautioning them about negative outcomes. But successful people aren’t phased and continue to press on anyway. The unsuccessful person can’t keep up and ducks out.

Attitude

Being successful or unsuccessful isn’t about how much money or status you’ve achieved. It’s an internal quality. It’s your attitude.

I’ve met people who have a lot of money, but their attitude toward successful people is so negative, they repel such people everywhere they go. I’ve also met people who are dead broke, but they easily attract highly successful mentors to help them out, and it isn’t long before their external world begins to reflect their inner truth.

When you harbor negative feelings toward successful people, you push success away. When you harbor positive feelings toward them, your own success draws nearer.

I’ve seen a very basic form of this advice in many books on wealth and success. You’ve probably encountered it as well. It goes something like, “If you hate wealthy and successful people, you’ll never be one of them because you won’t allow yourself to become something you hate.”

There’s some truth to that, but I think it’s easier to see why it works when you view it through the lens of subjective reality. Since your relationships are all in your mind, your relationship towards any particular class of people is a reflection of your relationship with whatever those people represent to you.

This means that you can understand your relationship to success by exploring your relationships with the most successful people in your reality.

Are the most successful people in your life close to you? Do you count them among your dearest friends? Or are they way off in the distance somewhere?

Do you love successful people? Do you speak highly of them? Do you feel loved and appreciated by them? Or do you shun them? Do they shun you? Do you move in totally different circles?

Who do you think is responsible for that?

A simple exercise

Select a person you regard as very successful. It doesn’t matter if you’ve actually met the person.

Take a few minutes to write down your thoughts about this person, including what you like and don’t like. Then read back what you wrote as if you’ve been writing about your own relationship to success.

I think you’ll find this exercise very insightful.

What if you’ve never even met the other person? How can you possibly know what they’re like? Where is your attitude really coming from? Your own beliefs about success are filtering it.

Seeing it from the other side

Have you ever been told that someone you’ve never met holds a certain attitude toward you. “Joe absolutely adores you; he talks about you all the time.” “Mary thinks you’re a loser; she talks about you behind your back.”

Does it strike you as odd that people could form such strong opinions about you without actually meeting you?

I get this all the time as a blogger. Lots of people hold strong opinions about me, but the ones with the strongest opinions have never even met me. To back up their opinions, they select a few clips to support their opinion from the nearly 2 million words I’ve written. Of course they’re really selecting to match their beliefs about whatever I represent to them, perhaps their own relationship to personal growth since that’s what I write about.

I’ve noticed that people who hold a low opinion of personal development will invariably hold similar thoughts toward me. I’m lame or stupid because of what I represent to them. Those who love personal development and have a strong relationship with their own growth tend to feel good about me. I’m helpful or brilliant because of what I represent.

I’m just using this as a general example. To a lot of people I represent growth and change because that’s what I write about, so this is the role people assign me in their reality. But of course it could be something entirely different. It’s your reality, so you assign the roles.

What do I represent in your reality? Can you see how your attitude toward me is a reflection of your attitude toward whatever I represent? Is it possible you’re assigning qualities to me that may be inaccurate and that your opinion might shift if we had a face-to-face conversation?

How to become more successful

If you wish to become more successful, then work on improving your relationship with the most successful people in your life.

Forgive them. Befriend them. Love them. Do whatever it takes.

Forgive, love, and befriend the part of yourself that wants to have a positive connection to success.

This doesn’t mean hanging out with people whose values and morals disgust you. Just loosen your grip on some of your criticisms. Realize that successful people are human.

Notice what blocks come up. What is it about highly successful people that really bugs you?

For example, if you get caught up in thinking about their character and personality flaws, what does that say about you? Does it mean that in order for you to have a close relationship with success, you must be perfect? Is that realistic? Can you see that you’re always going to repel success with that attitude because you’ll never be perfect?

I’ve seen this happen with some of my long-term readers. I write hundreds of articles they love, but as soon as I write about that one hot-button issue where we have a difference of opinion, they send me a nasty email and tell me I’ve lost them forever, despite numerous breakthroughs they previously thanked me profusely for helping them achieve. This often happens when they’re getting close to success in their own lives, but they aren’t ready for it.

Do you expect every teacher or mentor to be perfect? Do you expect to see eye-to-eye in every situation? Will you run away forever if someone challenges you in a way you don’t like?

Is this how you’d like to see other people deal with your success? Do you want them to put you on a pedestal, to analyze your every action, to expect perfection from you at all times?

Or would you prefer to be treated like a human being, accepted and loved as you are? Is this how you relate to the successful people in your life?

What if you believe that successful people are greedy? Do you ever complain that they should donate more to charity? What does that say about you? Are you more greedy than you realize but secretly resentful of your own selfishness? Do you feel you should be donating more than you are?

What do you think about enjoying the rewards of success? Can you feel good when some celebrity rewards themselves? Do you feel guilty about rewarding yourself with a treat now and then? Or do you feel good about it, knowing that rewarding yourself helps motivate you to create even more value for others?

Becoming congruent with success

We all have blocks that keep us out of harmony with our great potential. The people in our lives are always reflecting that inner attitude back to us.

To fix the inner attitude problem, you must at some point admit that you were wrong and forgive yourself for it.

“I was wrong about so-and-so. Perhaps he isn’t such a bad guy after all. Maybe he’s just human. I will do my best to love and accept him as he is.”

You can extend what I’ve said about success to any quality or character trait. Your feelings toward sexy people reflects your relationship with your own sexiness. Your feelings toward healthy people reflects your relationship with health. Your feelings toward rich people reflects your relationship with wealth. Your feelings toward creative people reflects your relationship with your own creativity. Your feelings toward highly productive people reflects your relationship with productivity. Your feelings toward highly spiritual people reflects your relationship with spirituality.

How do you feel about psychics? Are you skeptical? Do you feel they’re all frauds and charlatans? Do you harbor serious doubts about their so-called gifts? If so, does it surprise you that your own psychic senses are virtually nonexistent? Do you wonder why your intuition is so cloudy that you can never trust it?

On the other hand, do you feel that psychics are loving people with a special gift to share? Do you accept their guidance with gratitude? Is it any wonder that you’re also able to gain much value from your own intuitive and psychic senses? Do other people comment on how gifted you are?

If you hate or distrust certain people, you’re pushing away that part of yourself. If you love and accept certain people, you’re in harmony with that part of yourself.

You can massively accelerate your personal growth by tweaking these relationships consciously and deliberately. It’s all in your mind anyway.

As within, so without

When you make the inner adjustment, your external world will shift to reflect the inner change.

Recently I did some inner work on my attitude towards certain people. My block had to do with people who spend money on nonessentials, sometimes as a way of rewarding themselves. Spending money on nonessential items would usually make me feel uncomfortable, even if I could easily afford it.

Erin and I had a 13-year old couch in our home that was ripped in a couple places and pretty ratty looking. One of the built-in recliners was broken. She’d been talking about getting a new couch for at least a couple years, probably longer, but I always blocked her. “This couch is fine. We don’t need to spend money on a new one.” We had plenty of money though, and a new couch wouldn’t make a serious dent in our finances. She tried to get us to go couch shopping a few times, but I rejected her choices. There was always something wrong with them.

After doing some inner work on my attitude toward spending money and enjoying the rewards of success, I was able to get past this block. We went couch shopping and were helped by an exceedingly gregarious and non-pushy salesman. We shopped with an attitude of positive expectancy and soon found the perfect couch for our space. We also found some great recliner chairs and small tables for one of our upstairs rooms, and we bought those too.

When we got home, Erin posted an ad on Craigslist to offer our old couch for free to anyone who was willing to pick it up. We would have donated it to charity, but most charities wouldn’t take it. Erin got about 40 replies to her ad in 24 hours, and we gave the old couch to some people who were grateful to squeeze more life out of it.

I’m very much enjoying the new couch and chairs. In retrospect it seems like such a silly block to have. The solution was that I had to reassess my attitude toward people who use their money to reward themselves. I went from “What a waste of money; do they really need a new X?” to “Great to see people enjoying the rewards of success; they certainly deserve it!” Once I shifted my attitude toward others, my inner relationship with that aspect of abundance also changed. And soon my external reality came into harmony with the new attitude.

Even working through small blocks can bring more success into your life, sometimes in unexpected ways. Around the same time I was working through this block, some new interview requests came in. Later this month Deepak Chopra will be interviewing me for his radio show, and next month Jack Canfield is scheduled to interview me as well. Did they appear on my radar as a result of my inner shift?

Who are the people you hate most in your life? Who are the people you love most? Can you admit that your attitude toward those people is going to have to change if you want to change your relationship with what they represent?

Can you see that if you harbor ill feelings toward the top performers in your field, you’ll never become a top performer yourself?

Before posting this article, I asked Erin to give it a quick read. When she was done, she asked me, “How do you feel about people who have decent patio furniture?”

What, those losers???

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

It can be very unsettling — and frustrating beyond belief — when our old solutions no longer create the results we expect. We do what we think is best — we know it’s the right thing to do — but our tried and trusted routines seem to be broken for some odd reason. The harder we try, the worse we feel. It’s like sinking into an invisible abyss.

Why does this happen?

At some point in your life, your old patterns of success must break down to make way for something new. The lessons you learned that enabled you to succeed at one level of awareness (even if you consider your success to be moderate) must be shed in order for you to become something more.

Let me share my personal experience with this challenge. It was in the  early 2000s, and I was happily running my computer game publishing business. The business was profitable, I was doing interesting work I enjoyed, and customers were happy. I did a ton of work on the side to help other software developers succeed, including serving for a year as President of a non-profit association. I had a good life, a loving wife, and good friends. I had interesting goals, and my future looked bright.

But very slowly over a period of many months (perhaps years), I began to feel that something wasn’t right. My drive and motivation were slowly sinking. I didn’t feel as happy as I thought I should be. I was getting what I wanted, but it wasn’t enough. However, I couldn’t say what was missing. There were other things that I wanted, but most of what I wanted I already had, or it was well on its way. I should have been very happy and fulfilled, and for a while that seemed to be the case, but little by little, I began feeling worse and worse.

Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Was I eating the wrong foods? Was I not exercising enough… or not doing the right kind of exercise? Maybe I just needed to mix things up a bit for more variety — take on some new projects. Maybe I needed to read more books or attend more seminars to find the answer. Maybe I needed to spend more time meditating and journaling.

I put in a ton of effort trying to diagnose the problem, but each time I thought I’d figured it out and tried to implement a solution, it never worked. At best I’d be enthusiastic for a few days, and inevitably that slow sinking feeling would return. The best I could do was to distract myself from it with entertainment — novels, video games, etc. But even then I could still feel this sense of dread lurking in the shadows of my consciousness.

Months passed, and I kept trying new ways to diagnose the problem and new solutions. My income started to go down because I wasn’t as motivated to work. Even the simplest tasks on my to-do list seemed unusually burdensome. Intuitively I knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then in mid-2004, partly on a whim, I decided to attend Hay House’s I Can Do It! conference in Las Vegas. On the first day of the conference, I listened to a 3-hour talk by Dr. Dyer about the power of intention and living on purpose. Instantly I recognized the truth of his words. I was stunned. Throughout much of his talk, I either had tears in my eyes, or I was shaking. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I knew that my life had just been spun off in a totally different direction.

While listening to Dr. Dyer, I had a sudden flash of clarity. It was a glimpse into my future. I knew what I was supposed to do next, but it was too big to accept all at once. I heard a voice in my head say to me, “Your place is on that stage.” I knew it was true, but my reaction at the time was close to panic. If what I was experiencing was really accurate, it would effectively mean dismantling everything I’d spent the last decade building, including the identity I’d created for myself.

The rest of that conference was also extremely eye-opening, not as shocking to me as the first day, but it gave me more of what I needed to know. It was incredibly inspiring to be around so many other people who were also looking for meaning and purpose in their lives.

It took a while to process that experience and to make sense of it. For the next few months, I felt like I was living in two worlds. My external reality continued largely unchanged for a while, but internally I was a different person. I’d been inspired by a greater purpose, and I could see where I was supposed to go next. I knew that I was no longer a game developer. I had something more significant that I was supposed to do, and it was time to get to it.

Later that year I launched StevePavlina.com, not really knowing how I was going to succeed on that path. But success wasn’t that important to me at the time because this new path just felt so incredibly good. It was like being wrapped in a blanket of bliss. I was so happy with what I was doing that it didn’t bother me that my games business was only earning about 25% of what it could have been making… or that my new personal development website only earned $167 in the first six months… about 17 cents an hour since I was working on it full-time.

Fast forward five years. My games business is a thing of the past, and I now run a thriving personal development business. Hay House is my book publisher. I spoke at the I Can Do It! conference twice last year, and I met Dr. Dyer — and many other Hay House authors. The vision I had in 2004 was eerily prophetic.

These external changes serve as nice validation, but they don’t represent the essence of the transformation I had to go through. The real changes were internal — a shift in my consciousness.

Instead of putting success and achievement first in my life, I had to begin thinking in terms of happiness, fulfillment, purpose, and service. It took a long time for me to accept that the simple act of helping other people made me feel very happy, more than achieving a goal I’d set only for myself. Intuitively I could see that this was true, but mentally accepting it was the truly hard part. Logically it just didn’t seem like that’s how life was supposed to work. It seemed like I’d be happier if I worked on my own goals to get what I wanted instead of doing nice things for others.

Eventually I said to myself, “Okay, so I get a kick out of helping people. Maybe I should just focus on that.” And then the voice of fear blurted out, “But you’ll starve. You’ll go broke. You’ll fail. That strategy won’t work. You’ve gotta look out for number one. If you don’t do that, things will turn out very badly.”

For a while I believed those fears. They seemed so sensible and grounded, and the alternative seemed so unrealistic and airy fairy. But I resolved this conflict by getting curious. I admitted to myself that I really don’t understand how life works. Maybe my assumptions about how life works are inaccurate. I opted to try the service-based approach to see what would happen. I decided to accept that the outcome might be bad, but I had to find out for sure. At the same time, I began to recognize a deeper truth: If I don’t absolutely enjoy my life, then I’ve failed as a human being… no matter what else I accomplished along the way. So I began making it a priority to feel good about my life, and I noticed I feel very, very good when I’m helping people, and I don’t feel good when I’m too focused on myself. The more I experimented, the more obvious the pattern became.

But there was something even more significant happening. I gradually learned that when I focused on helping others, my own needs were getting met, and my personal desires were getting fulfilled. In fact, it was practically effortless. I barely even had to attend to my own personal goals because they largely fell into my lap. Money began flowing in greater quantities, and soon I was receiving much more than I was spending. New friends and contacts began showing up with exciting opportunities. What I wanted sometimes literally was delivered to my doorstep.

I realized that the universe already knows what I want and need. It’s not set up to deny my desires. It wants me to be fulfilled. But it needs me to make the first move. I have to hold myself in the state of emitting happiness, and then the universe can send my desires to me. And the way I emit happiness is by helping others be happy.

If you’re unhappy, the universe cannot bring you what you want. Your goals will remain unachieved, your desires unfulfilled. If you think those things will bring you greater happiness, then you’ve created a bridge between those new experiences and a particular state of being. In order to attract those experiences into your life, you must move toward the corresponding state of being. If you don’t do that, you’ll repel your desires instead of attracting them.

I know that I’m happiest when I focus my energy on helping people. That vibration makes me feel blissful, and it draws all my desires into my life. When I keep myself in that space, I feel joyful and fulfilled, and I don’t struggle with stress or depression. But when I stray from that mindset and get sucked back into socially conditioned values like success and achievement as the chief aims of life, that slow sinking feeling gradually returns, and soon it becomes obvious that I’ve gotten off track.

The good news is that when you know you’re sinking and you recognize that you’re not feeling good about your life, you can reorient yourself quickly and begin feeling good again. Just run through a few different thoughts of what you might do next, and notice how each thought makes you feel. Then act on the thought that makes you feel best.

I wasn’t actually planning to write an article today. But while I was reviewing some reader questions and also thinking about the DVD I watched last night, I started getting some ideas for a new article. I jotted down a few ideas, and a few paragraphs later, I noticed the article was beginning to write itself. I observed the thought of writing an article, and it felt very blissful to me. I thought about putting it off for later, and that thought didn’t feel as good. So two hours later, here I am… still writing… and it feels very joyful and effortless to do so. I am starting to get hungry though.

Don’t look to past solutions. Stay in the present. Know that life is always reflecting back to you what you are. If you’re feeling stressed and tight, it’s because that’s the person you’ve become. That is the vibration you’re emitting. If you don’t like what the world is giving you, it’s because what you’re giving the world does not make you feel good.

The lesson here is very simple: Stop acting on thoughts that don’t make you feel good. Keep cycling through different thoughts until you find one that makes you feel good. Then act on it.

Seek to optimize the feelgoodness of the thoughts you choose to act on. Dismiss the thoughts that don’t feel good. Turn toward the thoughts that make you feel best. Let go and trust in those good thoughts, and stop analyzing them to death and killing the good feelings before you have a chance to act on them. Follow the feeling of bliss; it will not lead you astray.

This morning I was feeling a little bit off. I had a mild sense of tightness and stress in my body. So I asked myself, “How can I feel blissful and happy again?” And the answer came back, “Do something to help someone right now.” I thought the fastest way to do that would be to post a message on my Twitter account that might help someone. I sat quietly with that intention and allowed the words to come. I posted a simple message: You do not have to struggle today. It felt good to post that. It was a reminder to me as well.

Then I asked, “What else can I do to help people right now?” I thought I could answer some of my emails. I don’t have time to answer all the advice requests I get, and I actively discourage people from asking for advice by email. It just isn’t practical for me to answer all the questions that come in each day. But every once in a while, I’ll sit down and type some replies for an hour or so to answer people’s questions when I think I can be helpful and when it feels good to do so.

By the time I’d gone through about 20 emails, I was feeling pretty good. And then I got a message from a friend that was a response to the Twitter message I posted earlier today. She said that she’d asked the universe for guidance to help her overcome some confusion in her life, and my short 7-word message was the answer she needed to hear. It relaxed her and helped her in a way she needed to be helped. Reading her email made me smile.

Interesting synchronicities like this happen all the time when I stay in the flow of being happy and doing what I can to help people. But when I get too caught up in personal ambition and lose sight of meaning, fulfillment, and purpose, the synchronicities go away. I can tell when I’m back on track because the synchronicities immediately start flowing again. It’s magical how that happens.

When I’m in a good state of being, and I experience an unfulfilled need, the universe says, “Sure, no problem. Here you go.” When I’m out of alignment with my higher self, however, the universe says, “Sorry, can’t help you.”

A couple weeks ago, I was in a bookstore browsing through some tech books. I started getting some ideas for a new article, and I thought to myself, Crap… I need to write this down, but I don’t have any paper or a pen. I searched my pockets, and I found some old movie ticket stubs — with just enough blank space to jot down the ideas I was getting. Then I thought, Okay, I’ve got paper. Now I need a pen. I got caught up in another idea, and while I was pondering it, I paced a couple steps, turned on instinct, and saw two pens sitting on the bookshelf right next of me. I love that kind of service. The funny thing is that when I try to get these kinds of manifestations for my own personal goals, it rarely works. But it happens all the time when I’m working on something for other people, like writing a new article that I intend to share for free.

You may be very frustrated when you hit the afternoon of life and try to apply the same solutions that worked for you in the morning of life. I found it very difficult to admit to myself that what I was doing was no longer making me happy and fulfilled, even though I had every reason to believe it would. That was a truth that was very hard to swallow. I kept looking to re-implement what worked in the past, but those solutions ceased to be effective and usually made things worse.

If you strive for happiness, you’ll never find it. Happiness is only found in the present. It’s something you can create right now, in this very moment. I experience happiness when I put out happiness, i.e. when I act with the intention of making other people happy. When I’m feeling a bit down and I stop myself and say, “Let’s forget about me for a moment and do something nice for others,” the negative feelings subside, and a sense of bliss flows in to replace them. It’s quite simple in practice. The challenge is remembering to do it.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

In order to believe you’ll succeed, you must believe your goal is possible for you, and you must also believe that you’re actually going to reach your destination. If you don’t believe your goal is possible for you, you’ll block yourself. If you believe it’s possible but you don’t believe you’ll realistically get there, you’ll block yourself. 

Beliefs exist at the subconscious level, so they typically operate below the level of conscious awareness. But you can witness their effects when you set a new goal and then notice the various ways in which you block yourself from achieving it quickly. Maybe you procrastinate. Maybe you hold back due to fear. Maybe you question whether or not you’re worthy of some new accomplishment. Maybe you make avoidable mistakes that sabotage your progress. Much of the resistance you experience is coming from your subconscious beliefs.

Fortunately your subconscious mind can be conditioned to hold new beliefs. It is highly programmable. If you keep exposing it to certain inputs, it gradually learns those patterns. Just as you can learn to ride a bicycle or drive a car, you can learn to believe something different than what you believe right now. It is largely a matter of time and training. 

There are countless techniques for reconditioning your subconscious mind, all with varying degrees of effectiveness for different individuals. Some people find verbal affirmations effective. Others enjoy self-hypnosis or NLP techniques. 

In a general sense, I like to condition my subconscious by hanging out with happy, forward-thinking people because their positive beliefs will infect me. (This implies avoiding negative-minded or pessimistic people for the same reasons.) I also like to expose my mind to at least an hour of positive material per day, such as books, audio programs, DVDs, and Paraliminals. 

These are all good for overall positive mental conditioning, but what about conditioning new beliefs that are conducive to the achievement of specific goals?

Creating a belief board

One specific conditioning method I use is to put up a belief board in my office. Since this is visual, perhaps the best way to explain it is by referring you to a recent video that shows what it looks like. This video was filmed on Friday when raw foodie friends Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes visited with Erin and me. The belief board segment begins at 5:09. 

In that video you’ll see a cork board on the wall of my home office with several pages posted on it. Each page contains a single belief that I’m working to install. Some of those beliefs are based on specific goals or habits, while others read like general positive affirmations. 

For example, the first item on the belief board says, “I am extremely productive.” That’s not a clear and specific goal per se, but it is a positive belief to install. 

I like the belief board because it’s completely passive. It takes only minutes to create one, and I don’t have to adopt any new daily practices like reciting affirmations. I don’t even have to consciously remember that it’s there. It’s essentially a fire-and-forget technique.

My belief board is posted on the wall in front of my desk and slightly off to the side, about 10 feet from where I sit, so my eyes are taking it in whenever I’m working at my desk. The whole board is within my visual frame for many hours per day. Although I don’t often consciously pause to read the items on that board, my subconscious gets to chew on them all day long.

Don’t concern yourself with the specific beliefs I post on my belief board. They’re important to me, but you’d undoubtedly come up with different ones based on your own goals.

Effectiveness

Is it effective? For me the answer is yes, most definitely.

You are capable of taking action based on your own conscious decisions. For example, you can decide how you’ll spend your evening and then follow your plan. But interestingly enough, most, if not all, of the ideas that float through your mind actually arise from your subconscious. And those ideas will be filtered through your subconscious beliefs. If you have a lot of self-limiting filters there, you won’t even be able to form and hold onto certain thoughts in your conscious mind that would otherwise empower you. You won’t be able to seriously set certain types of goals because your subconscious will simply block all the thoughts that would enable you to accomplish them. And if your thoughts are being blocked, then so are your actions and your results.

Now by using some conditioning process to install new beliefs into your subconscious mind, you can overwrite some of the old limiting beliefs that you picked up through social conditioning, media conditioning, traumatic experiences, and other sources. This will automatically shift the thoughts that arise in your conscious mind, thereby leading to new actions and new results.

Usually I will notice myself having different thoughts within a couple days of posting a new item on my belief board, and I’ll observe my actions shifting in significant and obvious ways within a week or two.

For example, after I put up “I am extremely productive,” I came up with a simpler way to structure my workdays that is helping me get more done each week. Lately I’ve also been making a lot of tweaks to my productivity habits. One specific change is that I take a lot more breaks throughout the day, usually 10-30 minutes each. This reduces fatigue and keeps my motivation high. During the breaks I often think about how much I want to return to work, so it keeps me in a place of wanting to work instead of having to work.

Another item on my board is “I process email once per day.” The purpose of that belief is to help reinforce one of my productivity habits and to avoid the time-draining practice of checking email various times throughout the day. The obvious shift in my actions there is that I’m processing email less frequently. Sometimes I’d get a little OCD with checking email too often on certain days, but those obsessive thoughts are largely gone now, replaced by other thoughts that are more goal-oriented.

My board has one financial item that says, “I earn $100,000 per month.” I don’t always find specific financial goals meaningful, but this particular goal inspires me for a variety of reasons. I’ve been earning five figures a month for several years now, and I feel ready to experience another level of creativity, contribution, and abundance. I’m also ready to grow my business a lot more in the coming years. 

One specific action that I took after putting this on my board was to form a new local mastermind group for people with similar goals. The group only has three members so far, including Erin and me, but we’ve already had our first meeting and set a date for the second. Based on the results of the first meeting, we’re all very optimistic about it, and we’re holding the intention to attract other members who will be a good fit, namely entrepreneurs who run some kind of information business (blogging, writing, pro speaking, info products, workshops, etc), who are earning a strong six or seven figures a year, and who are looking to grow their businesses even more. Ideally I’d like to grow this group to about 5-7 people with meetings one or twice a month. This is only for entrepreneurs who live in Las Vegas because I definitely want this to be a face-to-face mastermind group.

“Form a local mastermind group” has been on my projects list for many months, but I didn’t make any real progress on it during that time. However, about a week after I posted the $100K/month item on my goal board, the mastermind group came together very quickly. I told Erin about it, and she said, “Let’s do it.” Then I emailed a local friend about it, and he loved the idea. We had our first meeting last week, and we’re off and running. It may take time to build a larger group, but even a three-person mastermind group is better than none at all.

Yet another item on my board is “I am releasing Goal Achievement for Smart People.” GASP is the working title of a new audio program I’ve been developing. I choose this belief because I want my subconscious to believe in the inevitability of that release, so that all the hard work I’m doing will converge to a finished product that actually ships. This is a big project (bigger than writing my book), and it involves a great deal of research and experimenting, so it’s important to keep it moving forward day by day. I need to stay focused on the end goal of shipping a product and avoid getting sidetracked. This item also induced some specific changes that brought this goal closer to reality.

Beliefs can be quite powerful. So far all of the beliefs on my belief board have induced noticeable changes in my thoughts, actions, and results. The changes happen quickly too. In most cases there’s a very obvious difference between day 1 and day 15 after posting a new item on the board.

Optimization and tweaking

Once in a while an item from my belief board will catch my attention. I look up and my eyes will be drawn to one of the beliefs I posted. For some reason It feels off. My subconscious chewed on it for a while, spit it back out, and said, “Um… no. I’m not going to accept this one as-is. You’ll need to fix this. Blech!” 

At that point I pause and reflect for a bit. Invariably some thoughts will arise. Those thoughts are my mind’s objections to that particular belief. My subconscious tells me why that belief is unacceptable. 

For example, I used to have a belief on my board that involved hitting a certain goal weight. It seemed reasonable at the time, but no matter how I phrased it, my subconscious wouldn’t accept it. When I paused for a moment to reflect, I realized that weighing a specific number of pounds doesn’t even make sense for me. I often change up my exercise routine, and lately I’ve been gaining more muscle as a result of doing a lot of strength training. I don’t mind gaining weight during this time, but I want to make sure I’m adding lean tissue and not fat. After a bit of thought, I changed this item to “My body fat is 11%.” That makes more sense to me. So far that one has been on my goal board for about a week, and I’m not feeling any resistance to it. My subconscious has more options for how to integrate this belief. My weight could go up or down from where it is now and still remain congruent with this belief. 

Another item that had to be tweaked was the $100K/month one. Originally I had a slightly smaller figure up there, but my subconscious kept spitting it back out. I soon realized that it just wasn’t ambitious enough. My subconscious was telling me, “You can do better.” This rejection didn’t happen right away though. It only happened when my subconscious had already begun to integrate some of the other items like “I am extremely productive” and “I do the important tasks first.” As those beliefs were getting installed, my original financial goal was subconsciously downgraded from stimulating to boring. So I had to raise the figure to make it more congruent with my other beliefs.

When a belief has been on the board for several weeks and my actions seem fully congruent with it and I’m not feeling any resistance to it, then it’s safe to say that the belief has been successfully integrated. I can then swap it out and put up a new belief I’d like to integrate. 

If you decide to create your own belief board, it’s a good idea to think carefully about what you’re posting. Are these really beliefs you want to install? Will they mutually support each other? Do you detect any conflicts?

Ongoing experimentation

Now you may have some questions like, Can I condition new beliefs that aren’t about me? or What’s the best way to phrase my beliefs? or Can I use images instead of plain text to represent my beliefs? 

The #1 rule here is to experiment to discover what works for you. Give yourself the freedom and flexibility to test new ideas for yourself and see if they make a measurable difference for you. If you find something useful, add it to your bag of tricks. If you find it useless, drop it and move on to something else.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

For example, people write to me all the time saying that they wish they could start a successful blog, but they just don’t know how. They act as if I was magically bestowed with some kind of insider blogger’s knowledge that isn’t equally accessible to them. The truth is that no one really knows how to do something new until they’ve done it. Imagine Wayne Gretzky saying, “I wish I could play hockey, but dammit — I just don’t know how.”

If you were to give those very same complainers a greater incentive to get moving, such as a million-dollar bribe for generating measurable results within 30 days, you’d find that their empty excuses and pointless whining are solidly blasted out of the water. Somehow the lack of knowledge is no longer a serious obstacle for them. (Yes, I’m being harsh on purpose. When such people are in front of me, I prefer to smack them, but in this case I’ll have to settle for a verbal smack.)

I’ve written about this topic before, but this time I’ll tackle it from a totally different angle. In the past I’ve pointed out that with sufficient motivation, you’ll simply go out and acquire whatever knowledge you need. All the raw how-to information you need is probably available online for free anyway. Either that or you can figure out what you need via trial and error if you just start taking action.

Instead of looking at the motivation side, let’s consider the excuse side. Claiming that you lack certain knowledge is an act of denying yourself permission to experience what you desire. It’s a way of blocking yourself from moving toward your goal.

The physical and mental act of acquiring knowledge is really a projection of a deeper event that occurs within your consciousness. That event is the act of giving yourself permission to progress to a new “vibration,” to shift away from your current experience of reality and to graduate to a new experiential level. When your consciousness experiences that internal shift, all the knowledge you need will practically show up at your doorstep. In many cases you don’t even require new knowledge, but if you think you need it, then you’ll experience a learning phase in your physical reality as you progress to the next level.

Why would you ever want to block yourself from going up a level? Why would you stay stuck for so long with feeble excuses like ”I don’t know how” or “I don’t know what to do”?

The answer is that you aren’t ready to progress yet. You haven’t soaked up all the lessons from your current reality. Energetically speaking, you still need to experience and accept some of the energy patterns swirling about you.

To use a video game analogy, imagine your current reality as a level from Pac-Man. You can’t progress to the next level until you gobble up all the pellets on the current map. It’s not a matter of putting in a certain amount of time. If you try to wait it out, you’re just waiting for death. It’s a matter of completion. You can run around the map for quite a while, but if you don’t pick up that last pellet, you’re going to be stuck on that level until you die.

People who complain about not progressing are like Pac-Man players who complain that they can’t pass the current level. Maybe you’re complaining that you can’t figure out how to get those last few pellets. That’s usually because those pellets are on the other side of the ghosts (i.e. your fears). It may take you a long time to pass the level if you always run from the ghosts. Perhaps you need to swallow a power pill (i.e. grow a pair) and run straight at the ghosts of fear to pass the current level. Pac-Man isn’t a game for fraidy cats; nor is real life.

For many years I was stuck at the financial level of being broke. I was constantly struggling against debt, but you can’t pass a level by resisting it and hoping that you somehow get a mercy pass. You have to accept and work with the game board as it is. My solution was to turn toward the ghosts (my fear) and realize that I could still be happy even if I was broke. I learned to stop trying to make money with a scarcity mindset and to start expressing my creativity with an abundance mindset. In truth I had to pick up a lot of pellets (lessons) on the financially broke level, but once I got them all, I was able to progress to a new financial level rather quickly. Of course that new level had plenty of other interesting pellets/lessons to gobble up.

When you’re stuck at a certain level in your health, relationships, finances, career, spiritual growth, or personal habits, and you can’t seem to make any progress, take a moment to stop and look around. The universe knows you want to reach the next level. It’s not blocking you to frustrate you. You’re blocking yourself because deep down, you know you aren’t ready for the next level yet. You still have more lessons to acquire right where you are.

Is the point of playing Pac-Man to get to the next level as quickly as you can? Not really. The point is to have fun.

Is the point of life to immediately jump to a state of infinite health, wealth, relationship nirvana, and spiritual bliss? Of course not. The point is to enjoy the progression through various lessons that help you develop and expand your consciousness. When you pass each level, your reward is a new level with… you guessed it… more lessons. If you don’t learn to enjoy the lessons and the process of growth itself, you’re surely going to stagnate.

If you stop resisting where you are, you’ll find that life becomes a beautiful thing, regardless of what level you’re currently experiencing. You can anticipate the next level while still having immense fun right where you are.

If you want to level up, you have to acknowledge the ghosts on your level. They may seem like bullies, obstacles, or dangers, but in truth their purpose is to make you a better player and to provide you with an interesting experience.

Imagine playing Pac-Man with no ghosts. Every level would be the same. It would be incredibly boring. Nobody would play it. Similarly, no one would want to come to earth and partake in this human experience if there were no ghosts to face here. The ghosts make it interesting.

Confronting ghosts develops your consciousness. Ghosts help you discover new truths about yourself. They motivate you to get moving and pursue your goals. They make you stronger. When you face ghosts, you discover what kind of player you really are. That’s a priceless gift.

To pinpoint the ghosts on your current level, ask yourself, “What parts of my reality am I currently resisting, and why? What parts of my reality do I refuse to fully accept?”

When you’re about to go up a level in a video game, what kind of emotions do you feel? I usually feel a sense of excitement, fun, and gratitude. Don’t you basically feel the same way when you level-up in real life?

When you aren’t close to that level-up feeling, it means you aren’t ready to level up.

Leveling up occurs when you’ve completed the current level. This doesn’t mean you tie up every loose end in your life. It simply means that you’ve integrated the key lessons you needed to learn.

If you’re broke and wanting to experience financial abundance, have you learned the key lessons of being broke? Are you feeling immensely grateful for everything that financial scarcity has taught you? Or are you still running away from your ghosts?

If you’re single and wanting to experience a relationship, have you learned the lessons of being single at this time in your life? Do you feel happy and grateful when you’re alone because of all the beautiful gifts you’ve gained from it? Or are you railing against it, thereby preventing yourself from moving on?

If you’re struggling to figure out your life purpose and/or to choose a career direction, have you learned the lessons of being directionless? Do you feel grateful for the freedom and limitlessness of options you have right now? Or do you still resist your current experience of reality?

You can’t move forward in life by hating where you are.

Whenever you resist your reality, you deny your own creative power. You make yourself powerless to progress. You’re like a Pac-Man player that swears “I hate this game” and slams the joystick in anger. That isn’t going to help you level up.

When you’re ready to be grateful for your current experience of reality, warts and all, you’re ready to level up. Now you’re reclaiming your creative power, which is the very power you need to manifest the new level you desire. When you rail against the reality you’re experiencing, you simultaneously deny your power to create something new.

Resistance is powerlessness. Acceptance is power.

Imagine an artist surrounded by her paintings. Suppose she dislikes them so much that she denies creating them. Is that going to put her in a place to go and paint something better? Of course not. She’ll probably just sit around sulking.

Now imagine that same artist, feeling grateful for all the paintings she created. She acknowledges that she created them. This doesn’t mean she feels they’re her best work, but she appreciates each piece for what it taught her. Her early work may not be much to look at, but it’s still precious. The true gift she experienced from creating all that art was her progressive refinement as an artist.

Similarly, when you look at any part of your life with disdain, you deny that you’re the artist who created it. Maybe it’s your early work, and it’s not much to look at, but you can’t progress by denying that it’s yours.

What would be the market price for Picasso’s first crappy pre-school drawing today? Don’t deny the value of your own ”suck period.”

When people do make progress — real progress — in some area of their lives, how do they look back on their past experiences? Usually they look back with gratitude, nostalgia, love, and appreciation. If they look back with resistance, they’re probably still repeating those same lessons in their lives today.

I don’t hate the years of my life when I was broke. I look back on those times with fondness. I smile when I remember how Erin and I squeezed three people and two businesses into a small apartment on a noisy street. It’s funny to remember that we once used a cardboard box as a piece of furniture. I was able to move on from that period of my life because I allowed myself to fully accept it. I now know how important it was for me to have those experiences. I’m very glad that I went through that period. It was a cool level to play through.

What about those times when I was arrested and stuck in jail? I feel grateful for those experiences too. I don’t look back and feel hatred towards anyone. But at the time, I resisted those experiences tremendously. That’s why I had to keep repeating them. I wasn’t ready for the next level. Eventually I learned to fully accept those experiences because of what they taught me. For starters, those experiences turned me on to the pursuit of personal growth.

Are there still parts of my life that I’m resisting today? Of course. We all have those blocks. When we’re ready to face them, we’ll do so.

Blocking yourself from reaching the next level isn’t the end of the world. It’s okay to be where you are and to stay there for a while — assuming that’s what you want to experience. For example, income-wise you may hold yourself at a certain level because you’re still soaking up the experience. Maybe you don’t want to boost your income because you’re quite happy with your current level. That’s absolutely fine.

When a block becomes a problem is when you feel stunted and trapped in your reality. You anxiously crave different experiences, and you’re bored or frustrated with the doldrums of your current level. That’s a signal that you need to turn toward those ghosts and face them head-on. It’s time to build your strength and move forward.

Long-term stuckness boils down to running from fear — fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection. We all run from these fears at times. We’re only human. Lots of stuff scares us. Even the best Pac-Man players spend a lot of time running from ghosts. Ghosts are scary.

But we’re also more than human. We’re creators. We have the power within us to dig deep and proclaim, “Enough of this. I’m summoning my power to create a new reality.” We can self-prescribe a power pill. But in order to summon this power, we MUST acknowledge and accept what we’ve already created.

Imagine the Biblical God visiting this planet and saying, “Adam and Eve? Heaven and Earth? Nope, wasn’t me!” That’s what we do when we resist some aspect of our current reality. A mountain of debt? A sucky relationship? No, wasn’t me! Yeah, right… as if the credit card charges just appeared out of thin air and the wedding ring was glued to your finger by a mischievous fairy.

Look around at your reality for a moment, take a deep breath, stick your chest out, and say, “Yup… that was ME!” Take credit for all that you’ve created, even if you don’t think you deserve it. When you claim credit for what you’ve already created, you simultaneously summon the power to create something new. Never deny what you’ve created. That would cause me to smack you. (I swear your cheek LoA’d my palm!)

Your best bet is to assume that you’ve created everything in your reality — and for good reason. With respect to everything in your reality that you currently resist, say to yourself, “Okay, let’s assume I did create this. Now why would I do something like that? What could this possibly do for me?”

Look for the hidden benefit, lesson, or message behind everything in your reality that bugs you.

In order to do this properly, you have to look beyond the physical. Look at how it affects your consciousness. What benefits might you be able to retain even after death?

Use the TLP framework from the book Personal Development for Smart People to help classify your experiences. How are these experiences bringing you into greater alignment with Truth, Love, and Power? What about Oneness, Authority, Courage, and Intelligence? The cool thing about these principles is that they’re rooted in consciousness, not in physical reality, so they can help you see the empowering lessons behind all of life’s challenges, regardless of the particulars. The nice thing about universal principles is that they can be applied to any situation.

Don’t think of yourself as a physical being. Think of yourself as a conscious being. You aren’t here to develop your physical life. You’re going to lose all of it when you die anyway. Everything you build here will eventually crumble. The human race itself will die off too. But consciousness is eternal.

Physical reality is a playground for the development of your consciousness. Your physical body, your bank account, your material possessions, your home and family – none of that stuff really matters in the long run. Eventually it will all be gone. If you get too attached to those things, I guarantee you a lot of frustration and emptiness down the road. You’ll get that slow sinking feeling that something isn’t right about your life. Instead, focus your primary attention in this life on the development of your consciousness. That’s why you’re here.

Work on your physical body because such a pursuit develops your consciousness. Build your discipline by challenging yourself to eat foods you know are healthy for you. Build your compassion by refusing to kill and torture animals for the sake of your taste buds. Build your courage and authority by eating the way you feel is right, regardless of what others think.

Work on your finances because such a pursuit develops your consciousness. Expand your creativity by creating value for others. Cultivate an abundance mindset by learning to let go of scarcity thinking. Build your focus and discipline by working hard. Experience freedom by creating passive income instead of living paycheck to paycheck.

Work on your relationships because such a pursuit develops your consciousness. Build your courage by learning to be open and honest about your feelings. Increase your alignment with oneness by getting to know lots of people and realizing that we’re all part of the same whole. Deal with difficult people to learn unconditional love.

Get the idea?

Learn to embrace the Truth. Learn to connect with what you Love. Learn to channel your creative Power fully. Your problems are there to help you progressively train up your alignment with these principles. The purpose of your physical life is to help you improve the TLP-alignment of your consciousness. That’s something you can take all the way to the grave and beyond.

You are here to shine, not to whine.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

One of your greatest challenges as a human being is learning how to live as a vibrational being in a vibrational universe.

Attracting Compatible Patterns

You don’t attract into your life what you want. You don’t attract what you think about. You don’t attract what you feel. Desires, thoughts, and feelings are all important, but these are more effects than causes.

You attract what you’re signaling.

Think of yourself as a vibrational transmitter. You’re constantly sending out signals that tell the universe who you are in this moment. Those signals will either attract or repel other vibrational beings, events, and experiences.

You naturally attract that which is in harmony with your state of being, and you’ll repel that which is out of sync with your state.

If your energetic self radiates wealth and abundance, your physical reality will reflect wealth and abundance for your physical being.

If your energetic self radiates anger and frustration, your physical reality will reflect that as well.

Since the signals you’re sending out at any given moment tend to be fairly complex, your experience of physical reality will be equally complex.

Once you can accept that your vibrational self attracts compatible patterns, it becomes clear that if you want to experience something different in your life, you must somehow change the signals you’re putting out.

Your Vibrational Hum

Listen to the vibrational hum of your being. Quiet your mind, tune in to your inner being, and listen to the ever-broadcasting radio station that is you. What types of signals are you broadcasting in this moment?

When I tune in for a moment, I can sense some of the signals that are emanating from me. I can feel that I’m radiating happiness and joy. I can sense that I’m sending out signals to attract positive, loving new relationships into my life. I can sense that I’m radiating financial abundance and increase. I can sense that my energy is very mental at the moment because I’m writing this article.

These are all thoughts, however. The true signal I’m emitting isn’t a thought. It’s a frequency. I might describe this frequency in words, but I can never get the words quite right because human language is inadequate to the task. If I try to describe my current signal anyway, I might use the following adjectives: flowing, smiling, happy, peaceful, soaring, white, soft, strong, expanding, warm, mindful, smooth, and energized.

I can also tune into signals from my environment. I can sense that my belly is broadcasting satiety since I just had lunch (a mixed green salad and some olives). I can observe that it’s 49 degrees F outside. I can hear soft music coming from my computer speakers (sound is yet another vibration). I can subtly perceive Erin’s signal transmitting from the next room. I can feel the combined energy of the people reading my articles around the world.

Overall, I can sense that the signals I’m sending out and the signals coming from my environment are in sync. I feel happy, peaceful, and abundant, and my environment reflects that. This is a stable state, one I experience often.

Your energy signature is the summation of all the signals you’re sending out. Your thoughts and feelings aren’t the cause of these signals though; your thoughts and feelings are actually effects of the signals. If you change the signal you’re emitting, your thoughts and feelings will shift as well.

Vibrational Equilibrium

Your vibrational being and your environment will tend to move toward equilibrium over time. If your current life situation appears fairly stable, it’s safe to say that you’re maintaining equilibrium.

For example, if you’re financially broke, and if this is a stable situation that has persisted for some time, then it’s likely that most of the energetic signals you’re exposing yourself to are also vibrating at a similar frequency of broke-ness. This includes the place you live, the people you interact with, your work environment, the events on your calendar, your furniture, and so on. Your being is immersed in a field of these signals, and this encourages you to vibrate at the same level.

If you continue to surround yourself with signals that reinforce your current state, then that state will persist indefinitely. You may be able to get away from it for a while, but you’ll keep coming back to it if that’s your equilibrium.

Shifting Your Vibration

Creating a temporary shift in your vibration is easy. You can create such a change in seconds. Jump around and move your body. Sing your favorite song. Smile for a minute. Hold a yoga pose. Take a cold shower. All of these will change your state. However, this won’t create any sort of lasting change if you return to your old vibration afterwards. If your dominant signal remains unchanged, your equilibrium won’t shift.

In order to shift your equilibrium, you need to break the old equilibrium. This means you must create a lasting disconnect between your current vibration and the environmental vibrations that are compatible with it.

There are basically two ways to do this.

First, you can shift your own vibration long enough to create a lasting disconnect with your current environment. If you start transmitting a new signal, you’ll soon repel whatever in your environment is incompatible with your new signal. You’ll also begin attracting other people, events, and experiences that are compatible with your new signal. Hold the new vibration long enough, and you’ll see your whole physical reality change all around you.

You can apply this approach by visualizing your goals very vividly for at least 20 minutes per day. Visualize in such a way that you can feel strong emotions. An emotional shift indicates that you’re broadcasting a new signal. The longer you can hold this new vibration, the faster your reality will shift.

The second method is to intentionally replace many of your environmental signals with new ones. Then you must hold yourself in that new environment. This will feel uncomfortable at first because you won’t initially be compatible with those new signals. You must allow them to recalibrate your own vibration until you become compatible with them.

You can apply this approach by changing your environmental landscape — physically, socially, and otherwise. For example, stop spending time with your lazy friends, give away your TV, and hang out every day with the most productive people you know. This will feel uncomfortable at first, but eventually you’ll start to integrate those new signals, and your own vibrational pattern will soon shift to come into resonance with these new people.

So to sum up, you can either change the signal you’re emitting, or you can change the signal soup you’re immersed in. Either way can be very effective at creating a lasting change in your vibrational pattern.

Creating What You Desire

To create what you want in your life, you must shift your vibrational pattern such that you’re emitting a signal that’s vibrationally compatible with your goals and desires.

You can identify that new vibration by vividly visualizing your goals until you feel different emotions, and those emotions stabilize at a certain point. Notice how your vibrational inner being feels, not just emotionally but energetically. Then return to your old state, and notice the vibrational difference between the two states. Compare and contrast the old vibration with the new one.

For example, here’s how I’d describe the vibration of being broke and deep in debt, a frequency I emitted for many years: tight, knotted, twisted, chaotic, rough, blurry, red, dark, fast, changing, pressed, and squeezed.

Here’s how I’d describe the vibration of financial abundance: open, free, clear, bluish-white, flowing, smooth, bright, focused, and intense.

Each vibration has a different energy signature. If I temporarily shift my default vibration to a state of feeling broke (just by imagining it as real), I can feel my vibrational self shifting its frequency too. If I held that vibration long enough, I’d soon find that my physical reality followed suit.

Hopefully it’s obvious by now that if you want to shift your vibration, it’s a bad idea to consistently expose yourself to incompatible signals. Watch the TV news about the ongoing financial meltdown and the recession/depression, and notice what happens to your vibration. Then notice what happens to your finances in the long run. If you want to experience financial abundance, this is a very bad time to watch or read mainstream news. This is the perfect time to read high-quality books or articles instead.

Learning to sense and control the vibrational frequencies you’re emitting is powerful stuff. Once you really get this, you can intentionally shift your frequency at will to experience what you desire.

If you want to experience wealth, you can create that. If you want to experience a new relationship, you can create that too. If you want high energy and good health, you can create that as well.

This isn’t to say that it will be easy for you to accomplish all of these things. It takes practice to adjust your vibrational frequency correctly, so be patient with yourself. Rome wasn’t manifested in a day.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.