Manifesting with the Law of Attraction

Before you can use The Law of Attraction, and all the other great tools I teach, to create every good thing you want in your life, you must be ready to accept all those good things.

For many of us this is the hardest part. How many times has somebody offered to help you, maybe offered to pay for a shared taxi or something, and you have said “Oh no, that’s alright, I’ll pay”. Well if you can’t accept a taxi fair from a friend, how are you ever going to accept the new life you want from the Universe?

This may be due to a deep seated belief you are probably not even conscious of. It probably goes something like this: “I am really not a very good person so I don’t deserve to have the things that I want. Remember that awful thing I did twenty years ago, I deserve to be punished not rewarded”.

Come on! That was a long time ago. You have grown and evolved since then. You would not do the same thing today. Make amends if you can, and if you can’t just forgive yourself anyway and move on. And remember, you would not be the kind, loving, wise being you are today had you not gone through that and learnt its lessons.

You may not be able to make amends with the people you hurt but what goes around comes around so you can make up for it by helping other people, the people who are in your life now, instead. And if ever you run into those earlier people again just say, “I am sorry, I know I hurt you but I was being the best person I knew how to be at the time. I know how to be a very much better person now and I am using that knowledge to help others”.

As I said, you may not be aware of any of this on the surface. Consciously you may think you are a pretty ok kind of person. However if you find your self talk saying things like “I could never have that” or “I could never stay in that hotel” or “I could never fly first class”, stop and ponder. Do you have an unworthy undercurrent running through your subconscious?

Self image is the way we see ourselves and how we feel about ourselves. It can be complex and multi-faceted. Its important to try and connect with our self image, to bring it into the open where we can work on it. At various times each day ask yourself “How do I feel about myself right now?” Really listen to the answer. For this exercise its important to really listen to the answer. Don’t instantly replace anything negative with a positive affirmation as any self respecting Law of Attraction practitioner normally would. Later but not yet. First listen to the message and it will reveal an undercurrent of false beliefs you never even knew exited.

You can also look in the mirror and ask yourself “How do I look to myself right now?” Yes its ok for the boys to do this as well as the girls. If asking this question makes you feel fat and ugly, skinny, hairy, bald, bloated, maybe you need to give yourself more love and affection, more nurturing. Yes it really is ok to love ourselves, indeed it is essential. We are not being conceited. In fact we cannot love anyone else, our family, friends, pet, the planet, until we first develop a healthy love for ourselves.

Once we have discovered our negative undercurrents we have started to replace them. Affirmations and creative visualisation are great tools to help us develop a healthy self love and a positive self image.

The reason our self image may not be accurate is that we have been brainwashed since birth to believe we are inadequate. Affirmations, creative visualisation and suggestion audio programmes are brainwashing too but now we are doing the brainwashing to ourselves, now we are fighting back.

Always try to think of your own better qualities and remind yourself of them often.

Tags: affirmation, affirmations, belief, brain, Law of Attraction, Life, positive affirmation, self image, self talk, subconscious, universe

Altruism, the act of giving unselfishly, is an enigma to neuroscience. The theory of evolution says that organisms will behave in a way to ensure their own survival and that of their offspring. So how did altruistic behavior come to be? Is it beneficial to the giver?

Giving Activates Brain Circuits

Some interesting recent research begins to unveil pieces of the puzzle. When neuroscientist monitor the brains of people either giving or getting there are some commonalities. Especially in a part of the brain that helps control pleasure and survival behaviors like the search for food or sex.

It seems that both giving and getting activate pleasure centers. This gives immediate gratification to altruistic behavior. However, these brain regions also exist in animals where they are responsible for similar survival behaviors and animals aren’t typically altruistic so there must be something more.

Now, new data shows that givers, but not getters, involve a couple other brain regions in the cerebral cortex. These regions are only well developed in humans and are involved in higher levels of thinking and processing information.

You can interpret this in lots of ways. One way is to see altruistic behavior as more driven by higher thoughtfulness, and getting behaviors driven more by animal-like desires. This is not to difficult to grasp, but let’s dig a little deeper.

Use It or Lose It

We know that the brain is constantly remodeling itself. Brain circuits that get used a lot strengthen and develop while those that don’t get used a lot wither and fade. This is one-way that behaviors get entrenched into habits.

So think about that in the context of altruism. The act of giving might actually strengthen certain brain circuits in regions that are involved in higher levels of thinking, especially those that control social interactions. This can be adaptive to you by improving parts of your brain that control higher thinking and your ability to work with other people.

The basis of many religious and secular philosophies is to give before you get. Zig Ziglar, one of the grandfathers of personal development said ‘help enough people get what they want and you can have everything that you want’. Now, Zig and others are not saying you should be altruistic for the purpose of getting stuff in return – but it just always seems to work out this way.

Science Catches up to Wisdom

Perhaps the recent work in neuroscience is beginning to explain why this is true. The act of giving may actually improve your skills to work productively with other people, which is the best way to enhance your own life as well.

Looking at that another way, if you are always looking to receive you are thinking very short term (animal-like survival) in your behavior. Whereas, if you are always willing to give and help, you are thinking long term, even if you don’t realize it at the time. This would explain how altruistic behavior can get improve your odds of surviving and passing your genes to the next generation – which is the driving force behind evolutionary theory.

It doesn’t matter whether you subscribe to the theory of evolution or creationism or something in between. The bottom line is that altruistic behavior my actually improve the most ‘human’ parts of your brain and make you a higher functioning person.

It always amazes me when 21st century science catches up to age-old wisdom.

Tags: brain, desires, giving, thoughtfulness, Zig Ziglar

Here’s how to realize your dreams. And there are only four steps to cover, so it’s easy. Some people will give you a list of 74 steps to fulfill your dreams, together with a five-year plan. By the time you get to step 45, you’ve lost the will to live and certainly any desire to accomplish whatever you started out after. Four is much more manageable, you’ll agree.

First, you must turn your dream into a goal. Why? So you can tune in to opportunities to achieve your dream. There is a thing called your reticular activating system. It sits somewhere in your brain and tells you what to focus on. So when you make your dream tangible, by getting it down in black and white, you switch this system on. And it begins drawing your attention to things it feels are relevant to your quest. A similar thing happens when you buy a new car. Your reticular wotsit begins drawing your attention to similar cars and you suddenly realise how COMMON they are. The damn things are everywhere! Where did they all come from? Truth is, they were always there, and you just never noticed them before. Same thing happens when you turn your wishy washy dream into a concrete goal.

So that is your first step; create a goal. You do that by sitting down and writing out all the details of your dream. So that it becomes tangible.

And I do mean all the details. “I want a big house.” Doesn’t do it. You need to answer all the questions that statement brings up:

“How big?” “How many rooms?” “What is the size of the garden?” “How many garages, stables and gazebos?” And so on.

You need to know when you want it. A goal without a deadline is still a dream.

And you absolutely have to know why you want it. You need to have a reason; and it needs to be your reason. You know what I mean. We all do things because we feel we should. Or because our parents or partners or colleagues say we should. Make sure that your goals really are yours.

Keep writing until you are sure you have completed all the details.

Now you have a goal!

Second, ask yourself where you are now in relation to that goal. What is so? What have you achieved so far? What have you tried, with what result? Who can you seek help from? What resources do you have, or can acquire, that will help you?

Now you know where you stand. You may want to revise parts of your goal before you go on to …

Third, ask yourself what is the next step? There is always a next step, always something you can be doing to further your progress towards your goal. Most of the time we know what our next step is. But often we just don’t take it. And that is part of being human. And a very good reason for me to suggest, in step two, that you identify people you can seek help from. Ignore the personal development gurus who imply that you can do this on your own. Truth is, we humans are very bad at doing things on our own; motivating ourselves to keep going when things seem to be working against us is not part of the average person’s skill-set. Get help. Invite others to support you – even though that support may often seem like nagging!

Fourth, take at least one step towards your goal every day. Then loop back to step three (or sometimes step two, if the results of an action mean you need to revise your goal or your strategy)

And that’s really it! That’s all you have to do. Take those steps over and over again and I promise you, your dreams will come true!

To recap:

1. Turn your dream into a goal – make it tangible.

2. Find where you are now relative to your goal.

3. Ask yourself, “What’s next?”

4. Take action and loop back.

One last point. When it comes to taking action – do the stuff that works! We’re very good at spending our time doing irrelevant stuff that seems so important but does nothing to move us forward. From tidying the desk when we should be phoning the bank to watching ‘reality TV’ when we should be writing a business plan. And don’t pretend you don’t do this – we all do it. Just try to do it less and replace it with stuff that works; actions that take you closer to your goal.

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Jim Ewan is a past president of the Professional Speakers Association and has trained and coached people at all levels. For more of Jim’s ‘philosophy’ visit my website which is at http://www.dothestuffthatworks.bravehost.com

Tags: brain, desire, dreams