Using the Law of Attraction

My real blog is up now, and I have transferred most of my articles over there.  From here on out I will post all of my articles first here before they appear on this blogspot page.  The new website will allow me to be in much better control of the website, and also allow for easier commenting by any and all.  You are welcome to go back and make some of those comments you sent to my email earlier because you couldn't figure out how to post them to my blogspot...


Most readers by now should understand that the law of attraction is happening on a belief level.  If that sentence doesn't make sense yet, be sure to read this and this before reading the rest of this post.  Our beliefs are the filter that we use to interpret reality; they can either create a life a continual growth, expanding love, true peace and even joy; or else different beliefs can create struggle, fear, anger, criticism, etc.  It is paramount that we learn to go deeper than simply managing our emotions through positive thinking.  In this post I will discuss how our beliefs can have such amazing power.
A belief is an idea that is accepted as true.  Basically, a belief is a statement about reality that feels true on some level.  We adopt our beliefs about the world at a very young age, and then usually spend the rest of our lives finding evidence to support those beliefs.  The events we experience in our lives carry no meaning or emotion with them, it is only by applying our beliefs to an event or experience that we are able to decide if the event was "good" or "bad," or anything in between.

Let me give you an example to illustrate this idea.  Let's say one morning you wake up and it has snowed so much overnight that school is cancelled.  Your neighbor's 11-year-old son is ecstatic because he gets to build snow forts and go sledding instead of spending the day in a classroom.  Your other next-door-neighbor, an ambulance driver, has been up since 2:30 taking calls and doing his best to safely navigate his ambulance from the hospital to various accident scenes and then back to the hospital again.  You have a home-based business and no school-aged children, and your life does not change one way or the other.  From the same event, three different people have radically different reactions.  One person is thrilled to have the snow, and celebrates like it is the best day of his life.  Another dreads heavy snow and can't help but curse the weather under his breath, and a third is completely indifferent to the snow.  The fact that it snowed last night has no energy to it.  It is not good, it is not bad.  It is completely indifferent.  It just is.  When we apply beliefs to the snow, then the event carries meaning and emotion for us individually.

There are no events that hold meaning or emotion.

Until you, through your beliefs, give meaning to an event,

that event remains meaningless.

So let's look at how our beliefs add meaning to a situation, and help create our reality.
You may have goals or aspirations that you have been dreaming about for years or even decades.  Why haven't you started working towards them?  Perhaps you started at some point but never continued as long as you needed to experience your breakthrough.  Why did you stop?  Without having you in front of me or on the other end of the phone, it is impossible for me to know what exactly is holding you back.  Many people I talk to are held back by fear of one kind or another.  Many are afraid of failure.  Others are afraid of the unkown.  Still others are afraid of rejection.  The list can go on, but in my experience this covers more than half of the people I've worked with.  Today I'll talk of the fear of failure.
Where does the fear of failure come from?  Let's say you are afraid to start that business you've been dreaming of because you are afraid of it failing.  You probably also believe that you will be considered a failure when your business tanks.  Where does this fear come from?  You may have heard of the acronym for fear: F.E.A.R.= False Evidence Appearing Real.  So if the fear of failure (or any other emotion) does not come from an event (starting a new business DOES NOT create fear), but comes from a belief inside of you that gives meaning to that event, what belief created that fear?
Again, since you are not on the phone with me, I'm going to have to take one of the more common beliefs that create fear and it may or may not apply to you.  Like I said earlier, it does apply to most of the people I work with.

Most likely, the belief that is causing the fear of failure is the belief that failure is bad.  Have you ever stopped to consider whether or not that belief is justified?  Is that belief serving you?  I for one have spent multiple lectures helping language students change this belief so that they can make mistakes confidently and finally start progressing in their acquisition of their second language.  I believe that mistakes and failure are wonderful!  Penicillin is just one famous example of something that was discovered because of making a mistake.  There are thousands of others.  I spent five years working very hard to learn Chinese to a level of proficiency that I was accepted into medical school in Beijing.  I worked countless hours learning to read and write characters so I could write essays about different aspects of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) theory on tests in Chinese characters.  Eventually I passed the language proficiency exam and was accepted into the school.  I did well in my classes, but after one year of school I realized that I didn't want to finish my studies.  When I told friends and family that I decided not to finish school one of the common responses was "what a waste of five years of hard work!"  This reaction comes from the interpretation that 1) not finishing school is failure; and 2) failing is bad.  I obviously disagree with this interpretation.  I felt prompted to study Chinese medicine, and needed to acquire skills in order to do that.  I made the decision to study, and did it.  When I had enough information to make a better decision, I changed directions and have never looked back.  If I believed that not finishing was a failure, or that spending so much time to start something, only to fail at finishing, I would have to be devastated.  That very fear (of "failing" again) would keep me from branching out and becoming a professional speaker now.  But because I don't believe that failure is bad, I'm willing to act on the promptings that I feel, and trust that they are leading me in the right direction.
Tomorrow I want to expound about when and how those beliefs are integrated into our subconscious.  For now, think about what is holding you back; what fear is keeping you from acting, and what is the belief behind that fear?
You create your beliefs, (more on this tomorrow) and your beliefs create your life.  How you feel about yourself and the world around you is determined strictly by the meaning that you give to meaningless events around you.  But remember that you are not your beliefs, you are simply the creator or your beliefs, and you use them to interpret your world.
Deep, fun stuff.