Mickie Kent: 02/12/13

“Every tradition grows ever more venerable - the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

For many these past weeks the theme has most decidedly been tradition. The Great Kumbh Mela Hindu festival in Allahabad reached its climax with millions gathering along the Ganges for the most auspicious bathing day last Sunday, while many Asians have been celebrating the Lunar New Year of the Snake. February the 2nd once again meant Groundhog Day in the United States, leaving nine tenths of the world completely bemused as Americans dress up in top hats to watch a small mammal emerge from a burrow to see if spring will come early. The day always reminds me of the movie with the same name, which - like the best of comedies that teach and reform even as they delight - is such a great metaphor for asking what is important in life.

Undeniably, many influential people still believe that tradition and religion should play an important part in our lives. We often go after these symbols of our respective gilded ages to remind us of how "great" we once were, because cultures are often seen to have grown on the vine of traditions. However, tradition is not simply equated with benign customs, so can traditional always mean "good"? All tradition is merely the past, and just because we've always done something a certain way, does that mean it is necessarily right? In the summer of 2012, the Dalai Lama addressed representatives of different religious groups at Westminster Abbey. During his speech, he urged spiritual leaders to work together to serve humanity, and said that he was sure religions still had an important role to make a better humanity.

Coinciding with his United Kingdom visit, the Dalai Lama had met with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, who spent two decades under house arrest in Burma. The Dalai Lama had joined campaigns for her release during her detainment, and although the two Nobel laureates had never previously met, they talked privately for about 30 minutes in London last year. What did they talk about I wonder? How we are constantly failing to recognise the political and economic realities that everyday people are faced with daily? Or how tradition could help us progress? Because without a new view to "pass down", a new world will not come - without innovative thinking unchaining itself from what was passed down previously, the future is hostage to the same mistakes of the past.

God-belief versus self-belief - is it holding us back?
To some religion just means tradition and going through the motions, and critics of organised religion say it has been disgraced by its most traditional establishments in the 21st Century. This has been most recently evidenced by the shock felt when the Pope, a flagstaff of tradition, went public with his resignation to his Catholic flock. His critics say he showed bigotry and intolerance to a great many people, perpetuating unhappiness to millions in his eight years at the helm of a disgraced religion.
Others see this "break" with tradition as a chance to change papal tradition, and appoint someone with less archaic ideas, a more tolerant view of the world and society, and a stronger hand against the terrible child sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church. Critics and followers alike think it should return to being a faith, and not a company or organisation obsessed with procedure and finance.
But the Catholic Church has survived many of its traditional "monsters" it has harboured over the centuries - such as Tomas de Torquemada, the first grand inquisitor in Spain, whose name has become synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. And whether you believe the Pope to be a moral and humanitarian campaigner or a protector of paedophiles, or as irrelevant as spoken Latin, the position is as close to a "God" (or his prime representative) as people in the Catholic faith can get. But if organised religion has become morally bankrupt, then has the need for a god become less relevant on modern times, too?
We have many names for god. Many people look at the gods as mere symbols, representations of forces or mind strata, or as various personifications generated as a projection of our mind onto an impersonal pure state of being. They call god the super-conscious of some inner plane reality - that the god who shines in our eyes, who lights the heavens of thought and hides in the souls of all creatures is Self - that part of existence that science has yet to touch. And this idea of a prime deity which we associate with our source (or "Self") - even in religions that have a pantheon of gods and goddesses - is universal.
Go in search of the soul.
Thus, while some view gods not really as beings, but merely symbols of spiritual matters, others do see them as individual beings, where down through the ages, ordinary men and women, great saints and sages, prophets and mystics in all cultures have inwardly seen, heard, and been profoundly influenced by these super-conscious inner plane beings.
In the Vedas, god is called Brahman, the supreme being who simultaneously exists as the absolute transcendent of an omniscient consciousness or shakti power believed to be the personal prime deity. At once a symbolism of growth, manifestation, and expansion, this belief is linked to the existence of a mind of pure consciousness that underlies, emanates and resonates as all existence. Brahman is simultaneously Purusha, the primal soul - a perfection of being, the original soul who creates/emanates innumerable individual souls - including the gods.
Similarly, in the Bible, God (or YHWH) is the prime deity, known as the God of Gods who created all the angels. To the believers, Jesus is God incarnate, an extension of God's consciousness projected into time-space reality to be the saviour of the world. God in this religious sense is something our human ancestors have enacted into the realm of their existence to make meaning of their world - but traditionally religion has played out as a fight for faith, between whose version is "right" or "wrong". Often when we stick to the rigidity of tradition, we find that lightning often strikes twice.
Today, more often than not, traditional religion is in competition with beliefs that are more fluid and expand beyond the absolute to a more relative perspective, linked by the belief that all life, the sentient and insentient are interconnected by the cycle of nature. For societies, religion is the source of the flow of miracles and wonders, but being just immensely powerful is not sufficient. We are all born out of the body of the universe, and out of this body comes not only the Earth and humans, but also the gods of scripture. And only time will tell whether the notion of religion will change from one of providing absolute answers, to being a search for ones relative to the individual.

Kick-started round about the same time, the first industrial action by doctors for almost 40 years was under way in the UK, with British Medical Association members across the nation boycotting non-urgent care in a dispute over pensions - seemingly unable to face their own financial realities. The continuing reality is that our securities and economies will not be the same again. Countries are ditching low denomination coins as inflation reduces their value - Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Sweden are among many to do so. And while we all wish there was more money, more kindness, more faith to go around, when challenges arise, they threaten to down us.

Face your challenges like a true warrior.

Yet, it is at precisely such times that we need a reclassification (or clarification) of our life purpose: How many of us go about life knowing that we are on the "wrong" path? How many people live with an inner sense of uneasiness that keeps them knowing that something isn't quite right? When people of native American tribes felt this way they would go on a shamanistic journey to help shed light on their true "purpose". Going on an inward journey of sorts may not be such a bad idea. Clarification can help us move into a state of ease and confidence as we take what we learn from our challenges, and move into a path of ease and more power over our lives.

Operative word here is power. During times of crisis we often feel powerless. And while it's true that each day is a gift full of valuable lessons and many victories, we need to face the reality that there will also be a fair share of dark days. In fact, there are so many dips in the road of life, you'd think you were riding an eternal roller coaster. But Winston Churchill was right. Never give up, never give in. Or as I tell my friends over and over again, "You must never, ever, ever give up on something that is important to you if it still serves a purpose in your life." Churchill also said that neither our successes or perceived failures are final - it's the courage to go on that counts.

Ultimately, it all starts with having a vision for your life. You must start with the end in mind. Your vision doesn't need to be elaborate, but you need to hold some core values in your mind as to what you strive for in life. You need to be clear about what you will and will not do. You need to know what legacy you want to leave. When you are able to communicate these important beliefs, then you'll be one step closer to understanding what it is that you were born to do.

Discover your passions.

Rising to this task inevitably brings us to the age-old debate about the belief that you can "do what you love and success will come to you." Some experts believe this is true, while on the other hand, some insist that skills trump passion when it comes to success. Personally I am not biased one way or the other, I believe in using whatever works for you. But if you have a vision for your life, and you continue to take action towards it, and you connect with positive people that support your vision, then it is generally the case that you can do what you love, and get paid to do it. But really, should going after our passions be just about money?

Expand with love and wisdom.

Surely our passions are not limited to the paper in our wallets, or the coins that jingle in our purse? Surely they shouldn't sit quietly in your mind like money in a bank account going spare, hoping to be used one day when its well within our means to do so now? You might not see, feel or touch your passions like you can money. They may just be an idea. But shouldn't you be discovering your passions as a lifeline to a more fulfilling life? It's been said: Tell me your beliefs and I'll tell you what your life looks like. If this is so, then to look at our lives will require us to ask ourselves a lot of personal questions, and to question our beliefs.

Examine this statement: I do not believe. It's been often thought that these four words are necessary to destroy the forces of the supernatural, superstition, witchcraft and psychic etc., because these forces are seen as a morbid desire to escape reality, and can only exist in an atmosphere of belief. Belief is vital, and deprived of that acceptance, some believe such forces reveal themselves as another futile attempt to control one's environment and the forces of nature. Domestic superstitions like wearing lucky charms, or being afraid to walk under ladders or of the number 13, are based on similar primitive beliefs - and while actually denying any belief, people guard themselves by saying there may be something it. So they wear protections, for instance. Some say it depends on how personal the belief is for it to take hold.

Read more about money-making gurus.

Doyle - needing to rethink his strategies, and repackage his defunct programmes (when it became clear they didn't work) so as to keep his money source flowing - went public in 2012 with some thoughts that seemed to fly in the face of what 90% of the law of attraction teachers say about manifesting - including what he had been saying for years. But wellness critics say Doyle is a master at contradicting himself; he has constantly said you don't need to understand how the attraction law works, you just need to repeat ad verbatim to see results. Yet, he has also said that he runs a very different programme because of the emphasis he places on the "science" behind it all, and that the main problem with the law's biggest failures is that we (the money-paying clients) have failed to understand it properly.

What is the attraction law of manifestation?
Have you ever played with magnets? Have you ever had more than one magnet and tried to get them to stick together? If so, you'll know that depending on which end of the magnets are touching, they will either attract or repel, right? Some believe this is how the entire universe works. If you can understand what goes on behind the attraction process, you can tap into that power yourself and - like a magnet - attract anything into you life you can imagine. You might have heard about the Law of Attraction. It's a principles that is as old as the universe itself, but has come to the forefront more recently due to it being repackaged in book called The Secret.
One of the definitions of the Law of Attraction that you hear a lot is "like attracts like", but in life that isn't always the case. After all, you could hold two drinking glasses that are exactly "alike", but they aren't going to slam together, are they? Consequently some experts say that the Law of Attraction isn't just about "like attracting like", and that it's just a little ridiculous to think about attraction in such simple terms. Maybe there's a lot more going on with this "law" and maybe if we understood more about what was going on, we might actually be able to get results with using the Law of Attraction to actually create a life we love.
So, what does determine attraction? And what does that have to do with your life? Your money? Your health? Your relationships? Well, some experts in this field think that attraction has to do with something called resonance. If something is in energetic resonance with something else, it attracts it. If not, it repels it, like these two ends of the magnet.
Science tells us that everything in the universe is energy. And energy vibrates at certain frequencies. Adherents to the attraction law of manifestation believe that depending on what those frequencies are, various energetic systems and ecosystems will either be attracted to each other, or they will move away from each other. And while some people even understand that, the deep implications are not considered by most people, and as a result they don't realise just to what extent that every aspect of who they ARE is an energetic system of some kind, and that those energy systems are either in resonance with things or not - and most importantly that the vast majority of things that we as humans resonate with are things we're NOT thinking about. They AREN'T our goals, and they AREN'T in our visualisations.
Proponents to this theory say that once we understand that resonance and attraction aren't some new age terminology, and that this Law of Attraction isn't something we activate – but instead are always putting out energy with which the rest of the universe is either resonating or not - then we can begin to understand more about how the Law of Attraction really works, and what's going to be necessary to see results with it.
Energy, in addition to being "atomic" - having protons, neutrons, etc., is also thought to have information associated with it - and in large part, that's where the rules are believed to be made about how things resonate. The negative polarities of magnets attract because that's how that energy is encoded with information. The two similar glasses don't slam together, because they're not informationally encoded to do that even though they're made of the same stuff - they are "like". Some atoms come together as wood, some as water, some as mineral, but when you break it down, it's all atoms, the believers say, so it's the information - that doesn't show up on any microscope - that makes the rules. So, to get the attraction law to work in our lives with any consistency, we are told we have to know how to influence the information that is in our energy system.
— The Real Secrets to Love

Leaving aside all the pseudo-science Doyle fills his programmes with, he also came out to say that he was not content with quick "one-liner" explanations of a principle based in quantum physics (not surprising as it's arguably one of the most mind boggling sciences out there) and the law of attraction wasn't as simple as the original book made it out to be. What most people commonly consider to be "the definition" of the law of attraction, Doyle turned his back on, although the money-Meister was quick to reassure all the people that had hitherto believed in his past spiel that he was still a Law of Attraction guy.

Why are so-called attraction law teachers backtracking?
Because of the onslaught of law of attraction products after The Secret, some of them extremely incomplete thanks to Doyle and his cronies, there were thousands of people who thought they were learning about the Law of Attraction and how to use it, but had only a fraction of the information, and when they, not surprisingly, didn't see results, they tossed the whole thing off as a joke or a fraud. Their critics have lambasted them for taking a profound truth and turning it into a silly marketing scheme or new-agey concept with no basis in truth.
So-called attraction law experts like Doyle are trying to persuade their faithful that they mustn't give up, because they need all the information that people like them somehow hadn't bothered to release before. Instead of offering refunds, or free programmes to update the ones that had previously failed their customers, Doyle's advice is simply to hand him over some more cash.
Attraction law teachers like Doyle are claiming that even though their programmes do give you techniques and tools to put the principles of this ancient belief into action, you're not asked to do anything until you fully understand why you're doing it, and how it's going to work. They tell us that their programmes make sure that the message you're sending the universe about what you want your life to be isn't cluttered with a bunch of information that you're not conscious of that they believe are the cause of unpredictable results or no results at all. Although they sell themselves as self-improvement gurus, they tell us that the law of attraction isn't a toy, and it's not a personal development tool.
It's a principle that explains the very nature of the building blocks of our universe, which they again warn us "is a very complicated thing indeed", but in the same breath also give us the "good news" that if we hand over our hard earned money, we won't need to know every detail of the intelligence behind this "complicated mystery" which they have somehow unlocked and is reserved for powers "higher" than you or me. People like Doyle assure us, however, that we can tap into what they say is literally a reality creation mechanism to attract what we want.
Aside from "this lack of knowledge" we have, which they tell is is the reason why the law of attraction has failed, they also lay the blame at our door (and not their pseudo-science) by telling us that it's because we must be thinking this is all some kind of "magic trick", and if at some level, if that's how we look at it, we're going to run into some level of resistance. Doyle and his friends tell us that because it will all seem too good to be true, it won't occur as true for us. If the law has hitherto failed us it isn't because what they have possibly been marketing to us is wrong, it's just that we haven't believed enough.
They try to explain this by saying the energy that is that belief that "it's too good to be true" will not resonate with the experience of reality that is true, and so be like magnets that repel, rather than attract. But when you shift into energetic alignment with "anything is possible", "I deserve anything I desire", and "abundance is everywhere" - what real wellness experts define as true energetic alignment - then the information encoded in that energy brings on the attraction process.
True wellness experts tell us that people who want dramatic change in their lives need to to look at what has gone into creating the circumstances they want to change, and it's that understanding which empowers you to create the change. They warn us that all Doyle and his posse of well to do pals and cache of gangly hangers-on have done are repackage popular lifestyle changes known to benefit all of us under the guise of a manifesting universal law backed up by their pseudo-science.

In the intervening years, since the popularity of The Secret, wellness experts have watched the marketplace get flooded with Law of Attraction programmes, many of which simply don't accurately describe what the principle is really all about. As such, so many people "tried the law of attraction" with these programmes and got no results, and quite naturally, started to doubt the whole thing. While some in the industry decided to "move on" from teaching the law of attraction, because people like Doyle helped to make it unmarketable, Doyle himself decided to squeeze as much money as he could out of those few faithful left, and completely re-hauled his scam marketing from the ground up. The man fell to a whole new low, by actually trying to market children with his programmes.

Confidence tricksters rarely know when to quit, and just because a lot of people watered down the law of attraction and created programmes that disillusioned the masses, that didn't stop Doyle from trying to increase that number - as long as he could line his pockets with money from the misfortune of others along the way. There are some experts, however, that say con-men like Doyle and his ilk, shouldn't take away from the enormous impact manifestation has on every moment of our experience of life. We are told that we shouldn't give up on it until we get all the information, because the ripple effect on humankind in general is too potentially profound to NOT do everything we can to put these principles into our life. Imagine if manifestation really did work, and we taught this to future generations, how we would benefit as a species. However, the difference is that this shouldn't result in just one person getting rich quick. If the law of attraction really does work, then it has to work for the betterment of us all to really have any value.

Kitting out Doyle's mansions doesn't give the law of attraction a good name, it just turns it into a money-making vehicle to get 1% of us wealthy - and surely that was what this was trying to stop? Wasn't this about us all getting to benefit, and have everyone raise their quality of life up a few notches? But having turned some ancient wisdom and beliefs into a source of income for a few speakers churning out pseudo-science and a few inspirational quotes - is it surprising that many of us are now turned off when we even hear the words "law of attraction"? With the aim of pushing new money-spinning programmes for themselves Doyle and his counterparts admit to the setbacks followers of The Secret often face.

Understandably, people do all sort of personal development programs and "work on themselves" trying to find the key that makes it all work. Everybody is always looking for ways to make their lives better. You want to be healthy. You want to have money. You want great relationships. All these things make the human experience more rich and satisfying, so there's no wonder you want them. And people go about getting these things in all kinds of ways. You study for years in school so they can get a good job. You learn about health and fitness so they can live longer and feel better. You do your best to be attractive to other people - and not just physically - so that you will have people in your lives that make the experience better.

Click here for 5 ways to change your life!

Possibly it's cynical to believe that there will not be people that try to take advantage of that, but as the wellness consumer gets more clued up to the way these so-called gurus work, they are realising that self-improvement should be more than about making one or two people rich off our backs - funding the lifestyle they have become accustomed to and to pay for their holiday safaris to Africa, for example. These programmes may seem kind of "out there" and new-agey to many of us, and we may even be cynical enough to say if you believe in that kind of thing then you deserve to lose your money, but understanding how life works at a deeper level can give you an important advantage when it comes to living the life you truly want to live. For some, it is a quest for significance.

Is there a meaning to life?

Paying into these programmes taps into that subconscious desire for meaning. Your purpose is your unique take on the world and everyone has a unique way of viewing the world. Every single person has a unique voice and a unique way of expressing that voice. As an exercise into this, write down a list of the 10 most important things to you. It might be impossible to satisfy all of them, but if you can satisfy at least half you're on your way to your own perfect world. Thus, the reason we feel we must discover our purpose and express our unique voice is this if you don't find a way to express who you are, the perceived imperfections of your life will eat you up. We all need to feel significant, we are all questing for it, and our significance lies in our unique, one of a kind, way of seeing the world around us. If you smother your expression, you smother yourself and you cut off your significance, and that results in a life of quiet desperation.

Intimacy is another factor - we reach out to these sort of programmes to help us through dark times. Those who purchased disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong's autobiography often said it had inspired them to show courage in their own lives - but many now feel cheated and are demanding a refund in the courts. Are they really entitled to their money back? And are not all narrators of their own stories ultimately unreliable? As illustrated by the villainous reputation of Richard III, for example, which Shakespeare's play helped to make one of the English language's most memorable villains - but the notoriety of the last English king to be killed in battle is only half a story. Many things we read can often be disputed, and a cynic would sat that try as we might to be otherwise, we are all hypocrites - to larger or lesser degrees. They would say that proof is nothing but a collection of opinions that match your own. Knowledge is belief, nothing more.

Similarly, we are told that ultimately these approaches will only work if one thing is true, belief. We have to believe. It is strange that no one has explained if the law of attraction is truly based on fields of science (like quantum physics) why we need to believe. We don't need to believe in the laws of science for them to work. They will work with or without us. Human thought did not create the world, the world was created long before humans were around to think it up. So, how can our thoughts now create our own world? These are questions that need answers, and we must look to philosophy and science knowing that we will never know all the answers, and that sometimes these answers throw up more questions than they solve.

Seeking self-improvement, therefore, is more than just repeating a mantra of hope. Unless coupled with action-based assignments, thought isn't enough. That the energy that made the world is the same energy of our thoughts and ideas, and it is not the thoughts themselves but the energy of those thoughts and its vibrational signals that dictate manifestation. But neither Doyle, nor any of his partners in crime, have come up with serious answers based on real science, because all they are interested in is making money, not helping anyone to really improve their lives or to find out the truth of what might be. The most effective teachers of manifestation are not Doyle or his like - it is our own inquisitive and critical minds, searching for wisdom and purpose for the betterment of ourselves and others.

Couple positive thought with positive action.

Although invariably there will always be people like Doyle with his hand out, and others ready to fill it, this doesn't mean that there is more to our world than meets the eye. For neither can we say that we should only believe in what we can see - science has shown us that there are things at work in our universe that we can't record with just physical human senses, and also things we think we sense that are not real. For instance, the condition known as tinnitus leaves people with a constant loud ringing in their ears, which is actually a phantom sound. Thought to be caused by overuse of loud music, the ringing sound is not actually there at all.

Notwithstanding the mysteries of life that science as yet to unlock, we are becoming more savvy of people like Doyle that are trying to fill in the gaps of pseudo-science and quackery to make a quick buck off our noble cause of self-improvement. They in turn try to become more sophisticated in the way they market their programmes. Some even try to make their programmes more complex, by talking about sub-laws to the law of attraction. Some tell us that we are already masters at manifesting, and that we are already attracting events in our lives every day - except without their "help" we're attracting things we don't want rather than those things we desire. But what really holds us back from manifesting everything we desire are people like Doyle, and all the so-called law of attraction masters, that try to sell us a "quick route" to individual success. Lifestyle is not something we do, it is something we experience, and until we learn that, we will never master the art of living well.

Click here to rewire your mindset for success!

Delivering success is a case of changes to your lifestyle "experience" - not because you sit and wish it to happen, many critics of such programmes believe. If you take care of your appearance, take care of what you eat, structure your finances and get creative with your hobbies at home and get inspired at work, wellness experts say your life will change for the better irrelevant of there being any magical "law" at work, because healthy habits will give us a positive mindset that will make us feel better about ourselves. This in turn leads us to making more right choices in our lives. Again qualified experts tell us that the mind is powerful and therefore having a good, optimistic attitude is bound to have a positive impact. The trick to achieving this smiley state is to keep busy; don't dwell on the past, but focus on what could be. Volunteering and helping others is another way to make life seem more fulfilling. Sometimes negative thinking also becomes a habit; a rut you can't climb out of. To break it, become more aware of yourself. One recommendation is to could keep a grumbling journal and log how many times a day you moan.

Scripting your day is a simple, powerful, and motivating exercise that will make you more productive and get you closer to your dreams, faster. Write your own script for the future, because no one knows whether it has all been written out for us and we are simply playing a part, or whether we have free will to follow our hearts, but the point is that we must try and figure it out for ourselves through this journey. The answer lies in each of us, not in some law of attraction "master". It's about having the courage to go after our dreams - and the belief that is necessary is not belief in some money-making guru's repackaged online programme, it's belief in yourself. We must all find our strength from inside ourselves, and trusting in yourself is where your journey needs to begin. Others can help us find our way, and can help support us on our path; and it is always advisable to seek advice, but the way we each need to go rests in our hearts, not in some money-making programme for the likes of Doyle and his cronies.

Have the courage to believe in yourself

“Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”
— St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (9: 26-27)

In having the courage to do this can teach us our relationship with self-control, too, which many psychologists believe is a key component for life management. Willpower - the force by which we control and manage our thoughts, impulses and emotions and which helps us persevere with difficult tasks - they believe is rather like a kind of moral muscle. Like a muscle, it can get tired if you overuse it, but if you have lack of self-control, like a muscle, too, it is believed you can train it, too. Researchers have established that exercising willpower, but also making decisions and choices and taking initiatives, all seem to draw on the same well of energy. Thus restraining our impulses over one thing may cause us to under-perform in another (i.e., we suppress our emotions over an issue, but then lack the self-control over saying no to binging on chocolate biscuits).

Though interestingly, as with a muscle, experts say you can train your willpower. Even small, day-to-day acts of willpower such as maintaining good posture, speaking in complete sentences can pay off by reinforcing longer-term self-control in completely unrelated activities, while another way in which willpower resembles a mental "muscle" is that when its strength is depleted, it can be revived by getting a decent night's sleep and eating well. It seems that our willpower is strongest when we are relaxed and have a full stomach. This means good, slow-burning fuel is important in the exercise of willpower.

Shield yourself with real food.

You can use the top willpower tips suggested by the experts, namely: Build up your self-control by exercising it regularly in small ways. Learn to recognise signs that your willpower may be waning. Don't crash diet. Don't try to do too much at once. Establish good habits and routines that will take the strain off your willpower. Learn how to draw up an effective to-do list. Don't put yourself in temptation's way, or if you can't avoid it, make it harder for yourself to succumb. Use your willpower actively: plan, commit, and do so publicly. People with low willpower, use it to get themselves out of crises. People with high willpower use it not to get themselves into crises. This may all sound like common sense, if we utilise these simple tips and strengthen our willpower, many true wellness experts say this will make us succeed where many self-programmes can make us fail - because none attempt to strengthen our willpower and focus on achieving the results we want to see.

How are you here?
When the subject is about your actual life, your biological existence, we often ask what may seem like superficial questions - but they hint at the profound philosophies of searching for meaning in our lives. If something so fundamental is bothering us, we rarely have the courage to get it off our chest. How are your relationships? Are you putting off something that you know will eventually happen? Are you in denial instead of being open and confronting an issue? How are your finances? Financial advisers tell us that if we honestly minus all our expenses from our income, and the number is a negative, then it means we are technically insolvent. That's to say, you are steadily getting poorer each day, when you feel you should be getting richer. You feel you have to make the tough choice of slashing expenses to boost your income somehow, and fast. Where expenses and passive income meet is automatic and permanent solvency. By passive income I mean income that comes in without any work, like property rentals or royalties.
When it comes to questions of security and changes to our live, we need to make tough choices. We have to live in the real world and make real choices with a real consequence (for the better ultimately, even though it may hurt today). But often the perception of the pain we imagined isn't half as bad as we thought it would be when we actually face it. Worry is a death you have over and over, every day. Actual death isn't nearly as bad, and it only happens once. As the saying goes: "A coward dies a thousand times, but the brave die just once". Sometimes we blow this worry out of all proportion until we turn the lights on and see that the monster under the bed can be tamed, or even used to our advantage. Fear is power, and any power can be harnessed for strength. Fear is a liar, it lies to us by inflating our weaknesses, and downplaying our strengths.
Wellness experts say, therefore, that understanding how your life is how it is right now is the first empowering step to learning how to create it how you want. We need to bring responsibility and accountability into our lives, because to some extent our own choices and actions will have brought us to our current position. We often credit ourselves with our successes, but rarely do we credit ourselves with our perceived failures, or if we do, we are too hard on ourselves. It is about balance, and coming from a perspective to understand that "bad things happen" to everyone, and we don't have an exclusive on it.
Sometimes we can feel disconnected from our passion, and some of us are not sure what we are here to do. We are not on this planet alone, and we also need to learn how to surround ourselves with people that enrich our life and support our vision. Many law of attraction experts mix "vision" with visualisation - one of their key components to the "reality creation" mechanism they have been selling for years.
The truth is there are various ways to use visualisation to shape your experience of reality, but we also need to attune our intuition and take positive inspired action towards defined goals. We need to learn to listen to how we speak to our self - whether it is self-limiting, or even too over confident, and balance our self-view with our talents and desires. Learning to eliminate years and years of negative and limiting beliefs isn't easy, even with a variety of methods, because breaking a old habit is more difficult than learning a new one. This is what ultimately changes that energetic information so you can go from repelling to attracting what you want.
Self-love isn't just about indulging your desires. You can't just decide to suddenly feel good about yourself. It's what you do for yourself. You can only love yourself by doing, not thinking you love yourself. Execute feats of love, feats of respect, for your own benefit. Worship your body. You need to utilise the principles of health and fitness to create a vibrant life.
Let love express you.
Getting into the habit of employing a gratitude mindset is also seen as important, but is an area that people forget when manifesting. However, if you focus on gratitude through your manifestation practice that you can get more of the same – more of the good things in your life. Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools in your manifestation arsenal, and so is the pursuit of adding value to our world and future generations. Helping others find joy will aid to make a lasting difference on the planet; universal principles of gratitude and kindness and self appreciation have to be shared and passed on through the generational time line to really make a complete difference. Once we see the world at large change, then we can really say there is a manifestation law at work which is finally manifesting what we want more of in our lives.
Money-making gurus say the evidence of the law of attraction is all around us. Our very experience of reality is proof that energy in various forms and configurations is a part of your life - and there are specific reasons that everything in your life is there. We don't think about it most of the time, but when do, when you start to see the big picture, we are told an amazing world of truly infinite possibility opens up. But the real bottom line is one they rarely will tell you - that if there is anything you want to be, do, or have in your life that you're not currently doing, then their programmes will not help you in the long run - simply because they don't address the real issues. These issues will be different for every individual who is unhappy with their current way of life.
Read about the philosophy of happiness.
That unhappiness may not even be "unhappiness"; we may have everything that would make others happy, and yet we are unable to feel joy. These are deep rooted issues that no online programme can hope to address. We all need to create a vision that is in full alignment with who you are and what you really want, but you might be amazed at how many people spend time trying to attract something they think they want only to realise later that it wasn't truly what they wanted at all. Money-making gurus may present us with modules that contain in-depth video lessons, topic-specific expert interviews, supplemental educational lectures, and (some that have "wised" up to the important of inspired action and practical remedies) will even provide actual assignments that try to make you apply what you have learned - but the point is what they are teaching you is not worth paying them for. The attraction process rarely happens without action on your part, so getting you into appropriate and inspired action is a main priority, but there's no point in getting a bad education, and expecting good results when you attempt to do something with it.
Some even provide collections of audio meditations that are designed specifically to move you into energetic alignment with what you want quickly and easily, but these can only supplement you, and there lies more between being and doing to result in having, than simply listening to enhanced audio. Think for a moment about how many years of information you've absorbed through school, society, television, parents, and many other sources which have really just taught you "limitation". To make significant change, you have to unlearn some of this, and it's a re-education, that will take time. That's not to say the time isn't worth it, it's just that many of these money-making gurus try to tell you that results can happen magically. It's no surprise that if you buy most super-cheap Law of Attraction course that you're not going to have a profound life change - there are some foundational things you need to learn and understand. You can't just rush life transformation and expect miracles. You need to take the time, whatever time it takes, to have the life you truly want, because it is a lifelong process. Therefore you need to make a serious investment in yourself, not in the programmes of these money-making, self-professed gurus.
We are talking about your life here, and there is no quick and easy option, and no one in their right mind can guarantee any sort of results. And yet when these gurus make the outlandish claims, we so often fall for them because we want to believe them. We want it to be true. But major life change is not something you can simply breeze through - and to become more confident than ever as to who you're here to be, and more empowered that you probably ever thought possible, requires more than the empty promises of people getting rich off the misfortune of others.
If you are really ready for profound transformation in your life, then you're breakthroughs will only come after you let the resistance in your life, like self-doubt, fear, hesitation, and friends who bring you down go. Unless you do this, you will never take back control of your life and your actions. You are great now (we all are), but you will never feel great, or you will never see how great you really are. Here is something that someone should have told you long ago: You are great. You have the greatest potential to live your passion and smash fear in the mouth whenever doubt creeps into your mind. You have the power to say, "Not this time" when fear calls.
To do this requires belief in yourself, not in some online programme that hasn't worked reliably for years (otherwise why keep repackaging it?) Once you gain confidence, you can turn your fear into a strength and have the life you always wanted. The fear comes, because change at the start can make you feel worse. Every detox is uncomfortable to start with. The expression, "this too shall pass" can offer some light, but the real light to hold in the darkness is knowing that if this doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger. Staying strong is recognition that it's always darkest before the dawn, and that there will be days when you struggle. That's okay. Just never give up. Everyone goes through dark days, but not quitting is what separates our nights from our days.
On another level something profound is unfolding when you keep strength of resolve and willpower to do the hard inner work. Consciousness work is hard, because it takes courage and vision to get through - this is why visualisation can help for many of us. We need vision, we need to remind ourselves daily of our vision, and connect it with strong feelings to bring them to life via emotional attachment. If it felt right for you to change now, then clearly you made an agreement with your own spirit that at this time of your life you would be hit with the storm of change - and grow at a quantum rate.
So, you must come through the grief and struggle and backlog of stuff to deal with, it must pass. Commit to your unique way of seeing the world and start expressing it. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to the rest of the world. As long as you hold the higher vision and faith that is the real you, and you honestly answer the question of how you have come to find yourself in your current position, then you will attract all you desire not by any other law, except your own.

Others say manifesting is a tightrope. It is difficult to walk, and one slip-up undoes all of your hard work. All it takes is just one doubt to enter your mind and make you lazy, just one change in schedule to make you start missing your practice sessions, just a little too long without results to make you wonder if it is really for real, and just one of these things is enough to upset your energy flow and become a self fulfilling prophecy in itself - that you won't see results. For real success with the law of attraction you need to be mentally strong, focused on your desires, and consistent with your practice no matter what. The gurus say it is also important to get "on a roll". Many people get excited about the possibilities when they first learn about this and try to manifest a Ferrari or a million in cash. This is a step too far for a first attempt, the gurus say, using the analogy of a first-time gym-goer trying to lift the heaviest weights.

Undeniably experts would recommend a novice start with lighter weights, building their muscles and gradually progressing to heavier and heavier weights. And we are told that manifestation is no different, and that first you need the foundations of energetic awareness to allow your desires to tap naturally into your energetic flow. We should start smaller, exercise our manifesting muscles and manifest many things, bigger each time to strengthen your confidence and belief and ensure that we don't "fall off the tightrope" but stay balanced and are consistently manifesting our desires.

Continuing on this tightrope that some of these so-called experts mention, how often should we "tell" the universe what we desire? Do we need to keep telling the universe what you want? Should we repeat it daily as some law of attraction "masters" tell us to, or do you really only have to tell the universe once? The advantage of continuing to talk about it is that you get clearer about it, they say. In other words, usually you cannot speak everything that you want with your first statement, and so, the more you talk about it the more you fine-tune it.

Once you are clear about what you want, once you have zeroed in on it and you know what you want, then these gurus tell us that it is on the way to you, but that the manifestation of it will probably follow later, because there is, most often, enough resistance so that you don't have it instantly. We are told that the universe will never fail you. The universe will always give you what you have asked for, and that the question is how soon you allow it to manifest.

Does Destiny play chess?

Can this really be true? Is the secret all wrapped up in our true desires? We are told that desire is the true foundation of manifestation. Not just desire, but true, focused desire which you are aware of, which you create, which you control, desire which you channel into a specific goal, a desire from which all of your drive, ambition, and manifestation power comes forth. This foundation, once set will empower you and all of your manifestation efforts. Your manifestations will be coming from your heart, from deep inside of you. They will be charged with energy and emotion which comes from your very core.

Keeping true to your desires, then, will help you get into the flow. You can either struggle and spend your energy manifesting "off target", or you can tap into the manifestation flow, do things properly and spend your energy productively. This approach suggests that over the centuries we have forgotten how to manifest, and seems more biased towards seeing ancient wisdom as traditions we dropped as we changed through human progress and evolution. When we were a tribal society without complex communication, without "leisure time", when life was just "think, act, survive" manifesting came naturally. Now we have moved away from our traditional roots we have so many options and rarely apply our complete mental and physical consciousness to one thing at a time any more. Our minds are unfocused and untrained and we no longer know how to tap into life's flow and manifest naturally.

Sticking to this approach - along with "getting into the flow" - another key theme throughout this school of thought is the need to strengthen your energetic awareness - your awareness of your own thought channels and inner workings. Energetic and emotional awareness is always a good thing, mindfulness can help us in many areas of our lives. Only when you understand your inner workings can you truly manifest at a higher level - for manifestation really is the control of your inner energy, of the channelling of your intentions and desires. Wellness experts say that more practically, bringing our attention back to the present moment, we can see things more clearly and make wiser decisions. Awareness must take you deep inside your mind, to help you to get in touch with your emotions, your thoughts and your energy.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Clarify Your New Life with Love

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