Yesterday I was writing about past, present and future and I have a cosmic nudge to continue that theme today – proceeding from a different angle.

There is no question that our past colors our future. We have so much conditioning, programming and personal history that contributes to who we deem ourselves to be. As mentioned yesterday, some people dig their heels in and justify this “I” as an inflexible, unchangeable inhabitant of the universe. If you read me long enough or hang around with me, you will often hear me repeat what The Grasshopper told me years ago:

“Who you are is someone that you made up and got comfortable with.”

You didn’t entirely do it on your own. You had help – people molders of all sorts – parents, peers, teachers, clergy, culture, etc. So, you have arrived at a destination that may not be to your liking. How do you build a bridge from where you are to where you want to be? Allow me to answer in the negative. You’ll never get there by telling your story.

Your story locks you in place revivifying all the patterning of the past which acts as glue to keep you stuck. Yesterday I had lunch with a young man I have been mentoring for years. He was telling me about a guy he works with who is a fun guy to hang with, for the most part, but continually complains about his situation and tells all the supporting stories to justify his stuckness. My friend said he noticed that this guy’s attitude was affecting him to act in the same manner. He went on to tell me that he got the gift of awareness one day that hanging out with this person was counterproductive and he stopped doing so. He recognized an immediate shift in his attitude from victimhood to veracity.

The truth is that stories keep you stuck. I’ll admit that it’s a temporary high to go off on a rant and recount your tales of woe to a dear friend but it will never get you unstuck. It delays the process. There are people to tell your story to – once. These would be the people helpers of the world – counselors, clergy, physicians, etal.

Sidebar: If your people helper allows you to continually tell your story; they haven’t a clue how to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. With this type of counseling you will have session after session and productive results will not be measurable.

Your story locks you in the prison known as the past. If you continue to tell it, justify it, demand that people listen to it, your future is guaranteed to resemble your past. The only thing left from the past is a misty thought form that you convince yourself is real. It would be like saying the streak in the sky that an airplane left behind is the airplane. The past and all the stories about it do not exist. They are memories – period!

We attempt to keep the past alive by telling our story. The illusion we live under is that if we tell it enough, things will change. Look at the evidence to the contrary in your own life.

The path to a different future begins with letting go of the story. This method works and it’s not easy due to all our conditioning to the contrary. So, begin slowly. Find one of your minor stories that you have been telling to anyone willing to listen and retire it – permanently! Then you can move up to the next story in line and leave it where it belongs – in the past. At first, you may feel naked at a formal event but that feeling will pass once you quit dressing up your past and putting it on display.

The key is to be present when your story begins to occupy your thoughts or conversation. Notice that you are telling your story. The present moment noticing will have the story come around less and less frequently until it stays where it belongs – in your scrapbook.

The pathway to the future is always from the present – never from the past.

All the best,

John

P.S. Please visit my websites and explore what I have to offer that may prove helpful to you.

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

The mental pathway goes something like this:

Past→Present→Future

A parallel pathway looks like this:

Resistance→Acceptance→Future

It seems, with either model, that we spend too little time in the middle – The present and acceptance – and our future is determined by the middle way.

The Grasshopper delivered this note in November of 2005:

“Tomorrow’s vision is based on the consciousness you have now.”

Then a year before in December 2004, The Grasshopper offered this:

“Resistance is holding on to what was; acceptance is seeing what is.”

Present and acceptance are interchangeable terms. You must accept what is right in front of you right now. As I have stated before, you don’t have to love it or like it or not make a plan to remedy it, but the present is a constant reality. You may think you have many choices about what is present, but there is only one that works – acceptance. All the other pseudo-choices – denial, control, anger, frustration, etc. are just stalling strategies. You will eventually arrive at acceptance or you will continue to suffer.

Acceptance opens doors. Acceptance takes off blinders. When you accept, you know exactly what you are dealing with. There are no illusions associated with acceptance. Acceptance is the springboard to the future. Acceptance is like a mirror. It doesn’t lie. It reflects your situation with all its flaws. Nothing is hidden. When you know precisely what you are dealing with, then the strategy for the future becomes crystal clear. It comes to you quickly because you have made room for it. You have cleared all the pseudo choices and all their attendant weight from your consideration and a pathway magically shows up.

Many people misinterpret Self-Acceptance. You will know these people by this phrase, “That’s just the way I am.” No, that’s just the way your ego wants to stay.

True Self-Acceptance has you accept all the flaws, not justify them. When you start accepting the present and the reality it shows you, then and only then are you on the fast track to a strategy that opens the door to metamorphosis. You are on the pathway to a new you.

My latest 2 CD set I LOVE MY BODY is totally based on acceptance of where you are now. It is the step that is missing from most weight loss or body shaping programs. The biggest selling CD at all my seminars is IMPROVE YOUR SELF IMAGE. It is also based on acceptance. You can never get to the next step until you fully acknowledge and accept where you are right now.

I hope this gets you wondering how quickly you can begin accepting where you are at the moment so that a new pathway can present itself.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Did you ever notice that it is easier to feel bad than to feel good? It’s conditioning.

Side Note: One of my mentors, Dr. Dave Dobson would take issue with me using the words “Bad” and “Good.” He teaches that they are words we learned when we were toilet trained and that we are taken back to those experiences on an “other-than-conscious” level even when we use those words in a different context. He recommends using words that we learned at the high school level that don’t carry the same baggage – words like “productive, beneficial, counter-productive, inappropriate, etc.”

Please keep Dave’s caveat in mind while reading this blog.

Back to my story . . . it seems like a contradiction but for many people to feel bad feels good. It’s conditioning. Perhaps some explanation will be helpful.

A number of people are divorced from their feelings. They can be stoic when others are coming unglued. That may be looked on in some circles as being in charge of their emotions. It has nothing to do with conscious control. These people have a hard time getting into their feelings. It’s conditioning. It seems that they have a difficult time rejoicing or celebrating or to use a fluffy set of words – “being happy.” The only way this person can sense their feelings is through misery or feeling bad about something.

This feeling “bad” is the only way they can turn their feeling circuit on. The result is that feeling bad lets them know they are alive.

Misery makes them feel alive. Pain makes them feel alive. Complaining makes them feel alive. Depressing themselves makes them feel alive. I also have this theory about people who crave hot, spicy foods. (not those cultures weaned on them). My sense is these foods turn on their feeling circuit. When their nose runs, they are alive, when their mouth burns a bit, they feel alive.

Some folks, whose “feel good” circuit is not functioning, find their way to drugs and alcohol to make them feel “good.” For some, sexual pleasure is the only way they can feel alive. They can’t seem to generate feeling without some external agent. It’s conditioning!

There are many of us who fall into the category of “baby boomers” – people who were brought up by parents that lived through some tough times – depression, world wars, rationing. The parents had inured themselves to pain. It was the only way to get through the time. They passed that on. Any baby boomer can recite the stories of their parents walking long distances to school through feet of snow, or not having enough to eat, or ample clothing to wear. I’m sure you’ve heard your version of these stories. The “stiff upper lip pattern” that they learned got passed on to their children.

Notice that, in most cases, the children had it much better than the parents and their children have it much better than them. It should be cause for celebration. For many, the conditioning prevents them from noticing how much better they have it and the deadened feeling patterning rules the day.

The thing that I’ve come to recognize is that feeling “bad” for some people is better than no feeling at all. You can’t logically convince them by comparison. You may even give them your version of the old anonymous quote, “There was a man who complained because he had no shoes until he met a man who had no feet.” They may take pause about that comparison but will continue to lament moments later about having no shoes again.

It’s less about the shoes and more about being able to feel alive.

Artificial generation of aliveness (alcohol, drugs, sex, etc.) is short term and has very little residual effect. For these people their natural state of aliveness has been blocked by conditioning and cannot flow unless they create a temporary shunt to allow some of it in. This is hard work and the results don’t last.

Aliveness does exist for everyone. It’s ready to flow the minute you recognize it exists for you. This recognition of aliveness will take some practice for many and the results are worth the effort.

Eckhart Tolle has a brilliant exercise that he does where he has you focus your attention on your hands. You can do it right now. Notice the sensations going on in your hands right now. That sensation you are feeling is aliveness and it is always there. It just needs you to practice recognizing it.

I created a CD many years ago that assists you with this practice. It’s called RELAX IN 2 MINUTES. It has you focus on what’s going on in each body part so you can notice the aliveness that is always there. The progression through the body with this exercise has a wonderful side effect – your body unwinds and relaxes.

You can quickly learn this technique and begin doing it on your own anytime, anywhere. The gentle noticing of aliveness helps you relax into your feelings as you get in touch with your body. You no longer have to feel bad to feel good.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Erosion is the displacement of solids or the wearing away of solid forms.

We can witness the effect of erosion on rocks when we observe canyons that once had water running through them.

If someone tells you that you have rocks in your head, make sure to thank them for an accurate observation. Patterns of behavior can be likened to rocks in a stream and the constant passage of water can wear a rock down. Also imagine that these rocks are in the stream of thinking and influence your thoughts and behaviors as the stream alters its course by passing over and around them.

In most cases, you have to wait centuries to notice any appreciable erosion of rocks. In the human mind, you can accelerate rock erosion. It’s a simple matter of noticing. Back in January of 2006, The Grasshopper chirped in with this thought:

“Accelerate rock erosion by noticing they are there.”

Is there a pattern of behavior that keeps showing up in your life that you would like to alter?

The main difficulty that stands in the way of the erosion process is judging that pattern as a solid entity that is too strong to have any agent of change be effective. You could label that mindset as hopelessness or weakness. “I’m hopelessly obese.” “I’m a spineless wimp.” “(fill in the blank).”

When we appreciate that patterns, like everything else, are energy forms, we begin the process of erosion. “Solid as a rock” is an expression – not a reality. The atomic reality is that things we have perceived as solid are 99.99% space at the quantum level. The same is true of these energy forms called patterns. Patterns seem solid and that illusion keeps us from succeeding in our quest to erode them.

So it’s a two step process to accelerate pattern erosion.

1. Know that which is perceived as solid and immovable is mainly space. This simple recognition opens the door to possibility.
2. Observe the pattern of behavior, while it’s running, as a bystander. This means to catch yourself in midstream while you are running a pattern of behavior that you would like to erode. Then just observe yourself running the pattern. Don’t judge it – just observe it. This observation is the catalyst to muster the forces of erosion.

The more often you non-judgmentally observe a pattern of behavior, while it’s running, the quicker pattern begins to erode.

This is more than a novel concept or philosophical position when you actually make the effort to repeatedly do the exercise.

So the real question is: Do you want a piece of the rock or the peace of the space?

All the best,

John

P.S. Today is my sister Jackie’s birthday. Happy Birthday Sis! Did I mention she is my older sister?

http://johnmorganhypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan

http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301

Every now and then a novel approach to something comes along and captures our attention. Virtual Massage is one of those ideas that came to fruition through the efforts of Hali Chambers. Hali works for our company arranging our seminars. She is also quite a gifted massage therapist and a superb communicator. One night while chatting, she proffered the idea of being able to have people experience a massage without having to go to a massage therapist. I said, “You mean like a virtual massage?” And that was the beginning of a fabulous concept.

Hali ran with the ball and scheduled some recording time and put together one of the most physically relaxing experiences you will ever feel. Her vivid description of each massage movement she is doing engages your imagination and puts you right on her massage table feeling all the therapeutic strokes you would receive by your regular massage therapist. The best news is you only have to pay once and you can have a head-to-toe massage in the privacy of your own home.

The music provided by Mike Zampi and Hali’s enchanting vocal rhythms will have you ooh-ing and aah-ing in a matter of minutes.

I only endorse products that I believe in and have experience with. THIS IS ONE OF THEM. I highly recommend that you get a copy of Virtual Massage for you or a friend that needs to unwind now. Order by clicking here. Virtual Massage is only $19.95. You will wear out the laser light on your CD player because you will play this so many times.

All the best,

John

I do a lot of radio interviews. I check out the station website before the call and I sometimes see bios of the radio personalities. Many of them fill out a questionnaire which gives you some insight into their likes and dislikes – favorite movie, favorite TV show, who would you like to play you in a movie?, etc. One of the questions I often see is: What is your guilty pleasure? What an oxymoron that term is.

Guilt is guilt and pleasure is pleasure and those two trains run on different tracks.

Guilt is always a thought after the fact. It rarely has a purpose, other than to beat you up.

You weren’t feeling guilty when you were eating the ice cream sundae with the extra sprinkles. It tasted wonderful and it was pleasurable. Where did the guilt come in? – Always after the fact. That should tell you how reactionary and conditioned the mind is.

There is no benefit to a self-inflicted beating. This is not to say that you can’t learn from reflection but wearing sack cloth helps no one and it only scratches you. It’s our mind’s conditioning that makes us think that entertaining hurtful thoughts about ourselves will be the course of action necessary to make us a better person. That trail always leads to a dead end.

Guilt always was and always will be a self destructive emotion. It’s not the guilt that helps you change the way you may do things differently in the future. Recognition is the only catalyst necessary for future change. If you recognize that your past actions may have been hurtful to you or to others, that is all that is necessary for you to arrive at the doorstep for future decisions. If your next step is to put yourself in a self-imposed pillory, you have taken one step too many – a step that cannot bring you the mental relief you seek – a step that keeps you stuck.

Recognizing behavior and interrupting it while it is happening is the quickest way to new behavior. But even if you get the gift of awareness after the fact, that is foundation enough to build a different set of actions in the future.

Yes, there are consequences for actions that we all must pay and guilt is not one of them. Guilt isn’t a cause, it’s a reaction. Guilt doesn’t get you to issue an apology or make acts of atonement – recognition does. Guilt just keeps you steeped in no man’s land and delays the necessary action for change. Guilt slows up the process of self-healing.

Many years ago when I took NLP training, they used an expression called “elegance.” Basically it meant the shortest number of steps or route to reach an outcome. Guilt always acts as a sideways tractor-trailer spread across the highway.

Apologies and atonements are necessary elements to open the doors to forgiveness but guilt keeps the door nailed shut.

Many times when you take the unnecessary plunge into “Guiltville,” you were pushed there by someone else’s rule – one that you absorbed unconsciously from social, cultural and parental conditioning – one that prevented you for deciding for yourself if eating that pleasurable sundae was indeed the perfect thing to do or not.

This blog post is not suggesting that you get a free pass for past actions that may need course correction. My sole purpose is to point out is you can get to where you need to go quicker and without unnecessary bruising if you leave guilt behind.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://CDBaby.com/CD/JohnMorgan

I was on the road last week traveling with Hali who came to work for our company in July. Hali is skilled in many areas and one is body awareness and massage therapy. In phone conversations, I had been telling her about a nagging shoulder pain that I have been experiencing for a little over a year. I had gone to a medical doctor and didn’t get relief. She recommended a chiropractor in one of our conversations and I went. This physician offered a different remedy for my difficulty, which also didn’t solve my situation. I was commenting to her last week that neither of these approaches had worked. She quickly reminded me that my lack of a resolution was not evidence of the effectiveness of either approach for an ailing shoulder; it was more about seeking the modality that would work for me.

It’s interesting to note that some people can go to the same physician with the same ailment, get the same plan of action and one will get better quickly and the other will not get any relief. This is the point where some people may seek out other solutions – ones they may have never considered or dismissed in the past.

It got me curious about things that I have dismissed out of hand in the past. There are so many approaches that bring people relief from emotional or physical pain that the bulk of society has neither heard of or choose to dismiss because their belief system won’t entertain something new. They choose to remain in pain and keep seeking a solution by staying married to the same methodology that has not worked for them before.

The Grasshopper chimed in on this topic back in 2004. He said, “Regarding a therapeutic approach: It’s far more valuable if it’s useful versus whether it’s true.”

The word “true” brings out the logic machine. The truth that most people argue about is the relative truth. Usefulness is put on the back burner while philosophical concepts are bandied about so that we can pummel each other into submission as to our version of the truth.

It’s my experience that most medical doctors still roll their eyes when they hear chiropractic and most chiropractors still roll their eyes when presented with the medical model. They both roll their eyes at other approaches that won’t fit into either one of their belief systems. Then the true argument begins.

You cannot argue with reality. If someone has a documented difficulty with something and uses an approach that is considered “whacky” by the mainstream and gets relief, there is no argument as to the usefulness of that approach in that situation. To dismiss the person’s relief is to dismiss reality. They are feeling better and were not able to get that way with the “true” methods.

My personal opinion is we are an overmedicated and over marketed to society that seeks solutions in the form of a pill. Don’t get me wrong, I would take whatever they were giving out if I were in acute pain. It’s like Jerry Stocking says,  

“Thank goodness medicine is there when you need it and thank goodness it’s not there when you don’t need it.”

This isn’t a rant on medicine. It’s more about removing the relative truth blinders and entertaining the notion that a different approach to whatever is challenging you may provide the solution.

The prescription is: Get Curious!

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

http://CDBaby.com/CD/johnmorgan

You may need to be smart to get through school but you don’t need to be intelligent to get through life.

There are probably no dumb doctors. Even the one who graduated at the bottom of their class has to have some smarts to get through medical school. Smart is overrated. I used to work with a guy who was dumber than a stump who went on to be a roller rink mogul and made more money than all of his coworkers combined. His IQ was close to that of a plant but it didn’t stop him from succeeding or being happy. I’m reminded of an expression my friend, Howard uses. He says, “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”

When you adjudge yourself as smarter than someone, it proves very little. It just puts another notch on your ego’s belt about how superior you are to them.

If you think about it, your intellect is a collection vessel for facts, figures and concepts, and logic is the conscious assembling of that data. The bigger the vessel, the bigger the bragging rights. It is amazing to me how often what we know keeps us stuck in the snow. We dig ourselves deeper into our ditch because we are flooring the gas pedal of logic to get unstuck.

Smart and not so smart, alike, are programmed by another part of their mind that doesn’t pay attention to logic. This other-than-conscious part of your mind weaves whatever data that got into your facts and figures receptacle (intellect) into patterns of thinking and behavior that have nothing to do with logic. These routines that form will run us for the rest of our life unless we outgrow them. Here’s the rub that will rub your nose into reality – your superior intellect will never figure out how to outgrow a pattern logically.

For example, there are smart and stupid fat people. Reminds me of a story . . .

When I was in high school we had a neighbor who had a degree in nursing and had a master’s degree in nutrition and she was the head dietician at the local hospital. She could tell you the chemical composition of any food or beverage and she also had complete conscious command of the caloric content of any meal. She weighed close to 300 pounds. She was smart and dangerously overweight.

Staying with weight for a moment . . . you didn’t gain weight intellectually. You didn’t say to yourself, “I think I’ll go up 2 or 3 pants sizes.” You won’t lose weight intellectually either. That’s called a diet. Yes, you will drop some pounds as long as you intellectually follow the dictates of the diet, but the minute that conscious effort wanes, you go back to where you were and then some. Your weight is controlled by patterns formed a long time ago.

Everyone can communicate with and update the part of their mind that weaves data together that forms patterns that were originally purposeful. You may have outgrown the purpose that a pattern was originally formed for, but the pattern keeps running because it’s never been updated. The pattern doesn’t know why it runs; it just runs because that is its purpose. You cannot update it by being smart. You can update it by getting your intellect out of the way – no matter how large or small.

The intellect is a wonderful part of our mind and it serves an important function. The difficulty is when it attempts to do a job it’s not suited for. That’s when we fall face first into the mud and stay there.

When you learn to affect the part of your mind that updates your patterns, you go to the head of the class.

The frame of mind that you enter through hypnosis or meditation is the place where all patterns can be updated. Just make an intention and then enter this place of quiet contemplation with that intention and watch the magic begin to work. You will need to do this practice with frequency to get results. It sure beats having to use logic to explain why you’re not where you want to be.

It reminds me of an elementary school teacher I once had who said,

“You can have what you want or your reasons why not.”

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

Most people are accomplished at something. Some set the benchmark in their area of expertise whether in their job or profession, their hobby, or in their family. Unfortunately, some people never give themselves credit for what they are good at and, sorry to say, many times other people overlook that skill as unimportant.

For example, some people are world-class parents. They may struggle financially or lack formal education, but that does not prevent them from using this wonderful molding skill to provide a loving and nurturing environment in which their children can blossom. The difficulty I see quite often is that people are quick to discount such a skill and play the “if only” and the “grass is greener” games with themselves. The truth is the grass is just a different shade of green but it is still only grass.

A zebra that wants to be a lion or vice-versa is missing the unvarnished truth. They don’t recognize their area in which to thrive. My ex-wife used to say that fathers encourage their children to be what they can be and mothers accept their children for who they are. I’m certain there are examples to the contrary but her philosophy seems to be accurate.

A misperceived level of expectation for yourself or for others can lead to frustration and disappointment. Reminds me of a story . . .

Many years ago I was in a career-changing mindset. A friend of mine had just attended a seminar called The Accounting Game. He was a company owner and wanted to understand accounting a bit more so that his eyes didn’t glaze over when he listened to his accounting people. He raved about the seminar and I got caught up in his enthusiasm. I investigated the company and they had opportunities for you to sell their seminars. I sent away for the information and embarked on a new career path. I wasn’t very successful in making money for them or for me. They had a great product but I was not having success selling it. I was telling my neighbor Gino, who cuts my hair, about my latest exploits and I saw his brow furrow. He then said something that opened my eyes. He said something like: “John, you have a wonderful ability to communicate to people and I don’t think that skill was meant for you to communicate someone else’s message.” It became instantly clear that I was discounting my area of expertise and mowing someone else’s lawn.

What are you good at? If you said, “nothing,” you are missing the point. You have a skill set that comes to you as naturally as breathing. Home in on that ability and see how you can flesh it out to take advantage of opportunities that require that expertise. If you want someone else’s skill set, you can certainly take the training necessary to acquire it, but if it doesn’t ring true with your nature, you will struggle no matter how much knowledge about it that you acquire. My mom was a knowledgeable waitress who had an incredible eye for decorating. She never took a class but she really could arrange furniture and accent pieces to make a room eye-appealing and more than a functional space. It was really her calling but she never pursued it. She worked as an able but frustrated waitress.

There is the other side of the coin that is equally frustrating. I call it the “Stage Mother Syndrome.” I’m sure you know some parents who push their children into areas that they always wanted to pursue themselves, but never did. The poor child can’t sing a note but the parents keep setting their child up for failure by getting them vocal instruction and putting them into recital after recital.

Many people do that to themselves. They have a false sense of who they are and shoot in the wrong direction. They take training and acquire new skills but never flower because they have overlooked, dismissed, or discounted their natural skill set. There are many skill assessing methods available if you are still confused about what your natural ones are. (Myers-Briggs, Enneagrams, and others).

The real message is that ease and comfort will come when you do something that comes easy to you.

All the best,

John

Many people have asked me about The Secret which is a very successful book and DVD. It has captured peoples’ imagination around the world. My personal assessment is The Secret is a wonderful stepping stone towards the future. It’s one of the more attractive, decorated stones on the path. Rhonda Byrne is to be given high praise for compiling such a popular work.

The Secret’s message is one that’s been around for centuries – thoughts become things.

The real question is: what kind of thoughts?

The regular garden variety thought isn’t going to cut it. That’s thinking, and thinking doesn’t make it so. If that were the case there would have been a lot more ponies on Christmas morning.

The reality is that “thoughts become things” is a headline. The real story is many paragraphs deeper. When you investigate fully, the real secret is: Beliefs become things.

Beliefs are subprograms of the mind that run the whole show. No matter what we think, if we have a belief that opposes our thoughts, the belief will always rule the day. Thoughts are logical and beliefs are not. Beliefs run from serious to silly. Your beliefs on any of the talk show “hot button” topics (gun control, capital punishment, abortion, the war) are the “serious” ones. The “right” way to hang toilet paper is one of the sillier ones. Either way, your belief wins the day.

So if you desire to attract a new shiny, sleek, expensive automobile, you will have to do more than picture or imagine it showing up in your driveway. That’s a start but you will remain in the starting blocks if that’s all you do.

Your thinking will never change for more than a minute unless your controlling beliefs melt and fade away. Deep in the bowels of The Secret is the unvarnished truth. Quoting Rhonda Byrne,

“The law of attraction is reflecting back your innermost thoughts and feelings as your life.”

Those innermost thoughts and feelings are your beliefs and you will not think your way out of them no matter how vivid your imagination.

Another testament to “beliefs are things” comes from the author of Radical Forgiveness, Colin Tipping:

“Your life is a mirror of what exists in your subconscious mind.”

Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” We live our lives, mostly unaware, of many of the beliefs we hold, and the hold they have on us. Beliefs will take you to one destination – the same place every time. They are like trains that run on predetermined tracks and they always arrive at the same station – no matter that you desire to go elsewhere.”

In order for you to attract something different than what you have, your beliefs will have to get updated.

A great starting point is recognition. Recognition of a controlling belief will get you to the threshold of change quicker than the most vivid of imaginings. Your beliefs need to be interrupted by you before they have a prayer of changing. Before you can interrupt one, you have to recognize that you have it.

So get curious about what belief is keeping you from getting what you want. When that belief rears its head, interrupt it by noticing it. Just the practice of noticing it every time it presents itself will weaken its grasp.

I think that Wayne Dyer communicates the starting point for the law of attraction when he says, “Imagination is the force of creation.” Imagination is the catalyst. Think of it as the fuse that leads to the bomb. The difficulty most people experience is the personal explosion will always short circuit as long as the belief is in between the fuse and the bomb.

Here’s a reframe of an old saw that points the way to finding fruition:

“Curiosity killed the cat’s belief.”

All the best,

John