- A client reports that her interview didn’t turn out as she’d hoped. 

- A good friend is excited about the raffle she won at the charity event last night.

- My best friend says none of our foster kitties got adopted over the weekend.

- My father-in-law says his hospital test results turned out great.

- A client reveals that none of his leads panned out.

Whether surprised or excited or discouraged about their results, each situation invites the same question: “What were you thinking?”

Or some variation of that question: 

• “Did I pre-pave it?” 
• “What did I think would happen?” 
• “What was I expecting?”

When we can link up what we had in mind prior to the event, it’s pretty simple to see how our thoughts create our results.  That connection inspires us to be more deliberate in future events.

Favorite Example: a couple of years ago I went on my first internet date.  It was awful.  So awful that had I been famous, I’d known I was being punked.   It seemed impossible to contrive so many awful things in just one night.  But there it was - happening in real life.  Unbelievably ridiculous!

I promptly returned home to email the handful of other guys I’d been chatting with online.  I told them my girlfriends were right; I was crazy to meet men online - and I would definitely NOT do it again. 

Which led me to wonder what made for such a miserable experience.  ”What was I thinking?”

Well, I’d been thinking I’d give it a try.  I thought I’d check out what everyone was talking about with online dating.  In the back of my mind I was also thinking how my girlfriends thought I was nuts.  But I still thought I’d see what would happen. 

“See what happens?”  Okay, that’s not very deliberate!  Jeannette, you can do better than THAT!

I laughed when I realized I hadn’t pre-paved the date.  Hadn’t even put together a list of traits, qualities and characteristics I wanted in a guy!  Can you imagine?!

What could I expect when I hadn’t given Universe proper instruction about what I wanted?!

Well, that doesn’t happen twice. 

Once I understood that I’d just rolled the Universal dice on that first date, I knew I could do better. 

So when a not bad-looking financial planner/photographer wrote suggesting to “get back on that horse, kind woman!” I eventually agreed to meet him for lunch. 

This time, I imagined myself laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.  I held thoughts of what a pleasure it was to get to know someone new.  I fancied feeling an immediate mutual attraction.  I pre-enjoyed how crystal clear he was in letting me know he was interested in seeing me again (because if I was having THIS much fun, I’d definitely want to do it again)!  I imagined the ease of our conversation.  I loved that he was intelligent, funny, considerate, and hot hot hot!  

And guess what?  The attraction was so immediate I could feel it before he even crossed the parking lot.  I think I even blushed when I shook his hand!  Over lunch, I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt.  I never had so much fun getting to know someone new.  Our conversation was natural, easy and incredibly enjoyable.  He was funny and smart and sweet … and did I mention hot?!  Man, he was hot.

By the time I got home from lunch, there was an email waiting from him.  He was ”breaking all the internet dating rules” and inviting me to a weekend getaway.  tee hee (That meets my request that he was clear about wanting to see me again.)

Guess what happened next?

I pre-paved a magnificent summer of dating!  It got better and better each date with each guy!  In fact, I had so much fun, it must have been illegal.  Words can’t describe the amount of fun I had!

All because I got clear about what I was thinking.  No more rolling the dice, seeing what happened.  I got crystal clear with Universe about what to deliver. 

(And man, did Universe deliver!  Sheesh , what a fun summer.)

I’d love to hear what inspires YOU to pay attention to what you’re thinking.  How do you remember to segment intend, pre-pave, or hold the outcome you want in mind before you start?  Thanks in advance for sharing your inspiration with us!

PS to my second Match date - thanks for the good advice to get back on the horse.  I learned the power of paying attention to what I’m thinking and our time together offered great reinforcement to continue doing exactly that! 

PPS - the photo here is of one of the slot canyons we hiked in the southern part of Utah on our second date.  Fun fun fun!

My mind played big time tricks yesterday when I weighed in after the first week on my official LOA diet. 

(Not your typical diet, you might imagine - it hardly deserves that moniker.) 

But anyway, after I visualized all the right numbers, felt the happy feeling and then stepped on the scale - it said I’d lost 2.5 pounds.

Two and a half pounds!!  In one week!  That’s 20% of my goal already! 

After doing a little woo hoo dance alone in the basement (with the scale), I reveled in all the good vibes.  For about four minutes.  That’s when gremlins kicked in and started explaining away 2.5 pounds.  

• “Well, you know, that scale’s not very accurate.”
• “You’re probably just dehydrated.”
• “It’s might be muscle you lost, not fat.”
• “You should probably be gaining still, since you’re repairing impaired metabolism.”
• “The first week is the easiest, you know.  The rest will be harder.”

Oh my gosh!  Could gremlins please cut me some slack?!  Let’s just enjoy this, huh?  Two and a half pounds in one week - on the easiest diet anyone ever dreamt of - is GOOD NEWS!  I’m not letting go of this!

But the gremlins continued throughout the day as I reflected on my progress. 

Finally, I’d had enough. 

I said to myself, “Face the facts.  You dropped 2.5 pounds in one week.  That’s all there is to it.”

Those cold hard facts turned the gremlin chorus off.

And honestly, those are nice facts to face.

I’m not a big one for facing the facts, you know.  I prefer to make things up in my mind and let them manifest in physicality …

… but when the facts are aligned with what we want, it’s time to embrace them.  This is REAL.  This is TRUE.  Own it!  Claim it!  Revel in it!

I really did get invited to Oprah’s LOA show!  I really am a Master Coach!  I truly am in the midst of living out my best relationship EVER!  I honestly look ten years younger than I technically am.  I live in a beautiful house with a lifestyle many folks dream about.  And girlfriend - you are hot stuff - 2.5 pounds or not!

Relax and enjoy, huh?!

Sheesh - that’s the last time I let the gremlins crash the party!

The thing is I know I’m not alone with this habit.  Many of us show an uncanny ability to dismiss the good stuff (even the cold hard facts) to jump right back into whatever problem we’re focused on. 

• “I manifested $20,000 out of the blue?  That’s not enough.” 
• “Mr. Right asked me out on a date?  Wait till he gets to know me - that’ll be the last of him.” 
• “The boss just promoted me to Head Honcho?  Now he probably thinks he doesn’t have to give me a raise.”

Can anyone relate?

I just hung up the phone with my ex boyfriend’s dad who complained that (four months ago, if you can believe we’re still complaining about it) his son showed up for his 70th birthday party with a beer in hand.  (That’s a big no-no for devout Mormons, which my ex’s family is.) 

“He shouldn’t have done that,” his dad said to me. 

Well, let’s face the facts. 

1) Your son came to your birthday party.  That’s good right there, if you ask me.  I have plenty of clients who wish their kids even knew when their birthday was, let alone showed up in person to celebrate it. 

2) Your son remembered, he cared, he even brought nice friends along.  We can give him credit for that. 

3) And he was not only the life of the party, he was also sober.  (So were his very polite friends, who were not drinking.) 

Yes, he carried a beer and maybe made you look bad in front of your religious friends, but how long ago was it that you’d have been thrilled if he was just even sober on a Friday night?  (Let alone Monday morning.)  Or wished that he wouldn’t drink and drive?  Or even hoped that he’d hang out with friends, instead of being lonely and depressed in your basement?

There’s lots of good news here … let’s see it!

If you’ve heard it from me once, you’ve heard it a hundred times: we get what we vibrate. 

So that means there is NO good reason to discount the positive news.  We’re not setting ourselves up for disappointment if we think good things are in the works; we’re not motivating ourselves toward success by imagining potential problems; and we certainly aren’t headed in the direction of our dream come true by refusing to acknowledge the evidence that it’s on the way. 

(I’m saying all this as a reminder to me as much as to anyone else who could use a refresher on this topic!)

For that reason, I’m inviting all of you to join me in a little 2.5 pound victory dance from wherever you’re sitting right now.  Shake your shoulders, give a big smile, or do a little jig if you’re standing and holler “woo hoo!” 

Even better, share YOUR good facts here to get a group investment going in what you’d like to see more of.  It’s a simple way to grease your wheels for the journey to your dream come true. 

PS - I’ll share the details of my LOA “diet” after I’ve proven it works as well as I think it does.  In the meantime, thanks for sharing my fun facts with me, and yours with the rest of us!  : )

This piece from Michael Neill’s newsletter is such a simple method of enacting the Law of Attraction that I wanted to post it for those of you who don’t already receive his notes.  (You can sign up for them at www.geniuscatalyst.com.)  Here it is:

I was speaking with a friend yesterday who told me about a simple conversation which changed her life.

She was in the midst of complaining to one of her teachers about her life when she said “I guess what I really want is to be happy.”

He smiled at her and asked, “Do you ever get a happy feeling?”

“Occasionally,” she replied.

“Do more of that,” he said.

Nonplussed by the simplicity of the reply, she went on to discuss her failing marriage.

“Was there a time when your marriage was happy?” her teacher asked.

“Well of course, in the beginning.”

“What was different?”

She thought about it for a few moments.

“I guess when we were first together I wasn’t so critical of him all the time. Nowadays I’m obsessed with every stupid thing he’s ever done, and when we’re together it feels like I’m just waiting to see how he’ll mess things up this time.

In the early days, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a great guy he was and running through all the fun times we had together in my mind. All I wanted to do was just enjoy hanging out with him.”

Her teacher smiled again, said “Do more of that”, and walked away.

She said that her first response to the conversation was shock and a bit of anger at her difficult, difficult problems being dismissed like that. “After all,” she thought to herself, “that’s the kind of simplistic advice I would expect from my grandmother!” But then something shifted.

She could see her future out in front of her like a line, and she saw how her constant obsession with her husband’s faults would lead to an unpleasant separation and divorce. Then she imagined making his good qualities more important than his bad ones and simply enjoying his company and could see a long and increasingly happy life together stretching on out into the future.

When she imagined herself continuing to obsess about her unhappiness, her image of the future became cloudy and grey; as soon as she imagined herself “doing more happy feelings”, it brightened up and just thinking about it made her smile.

Since I knew her to be someone who was generally very happy and whose marriage, while no doubt not perfect, seemed perfectly wonderful, I asked her how she had made the change.

“It was actually quite easy”, she replied. “Once I really saw the impact of my obsessing with what’s wrong and compared it to the possibility of focusing on what’s right, I just naturally started to do less of what wasn’t working and more of what was.”

“But what about when you were caught up in a negative spin?” I asked.

“I either waited it out, knowing it was just a low mood and would pass,” she said, “or sometimes, I just changed my mind.”

Now it was my turn to be nonplussed.

“You just changed your mind?”

“Sure. Haven’t you ever had a negative reaction to something but then, as you learned more about it, you decided that it was actually a good thing?”

“Of course. When Nina first told me she was pregnant, I thought it was a disaster and that I was going to have to give up my work and become a plumber. As soon as my son was born, I realized how gloriously wrong I had been and now having kids is one of the most wonderful things in my life.”

My friend smiled at me mischievously.

“Do more of that.”

(c) 2008 Michael Neill/All Rights Reserved
Genius Catalyst Inc.
4220 Esteban Road
Woodland Hills, CA
91364
US

Jeannette again: I’d love to hear what stops those of you from practicing this simple habit of doing more of what makes you happy (i.e. feels good).  It’s a key component of my coaching with clients, so this is an important topic for me not just as a deliberate creator, but also a coach!

“It’s just bad luck.”

That was Russ’ answer to my question as to how something like that could happen.

He’d just returned from a golf tournament where someone told the story of a 17 year old boy who was hit by a golf ball and could lose his eye as a result.

Golf is this dangerous, I wondered?  You guys don’t plan better than that?  Russ said there are a lot of “hacks” out there that are fully capable of sending a ball in the wrong direction.

(I would be one of those people, I’m sure, if he ever talked me into golfing.  Which won’t happen especially now that I know how easy it is to get hit.  All I needed was one more excuse to cross it off the list!)

Even as he answered me, though, I suspected that wasn’t the answer.

Because I don’t believe in luck, other than to the extent we create our own - good and bad.  (I actually don’t really believe in “wrong” direction, when it comes down to it.)

How something like that happens - no matter what we’re referencing - is due to aligning vibes.  That’s all.  No good, bad, right or wrong about it.

It’s just energy lining up.

Which I would probably not say to someone who’d just been hit by a ball.

Coincidence?  Luck?  Fate? 

Sometimes it might feel better to think so, but that’s the only reason I’d entertain those thoughts. 

Which makes me wonder - as we entertain those thoughts, do we create that reality? 

I suppose so - but it’s still a result of OUR power.  Not from something outside ourselves.

As we think it, we create it.  So if I believe in good or bad luck, I’ll attract the appearance of it. 

Which made me wonder with all this talk about 2012, are we creating that, too?  Abraham says 2012 will be just like 2011 and just like 2013, so relax about it.  But if we keep thinking 2012 is going to be some sort of big deal, and we’ve been thinking that for a VERY long time (like Mayan calendar long time), aren’t we manifesting it?

You probably already know I’m more than curious about your 2012 thoughts …  Would LOVE to hear everyone’s perspectives on the topic!

Welcome to the second half of 2008!   Can I get a big round of “woo hoos”?!

July’s LOA blog carnival theme is success stories, which has always been an intriguing topic for me.  Specifically, how we each define and measure our success.

What I’ve come to learn over the years of working with clients is that one person’s success is another’s failure.  What to ME is perfect evidence of a dream come true could be someone else’s worst nightmare.

Success is an undeniably intimately personal experience.

I’m thinking of Rhonda, very new to LOA who hired me last year despite suspicions that I was full of it when she saw my 2003 Ford ZX3.  That was not her idea of someone who knew how to attract an abundance of wealth. 

I’ve also heard: “No offense, but why would someone who can create whatever they want still work as a coach?”  Or live in Rose Park, or have an ex-husband, or need a pedicure?

Well, I say, I got married and divorced long before I learned about deliberate creation.  Ha! 

But that’s all I offer an excuse for, because the rest of my life is just how I pick it.  Yes, this is (virtually all) on purpose. 

This is, based on the desires I’ve fostered over the years, my idea of a good time.  I’m doing it my way, and that’s the best definition of success I could think of.

It’s true, I have several cats and dogs and love love love it!  I’m friends with all my exes and glad there are lots of them; I spend as little time in the salon as I can get away with; and am learning how to create long-lasting happiness with my live-in boyfriend.  I don’t have a lot of close friends, but the few I have are worth their weight in gold.  I’d rather sit home with a good book than go to a party, and I prefer camping in the mountains over a trip to the bahamas.  But that’s just me!

If it’s important to you to drive an expensive car, or put the kids through private school, or be married, or have perfect body parts (mm, I might have bought into that one), or claim the biggest bank account in your circle, then that’s what you should measure YOUR level of success by. 

But don’t hold me - or anyone else for that matter - to that standard, since we each have different ideas about what success looks like.

What matters is that each of us knows our own definition.  Letting everyone choose their own measure is a nice way to live and let live (i.e. allow).

How do you know when you’ve arrived?  What indicates your achievement?

If I know anything, it’s that striving for someone else’s definition of success is a quick ticket to misery. 

My idea of success:

• Waking up looking forward to the day
• Feeling good about myself and how I spend my time
• Laughing, Enjoying, Appreciating
• Being true to myself

(That’s certainly not how I always measured it, though!  I remember when what mattered was how many people approved of and accepted me, how many credentials and promotions I had on my resume, what my credit score was and how many men I could capture the hearts of.   Ugh, huh?)

Tell me YOUR definition of success.  How do you know when you’ve really nailed it?  What are the key things that having, doing or being allow you to call it a successful life? 

I can’t wait to hear!