“Argue for your limitations and they’re yours.”
- Richard Bach, from Illusions and The Messiah’s Handbook

Rather than dismissing what is possible so that you can be right, what can you accept so that you can grow?

What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?

By Lena Salonikas

I am often asked why language and focus is so important in manifesting your desires. The plain truth is that if you use negative language in your discussions about what you are manifesting, be it out loud or in thought, or you are focusing on what is not right, you sabotage your good intentions. How can one negative thought or a backwards focus throw you off so much? Let me try to explain.

If you look at classic marketing theories, they say that people buy for the emotion that it gives them and that specifically people buy to move either away from pain or toward pleasure. It is the same in manifesting anything in your life. When you desire something, you generally desire it because it will either move you away from a painful feeling or undesirable experience or it will move you toward a feeling of joy and peace, toward a better experience. The rate at which you manifest what you desire is 100% based on where your focus is. If you are focusing on moving toward joy and peace, you will get what you want much quicker. If however, you are focusing on moving away from pain it will take you longer.

Why does the direction you are going in make a difference in how fast you manifest your desire? This is where focus comes in. The law of attraction states that like attracts like. Many successful people have also proven through the years that what you focus on is what you create in your world. Looking at all of this, what your thoughts are and what your thoughts are focused on are what you see before you in your life. The stronger your focus is, the quicker you see it happening.

Looking deeper at the away from pain vs. toward pleasure principle, I’m going to refer to moving away from pain as moving away from darkness and moving toward pleasure as moving toward the light.

When you are looking at the darkness, and focusing on it, you are constantly looking at it and no matter how far away you step, you still see a little black dot of darkness. It is always there, and because you see it, you are constantly reminded of the black dot that you no longer want in your life. You want it gone, but because you keep looking at it, it won’t go away until you move far enough away.

When you are looking at the light, there is no black dot to focus on. There is nothing to interfere with you focusing on what you want. The light is bright and keeps getting brighter and brighter the closer you move to it. You gravitate toward it until you feel enveloped by it. You see nothing wrong because there is no black dot to focus on. There is only the brightness and warmth of the light. Soon, you are in a state of bliss because the light surrounds you and you see the creation of your desire coming to life.

When you do something to move away from pain, you keep focusing on the pain and what you don’t want. There is always some residue there. When you move toward something that brings you pleasure, you focus on what you want and you see it showing up – you don’t even see the darkness, so it is instantly non-existent.

In my own life, I’ve been recently reminded of this theory as I close one chapter and open a new one. I’ve realized how in the past, I have moved away from pain by focusing on healing myself and others even though what I wanted was to create an ideal life. Sure, I moved along my path and create new things in my life every day. However, now that I’ve switched my focus to only the best of what I want, I’m creating at the speed of light. My focus now though, is all about helping people to create their dreams by gaining clarity around what they want, not what they don’t want, and staying focused on it. The result, I’m creating faster than I ever have before.

I am through moving away from darkness completely and have embraced moving toward the light with every fiber of my being. Are you? Make the choice today to manifest in your life at the speed of light.

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Lena Salonikas is a writer, life coach and infopreneur who works with people to live the life of their dreams. To find out more about her and what she is currently working on, visit www.masteringlifesgame.com or e-mail her directly at asklena@masteringlifesgame.com.
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Copyright © 2005, Lena Salonikas, www.masteringlifesgame.com. You may reprint and distribute this article in its entirety provided that all contact information, attribution and links are kept intact. If you use this article, please send an e-mail to askus@masteringlifesgame.com stating when and where it will be posted.

So… I just got back last night from being in Mississippi since last Thursday. This was the weekend for our annual family picnic in Hernando, a little country town turning suburb not too far outside Memphis.

I used to say this wasn’t a vacation by any stretch for me - it’s quite a bit of work. Since I’m in charge of grilling (woo hoo) I basically spend most of Friday and Saturday prepping the meat and standing outside manning the grill. (I found out that I do indeed sunburn.) Plus there’s all the shopping and other stuff that’s part of the prepwork. And I usually end up doing this mostly myself (Lena does come with, thank goodness) before most everyone else gets down there.

It occurred to me just before I left, that even though it’s a lot of work to do, and I’m involved on the front end of things, that really I do love the parts that I do - well, the grilling anyway. I’m well on my way to becoming a barbecuing guru. Plus, that also means I can usually coast the rest of the weekend, letting everyone else do the cleanup and all that other jazz as they gush about what a great job I did on the grill. The fact that I’m out there for about twelve to sixteen hours in the hot Mississippi sun doesn’t hurt either.

So is it a vacation? I say heck yeah. Compared to the stuff I usually do during the week, this is kind of a getaway. Can it be tough? Sure, but it’s a labor of love. I honestly do enjoy almost every moment (I’d be more than happy for someone else do some of the prepwork).

The point is, event though some of it is indeed tedious or hard, it doesn’t really feel like work in the long run. The enjoyment I get while doing it, and the satisfaction of doing it well, really makes it seem effortless to me - though honestly it tends to feel more effortless after I’ve finished.

So I can call my weekend a vacation, even with all that hard work. And then it dawned on me: How often have I thought about a job or project being tedious and unpleasant and not been psyched about getting it done? Plenty. But what if I could reframe the work, and instead focus on the joy it brings me - whether I get that joy while doing the job or after it’s done. If I consciously choose to find the joy in the things I do, then it feels less like work - becoming more ‘effortless’ to me. And every job could then feel more like a vacation to me.

Gratitude is an important element of our prosperity. When we express our gratitude for what we have in our lives we align our energy to receive even more of the same in our lives.

Put simply, being grateful makes us magnets for more prosperity and abundance. Huge magnets.

Invoking this power is simple: express your gratitude for something, anything you have in your life. Size doesn’t matter on this one. If you found a penny on the ground this morning, celebrate it! After all, you just got something for nothing - free money - two things, interestingly enough, that “common wisdom” says don’t exist.

Still don’t think you have anything to be grateful for? How about the fact that you managed to read this blog in the first place? How great that you’ve got access to a computer and the internet! Got a roof over your head? How about the fact that the air you breathe is free? If you take the time to look, you’ll absolutely find something to be grateful for. And the more you find, the more you’ll find.

So on an ending note, here’s my own list of things I’m grateful for today:

I am grateful to be on this path of prosperity consciousness and effortless living I am currently sailing.

I am grateful to share my knowledge with others to help them determine their own paths.

I am grateful to be in such positive energy that grows more each moment.

I am grateful to have released so many beliefs that didn’t serve me and replaced them with beliefs that support my abundance.

I am grateful that I am increasingly more present in every moment of my life.

I am grateful to know that I can choose happiness at every moment, and do so most of the time.

I am grateful that I release judgment, especially of myself in those times I do not choose happiness.

I am grateful that I attract more abundance into my life, and celebrate every time I receive, be it a penny on the ground or a thousand dollars into my bank account.

Above all else I am grateful for my entire life experience, and that I am truly enjoying every aspect and experience of my life.

This weekend I charged myself with completing writing something. This project has needed to be done for a while now, but I have kept putting it off. Finally, I made a commitment to it being in someone’s inbox by the time they started work Saturday morning.

It was Thursday morning when I made this commitment, knowing that I had two very full days ahead of me and very little time in which to accomplish it. Friday night would be the only unscheduled time I had to write it.

Friday evening I retired to my office and pulled out the document to work on. I read over my previous work on it and decided that it needed a fresh start.

I sat in front of my computer and stared at the screen for a few minutes before I walked away. It was in the moment right before I left my office when I realized when I have really wanted to complete a piece of writing, I go to bed relatively early and wake up in the wee hours of the morning.

I followed that prescription Friday night. I crawled into bed between 9:30 and 10:00 PM and set my alarm for 3:00 AM. I know…I usually find that to be a tortuous hour to wake, but when I absolutely have to write, 3:00 or 4:00 AM is when it gets started. I drifted off to sleep thinking that when I awoke, I would get straight to writing and I’d be able to send it off just before 8:00 AM.

At 3:00 AM I decided to reset the alarm for 4:00.

I finally get to the computer sometime around 4:20. I locate the document and start typing away. It is in those morning hours that the words flowed through me and seem to magically appear on the page. Before I knew it, I was done. It was about 5:45.

I did a quick review for typos and minor changes, not too concerned if I would have to do anything extensive since I knew that I was sending it out for a critique and would get revision suggestions in the afternoon.

I took a fresh look at it around 10:00 and did very slight tweaking. I realized that the editing needed on this piece was minimal.

I reflected upon past morning writings and noticed a few things. I started doing this type of writing in college, when I would have a paper, short story or any other piece of writing due. I would beat myself up about it, yelling at myself about procrastination.

As I got older, I still did this when I had something that I felt was really important to write. My stomach would get all tied up in knots as the deadline got closer. Then, I would again admonish myself for procrastination and not getting it done sooner.

These two things didn’t need any reflection. I know these two things because they run through my head any time I have committed to writing something.

The next few thoughts that came out of this reflection have just changed my life forever.

I realized today that what I’ve been doing all these years has not been procrastination. It has been a formula for my writing success.

When I feel compelled to write, like now, it can be any time of day and there are a few factors that are always similar like where I like to write, the instruments I use to write with, etc.

When I have to write, it is entirely different. Choosing to deliberately write takes discipline. Ask any writer, we all have a routine that we follow. I just never recognized mine until today.

Daily disciplines allow you to focus on the task at hand. It is just something that you do that eventually becomes automatic. You will often fall into a zone while doing it. My best deliberate writing, needing the least amount of editing is the outcome of a very specific discipline.

What I once thought was procrastination and being driven to work under the wire, I now know is my way of setting a very strong intention, focusing on the outcome and getting my conscious mind out of the way so that my subconscious mind can be open to delivering just what I need.

I know this formula now, and can use it with any project that I want to flow effortlessly through, be it writing or anything else.

I know that this formula will work for others as well – we just need to plug in the routine that is specific to them. For me it is sleeping on it and getting up and doing it. For someone else it might be brainstorming, going to play a game of golf and coming back to sort the brainstorming into a cohesive project plan they are inspired to follow.

The possibilities are as endless as the people who want to tap into how to move from procrastination to productivity in their lives.

Imagine your mind is a big room. Each of your thoughts is an item in the room, like furniture, artwork, knickknacks, and so on. Your positive thoughts are the stuff in this room that bring you joy, like comfortable couches, beautiful artwork, and so on. Your negative thoughts are the ugly, uncomfortable, tacky decor and clutter that at best does nothing for you and at worst repulses and hinders you.

Most people’s rooms are filled to the gills with all kinds of clutter and junk, most of it falling into the ugly, tacky category. There’s hardly any space to move around and do anything because the room is so full.

So the trick is to get rid of all the tacky negative thoughts, which for most of us on the planet means we’re left with a big, mostly empty room. But look at all the space to work with! It’s now up to you to decide what kinds of things you’d like to go in this room.

The following is a quote from The Attractor Factor by Joe Vitale:

“When we dismiss people and ideas because the entire world doesn’t agree with them, we get to be right. But we also get to stay empty inside. By dismissing what could work, we dismiss our own growth. We dismiss what’s possible.

“The truth is, no method works for everyone. No teacher is right for everyone. No book is going to inspire everyone. It all comes from within. You are the first and final authority on your life.

“Rather than dismissing what is possible so that you can be right, what can you accept so that you can grow?”

‘Nuff said.

I was reading Michael Kimble’s (an internet marketer) blog and read an interesting conversation he had with a friend awhile back:

“A year ago, I was working a job, and I got a raise to $60 an hour. I almost couldn’t believe I was making so much money. But I never would have believed I could make $10K a month online, and even once I started doing it, it took me awhile to get comfortable with it.
Now, I think I can do $20K.”

I told her this: “$20K a month is nothing. I have a friend of mine who makes $750K a month, and I’m pissed that I’m not yet doing that.”

When she heard this, her jaw dropped, and she said, “That’s almost unbelievable–I can’t imagine making such a staggering sum.”

“And that,” I said, “is what’s holding you back.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I know people that think making $20K a month is excessive. I even know a few people that can’t even conceive of making that kind of money.

It’s not that what they believe is good or bad. If they’re content and happy making $10K, $0K, or anything in between, then I’m thrilled for them. Their beliefs are working for them quite nicely.

However, a person that desperately wants to be a millionaire but can’t even conceive of making even $40K per month - less than half a million - is shooting themselves in the foot and probably doesn’t even realize it.

Most people are taught beliefs like “money is scarce (it doesn’t grow on trees),” “you have to have money to make money,” “money is evil,” “rich people are greedy and corrupt.”

People with those beliefs ingrained in their subconscious will rarely become millionaires, and even if they do, their subconscious beliefs will cause them to lose it all - or become greedy and corrupt.

And it’s not just about money. Your beliefs dictate every part of your life. What you believe becomes your reality.

We’ve all heard stories about athletes pushing themselves and winning medals and championships; people from poor, uneducated, or other limited backgrounds becoming successful, distinguished, or famous; people overcoming terminal illnesses and living long, healthy lives.

These people acheived their goals and dreams simply because they believed they would. They believed in themselves even when people around them said it couldn’t be done. They let nothing interfere with their beliefs.

We all have exactly that same power, without exception.

The problem is, most people use that power in reverse.

Many people believe they’re poor, underprivileged, or unfortunate because it’s who they are - it’s their lot in life. Or they believe that there’s no way they can achieve their goals or dreams, that “it can’t happen to them.” They listen to other people around them giving such “helpful” advice like “don’t get your hopes up” and other garbage.

Richard Bach, in his book Illusions, has the best response: “Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.”

If you truly desire to live the life of your dreams, the first step is to believe you can. Get rid of your limiting beliefs and replace them with beliefs that serve you.

You don’t have to try to do that all at once. (Although it’s possible to do so, it’s very difficult and uncomfortable for most people.) Just become aware of your limiting beliefs one by one, replacing each one with a belief that moves you closer to your desires.

As you practice your new beliefs they will become ingrained in you, displacing your old limiting beliefs and bringing you congruent with your desires. Life then picks up on that congruent energy and puts you on the path to realize your dreams.

So… what’s holding you back?

-Chris