It became obvious to me that for me to experience my own potential the first task I had to do was master my ability to produce results. When you begin to produce results and take action, you begin to experience your own power as a person.
What I have found out is that everyone is interested in producing results. Everyone wants something. If you don’t have what you want in life, there is no way you can be truly happy. You can deny it. You can joke about. You can lie about it, and you can pretend that it’s not important, but that doesn’t change the fact that you still want what you want in life. The purpose of this book is to help you to understand the creative process so that you can use it on a systematic basis to get what you want.
You Will Never Reach Your Potential
We all have a desire to reach our potential. However, do you know anyone who has reached their potential? The answer, of course, is “No”. So by definition, the potential is unlimited. You will never reach your potential. No matter how successful you are, there is always going to be this little voice in your head that says. “You could have done better.” No matter what you do, it will seem like you could have done better or you could have done more. Before I realized that I would never reach my potential, when this little voice spoke to me, I reacted with disappointment. No matter how much I accomplished, it seemed like it wasn’t enough. I was always focusing on how much better it could have been. When I realized that there is always going to be something more
or better, I learned to relax and just enjoy the trip, to be thrilled about the experience rather than being tied into getting there.
It helps to understand that you will always be able to do more and have more. The most important thing is the trip, not the destination. In life, if you achieve goals because goals are the most important thing to you, you’ve missed the point. A goal is only an excuse to play the game.
The Name of the Game Is Producing Results
You can not experience who you are by reading about others or watching others succeed at what they do. You experience who you are by producing your own results. The more results you produce, the more you find out who you are.
At the spiritual level we are perfect because we are one with Creative Intelligence. There can be no separation between the Creator and the Created. Since we are one with Creative Intelligence, in theory, we should be able to make perfect choices about our lives. However, we have been created with free will, which means we do not always choose the perfect path for our lives. What goes on in our lives is usually not based on this perfect spiritual pattern, it is based on our choice. We choose our reality. So what are we going to choose? If, in the past, we have chosen sickness, lack, limitation or unworkable relationships, we don’t have to settle for that today.
We can create anything we desire, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort and work. If we think it takes a lot of effort and work to get what we want, then our life is going to be about struggle. The idea that it takes effort and hard work to get what we want is just another false belief system.
All we need to do is to follow the principles discussed in this book. While that may seem like a lot of work, the systematic application of the principles discussed in this book is actually less work than not applying them. It’s more work to create poverty, disease and disharmony than it is to create health, harmony and abundance, because perfect health, harmony and abundance are the natural order of things.
Choose and Believe
Simplified, we can boil it down to this: Choose what you want and believe you’re going to get it. Remember, your subconscious is hooked up to the main computer or the Universal Subconscious. So your mind is set up this way: Decide what you want and believe in your ability to get it, and your subconscious will take care of everything that needs to be done to make it happen. It’s as easy as that. The problem is that we are fooled by the simplicity of it. We are conditioned that life is more complicated than that. Again, the idea that it is difficult or complicated to create what you want is just another false belief system.
You can’t get started until you know what you want. So, if you are not sure, then I urge you to trust your intuition. Listen to your intuition and it will tell you.
If you are having difficulty coming up with an answer, here’s a little hint that may help you. You may be so completely out of the habit of thinking for yourself that when you asked the question, “What do I want?” you seem to draw a blank. If you put it to yourself in the following way, it might come out differently. Ask yourself, “What would I like to see happen?” This might be easier for you. When you put it this way, your subconscious won’t feel threatened by an impending change. Then it’s
not such a big step from what you would like to see happen to what you want. This in turn can prepare you for the big question, which is, “What can I do to make this happen?”
The important thing is to choose something. Just get started. If it’s the “wrong” thing, you will find out and then you can make corrections. But you must be specific. Affirm the specific thing that you want to be, to do and to have. Once you have made the decision, your subconscious will shift from theory to practice and will support you in creating what you want.
Take a Chance with a New Idea
Impulsive action does nothing to add to your strength. Strength comes from knowing what you want and making a decision. All it takes is learning to trust yourself. Once you learn to trust yourself you will begin to listen to yourself even if your first impressions seem to be crazy or odd. That’s the way original thinking has to appear at first. So take a chance and turn a new idea over in your mind. Play with it and you will find it’s fascinating. And out of a little idea can come the most meaningful and important thing in your life.
Many of us spend our whole lives waiting for our ship to come in. Then, if it does come in, we’re too scared to unload it. The sensation that life is passing us by is a very real sensation for most of us. We have all at some time in our lives experienced the feeling that the world is moving forward without our involvement and that it will continue on after we’re gone.
In an effort to throw ourselves back into the mainstream of life we frequently establish hurried and ill-defined goals. Most often these so-called goals are not written down, but just floating around in our
heads as a vague idea. We haven’t accepted at the subconscious level that we already have what we want. We need to take the advice of Jonathan Livingston Seagull when he said, “The way to get there is to know you’ve already arrived.”
The paradox is that we must accept that we have something before we can have it. You see, in the one Universal Mind it is already a reality. Our acceptance takes it from the realm of the Universal Mind into our physical reality.
Allow a New Channel to Open Up
The important thing after you’ve accepted that whatever you want is yours, is to release it with no expectations. Expectations are the exact way you think your goal has to come to you. Just accept that what you want is yours. Remember, whatever you want wants you. But be careful with your expectations. Don’t get locked up into one channel, whether it’s a person, place or thing that you think will be the channel for your desire. Allow all the channels to be open. Never close off any one channel.
When accepting what you choose to experience, the forces within the universe and your desire become a reality. I realize that this may not be simple to understand, but this is the way the Universal Creative Mind works. Without a clear picture of what you want, you will walk around without purpose and direction, and you will get caught up in all the little things that happen in your life. Then, if someone slams the door in your face, it becomes a catastrophe. When you take a look at the completed picture, everything that happens in your life will serve you in getting to where you want to go.
Give up Beliefs About the Way Things Should Be
Once you’ve established where you want to go you have to give up everything you know about getting there. That doesn’t mean you don’t take action. Unfortunately, because of our past experience with problem solving, we tend to handle things in the same way we’ve been handling them for years. Creative Intelligence, however, always knows the perfect way to bring about our desires. It will guide us only if we are willing to give up our old beliefs about how things must work. This is the movement within the Higher Self. To put it another way, our satisfaction in life is really our ability to give up our ideas about the way things should be before we experience them. When we are able to give up our ideas and concepts about the way that things must happen in order for us to be happy, then we can participate in life without fear. We only become unhappy when our concepts or pictures of what life should be like don’t match up with the way things are.
When we give up our beliefs about the way things should be, we are able to receive, through our intuition, ideas about what to do, where to go, who to meet and who to bring into our life. When we have made the decision where we want to be and where we want to arrive, whatever we do will support us in arriving there. Einstein’s idea of relativity came to him while he was sick in bed. Your ideas can come to you at any time if you are open, responsive and ready for them. Keep in mind that your desire or goal is greater than any obstacle you may face at the moment. The trick is not to get caught up what is happening in the moment, because whatever happens to you will ultimately serve your purpose in getting to where you want to go.
The Right Course of Action Will Be Revealed to You
Be conscious of the fact that we will always be attracted to the situation or person that we need, in any given moment, in order to learn whatever lesson that we need to learn. The most important thing is to learn the lesson quickly, let go, and then move on.
There’s nothing that is kept from you that you have not kept from yourself. The thing that you desire is already yours, but by now you should already know that. If there is any barrier between you and what you desire, that barrier will be revealed to you and you will be able to dissolve it. Whatever you need to know in order to get where you want to go will be revealed to you.
You set the forces in motion within yourself once you’ve made the decision of what your ultimate goal will be. So allow whatever it is that you need to know to come up from your subconscious to your conscious mind. The right course of action is always revealed to you if you will trust your own judgement.
Studies in human behavior show that people tend to seek out surroundings they feel comfortable with. Once an individual’s attitudes are developed, that individual will find an environment in which his attitudes and beliefs are accepted and his current belief system is reinforced.
What this means is that if we don’t make a conscious decision to change what is not working in our lives, we are going to stay in the same type of mental environment that we’ve been living in for years.
Overcoming the Fear of Change
If beliefs are causing us pain and suffering, then why don’t we change them? Why haven’t we done what needs to be done to have
exactly the kind of life that we want? It is because we’ve been programmed to fear change. We are addicted to certainty. We would rather be certain we are miserable than to risk being happy and satisfied. We are programmed to always look for security and survival, and we are also programmed to fear the unknown.
Making a decision says something about you. It’s also true that not making a decision says something about you. So don’t get hung up on the end of the pendulum swinging back and forth between “yes” and “no.” Giving yourself such a conflict means you are avoiding change. And like any obsession, excessive conflict is a cover-up.
The “yes” and “no” of the conflict is a distraction to keep you preoccupied so that you do not pay attention to something else. The something else is usually “What will they say?” or “What if I make a mistake?”
Change involves dealing with the unknown. It involves going from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and it involves risk. If you changed your job today, how would you feel?
Supposing you’ve just taken a job that provided a higher salary, more chances for advancement and better working conditions.
Wouldn’t there still be some doubt, fear, nervousness and insecurity regarding the change? Most likely there would. You see, even when change is positive, we have anxiety.
The Difference Between Successful and Unsuccessful People
The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is how they handle change. Successful people have anxiety too, but they don’t get immobilized. Unsuccessful people let their anxiety immobilize them.
Successful people still have anxiety, but they re-channel it into creativity. Start to look at change as a friend instead of an enemy. Take it with you and allow it to work for you instead of against you. Each one of us is climbing the ladder of life. And each rung has new opportunities and new obstacles.
You may be familiar with the “Peter Principle” that states that eventually each one of us rises to our level of incompetence and then we stay there because we do not have the ability to continue. I don’t believe that’s true.
I think it’s because of our fear of change that we stay stuck because we don’t reevaluate and reprogram ourselves to adjust to change. We just stay where we are, which is just a little bit over our heads.
The Peter Principle infers that we have limited abilities. But the truth is we cease developing our abilities because of our fear of change.
There Is No Way to Know Ahead of Time
In the growth process you will make many mistakes. You’ve been programmed since childhood to look at your mistakes. What you’ve been taught to do is to concentrate on what isn’t, what should be, and what could have been. We’ve been brought up with a belief system that says we should constantly judge ourselves, evaluate ourselves and see if we are doing it “right”. We end up judging ourselves so harshly that we quit producing results because we are afraid to make mistakes.
You and I have been taught to fear the unknown, so we start worrying about what’s going to happen two weeks from now, two months from now, or two years from now, instead of concentrating on what is.
We are always looking for certainty, and if we can’t be certain, we don’t move. We allow ourselves to be immobilized. It is because we don’t like the unknown. But the truth is that no matter what you do,
there’s always going to be the unknown. And there’s no way to know before experiencing it.
It’s Okay To Make Mistakes
You might as well face this fact: there’s no security between the cradle and the grave. The only security that you and I have is our ability to create and produce results. If we are not tied into to the belief that we should not make mistakes, uncertainty won’t be a problem. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. Some of them were very large. But that’s part of the growth process. I plan to make more mistakes, and I’m sure that some of them will be even larger.
It helps to realize that an airplane spends ninety percent of its time in error. We need to take a look at that. If you could see that you can get an airplane from New York to London, even while having been in error ninety percent of the time, maybe you could be less critical of yourself.
Maybe you would allow yourself to be in error. A sailboat cannot get from where it is to where it wants to be by traveling in a straight line. It has to zigzag. So in terms of a true course, it’s always in error. What is important about an airplane or a sailboat is that the errors cancel out.
Healthy Personalities Learn to Correct
Learn this great secret of life – that life is about making corrections. The problem is that most people are highly sensitive about being corrected. The way that we respond to correction is a reflection of our own self-esteem.
If you will look at your life, you will see that whatever has happened to you, there was usually a warning sign, but you delayed
until the last minute to make a correction. You were probably afraid of making a mistake, being wrong, losing someone’s approval or looking like a fool. Failure, for the most part, is not the result of our lack of ability, but a product of our reluctance to correctly observe, evaluate and act on the danger signs of a given situation – before that situation gets out of control.
We are fundamentally no different than an airplane. To be in error means to be off course. What’s important is not that we are off course, but whether we make the correction that needs to be made.
Most of us don’t make the corrections because we are too busy protecting our ego. Most people’s failures in life are products of justifying themselves and protecting themselves when they should be correcting themselves. Our willingness not to be in error and not to correct is the source of most of our failures.
Successful people are like an airplane. They are willing to live in error, and they are willing to correct. For the most part, the problems that we face are the result of waiting until the last minute to do what needs to be done. What you get out of failure is the experience that you are not okay. Well, it is not true that you are not okay.
You Can’t Improve Your SELF
You can’t improve who you are – the Real You or your Higher Self that is spiritually perfect. You can, however, improve your performance. Through ignorance you will make mistakes. So what! All you have to do is make corrections. Remember you are not your results. Learn to detach yourself from what you have and what you do. Make sure you are clear on that, because if you are not, you will suffer for the rest of your life. Your responsibility is to just keep correcting when you get off course, because no matter how much you have it together, you‘ll be off course much of the time.
Successful people are people who are constantly busy doing things that they don’t know how to do for sure. And that’s the adventure of them. They don’t know what the future will hold.
All they know is that they are committed to a path, and they will do whatever has to be done to get to the next step, that gets them to the next step, that gets them to the next step, and so on. Unsuccessful people just live intimidated and immobilized by the fear of discovering that they are in error or are making a mistake.
Make a decision once and for all not to be one of these people. Look at the failures you’ve had in your life and notice how you were more concerned with being right, looking good, protecting yourself and not making a mistake than you were with making a correction.
Somehow we’ve gotten the notion that all we have to do is to get to the point where we will be smart enough so that we don’t fail. What I want to tell you is that option is simply not available to you. It’s like trying to eat once and for all. It can’t be done.
The more successful you are, the more mistakes you will make. People that don’t do anything, don’t make mistakes. Rather than start and commit themselves to a course of action, they allow themselves to be immobilized. They think that as long as they don’t do anything, they are safe. While that may be true, the price they pay in not realizing their dreams is far too high.
It’s Time to Give up Hope!
It’s at this point that we must give up hope. We say things like, “I hope this works,” “I hope I have enough money,” “I hope they will buy my products.” “I hope things get better.” We hope that someone will save us, take care of us, change our life, make us happy and bring us
what we want. We hope and we wait, but they never show up. What we need to do is give up hope.
Hope is the subtle illusion of what might be someday. It’s important to accept what you want and accept it in the present tense – that it’s already yours right now. Do not use the words hope, maybe, tomorrow or soon.
Use NOW. Hope, so highly praised by many, has neither value nor meaning to a conscious person. Examine this for yourself and see how hope is an illusion that produces the very feeling of desperation and aloneness that we seek to avoid. Also, see how it causes the fear of non-attainment.
We Are Prisoners of Hope
We become prisoners of our hope. Hope is what keeps all suffering in place. Hope is the expectation that something outside of ourselves, something or someone external, is going to come to our rescue, and we will live happily ever after. And it’s that little rush of hope that keeps us going from one disappointment to another, because it keeps us from taking responsibility and taking action.
Letting go of hope can be a difficult experience at first, because if we believe that there is no hope, we think, “How am I going to survive?” The fact that nothing or no one outside of ourselves will save us is the truth.
In the beginning, this truth is difficult to accept, but after we have accepted it, something interesting begins to happen. It becomes freeing. We can finally stop waiting for someone or something that was never going to show up anyway.
Once we give up hope and stop asking a source outside of ourselves to deliver something that they cannot deliver, there is a dynamic shift in our relationship to Life. We begin to choose
advancement instead of avoidance, and we become responsible for the quality of our own life. As long as we believe in hope, we are a prisoner of our own hope. It’s only when we become hopeless that we will take responsibility for our lives.
Give Up Hope for Action
We want to train ourselves to give up hope and take action. There’s only one way that you are going to find out for sure what’s right for you and that’s by taking action. You can think about what you want, you can speculate about it, you can gather all the facts and you can ponder the possibilities for the rest of your life, but you will never know for sure until you do it, until you take action.
Getting started is difficult sometimes. It’s the Law of Inertia. Any object at rest takes as much greater amount of energy to move than when it is already in motion.
The best advice I can share with you again is to do something. Make a decision, even if it’s the “wrong” decision. Whatever you do, it will be better than sitting and hoping things will improve.
Once you’ve told your subconscious that you have done everything that you can do, trust it to take care of the rest. It knows what to do because it is connected to the Universal Subconscious. Begin by knowing that you have already arrived, that at the Being level you already have everything that you need. You are already a success. You are already healthy. You are already rich. Live your vision, experience unconditional love, and enjoy the magnificence of your own being.
How many times have you been told that you can do it or that you can have it all? And yet, as you read the words, there’s another little voice in your head that says, “In my case it’s different. I can’t. I’m not
able to. It’s too difficult. I’m afraid. What will they say? What if it doesn’t work? What if I make a mistake?” This is the same little voice that has robbed you of achieving your innermost desires.
You don’t have to listen to that little voice. That’s not the Real You. That’s not your Real Self. That’s your ego and your past conditioning. It’s your old tapes playing. Make a conscious decision to program new thoughts, new ideas and beliefs. You are in control. You are the one who can choose what you want to think and what you want to believe.
Everything Works on Acceptance
I used to manage a sales office, and one of the salesmen that worked for me would go down to the vending machine and check for change in the coin return. If he found anything in there, he would say, “There is my lucky day,” and he would have a great day for sales! I got wise to this, and I used to put change in the coin return once in a while.
You see, it was his belief that the money in the coin return gave him a lucky day. Belief creates everything. When you have belief, you have faith. Faith is the absolute knowing that your thoughts become your reality. That the energy you send out is the results you get back. Faith is the knowledge that whatever you do will work if you totally believe it will work. Everything works on our acceptance.
There are No Limitations
If you practice the principles in this book on a daily basis, they will allow you to be bigger than your belief system. Then you will produce results that will give you a new belief system that will allow you to grow even more! There are no limitations. The only limitation is the limitation in our mind.
Have you ever driven your car with the emergency brake on?
The emergency brake represents fear, anxiety, procrastination, and poor self-esteem.
The fact is that you can still get where you want to go with all these unworkable beliefs, just as you can get where you want to go with the emergency brake on. But it’s a lot easier to just let go and release the brake.
It’s a lot easier to get where you want to go if you’ll let go of anything that does not support you in getting what you want.
You’re already awake sixteen to eighteen hours a day. You’re already working eight to twelve hours a day, and you’re already self-disciplined. Why not take a few more minutes each day and work on your game plan for the money you want, the relationships you want, the health you want, the career you want, and the business you want. Just a few more minutes a day spent applying the principles shared in this book will totally transform the quality of your life.
Aren’t you tired of allowing circumstances to tell you who you are? Aren’t you tired of having people tell you what you can do and you can’t do, or what you should do or must do?
Perhaps you were brought up in an environment that taught you limitations, that accentuated your errors, and made fun of you when you made a mistake. Yet I know that within you something has told you that you can create the life you desire. You can have it all. Through these pages, you are being reminded once again that you have the inherent ability to create the life you desire. That’s your destiny. Remember, you can have anything you want if you will give up the belief that you can’t have it.
It’s time to be sick and tired of being sick and tired. Allow yourself to go beyond positive thinking. Make it okay to take risks and
make mistakes. Program your dreams into your subconscious then say “Yes” to Life and you will find that Life will say “Yes” to you.
You have been programmed that seeing is believing, but you now know that believing is seeing. If you believe in something with absolute faith, you will see it manifested in your life. If you are waiting to become something or are waiting for something to happen before you can start living – such as reaching a certain age, retirement, a certain amount of money in the bank, achieving a goal, meeting the right person
– you are existing in a state of perpetual expectation. You never arrive and so you never really start living.
What perhaps most frightens terminally ill patients is the realization that they have never lived the life they wished and there is no more time. The only time that we have is NOW, and the clock is running out for all of us. The question is, “What are we going to do with the time we have left?” This is the most important time of your life, and it can also be the best time of your life.