Here is a true story which will prove that if you take action, towards your goal, it can lead to massive gains.

So there we were, my wife and I sitting in our back garden one Bank Holiday, dreaming about what we could do with the back end of the garden, which was an eyesore. We would love to build a little patio and flower bed. At that time we had lived in our house for 12 years and the job always seemed too large to tackle.

There was a mess of compost, discarded masonry and a concrete slab wall. We decided to brighten it up, with some trellising and climbing plants. It would hide the wall, at least. So in that moment of decision we jumped in to the car and went to our local garden centre, to buy some trellising and climbing plants.
I will tell you what happened next in a short while.

The Law of Attraction

I have read The Secret and many others books, which talk about the Law of Attraction. I also think that there is something in it, however, I don’t know how, it just seems to work. I’ve actually written a book called Is the Law of Attraction Real and Does it Work?. Basically, if you focus on the outcomes you want in life, they seem to manifest – eventually. Sometimes, though, no matter how much visualisation and visioning you do,  some goals seem so far away. Why is this?

I think I’ve found out, although this is no secret – it’s because we need to take Action.

Taking any action, no matter how small, consistently and whilst keeping your vision in mind, really does work. We should call it the Law of AttrAction.

What action should you take?

I’m here to tell you today that it doesn’t matter. Do something, anything, even if it is only a slight movement towards your goal. In another post, I told you about a great book by Al Seconda called the 15 Second Principle, in which the author tells us that even working for just 15 seconds per day on your goal will work miracles. How can this be? This is because it is so easy to do, the emotional part of the mind doesn’t perceive this as a threat and so you are less likely to procrastinate.

For example, maybe your goal is to write your own blog. If you committed to writing for 15 seconds a day, you soon be churning out regular books. I know because this is what I do. You see, once you get started, the Law of Inertia kicks in and you continue to work. You will be maintaining the habit and just like bad habits, good habits, once they are ingrained, are very hard to stop.
How else can you take action? What if the actions take longer than 15 seconds? For instance, renovating the house?

Breakdown the project into small parts. What is the next action that will move you forward? To test if it’s an action, write it and check if there is a verb in the sentence, for example:

Go to the X to get some Y
Phone X about Y.
Physically move X to the Y
Email Fred about Ted

In our renovation example, you would split this goal down to a smaller project first, such as: Decorating the spare room. A good first action would therefore be to: Go to the garden shed and take an inventory of the painting materials that you have.

Once you have done this you could plan action number 2, which could be: write a list of materials required for decorating the spare room.
Action 3 could be: put a date in the diary to go to the DIY centre to buy the remaining materials.

The Unschedule

Another method for overcoming procrastination is to use an Unschedule, as described by Neil Fiore in his book the Now Habit, which I recommend. Very simply the method involves blocking out your diary for the week. This would include all the fun things, appointments, commitments and things like exercise. What is left is the available time for projects. The idea is then to plan in your Project time and the reward you will get for doing it.

Sometimes the result of a goal is out of your control, for example becoming Prime Minister or winning gold medal at the Olympics. Focusing on the result, all the time, is a sure way for you to fail. When working towards these types of goal, successful people fall in love with the process of attaining it. They may have the ultimate goal in mind but their focus is on improving the day-to-day skills they require. The repeated actions become the focus not the final achievement.

An athlete will learn to derive happiness from the actual training. The Olympic Gold Medal maybe in the back of the mind but they will fall in love with the Dawn runs. In a similar way, an entrepreneur can fall in love with the process of prospecting for new clients, whilst the end business goals will be at the back of the mind.

So what happened next after the visit to the garden centre?

It didn’t take long to put up the trellising, so I decided to plant the climbers as well. As I dug a small hole for the second plant, the spade crashed against a stone about 10 cm down. So I adjusted a few cm back to see if I could dislodge it – crash, again I struck the stone. I moved back about 10 cm – crash. I thought, “Wow, this may be a flagstone”. As I removed the turf above, it was clear that it was a flagstone. Ok so I thought I would remove the turf bit by bit until I had uncovered the whole flag. But oh no – another flagstone, then another. After an hour of back breaking digging, I had indeed uncovered an intact patio, which the top soil had hid for at least 20 years. Over the next few weekends, I transformed the area into the patio and the flowerbed we had dreamed of.

So the next time you have a dream or goal, which seems just too big to start. Start anyway; you never know what you might uncover.

The post Take action – how this helps the Law of Attraction appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

There are three secret laws of suggestion that I will reveal, which hypnotists learn, so that they can get people to change. If you learn and use these three simple laws, you can affect any change in your life. You will certainly be able to change it from positive to negative.

The Law of Concentrated Attention

The first law is the law of concentrated attention. What this law states is that whatever you concentrate your attention on will increase or become real. It is a law, which philosophers have known about for millennia. It is behind the epithet in the bible “As a man thinketh, so he is”.
This law is also behind the phenomenon of the Law of attraction. I have written extensively about this in a book on the Law of Attraction. It works in both positive and negative ways . If you concentrate on the negative aspects of your life, this will tend to increase. Remove as many negative influences from your life as you can, this will help you get your mind off the negative. This will begin to stem the negative thoughts you have.
Use the power of Gratitude to start to focus your mind on the positive. This is how you can use the Law of Concentrated Attention in a positive way. Fill your mind with as much positive stuff as you can and your mind will tend to become positive. Your mind will then notice more positive things in your life and tend to ignore the negative.
If you persist with this, quite soon your life will turn from negative to positive.

The Law of Dominant Effect

The second law, that you can use to your advantage is the Law of Dominant Effect. What this law states is that if a suggestion is linked to an emotion, this will override any other suggestion in your mind at the same time.
This often happens in life, when say a person has poor health habits. Perhaps they might smoke, overeat and drink too much. Life goes along pretty much ok. This person knows that their lifestyle is bad, but things are ok for now. Then something happens that puts the fear of God up them. Perhaps they are diagnosed with cancer, or they have a heart attack, but survive. The negative emotion linked to the doctor’s suggestions are such that they will actually listen to the suggestion now, whereas before they didn’t. This also how people turn their lives around after near death experiences or the death of a loved one. The emotions are enough to get them to change.

How to Use the Law of Dominant Effect

How can we use this law to change your life from negative to positive? By attaching as much positive emotions to the positive thoughts as possible. Affirmations and visualisation are a great start, but if you can get into feeling great about yourself, then this will have a massive effect. Here are some easy tips you can use straight away which will have an immediate effect:
Listen to uplifting, upbeat music especially in the morning when you read your goals to yourself.
Read the biographies of positive successful people, especially rags to riches stories. Stories are so powerful because we resonate emotionally with other human beings.
Instead of watching pap on TV, look for uplifting videos on YouTube – search google for uplifting Mind Movies. Here you have great music, pictures and positive messages.
Many of the detractors to the positive mental attitude movement, will say that this is transitory and temporary. Yes, you will feel good for a while but the effects wear off. Whilst this might be true, I would argue that you are creating new neuro-pathways that are linking feeling good, with positive messages. This in effect creates the habit of feeling positive, but just like any other habit, it does take time and persistence.
In the end, the results will become permanent. You will have over-ridden all the negative habitual thoughts with positive one.

The Law of Reverse Effort

“I’m gonna’ catch that horse if I can” – Chestnut Mare – The Byrds

This law really is the universe at its cruelest. It states that if you doubt your abilities, but you try hard anyway, the less you will be able to do it. To put it another way, the more you chase your goals in desperation, the more they will seem further away. Of course, it’s a psychological trick, it’s like when they say a watched kettle never boils, or time flies when you are having fun. When you are so attached to the outcome, the more it seems impossible. It’s just like that Chestnut Mare in The Byrds song. The more you chase her the faster she runs away.
How can you turn this to your advantage? Firstly whatever your goal is, fall in love with the process of achieving it so much, that you almost don’t care what the outcome is, because you are enjoying the work, so much. Think of anything in your life that you absolutely love to do just because of the passion and love for it. This is the intrinsic motivation it gives you. I don’t know anything about you, but in know that whatever this thing that you get lost in, that you excel at, I’m betting that it is no effort for you. Even obstacles and snags are overcome, perhaps you enjoy the challenges of overcoming them.
Whatever you are striving for, let it go. Fall in love with the process. Make the work your passion. Do what you love to do. As you pour your life into this work and become a part of it, rather than the goal, you will soon be amazed when the Chestnut Mare comes sidling up to you.

The post The three Laws of Suggestion appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

When people think of the Law of Attraction, they associate it with magical thinking. That is that they just need to sit and think or pray and the Universe will grant their wish. This would be the none-scientific explanation.
Now I am not suggesting that the Universe or God or whatever, doesn’t play a part – I will simply say I don’t know whether this is true or not and I don’t think anyone will ever know for sure. This is a matter of faith, not fact.

Science and Providence

What I do know is that once you start on this journey of creation, which always starts within yourself, things occur that appear strange. We have already discussed the Reticular Activating System in a previous post. I am sure most of the Magical can be explained by this faculty. I also looked at coincidences in that same post and how our nervous system has evolved to notice novelty in our environment, to flag things up as a threat or opportunity.
Whilst we explore the mind and our creative forces in the Universe, I do think we need to nod in the direction of Providence. I am a scientist by schooling, I have a degree in the Applied Zoology. My training and early career is in the logical, scientific and material.

The Leading Edge of Evolution

As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I realise that the more we know of our universe, the more we will know what we don’t know. Even our technology, whilst it discovers new answers, discovers many more questions.
As a species, we simply cannot know everything. I am fine with that and I am happy that I am here at this stage in our evolution, with our searching and creating brains. This is because I know that we are playing our part in the evolution of consciousness. I believe we are all at the leading edge of this evolution, as the Universe becomes aware of itself.

The boundary between science and spirituality

There is a place for science; its analysis and structure has enabled us to crawl out from under the rock of superstition. There is also a place for the spiritual, the deep searching within ourselves, within the dark recesses of our psyche. This is where creation takes place, all the great scientists knew this. In between is the Magical, the boundary between science and spirituality. That place just beyond what we know and before we get to faith. That, I believe is where wisdom is.

How do you get wisdom from magic?

Wisdom makes you Wise, like the Three Wise Men sometimes referred to as The Three Magi. This gives you the word Magic.
So although, I will always try to explain the Law of Attraction as the results of a sustained and specific way of thinking, at the back of my mind there are some things I can’t explain and science may never explain. But that’s ok. It doesn’t matter.
So when you ask the question, Is the Law of Attraction Real and Does it Work?You are asking the wrong question.
You should ask ‘how I can train my spiritual mind to create what I want in this material plane?’.

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The final step in using the Law of Attraction properly, to get what you want  is the use of Gratitude. I say it is the final step, but actually, it should be the first step. You should always start from a place of gratitude.

Start from gratitude

In a recent study, it was shown that gratitude makes you happier. Happy people tend to be more optimistic. Optimistic people tend to be more successful. So, there is no magic involved here, it is simply another strange way our brains work.
If you begin your goal setting process with gratitude for what you already have, it actually makes you less attached to the outcome. It is curious that when you become unattached to the outcome, you seem to get what you want anyway. I believe this is where the Aladdin’s’ Lamp type of explanation for the Law of Attraction comes from.

My Sales Business

One example I can give you is from my sales business, where I routinely call 20 cold call prospects per day. On each call, I frankly don’t care what happens. I am polite and go through my story. If they’re interested, great. If not then that’s great as well.
I am happy and grateful that I already have plenty of prospects to work on, but these 20 cold calls per day are one of my daily income producing activities. I just hit my numbers every day. As long as I do this, more leads come. I could imagine that if I came from a place of desperation or lack, this would come across in my tonality and I would struggle getting leads.

How can you practise being grateful?

In my morning routine, I practice writing down 10 things I am grateful for. They have to be different things every day. First, you go through the obvious things like, having your family and friends around, the love of your life partner, your health, the money you do have now. Then you start to run out of things to be grateful for. This is where you have to force yourself to come up with a list of 10.

I then come up with things like: my kidneys are working, I live in a stable democracy, the internet etc. Then you actually notice more things that you actually take for granted: it’s now late November and I am writing this in the evening whilst it’s dark outside. 100 years ago, I couldn’t do that. I can write this post and someone on the other side of the world (You) might read this, maybe years from today (posted 2018). How lucky are we to be alive right this minute.

It becomes a habit

As this becomes a habit, just like any habit, it becomes automatic. You find yourself being grateful all of the time, not just in your morning review. This is when the magic does start to happen. Remember our old friend the Reticular Activating System; guess what you’ve trained it to do? Like the faithful servant it is, it looks out for things for you to be grateful for.

Be grateful for everything good that comes

I walk our dog Rosie every day, sometimes twice a day. I often find money on the floor – mostly 1p, 2p, sometimes 5p. People have thrown this money away, probably because they don’t like having loose change in their pockets. I know this because it’s usually around a row of local shops near my house.
So I often wonder about these people and how their finances are. I wonder if they wish they had more money. Do they dream of winning the lottery? Perhaps they really desire money but they throw it away. This is not the same as giving it away, no, they are literally throwing money away. What kind of message does that send to the subconscious mind? I love money, but I hate it as well.

What do you think happens – nothing?

When I pick these pennies up, I wipe them off with a hankie and recite a little prayer of thanks.
‘Thank you for this sign – money comes to me in ever-increasing amounts in a good way. I am a money magnet. Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
Then I take it home and put it in a jar. After about a year, there’s enough to take to the coin exchange, for notes and then a nice meal out with the family!
Am I happy with my financial status? You bet. I am so grateful and blessed in so many ways, not just money. The more grateful I am, the more I get. Funny that.

Be grateful before you receive

When you start to become adept at manifesting things in your life, using the law of attraction, you become certain that things will come. It’s a bit like ordering books from Amazon. You place the order and a few days or maybe a week or so later, it arrives. You just know it will come. The law of attraction is the same. If you go through all the steps I describe in my book – Is the Law of Attraction Real and Does it Work?(Amazon Associates Link), eventually what you want will arrive. Just keep doing the work and you will be rewarded.
Just make a start, then keep starting over and over and over. Rest a while but do not quit.

When things go wrong

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit

The post Gratitude – The First Step in Getting What You Want appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Can acceptance help you achieve your dreams and goals quicker?

Que Sera Sera – whatever will be will be.
There comes a point when you release your intentions into the ether. You follow all the steps in the Law of Attraction through from mental simulation to acting as if, adding emotion, taking action and following the signs. Then results start to happen.

Don’t reject anything

These results may not be what you expected or desired. However don’t reject anything that is n’t perfect – it’s a process. Accept the results as the feedback they are. Imagine that you are jet aeroplane. You have a destination – a goal. You set off in a certain direction towards your destination. Soon, your on-board navigation system will kick in and start to give you feedback on your position relative to your goal.

Life and Success

This is the same with life and success. The results you get in life are feedback, telling you where you are relative to your goal. What does an aeroplane do when it is off course? It adjusts its course, so that it goes back on course; either the autopilot does this or the actual pilot.
So you should do the same. It would be nonsense for the pilot to carry on going in the wrong direction or even turning back, just because it was off course. If you aren’t getting the results, accept them first, then figure out what you need to do to get back on course.

Reflect on your actions.

Sometimes it’s not always obvious why you get the results you do. We live in a complex universe, where our actions sometimes have unseen consequences much later on. There is always cause and effect. Whatever affects you are getting, there is a cause.
Accepting your results is not the same as resigning yourself to whatever the universe throws as you. That is victim mentality and doesn’t serve you.
No, you should accept, but realise that you are totally responsible for what you do next. So you didn’t get what you wanted, then reflect on your actions. You are the cause in your life. Some things are not your fault, but you are responsible for your feelings, thoughts and actions. What you do next is always in your control.

Sometimes shit happens to good people

Sometimes life bowls you a googly. The boiler breaks down. It’s not because you are a bad person or you did something wrong. Sometimes boilers just break down. You cannot control when a boiler breaks down. It’s not your fault but again, you are responsible for what you do next. Perhaps you could get your new boiler and take out a service contract, so that it is checked out annually?
Random events are just that, random. Accept what happens, but ask yourself if you can learn from it. If not move on.

GOD, grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,

Courage to change the
things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.

Kipling said it differently

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

The post Acceptance appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Is intuition real and can we cultivate it?  What do dreams have to do with intuition? Does intuition and dreaming point to what is significant?

Three profound questions. Is that significant?

The law of 3 s

One great way to test whether what you are noticing is significant is the Law of Three’s. If you notice three related coincidences, then it is a good chance that this is the answer you need. You can use this in lots of ways. It could be a hint to go in a certain direction (buy a certain book).It might be that you have an ache in your back. It goes away to be followed by a pain in the hip. That goes away and makes way for a sore knee. The fact that you notice three things is significant, to focus on your structural health. Maybe look into starting yoga.

Is the Law of 3s Real?

The reason why I believe this law of three’s is real is that because you filter a vast amount of sensory information, you don’t even register it. You even disregard and forget many things. For instance, let’s take the example of buying a book. How many books have you browsed and then forgotten, because there was nothing out of the ordinary. How many times do you hear a recommendation about a book and disregard it immediately. And yet you noticed this book recommendation because it was the third time. The crux here is not that it was a coincidence or anything supernatural, the goldmine of information for you to grasp here is that you noticed.

What you notice is always significant.

Gut feelings

It took me a long time to trust that my gut feelings were real and should be taken seriously. It is usually when things go wrong that I look back and realise that I had a hunch and a gut feeling. I have two major examples that looking back had major impacts on my life.

The first was when I was looking for work in my early thirties after a failed attempt to get into business. I had two interviews lined up, both for commissioned sales companies. One for an engineering firm and one for a training company. The interview with the Managing Director of the engineering company went well. We liked each other and talked about our mutual love of self-development. I was offered a second interview to meet the board. The second interview, with the training company, was a group interview with other candidates. As I walked into their offices, I felt an all too familiar gut feel. Don’t walk away from this – RUN. I can’t put my finger on it why. It was just a no – no. However, the training company offered me a job, it was great money, with the chance to earn massive commission.

Much to my later regret, I took the job at the Training Company and turned down the second interview at the Engineering Company. Although it felt right to go with the engineering firm, my logic persuaded me that the training firm was better.

The Aftermath

I left that training company three months later. This doesn’t begin to describe the horror of my experience here. It was sheer drudgery. I hated the place. I didn’t like the company and their values, shall we say, were not the same as mine.

What followed was around nine months of wilderness for me. I will write about this time one day, but for now all I will say is that things just fell apart.
To cap this story off, years later one Sunday morning, I picked up my weekend Financial Times and settled down with a mug of hot coffee. I flicked through to my favourite column – How I made my first Million, in the Money section. Low and behold, there was the MD of the engineering firm, being featured. I was gob-smacked. There was the man I turned down, who could have been a mentor and friend.

Once bitten, twice bitten, thrice shy

The second story, will help you figure out how to trust someone you meet in business, in seconds. After three months of renovation, my very first investment property was ready for letting out to tenants. This was a small two bed apartment in a block of six flats. I put the property up for let with a local estate agent. I quickly received a phone call from another property manager, who got my number from another owner in the building. He offered to better any offer the original agent made to me to manage the property. He wouldn’t even charge me to find a tenant. We agreed to meet up at the flat; it was all agreed over a hand-shake and it was a weak hand-shake. It was limp and lifeless and he completely avoided my eye contact.

As I left the building having handed over the keys, I was filled with feeling of woe, which came right up from by gut. This person could not be trusted.
However, logic ruled. If I stayed with him, I would be better off each month, financially and he would find a tenant for the flat completely free.

Fast forward to four years later, I shuck hands with my new property manager. A good firm hand shake, great eye contact and a genuine smile. Thank God that is all over I thought. Here’s someone I can trust. My family and I had just spent the previous month getting the flat back into a habitable state, after the first manager had been using the flat as a cannabis farm.
Always trust your gut.

Record your dreams

Your subconscious communicates with you in many ways. This communication between the conscious and subconscious faculties is a two way process. One method of communication is the dream. Dreams are symbolic representations, as we try to make sense of the world. The conscious mind, can grasp a tiny bit of what goes on. Like a laser, this focus is sharp but narrow. The subconscious mind is the opposite. It’s grasp is enormous, probably infinite. However, it is unfocused. It sees the whole picture, the ecology. Having evolved before humans could speak, the subconscious doesn’t use language or words, like the conscious. Instead it uses pictures and symbols. If it does use words, they will be an aphorism or lyrics from a song.

Archetypes

The subconscious also uses archetypes. Do you have a particular person or place that comes into your dreams. This person in the dream doesn’t represent the actual person, but is a representation or a part of you. I often dream of a couple of friends from primary school, who I’ve not seen for decades. One was a leader the other was a follower. These two archetypes represent two parts of me the teacher and the student. So whichever of these is in my dreams, I need to think about myself as the reciprocal.

Other dreams can be metaphorical. For instance, I dreamed recently that some old family treasure was buried deep under a derelict building, deep underground. All I needed to do was go and dig deep down underneath all the rubble of the past, to find the treasure. Translation – what we are searching for in life is almost always deep within our own psyche. It’s often within life’s baggage (our crap), where we find it. Get yourself a metaphorical shovel and go digging. Yes, it’s dirty hard work and often painful. But that’s where the treasure lies.

My recommendation to you is to start recording your dreams as soon as you can. If you think that your subconscious mind has downloaded and recorded everything you have ever seen, heard or read, then you have the wisest teacher right there for you.
I tie this in with my morning journal writing (another recommendation). At first, these dreams will not make sense, but over the weeks and months, you will notice patterns. You will start to get aha’s. you will begin to learn the language of your own subconscious.

The post Intuition and Your Dreams appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Your job whilst you are taking action and assessing your results, is to follow the signs. This is because coincidences and curious happenings will take place.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”
― William Hutchison Murray

Take notice

You follow the signs by taking notice. Notice what happens around you when you take action. What unusual things happen, by that I mean what things happen that aren’t usual. A friend you haven’t heard from calls out of the blue, with a proposition. You get a sudden urge to travel a different way to work. Maybe you come into a small but not insignificant amount of money. Is it a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that you noticed it was different. This is the key.

You are recognising that your subconscious is flagging things up to you, that are not normal. Your subconscious is telling you ‘Take notice of this, it is important’. From steps 1-3 you are telling your subconscious what you want. In step 5, you listen and notice your subconscious communicating back to you. Step 4 taking action is the link between the two. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the Reticular Activating System.

Reticular Activating System

The Reticular Activating System is a part of the brain stem. The brain stem is the oldest part of the brain in evolutionary terms, which regulates heartbeat, breathing and digestion. In other words, this part of the brain keeps you alive and you also have little conscious control over it. This is the part that makes you breathe after holding your breath. The RAS sits at the top of the brain stem and acts like a messenger between this old part of the nervous system and the higher thinking centres. The RAS is also in contact with the sensory organs. It therefore monitors everything you see, hear and feel. Even though most of what our eyes and ears pick up, we filter out, the RAS is monitoring in the background ready to alert you to danger.

Because the RAS sits between the brain stem and the sensory faculties, you can jump out of the way of danger, without your conscious thought. If you step out in front of a bus, your survival depends on shifting quick. You don’t need the conscious analytical mind getting in the way.

The magical part of the Reticular Activating System is that you can ask it to look out for certain things. This is what you are doing in steps 1-3 of the Law of Attraction. You are programming the RAS to alert you to anything that could help you move to your goals.

The RAS, then goes to work in the background, constantly scanning the environment for opportunities, threats and answers.

Coincidences

Have you ever noticed, when a friend calls you up, who you haven’t spoken to for a while, just as you were thinking about them. Or, what about the book you picked up in the store, but decided not to buy, even though the blurb seemed to suggest you needed to buy it. Later you hear about this book on a podcast, then a colleague suggests that you should read it. Coincidences? It doesn’t matter. What is important is that you are noticing. Take the example of the friend who calls you up. Is that telepathy or a coincidence. Honestly I don’t know. But what I do know is the human brain. And I know that you are programmed to notice coincidences and things that are out of the ordinary. It is nature’s way of keeping us alive. Whatever is novel in our environment could be a threat or an opportunity. Your RAS is constantly scanning for these coincidences and will flag them up to you. As this faculty is largely unconscious, these hunches seem to pop up from nowhere.

I am not about to debunk telepathy or ESP, because frankly I don’t know if they are real. I do know that some research has shown they are real, but mainstream science denies it. (See Where Science and Magic Meet by Serena Roney-Dougal). I am more interested in results. The good news is that whatever the Law of Attraction is, you can use it and it will work. You can actually program your RAS to go to work to scan the environment, for what you want. You just need to notice the coincidences. It is the RAS saying – ‘This could be worth looking at’ or ‘Watch out, avoid this’.

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When I read some books on the law of attraction, I am often infuriated by the lack of any mention of the word Action. How can this be? This is the most important step in how to use the Law of Attraction and yet it is often neglected. People think the Law is a way to get results without taking any action. This is just not so. You need to take action.

Do something – anything

What action should you take if you don’t know how to get your goal? The answer is to do something, anything that will move you towards the goal. Get in the game. The action could be something small, but make a start.
Repeated small actions towards you goals will eventually make your dreams come true. This is so critical – daily small actions in the direction.

The great thing about taking even a small action towards your goals, is that your outlook changes. The view changes. Obstacles that seemed large, appear smaller as you approach them. I do recommend planning as much as you can, although be prepared for you plans to be thrown out of the window once you get started.

Another advantage of doing something, is that you can tweak. Once you take action, you start to get results. They may not be the results you want, but these results are precious. Why so? Because feedback is the key to success. As you take action and note your results, you can adjust your actions to see if they improve your results. You can keep adjusting and adjusting and your results will get better and better.

What happened next after the visit to the garden centre?

An athlete will learn to derive happiness from the actual training. The Olympic Gold Medal maybe in the back of the mind but they will fall in love with the Dawn runs. In a similar way, an entrepreneur can fall in love with the process of prospecting for new clients, whilst the end business goals will be at the back of the mind.

Back to our story of our back garden. It didn’t take long to put up the trellising, so I decided to plant the climbers as well. As I dug a small hole for the second plant, the spade crashed against a stone about 10 cm down. So I adjusted a few centimetres back to see if I could dislodge it – crash, again I struck the stone. I moved back about 10 cm – crash. I thought, “Wow, this may be a flagstone”.

As I removed the turf above, it was clear that it was a flagstone. Ok so I thought I would remove the turf bit by bit until I had uncovered the whole flag. But oh no – another flagstone, then another. After an hour of back breaking digging, I had indeed uncovered an intact patio, which the top soil had hidden away for at least 20 years. Over the next few weekends, I transformed the area into the patio and flowerbed we had dreamed of.



So the next time you have a dream or goal, which seems just too big to start. Start anyway; you never know what you might uncover.
There is also another curious thing that happens when you take action. Coincidences happen. This is where the scientific makes way for the spiritual. It is where the unexplained happens and it is this area, where the magical element occurs. That will be the subject of a future post.

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Fill your dreams and goals with emotion. This is as useful step in the Law of Attraction. You are utilising a primeval faculty – your emotions.
Let’s take your fledgling goal or dream. Does it fill you with desire or emotion? There is a saying in goal setting that when you should find a Why that makes you cry. Ie you need to find such a compelling reason to achieve this goal, that you will move mountains.
If not, you will need large amounts of self-discipline to do the work required, especially when the going gets tough. If your goal or dream is worth having, there will be tough times.

As an example, think of how you get out of bed on a cold winters’ morning, compared with when you have a morning flight to a hot sunny, holiday destination. You bounce out of bed, when you know you need to get to the airport on time. This is the kind of motivational juice you need to achieve your dreams.
But what if you don’t have the same levels of motivation. What if your dreams and goals don’t get you all emotional. How do you get yourself going?

Embrace the dark side Luke.

To get you motivation going, use the negative dark side. No I’m not saying join the forces of evil, but you could tap into the other side of your emotions – fear. There’s another saying – fear propels you, until your desire pulls you. Many successful people started out of fear, from multi-millionaires who started businesses because of the fear of poverty, to comedians who first used comedy to avoid beatings from the school bully.

If you can’t find a desire strong enough motivation, tap into your fears. Can’t think of what to fear – here are some real ones to get you going:
Cigarettes will kill you eventually – motivation to quit.
Your job is not as secure as you think it is – motivation to explore a side-line business.

TV and film companies work together with advertising agencies and big corporations, to brainwash you into buying things you don’t need – motivation to turn the damn idiot box off.
Being overweight will shorten your lifespan – motivation to lose weight.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

I don’t apologise for these and I could give you many, many more. I remind you of these out of love and I want you to shake yourself out of your lethargy. Just like old Ebenezer Scrooge in Dicken’s Christmas Carol, who needed sheer terror to get him to change, feel the fear and let it get you moving? Once you are on your way, then your desires will take over.

Sensory immersion

Another way to get your emotions stirred is to get a taster of your dreams. Employ all of your senses, when you think of your goals. These will increase your desires. Here are some examples:
Going to the car show rooms and sitting in the Mercedes. Feel and smell the leather seats. Listen to how it squeaks when you sit in it. Think to yourself, soon this will be mine.

Get dressed up and go to the most expensive restaurant you can find, close to you, over lunch. Just buy a small drink if you want. But sit and soak in the ambiance. Think to yourself, this is where I eat out.
Want to own some investment properties? Go on-line and check out when the nearest Real Estate Auction is. Just sit at the back and soak it in. No one needs to know that you aren’t bidding.
Want to get fit? Go for a free tour round your local gym.
Want to be a famous speaker? Join your local Toastmasters.




Whatever you goal is, think of some way that you can experience a taster of it now. Soak as much sensory information in as you can. Remember your subconscious is a faithfully, hard-working servant. It doesn’t know that you don’t own the Mercedes, it just likes how it feels, smells and drives.

Imagine how you feel

If you do the above exercise, you can use these sensory memories to add juice to your visualisations. Now, instead of just seeing yourself achieve your goal, you can feel it. This will speed up your results immeasurably.

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Mental simulation and focus are usually what most pop psychology and Law of Attraction books focus on. They are an important first step in the process of getting what you want out of life.

Visualisation

Mental simulation is make believe. Make Believe. Its a funny old saying isn’t it. You don’t hear that saying much these days. It has negative connotations to it, like describing something that is somehow childish. But there is a profound truth in those two words. When you are simulating your desired result before it actually happens, you are making yourself believe something, that has n’t happened yet. And that is the trick.

Auditory and Kinaesthetic Simulation

Our sense of sight is not the only one we can simulate. You can also simulate the sounds and feelings associated with a desired goal. If you can see, hear and feel all the senses (even smell and taste), you provide such a rich sensory movie that your mind will believe that the result and already taken place.

End Result or Process

Through my years of research and Hypnotherapy and NLP training, I have broken down goals and outcomes into two. Outcomes are either the result or the process of achieving the result.
Recent psychology studies have shown that you get better results by simulating the process of achieving a goal, rather than just the visualising the result.
This information is critical for you to take into account. It is one of the reasons why people fail with the Law of Attraction. Let’s say your goal is to lose weight. If you just visualise yourself being your ideal weight, you are less likely to reach your goal, compared with if you visualise yourself actually eating the healthy food, taking the exercise and generally doing what slim people do.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

So if you know your desired outcome and the habits you need to adopt to achieve it – visualise yourself adopting the habits.
That means visualise yourself doing the work. The results will be quicker and better.

What if you don’t know how to achieve your goal?

If you know what the goal is but don’t know how to achieve it, then you can’t focus on the process. Perhaps it’s a long-term business or financial goal, that is years off in the future.
In these cases, you should only focus on the end result and don’t try to think of all the steps to reach it. This is where the vision boards and mind movies come in to play. You set in to action the Reticular Activating System (RAS) part of the brain. The RAS regulates sleep and waking, but it also have an important function in acting as a gateway between the conscious and subconscious mind. I will go into more detail on this in a later post.

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