Success Story

I thought I'd share a success story that recently happened. My Girlfriend, Son and I recently moved to Southern California after a long depression brought on by the dark weather in Northern Oregon (yes, we're solar powered). I had my manifesting energy in full swing when I created a new job with good pay in a down economy. The problem was that the house we had lined up fell through at the last minute and we were forced to take the backup plan and move to an even more depressing town then we started out in.

Now, we both know we shouldn't be affected by the environment around us, but we were nevertheless. We eventually found ourselves in a run down house, struggling to pay bills, and in extreme depression. I was having thoughts of regret thinking I wasn't being a manifesting genius, but arrogant and forceful.

The stories in this forum and the tweets, blogs and calls that followed help put me back on track. I finally said to myself, "What's my problem, I'm better then this..." so I began trying to manifest money...trying... first mistake ... money... second mistake. I found these two the way I had them in my vocabulary to be mistakes because I was first trying, I know that it should be effortless, and I was using money as the goal assuming it was the only tool to get what I want.

What did I want? To live in a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood for starters. My girlfriend and I started painting the picture (in those rare moments when we could see through the fog) and came up with some specifics:

1. Some land - Not allot, just a place where we could plant
2. Charter School for our Son - We tried unsuccessfully to get him into three different charters in the area
3. A solar home - O.k., that was a fantasy, but we were having fun with it
4. A view of the ocean - S. California has some beautiful sunsets and we wanted to watch the sun set over the ocean

There were a couple others, but I bring up these four because of how it worked out.

I looked through the house adds and said "today I will find a house!". The second place I looked at was on a quarter acre with a vegetable garden all ready for planting on a hill facing the ocean. The school district happen to be in the only Charter School we didn't apply to and guess what, it's got solar power!!

I called on the place and sure enough, it was available. I got a quick personal loan, paid off some stuff that was screwing up my finances and put a deposit down on the place. A month later, we covered all our goals and are sitting out on the back porch drinking wine and watching the sun set over the ocean!

I learned long ago (then quickly forgot several times in my life) that money is at best a tool to get what you really want. Interestingly, since we're in such a nice situation now, I'm not treating my finances with the despair I was living in. As a result, I somehow magically have more of it! I'm not even sure how that happens, but I went over it and the math works out. Weird.

Anyway, what I learned from this experience is that it really does pay to know the what and not worry about the how.

The anxiety of investing

I was reading an article in the LA Times last weekend about an investor who recently saw a big jump in her earnings. The article covered her feelings about the recent rise in stock prices and how it effects her investing decisions. What I thought was interesting was how she was so afraid, even when things seem to be looking up.

Now, we all know the propaganda about the current state of the economy, rising unemployment levels, falling consumer "confidence", etc. But to an investor, they have to act on that fear. At least they think they do.

The person in the article explained her fear in vivid details. She said that the real question is why? Why are stock prices rising with unemployment levels and record highs and the growing national debt...

It made me think of a very important point. Don't think that thoughts, feelings and emotions affect reality? Just look at the Stock Market for a minute. In a bad economy, you'd think stocks would just fall and fall, but they don't. They bounce up and down and higher amplitudes then in a good economy. Why? Because when stock prices drop, people buy, when they buy, the stocks go up. When they get too high given the state of the economy, people sell out of fear that they will drop....and they do. It's like managing the anxiety of the investor.

Now I know what President Obama is trying to do when he tries to rally people into believing the economy is recovering. He's trying to break through the investor paranoia. It doesn't matter that the GDP is coming back up, that top economists in Washington are talking about the recession being over. Even Warren Buffet is saying that the economy has finally "bottomed out". Investors like the Woman in the LA Times just want to believe in the bad news. Bad news, apparently, is easier to believe in. "Better safe then sorry" sound familiar?

In the 80's there was this great movie called Sneakers. The story was complex, but the part that I always remembered was that Organized Crime had started to work the economy. The idea was, if you could convince investors that a company was going under, they will pull their money out and eventually the company will go under. They were looking at this strategy in terms of small businesses, large corporations, small Countries...

It even works in Politics. Next time you're looking through the headline news articles, check out how many headlines end in a question mark. People are so swayed by the power of persuasion that news reporters don't even really have to report on the facts anymore. They just put the question out there and it becomes news.

I like Byron Katie's' work were you are forced to review your thoughts and ask the question. Is it true? Are you sure it's true? What if it weren't true? We can persuade ourselves that things are going great and reverse the outside propaganda. It just takes knowing that the power is real. If a news article can convince me that Obama's health care plan will run the Country into bankruptcy, then I can convince myself that that's a bunch of bull and that the economy is coming back and that my life is always improving!!!

Letting go of emotions

Ever feel like your feelings surrounding something need to improve? How does that make you feel? I find myself sometimes thinking about a certain thing with fear, worry, anxiety  or some other "bad" emotion. If I'm focusing on this, I soon start to feel bad about the bad feeling that I'm having, then the feeling about that bad feeling turns to bad feelings about a bad feeling about a bad feeling and so on...

The more we focus on something, the more "real" it becomes. Thus, if we're focused on negative emotions, or even negative emotions about negative emotions, we're increasing them and pushing us further from the end goal which is usually the opposite of that.

A good quote from Abraham on the subject is "you don't need to find the thought that is causing the resistance, you just need to find the thought that isn't causing the resistance". When looking change, we often find ourselves saying things like "my biggest problem is..." or "what needs to happen is...". This can lead to an attachment that is particularily hard to let go.

Money is a great example. Most people can manifest money increases like a raise, bonus, winning, gift, or any other source. We've all done it at times in our life, sometimes without even realizing it, but try to manifest money when you really need it and it's not quite so easy. I suppose this is why so many people don't believe in miracles. It's sort of a "where were you when I needed you?" kind of thing.

The Sedona Method describes an interesting way to illustrate that. Try picking up a small object you'd be willing to let go of and hold it tightly. The longer and tighter you hold it, the more it feels like it's attached to you. If you then open your hand and roll the object around in it, the feeling quickly changes to you holding the object instead of being connected to it.

We are like that with our emotions. The tighter our grasp on it, the more we become attached to it. How often do we find ourself saying "I'm sad", or "I'm angry", or even "I'm happy" instead of "I feel sad" or "I feel angry".

As domesticated humans, we've become attached to everything around us. Whether it's the crap in my garage or the feeling in my heart, we always have a hard time letting go. In order to produce positive change, we need to first let go of all the feelings that do not serve us, then put out attention on those that do.

The final step is to surround ourselves with the feeling of what we want already being present in our lives. This method brings us to that emotional level without putting conditions out there that we can become attached to. We can get out of the feeling of "I'll be a lot happier when..." and start feeling happier now. The rest seems to fall into place at that moment.

When a football player is in "the zone" he's not thinking he should be in the zone, he's feeling the feeling of being an extraordinary football player. It's that effortless focus that gets us where we need to be. In my job I can experience the feeling of being a great engineer or excellent sales person and whatever I produce will be an example of that.

The challenge is if I have to be a great engineer in order to find a solution to a big problem, or I have to be an excellent sales person to pay my bills. Instead I enjoy being a great engineer! I love closing an excellent sales deal! I also love having my bills paid off!!!

Forgiveness and the art of paying attention

Last night I was up working late on a Server design for some new clients when I found I made a mistake in the original setup. As I didn't want to stay up the rest of the night redoing it all, I found a different way of accomplishing the same task. I proceeded to put in my design and got the system up enough to do the testing that I promised my boss I'd have done in the morning.

When I woke up, I received an email from my boss telling me to "Stop what I'm doing" and that I was "doing it wrong". I don't tend to like either of those sentences, especially in Engineering, but I carefully crafted my perturbed response. "First off relax" I said, then went on to explain what had happened and how I managed to work around it for testing purposes. I felt the reply was carefully planned to where I was standing up for myself, while still explaining the situation.

The reply from my employer did not support my analysis of what I said. It was simply a single sentence that read "stop the BS". Now at this point all kinds of dismay was flying around in my head so I asked myself how would a highly evolved conscious creator respond to this?

According to what I learned, the first think that is important when being criticized (unconstructively), is to be sure to not buy in to other people's negative outlook. Instead, turn what they say around into something you love about yourself (thank you Jeanette). This manifested itself in a way I did not expect. The minute I had that realization I looked over at the car next to me on the Interstate and it had a small bumper sticker that simply read "I (heart) BS".

This was to me, the universe offering some welcomed humor to the situation.

By the time I got to work, I had summoned up all kinds of wisdom for dealing with the situation with my boss. Including:

• Forgive everyone, yeah even that guy that cut you off on the way to work this morning
• Confront with the expectation that things will get resolved
• Display the kind of response you'd expect if the situations had been reversed

This helped me to get my point across without turning the situation into more of a confrontation then it already was.

When I got to the office and confronted my boss, I asked questions regarding that he was afraid and angry about. I did not accuse him of jumping the gun, though I felt that he had, the floor was open to resolving the conflict without one person having to bow to the other.

Later on in the day, my boss and I made another discovery. Turns out, he had spec'd out the hardware wrong and the whole architecture needed to be redone after all!

Instead of pointing at his earlier reactions to me, or responding to his screw up the same way he responded to mine, I saw the chance to display the calmness and understanding I expected when faced with my own mistake. I said "no problem" and quickly explained how I would make a couple quick changes to the architecture in order to accommodate the requirements without having to scrap the whole design.

Summary: When faced with nonconstructive criticism, we can either let it eat at us until we finally succomb to the failure we're made out to be, or just stay confident and focused until intuition points us in the right direction. Today that happened to me and I'm grateful for it! It made the whole day a great day. In my past I normally wouldn't have seen things quite that way.

Responsibility for our Emotions

"That guy really makes me angry". Sound familiar? Most people think so. I've been in too many situations where I felt that some one was making me angry, happy, sad, etc. The truth is, while people can do things we don't like, no one can make us feel anything. That's up to us.

About a year ago, if someone asked how I feel, I would have told them all about the feelings I didn't want to have and then go into massive details about how other people and situations were making me feel that way. I really had to listen carefully to what I was saying to hear it. When we have a philosophy that our emotions are somewhat dependent on outside influences, we use all kinds of words in our speech that accelerate the negative energy we feel.

Take this sentence as an example, "I really should start to work out more. I'm in such bad shape and I really want feel better about myself".

This is something people say to themselves or a close friend. Look at it again with the negative parts highlighted:

"I really should start to work out more. I'm in such bad shape and I really want feel better about myself".

The words in red are the ones that stand out and make this such a self-defeating sentence. I found that by doing instead of thinking, then radiating the feeling that comes from it, the sentence become something quite different.

"I've been working out more and I feel great!"

Law of Attraction savvy people will use affirmation statements to counter the bad vibes:

"I love my job"

"Thank God I'm Rich"

and so forth.

Next time you're out somewhere, think about the language that comes into your head when the guy in front of you cuts you off, or when you say paper and get plastic, or just when looking at the people next to you. Little shifts in the way we think could bring about big changes inside ourselves. "That guy must really be in a hurry" or "She must have thought I said plastic" could mean the difference between positive, affirming emotional radiation or the attraction of more of what you don't like.

What's working for me (present tense, I'm still exploring this) is at work. People around me have a lot of complexity to think about and little time to do it in. As a result, people tend to come off short tempered and can appear sometimes rude. Here's the big revelation with this one. Your workmates, bosses and colleges are not responsible for how you feel! You are.

That's what I've been saying to myself. My feelings are my responsibility and no one can take that away from me. By holding on to that, I've found that any distemper from the people around me is short lived, and I'm in a much clearer head to deal with the problem at hand. Also, others are starting to pick up on it and are beginning to see the same things as me. That everyone has the basic desire to work together as a team.

I read in another blog that we can't control other people, but we can influence their vibrations all the same. I have a hard time believing anyone wants to feel bad, therefore the positive vibrations we radiate can influence others around us weather we have a physical encounter with them or not.

The Story

Here's how it all started. Once during a holiday celebration, I found myself totally commenced in depression. I did however, take responsibility for it and started a quest to find out how the heck I was attracting this kind of stuff into my life.

What I found was that one of the most prominent philosophies I lived my life by needed some fine tuning. I used to believe that more then half of what happens to us is a direct result of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions we radiate. What I found is that it's not half, it's ALL!

I started reading books, articles and blog posts about the "Law of Attraction", the "Power of Intention", "Emotional Freedom Techniques", and everything else I could get my hands on that explained what I was seeing.

Here's how it makes sense to me. The realization that clinched the deal for me was the work of Albert Einstein. No, right away when people think of Einstein, a lot of things come to mind. The first of which is that infamous equation E-MC². Everyone knows that equation and that it is the basis behind Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but what does it really mean? An how did that simple equation knock the socks off the Physics world overnight?

The basics behind it is this. E is the symbol of Energy. M is equal to Mass, C is the speed of light. Energy is equal to Mass times the speed of light squared. The realization came when I realized that MC² is a formula that Physicists use to explain Matter. In other words, Matter is Energy!

We also radiate energy though our thoughts feelings and emotions. This is a measurable magnetic force that is measured in frequency, or "cycles per second". Therefore, if energy is measured in cycles per second and all these things are created by energy, then everything is based on a specific vibration. That was the thing that made it all come together for me. We attract to our life what we radiate. We can control our lives by the vibrations we produce.

That basic premise is what started me on my journey and the amount of knowledge I've been gaining from it has been changing my whole viewpoint in life.