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EXCUSE ME, YOUR LIFE IS NOW
Mastering the Law of Attraction
By Doreen Banaszak Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2007 Doreen Banaszak
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61283-155-8
CHAPTER 1
What Are Creation Principles?
To every one of us who finally ... maybe ... possibly ... believes they have the right to perpetual happiness, beginning now.
—Lynn Grabhorn, Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, from the dedication
Congratulations! Your willingness to read this book means that you do believe that you have the right to perpetual happiness. The steps presented in the next few pages will give you the tools to create your happiness, "beginning now." I've started with Lynn's dedication because I think it is one of the best ever written, and it sets the tone for what she and I want for you—to create your life the way you want to, not how you think you "should."
Lynn's central ideas are summarized below, along with a few little exercises to get you in the deliberate creation groove. For those of you who have read Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, this review will be a great chance to brush up a bit on the principles in preparation for you to learn how to apply them consistently in your daily life. If you haven't read Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, I encourage you to, as Lynn's explanations will help you to get a better handle on the concepts throughout this book. But even if you don't read Lynn's book first, I'm confident that the words in this book are going to change your life in ways you could never have imagined!
The Four Steps of the Law of Deliberate Creation
So let's get started. There are only four steps to deliberately creating anything you want. They are:
1. Know what you DON'T want.
2. Know what you DO want.
3. Get into the feeling place of what you DO want.
4. Allow what you DO want to come into your experience.
Part of this process is a willingness on your part to believe that you are not alone, that you have a partner who helps to take care of all the details of delivering your desire. Some may call this partner the universe, or God, or Higher Self. For the remainder of the book, I will refer to this partner as your creation partner. I will explain more about how to work closely with this partner a little later. Lynn wanted us to be sure we understood that creation is not just a process of thought; it is a process propelled and maintained by feeling. There's a difference between thoughts and feelings. We can think all we want, but if we don't actually feel what it is that we want, we don't vibrate our energy in alignment with our desires, and therefore we aren't using all of our power to attract what we want.
It's kind of like choosing to start a fire with two sticks when you have a lit blowtorch sitting next to you. It seems nonsensical, but we all do it; we make our experience harder than it has to be by choosing not to use all of the tools at our disposal.
What is the beauty of this? Since everything in our experience is attracted through our feelings, then our power to create is an inside job—we are the only ones who can create our own experience!
If this is true, we are not the victims of our circumstances; we are the creators of them!
I know, I know, some of you may be thinking that there is no way that you wanted to create your current circumstances—and I'm not here to convince you that you are responsible for losing your job, breaking up with your partner, or dropping your favorite ring down the drain. What's done is done, and there's no sense in dwelling on it. Instead, I am inviting you to focus on the here and now, to accept and change your thoughts and feelings about your current circumstances, so that you can accept the freedom that already exists for you—THE ABILITY TO CREATE A NEW EXPERIENCE!
For some people, accepting the belief that we can create our lives, from the little to the big, will not happen overnight. However, if you are open to the possibility of deliberate creation, and you start taking the four steps toward what you really want, you will soon see results that prove you have the innate freedom to create the experience you really want.
Lynn sums it up nicely in her wonderfully direct manner:
We came here with a guaranteed freedom of choice mandated by the very nature of our existence. The time has come for us to exercise that birthright. We are caught in no one's web. We are bound by no circumstance. We are victims to no conditions. Rather, we are beings who possess the sacred ability to implement any outlandish desire our limitless minds can concoct, for we possess unregulated, unrestricted, uncontested freedom of choice, no matter what those choices may be.
Now, doesn't that feel better than "I have no choice"?
So for the rest of this book, be willing to consider the idea that you create your own experience. Spend time thinking about your current circumstances, and start to recognize which thoughts and feelings serve you and which ones don't. Start putting your attention on new thoughts and new feelings that will create your next series of desired circumstances.
Putting the Laws into Action
The Law of Attraction and the Law of Deliberate Creation work hand in hand. The Law of Attraction states that like attracts like. If you put out positive feelings, you'll get back a positive outcome. If you emit negative feelings, you'll get a negative result. How can you make sure you're putting out positive thoughts to attract good things into your life? You do this by practicing the four steps of the Law of Deliberate Creation, which states that you create that upon which you put your attention.
Therefore, if you want to have more money, you have to put your attention on creating positive feelings around the idea of money in order to attract more money into your life. The great thing about these laws is that they are universal. You probably never realized that you are already applying them unconsciously! But when you apply them unconsciously, you have no control over the results. When applied consciously, they give the results you truly desire. There are no exceptions; this concept works equally for everyone. So, let's look at this process in more depth.
Step 1. Know What You DON'T Want
You might think it's odd to start here, especially after what I just said about not focusing on negativity, but here's the thing—a lot of us have a hard time figuring out what we really want. It's much easier to articulate what we don't want because we tend to do this naturally anyway. Recently, for example, I've noticed that my three-year-old daughter Samantha will say, "I don't want her playing with my toy!" or "I don't want to do that." I'm not sure where this comes from, as I pay close attention to how we phrase the things we say, but in response, I have been asking her to "tell me what you DO want." In this way, she is turning a "don't want" into a "do want." It's a simple process that you can practice, too. The technique of starting with what we don't want can sometimes jumpstart our thinking toward what we do want.
Having your attention on what you don't want keeps you squarely locked on what you don't want to have happen, and, according to the Law of Attraction, this is what you're most likely to draw into your life! Being fearful about something is the fastest way to bring it into your experience. But by first identifying what you don't want, you can face your fears and then choose to put your attention and energy on that which you do want.
So let's get started. Get out a piece of paper or get on the computer, and write a list of all your "don't wants." For example:
* I don't want to fail.
* I don't want to get sick.
* I don't want my kids to get hurt.
* I don't want to go out of business.
* I don't want to work here anymore.
Now let's move on to Step 2, in which we can use these "don't wants" to help us identify what we really do want. Once we are clearer on what we want, we can focus our attention on those things, rather than the "don't wants" we've been concentrating on up to now.
Step 2. Know What You DO Want
Now that you wrote your list of "don't wants," writing your "do wants" is a piece of cake! Simply rewrite your "don't wants" as "do wants":
* "I don't want to fail" becomes "I want to be successful."
* "I don't want to get sick" becomes "I want perfect health."
* "I don't want my kids to get hurt" becomes "I want my kids to be safe and healthy."
* "I don't want to go out of business" becomes "I want my business to be successful."
* "I don't want to work here anymore" becomes "I want to find work that I love."
That's easy, right? Those are the positive wants, and they should feel pretty good when you say them aloud. Remember, you aren't pining or longing for them, but conjuring and savoring the feelings associated with having them.
But beware of getting caught up in the trap of expressing "negative wants." If your "do wants" make you feel badly about yourself, then they're not positive. Like the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing, they're simply more bad news, but in a nice, fuzzy costume. For example:
* "I want to be thin."
* "I want to be rich."
* "I want to be pain-free."
For the most part, these tend to be focused on what you are not: you are not thin, rich, or pain-free. And focusing on that doesn't feel so good. In fact, saying them probably feels like eating a prickly pear.
To counteract negative wants, restate them in a way that feels good. Maybe the following will resonate more for you ...
* "I want to learn how to eat well."
* "I want to learn how to earn money doing work I love."
* "I want to learn about alternative ways to be healthy."
Note that choosing to learn about something is a great way to be focused on the positive while creating a next step.
Finally, if you're the kind of person who feels guilty about wanting things—that perhaps you're not good enough or deserving of good things in your life—then you need to know about the concept of "rightful wants." Lynn tells us: "With rightful wants, we accept the very real fact that it is not only appropriate and proper, but critical for us to want: anything ... anywhere ... of any kind ... in any amount ... in any shape ... to any degree ... at any time we so desire. Anything!" So, get rid of the guilt! You deserve good things in your life just as much as the other guy. Accepting this idea is going to be very important for the next step. Start to really think about and believe in what Lynn is telling you here, as it will make the difference between frustration and success with these principles.
Step 3. Get into the Feeling Place of What You DO Want
Some people who read Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting having them. thought that Lynn repeated herself a lot throughout the book, especially when it came to the word FEELINGS. Well, there was good reason for the repetition, because feelings are what this whole process of creation is based on. Unfortunately, we typically rely on our thinking, not our feelings. If you don't feel good—no matter what you happen to be thinking—you are creating what you don't want. If you feel good, you are creating what you do want.
It really is that simple!
Of course, thoughts and feelings are connected. Try this: think of something that makes you feel sad ... Now, while thinking about it, be happy. It simply is not possible to think sad thoughts and feel happy at the same time.
So if you are thinking about a circumstance in your life that you feel badly about, banish those thoughts from your mind because those negative thoughts will never generate the positive feelings you need to change an unwanted circumstance.
Lynn was adamant in her repetition of the importance of feelings because, for most of us, it seems much easier to be stuck in our bad feelings than to shift those feelings in a way that will ultimately change our circumstances. She even suggested that spending at least 16 seconds flowing powerful positive feelings was a great start to bring what we want into our reality. (Many people have asked where the idea of 16 seconds came from, and I honestly don't know, but I'm confident that Lynn knew what she was talking about!) Whether it's 16 seconds or 16 hours, what I do know is that any amount of time you can feel powerful and positive is time well spent!
Okay, so how do you change how you feel? Just do what you've been doing so far:
* You've identified what you don't want.
* You've identified what you do want, and you are feeling good about having it.
Now you want to feel even better about it! Remember that the Law of Attraction means that like attracts like. You want to create such a good feeling about what you desire that you start to attract that desire into your experience. In fact, the better you feel and the more positive attention you put on your want, the faster it will come!
Lynn refers to this as "buzzing," or raising our frequency. Emotional frequencies are just vibrations. In essence, what you are learning to do is to manage your energy vibration by managing your feelings. So get a "buzz on" about your want!
Take one of your wants and ask yourself the following questions:
* What feelings will I have more of when I get this want that I don't have today?
* How will I change when I get this want?
* How will my life change when I get this want?
* What do I see my life looking like when I get this want?
Now, write out a script or vision of this want, a wonderful mini-story. You'll know you have been successful at ramping up your feelings when you read your mini-story aloud to yourself and you FEEL the way you've described feeling in your answers to the questions above.
Also, as this is happening, pay attention to the place in your body where you are feeling your positive energy. Is it in your stomach, your solar plexus, your head? Positive feelings in your body are physical proof that you are creating, not "miss-creating"!
Step 4. Allow What You DO Want to Come into Your Experience
Okay, a quick review ...
* You've identified what you don't want.
* You've identified what you do want.
* You've gotten your "buzz on" about your want.
Now, the fourth step ...
What typically happens when we decide what we want? Usually, we start taking a ton of actions to get it. Maybe we write frantic to-do lists, or race around in search of this or that. Lynn called this "Hi-Ho Silvering," and it isn't very effective, because it doesn't feel good! It just makes us feel stressed.
Do keep in mind that I am not recommending that you just sit around and wait for your want. What I mean is that your want will come much faster if you put your attention on allowing it and taking what Lynn called "inspired action." What is inspired action? It's action that is driven by your attention to how you are feeling about the circumstances that present themselves. Here's an example from my own life on how this works.
A few months ago, I had little time and a choice to make. I could do a business task to generate some badly needed new business, or I could do some Web site maintenance. Now, most of you entrepreneurs out there would say this was an easy choice: go after some new business, right? In days gone by, I would have done exactly that, but that day that option just didn't feel good. It felt better, and more inspired, to do the maintenance, so I did. Believe me, I was pretty amazed that I made that choice, too!
First, I put my attention on the maintenance going smoothly, I updated my Web site with some new class dates, and I made the site look better, too. A few hours later, I got an e-mail from someone who had just recommended my Web site to a large list of clients. If I hadn't done the site maintenance, I realized, all of the new people coming to my site would have found outdated information, and I would have lost multiple opportunities for new business.
Did I know that my Web address was going to be sent out? Nope. Did I know that there was another opportunity looming for new business? Nope. All I knew was that I wanted new business and that I felt inspired to update my Web site, so I did, and look at the payoff!
When you are forcing your actions, it doesn't feel good. Not feeling good means that you are not creating in the direction of what you want. In fact, it means that you are creating in the opposite direction! Remember, you engage not only your own power, but also the power of your creation partner when you allow and feel good about the actions you are taking.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from EXCUSE ME, YOUR LIFE IS NOW by Doreen Banaszak. Copyright © 2007 Doreen Banaszak. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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