# 48 STRETCH YOUR THOUGHTS

     When you feel you have good command at quieting your thoughts, you are ready to progress to the first step in thought direction:  stretching your thoughts. 

     Remember the 60,000 thoughts a day you have?  Motivational coaches hired by professional athletes or CEO’s of fortune 500 companies instruct their protégé’s to take one thought and hold it for as long as they possibly can.  That is what I want you do.  Take only one constructive thought and practice holding it.  The only requirement is that it must be a neutral thought.  Do not think of anything that you feel overly emotional about.    Think of a shoelace, a leaf, or a fish. 

     Roll the thought over in your mind.  What does your thought look like?  Hold this picture for several minutes if you are able.  Did you pick the shoelace?  Is your shoelace long or short?  New or old?  Are the ends intact or frayed?  Is the shoelace dirty?  Set your alarm again and meditate with this same thought over the next several days.  Do not alter the object from session to session.  You want to become adept at holding very specific thoughts for periods of time.  It is okay to view your shoelace or fish from different viewing angles.  However, you want to pick only one item to contemplate.  Stick with it for a few days before moving on.  Then select another object to view in your mind such as the fish.

     After finishing a few sessions contemplating just the shoelace (or fish or leaf), practice thinking of just the color green.  Is your green winter green?  Forest green?  Light green?  Lime green?  See your green in a can of paint swirling as you stir it.  Stretch your green so it is a large blob.  Tighten it up to a super ball size and bounce it on the ground in your mind.  Again, practice thinking about just the color green for several minutes. 

     As you become adept at holding your thoughts, bring a thought into your session that triggers emotion.  Make it a happy emotion, never a negative emotion.   Think about your child’s face, the trophy fish you reeled in, or your new car.  Whatever your thought is it has to make you smile.  Stretch your thought as long as you possibly can.  Remember to smile while you meditate on the thought.  After all, the requirement was to think of something that makes you smile. 

     After you have completed stretching your happy thought, select a thought that calls forth your senses.  Rattle sensory thoughts around in your mind.  Go through each of your five senses:  sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.  Your goal is to pick a thought from each of these categories and stretch it. 

     You can open your eyes for your sense of sight.  Pick a boat in a magazine, your dream house, or a pan of brownies and examine the contents.  Take in the scenery, the color, the texture, the shape and any other details visually that you perceive.  Focus on your target for several minutes before moving on to another sense.  Choose a musical instrument, a train whistle, or the wind for your sense of hearing.  Close your eyes and listen to the sound within the confines of your mind.  Hear its noise.  Stretch this thought as long as possible.  Move on to touch.  Use the thought of your baby’s skin, the roughness of sandpaper, the smoothness of glass.  Move on to taste.  What does raw cinnamon taste like?  What about the sweetness of sugar or the sourness of lemon?  Draw these mental pictures.  Consider what you smell.  Think of a skunk’s odor, the funky animal smell at the zoo, your favorite perfume, or the smell of moth balls.  Stretch each of these thoughts in your mind.  Roll them over and see them.  Hear them.  Touch them.  Taste them.  Smell them all within your mind.

     These exercises strengthen the conscious minds ability to visualize internally imprinting upon the Universal Mind.   You are learning to clarify.   When you construct your ideals, the pictures you need to submit must contain as much sensory data as possible.  Thinking I want an orange.  Seeing the perfectly rich orange color, feeling the waxy pitted peel, smelling the erupting juice squirt as you break it in two, and tasting the sweet flavor of the orange burst within the confines of your mouth is a more powerful image to imprint upon the Universal Mind that just thinking it would be nice to have an orange.  It is with all of your sensory images that you paint the thoughts that produce the most effective outcomes. 

     I want you to practice thinking of in terms of mental sensory images.  This is not something that should consume your thinking or something you should hang on every word.  As opportunity presents itself throughout your day, take a moment or two to call forth very vivid mental pictures.  If someone is telling a funny story, instead of purely listening externally to their yarn, play out its pictures in your mind as they tell it.  Try to imagine the people they describe.  Try seeing the situation.  Hear the laughter erupt in your mind. 

     Go about your day looking for opportunities to imprint your senses mentally.  If someone offers you a chocolate bar, take a moment to consider the smell and taste within your mind, not just what you see and smell physically.  Practice, practice, practice thinking in terms of pictures.  Draw forth as many of your senses as possible as you think.  The value this will provide in just a short period of time will be immeasurable. 

     Nikola Tesla, a great inventor, always visualizes and manipulates within his mind first the perfect embodiment of his desire.  “In this way,” he writes in the Electrical Experimenter, “I am enabled to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything.  When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of, and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete (form), the product of my brain.  Invariably my device works as I conceived it should; in twenty years there has not been a single exception.”

     Practice thought imagery and stretching well after your practice sessions have ended.  You need to become effective at this.  The only way to master thought direction is by practice.  As you continue, the alarm devices will not be necessary.  However, set them if you feel it helps by all means.  The more frequent attempts you make at these mental practices sessions, the quicker you will get your mind in shape to perform the enticing task of securing your ideals.  Practice, practice, practice!  Your experiences will be delivered in exaction proportion to your efforts.  What goes in must come out.  No efforts in equal no change without

#47 Squeezing Out All Thoughts

Once you are able to feel the presence of your thoughts, the next step is to squeeze them out.  You will proceed as you did above setting an alarm device throughout the day followed up by periods of meditation.  At each alarm interval and mediation session, try to blank out your thoughts.  Think of nothing.  At first this will require much effort.  You will probably only be able to shut thoughts out for brief moments; several seconds to a few minutes.  Continue this practice for several days until you feel comfortable blanking out your mind.  Your goal is to squeeze out thoughts for at least one to several minutes at a time.

     Practice squeezing thoughts out of your conscious mind for several weeks.  Do this regardless of the thought, even if it is one that fulfills you.  Gaining the ability to shut thoughts out, any thoughts, will help you eliminate destructive thoughts.  As you develop the habit of going inside you, you will begin to notice both your feel good thoughts and your feel bad thoughts.  As you detect a destructive thought, your practiced ability will allow you to squeeze it out.  You must practice, however.  If you do not master squeezing thoughts out when destructive thoughts are noticed, it will be very difficult to get your mind off the thoughts.  The Law of Attraction will pepper you with them.  Subsequently, you must be versed at shutting thoughts out.

     These exercises:  Familiarizing yourself with your thoughts and shutting your thoughts out, assist in directing your thoughts.  You will not be able to direct your thoughts until you have mastered the connection within yourself and have developed the ability to squeeze out thoughts. After all, you cannot direct that which you have no control over.  The control must be gained first. 

     Directing your thoughts is done in steps.  Practice is required, much like teaching a child to tie shoes or ride a bike.  It is through instruction and practice that we learn.  If we do not practice we do not fully reap the benefits.  How many people do you know that simply cannot swim?  It is not because they are inept.  It is because they failed to practice.  Anyone can swim if they practice.  Consequently, anyone can learn to direct their thoughts through practice.    

     This is mental work but requires the same regimented rehearsal as any physical activity you would prepare for.  You practice until you learn and you will learn every time.  Every child learns to walk, tie shoes, ride a bike, and read.  Children are sponges of opportunity because we discipline them to practice until the task is accomplished.  We do not dare take the shoes away after a few unsuccessful tying attempts, nor do we stroller children for life who do not walk by the age of one.  We tell our children to keep trying until you learn.  That is why we all know how to ride a bike, tie our shoes and walk.   It is with this diligence that you learn to direct your thoughts. 

     It is important that you ease yourself into thought direction.  You would not teach a child to ride a bike by perching them on a motorcycle.  You would not select an expert course to start skiing.  Do not be tempted to go immediately to hard in thought direction.  Remember, you validate your experiences as proof of truth.  Any failures will be deemed by you as proof of some inability or proof that your thoughts are powerless.  So it is very important that small steps are taken and small successes are celebrated, thereby validating your work as accurate.  Small drips applied gradually increase your water bill tremendously.  It is the same with your thoughts.  Start small, build tall. 

#46 Exploring the Conscious Mind

     By now, your attention should be shifted inward as you notice what you are thinking. You are developing an awareness of at least some of your daily thought habits.  You are also meditating on a regular basis (several times week).  Up to this point, you have made no effort to change your habits or prevent your thoughts.  You have let them roll through your mind unhampered.

     I am going to give you an exercise designed to remind you to inspect inwardly.   Set your wrist watch or cell phone alarm to ring several times a day (resetting each time it goes off for an hour later).  When your reminder alarm sounds, stop!  Jot down exactly what thoughts are present when the alarm sounded.  Make no attempt to embellish the thought or think of something if you cannot recall.  If you do not know or cannot remember your thought, write down I drew a blank.  You will be surprised how quickly the thought leaps from your clutch.  Set your alarm for the next half hour or hour and do the same.  Keep this log for several days.  Your goal is to awaken to your thoughts.  As you progress, you will naturally begin inspecting your thoughts several times a day without the aid of the alarm.  The alarm helps you develop the habit of peeking inside your mind. 

     As you journal your thought log, set aside at least ten minutes to half an hour a day to meditate.  Meditation shuts out the physical world forcing your focus inward.  Meditating is not difficult.  In fact it is relatively easy and should leave you feeling refreshed.  Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.  Quiet dimly lit rooms work nice.  Sit on a comfortable chair; lay on the floor, or on your bed.  This is mental work and dozing off is not allowed.  Save meditating for a time when you are alert, yet able to relax. 

     Find your comfortable spot.  Close your eyes and let your thoughts flow freely.  Permit them to trail.  Pay attention to the speed at which thoughts “pop” in for a visit.   They come.  They go.  Often thoughts are followed by similar thoughts and clear images.  Other times their randomness distracts from the picture.  Your goal is to familiarize yourself with you.  The only way to know you is to go inside you and feel your presence through your thoughts.  Mediate in this fashion for several days, again making no effort to control your thoughts.  Your goal at this point is self awareness.  Repeat this process of dropping in on your thoughts for several days until you feel connected to the inner you.

     You are not ready to move forward until the connection is felt.  You are a ships captain right now getting familiar with the crew and equipment.  You would make no attempt to sail your vessel without proper acclimation. 

     It is OK to feel overwhelmed by your thoughts; most people do, which is why they tuck them nicely away inside their head and spend time dazzling themselves with their physical acquisitions.  You will never try to control your thoughts sporadic nature.  You will only direct your thoughts towards your ideals as you currently define them.  Directing your thoughts requires that you (1) disarm destructive thoughts and (2) install constructive thoughts.  The rest of your imaginative, spontaneous, unprompted, unstructured thoughts should be left to prowl.

#46 Building a New Foundation

You now have an understanding of the power that resides inside you.  You know you have an insatiable creative purpose that is unleashed through thought.  Thoughts attract like energies binding into beliefs.  From your thoughts and beliefs springs your reality.  You have learned that your beliefs repel thoughts that are not on the same frequency denying access to the universal mind.  Therefore, you cannot create that which betrays your beliefs.  You cannot even fake it. 

     Emotions and Feelings allow you to gauge the relationship between your physical world and your thoughts simply by asking yourself:   How do I feel?   Am I joyful?  Grateful?  Appreciative?  Or am I mad, sad and frustrated?  Thoughts lay the groundwork for feelings.  You feel what you think.  Feelings provide a temperature check for what you are thinking right now.  Feelings steer you towards your ideals if you tune into them.   Your goal is to follow the thoughts that leave you feeling good and abandon the thoughts that leave you feeling bad.  Remember, thoughts that leave you feeling bad are bad leaders.  You do not want to be lead where they are taking you.  It is that simple.

     Ideals give you direction.  They are powerful blueprints.  After all, what would power be without a purpose?  Your purpose is to create the unrestricted vision you hold of yourself in a harmonious state with the Universal Mind.  You will feel fulfilled as you move towards your Ideal.  Your Ideal will always be a moving target.  As you accomplish, so you will endeavor to create more.  Once you understand how you work, all that is necessary is to define what your vision of you is.  

     Clarity is the painted pictures of your ideals.  It is absolutely necessary that you give brush strokes to these pictures.  Clarity combines thoughts and ideals in the same coordinate points within your mind.  The more often you can combine thoughts, beliefs, ideals, and expectancies the quicker your new experience emerges. 

     Expectations serve as check points in your thinking.  By asking yourself, what do I expect to occur this week, you can gage where your thinking has been.  If your ideals are not on that list, then your thinking is not where it needs to be. 

     Your imagination exercises your spontaneous thinking.  You do not need to get an imagination.  You already have one; a really great one!  Sometimes people will use phrases like, you have no imagination.  It is only through lack of use that we fail to rely on our imaginative ability.  Using it is like toning the muscles that lay ready for use under your skin.   Once employed, you will not be able to stop the popping of ideas.

     Finally, you have your misunderstood willpower which is your magnetic energy in motion.  It is the Law of Attraction at work.  Smokers, dieters, and alcoholics are all too familiar with this pull of energy.  It is the ever so powerful cyclical thoughts connecting mental to physical.  The power of your will to draw cannot be avoided. 

     Once you understand each of the working pieces that make up you, it becomes uncomplicated to navigate you.  Easier, make note, not easy.  However, understanding helps!  Before you were afraid to imagine, now you have permission.  Previously you settled, now you idealize.  Yesterday you allowed your thoughts to run amok amidst fret, anger and frustration.  Today, you command them towards abundance joy and harmony.  Where once doubt settled in confidence is restored.  You are in charge of you and always have been.  Creating your ideal vision of you begins right now with thought acquaintance.

     I had the opportunity to visit an annual art show in Grand Rapids, Michigan called Art Prize.  Artists around the world compete for the annual art prize of $1,000.  It was hard to find a piece of art at Art Prize that was not amazing in its creation.

     However, there was a piece that stood out in particular.  An artist by the name of Paul A. Baliker had carved a piece of driftwood into a large circle about fifteen feet in diameter.  The carving contained all sorts of intricate detail such as a carved giraffe, monkeys, and so forth.  He work was called A Matter of Time.  This particular artist was on hand to answer questions about his piece. 

     One of the members of the group admiring the work asked the artist as he stood off to the side, “How do you even begin to build something like this?  It seems so overwhelming to me.”  The artist responded, “I start from the bottom.  I always start from the bottom and I just keep working upwards.” 

#45 EXERCISING YOUR IMAGINIATION

     If you are unsure how to bring your imagination from passive to active, watch a child play.  Children have no trouble at all employing their active imagination.  Give them a ball of yarn and a pile of sticks and they will give you a fort.  “Here’s where the kitchen is,” they will say!  “Yeah, and over here is my room.  My bed is here.  And this big rock is my pillow.”  Children will spend hours setting up battlegrounds, tea parties, or hoeing a make believe garden.  How are they at entrepreneur skills?  There is no reluctance on their part selling crayon pictures, homemade bracelets or cookies that are falling apart.  Do kids dread going door to door to selling their goods?  No, they love going door to door with their cooked up inventions, crayon pictures and mud pies!  Kids believe in their abilities and actively employ their imagination. 

     The world’s most successful people transport their imagination from passive to active:  Movie makers, song writers, novelist, gaming creators, painters, inventors, scientist, entertainers, and magicians.  The top performers in any professional category are always those deemed to have the “wildest” imaginations.  You too, can be imaginative.  All it takes is practice.  What is available to any top performer is also available to you.  As you use your imagination, a dousing of fresh thought trickles in.   

     Shedding limiting beliefs allows your imagination to stretch.  When we shed the belief that man could not fly, we came up will all sorts of vehicles for man to fly in:  airplanes, hot air balloons, helicopter, space shuttle, parachute, and blimps.  It is the belief that bars the ideas entry.  When you clear the path, ideas will spring to mind, one after another, from the easily doable to the absurd.  Do not deny these thoughts their proper consideration. That is your mental power in action trying to bring your desired object close to you.  Denying these thoughts and opportunities is the same as denying your object. 

     Are you familiar with the children’s movies “Finding Nemo” or “Monster, Inc?”  Finding Nemo is about a young fish that is separated from his overprotective and rather paranoid father.  The father must venture out of the safety zone of his coral reef to find his young son.  The story tells the tale of father and sons adventure as they try to find each other.  Monster’s Inc. is a story about Monsters that live in a parallel universe to ours accessible through the closets of children.  The Monsters have to scare children to collect screams.  The screams of children power the Monsters electrical world.  A little girl accidentally enters the monster’s world and the adventure begins. 

     These stories could only be created through active imagination employed regularly.  When you are open to ideas, they come.  When you shut ideas out through your beliefs, they cannot come.  They are denied access by the beliefs.  The only reason you feel a lack of creativity is because you are not letting your thoughts springboard you into ideas like Finding Nemo or Monsters Inc.  You do not permit them.  You walk around oblivious to your thoughts with a big tag across your chest that reads, “Access denied.”

     Your thoughts are worthy of exploration.  If there is ever a time to listen to the knock, knock, knock of your thoughts…the time is now.  Often our brief interludes of constructive thought are followed up with the flickering of attracted thoughts responding.  But we miss the sparking of new thought.  We take no action.   

     Your imagination is tapped through active use.  Take your imagination into your meditation sessions.  Force its use by asking yourself questions out of the ordinary.  Ask yourself questions you would not normally or ever consider.  Examples such as:  What would my world be like if I lived on the leaf of a Sugar Maple Tree?  Would I learn how to access its sap?  What could I use the sap for besides a sweetener?  Ask of yourself, how could I have $10 without laboring for it?  What job do I think is the best job in the world?  In considering this job, what do I think is the most challenging aspect of this “best job?” 

     There are no rules to the questions you ask except that you must either feel good or neutral about the material.  Bring no unpleasantries into your session.  Your imagination will spring up through active frequent use.  If you do not use it, you lose it.  However, you can gain it back.  Your imagination does not pack up and leave you.  You have only suppressed it.  It did not go anywhere.  By suppressing it, imaginative thoughts do not occur to you.  When you use it often, thoughts leap seemingly out of nowhere.

     When you feel in command of your imagination, then you can initiate thoughts of your ideals.  Prematurely setting ideals causes you to aim low.  After all, if your imagination is harnessed like a beast, it will not occur to you that certain ideals are available.  You have likely heard people say, “I never would have thought of that” or “I wish I would have thought of that.”  What are they saying this about?  Just about every good idea that slaps them in the face from the Pet Rock to the Invisible leashed pet.  They said it about Colonel Sanders secret recipe, Martha Stewart’s Life Style entertainment, the slinky, Rubik’s cube, and on and on. 

     Ideals spring from the pursuit of an active imagination.  When you allow yourself to ponder without restriction the ideal life you desire, it too will begin to take shape.  Ideas that would have never occurred to you before will occur.  That is why it is important not to loiter in new found thought.  You should always keep idealizing since your ideal is always relative to where you are now.  It is a moving target.  As you carve your way towards your ideal, thoughts that have not occurred to you before will help you to set new ideals.  You are always moving towards a new set of ideals.  If you linger to long on a tier, beliefs will grip you in that tier.  While some may be beneficial, others will hold you to certain experiences.  That is why it is always important to remember what you believe holds no universal truth.  You do not want new beliefs to mesmerize you in the same regard your old ones do.

     Your imaginative ideas should be as unrealistic as possible for this reason:  What is real, is already believable by you and requires no reinforcement.  Thinking in terms of what is unrealistic and unobtainable stretches your mind.  It forces you to consider thoughts you normally would not.  Once these thoughts are brought into the active mind for inspection other like thoughts will follow including thoughts that make the unobtainable obtainable and the unrealistic real. 

     When Gary Dahl first thought of the Pet Rock, it was amongst friends who were at the time complaining about their pets.  The Pet Rock was a laughable substitute for a pet.  However, Dahl went home to consider the Pet Rock further.  He even went as far as creating a guide on caring for the fictitious Pet Rock.  The more he thought about this very unrealistic pet, the more real it became real.  Ultimately, he put together a marketing plan that successfully launched his pet rock to a welcoming market.  The rest is history.

     Your imagination works well when you use it well!  Creating your ideals through imagination serves as a guide for your thoughts.  Until now, you have allowed your thoughts to wander, snaking off when you perceive them as becoming too unrealistic within your belief system.  Time spent in concentrated effort imagining your ideals draws forth those experiences.  Like the water drip and the fall leaves, small daily doses build up monumental results quickly.   The degree to which you are willing to devote concentrating on your ideals, determines the speed at which your ideals are returned.    Small doses performed daily lead to large immediate results.

#44 Imagination and Will Power

Your will power, thoughts and imagination are bound together.  Will power NEVER goes against them.  Therefore, it behooves you to try to abandon through willpower the thoughts you have imagined.  You cannot do it.  

     You are always in a state of attracting.  What you attract depends upon what you think about and believe.  Your will power is your power of attracting as you will something to happen.  Your will is your thoughts materializing. 

     Understand that you cannot use your willpower as a weapon against your thoughts and imagination.  Your will draws reality towards you like an earth magnet.  It is unwavering, unbendable and unstoppable until you change your thoughts. 

     Diets fail, addiction treatment plans fail, marriages fail when you consume yourself with thoughts of donuts, drugs, or adulterous desires and then try to waive off the materialization of those events with some incredible will power.  Your will power is not some super hero inner strength that allows you to thwart off a donut, a drink or an affair.  It is exactly the opposite!  Your will power is your power to draw to you what you think about.  The only way to prevent the materializations of events is by stopping your thoughts.

     Thoughts attract similar thoughts; similar thoughts band together as ideas.  Mental pictures are painted. Soon you are visualizing.  It is the obsessive repetition of thought that draws forth unwanted behavior.  You have to be immediately willing to banish thoughts unworthy of you from the focus of your attention.  Your bad habits are conquerable when your thinking is consciously directed away from the habitually bad thoughts.  That is the only way.  Soon your physical world will turn about and seem to cure you.  But it is the steered thinking that altered your experience.

     Think of your will as self talk.  The repeated messages that you send yourself direct your experience.  For example, if self-talk includes commenting on the undesirable status of your weight, obsessing over what afflicts you, or a dread of exercising each of these conditions will magnetically be drawn to you.  As you fight for control, you further draw undesirable situations because you are magnifying your thoughts in these areas.  Your power resides in redirecting your thoughts not in trying to redirect the environment the thoughts produced. 

     What many of us attempt to do is diet by forgoing food or battling intense exercise regimes.  While physical exercise has its benefits and place, you are fat because of your thoughts.  You are consumed by thoughts of food and weight.  You try to diet by forcing food away.  However, you continue thinking about brownies, treats and the taste of bacon.  Repeatedly trying to shove the food away does not work.  Your thoughts, imagination and WILL POWER are strong attractants.  They will produce results whether you like it or not.  Directing your thoughts away from food and the scales will change your weight.  That is your only option.

     What do we say about a person who is on a diet and forgoes desert?  “Oh my, what astonishing will power!”  However, it is not the will power that banished the dessert.  The thoughts of the dessert were not allowed to spin out of control.  The person’s thoughts were on anything BUT the dessert.  You cannot think of dessert or its delicious offering and push it aside. Your thoughts are what are pushed aside first!  You reject the dessert by rejecting first the thoughts. 

     You might think that you have been thinking fat thoughts and so agree to think thin thoughts.  However, you “imagine snacks.” You think you are powerless to your own will.  However as I have stated, your will power followed your imagination. One million Americans are overweight.  Five million diet each year in futile attempts to shed pounds that only regain themselves over time.  Failed attempt after failed attempt leaves you feeling in the dumps.  All you think about is dieting plagued by these incredible urges to eat.  If you had listened to your feelings (feeling bad about your weight and failures) you would have known they were trying to tell you something about your thoughts.  You are attracting more reasons to feel bad, more weight, more down in the dump feelings.  Your attempts to thwart a reality that you created through thought are impossible.  You have to change your thinking.  When you think of yourself at your ideal weight, feel good about the person you are right now and push aside the thoughts of weight, you will experience change.   You have to love yourself the way you are, adore your body and feel good about the person you see in the mirror in order to be given more experiences of feeling good about who you are.  That is will power in action!  It is the attracting will power of specific constructive thoughts, I love who I am and the rejection of “I am fat” thought in action here.

     Remember we talked about the power the word I am contains.  Whatever follows I am are your beliefs.  Your beliefs dish out your reality.  So what you believe about I am (fill in the blank) is what you are going to get without fail every single time.

     Every person that is overweight is consumed by thoughts of food, right size portions, hunger, special diets, new diets, tight clothes, calories, carbs, protein, foregoing dessert, cellulite, dress size, and how nice fries would taste right now.  Overweight people are consumed with thoughts of food and their body size.  Right weight people give no more thought to food than they do a blade a grass.  In fact, food is so far from their thoughts they often forget it is time to eat. Their thoughts are not consumed with hunger or their clothing size.  Right weight people look in the mirror and think I like how I look today.

     Change your thinking.  Change your life.  Do not underestimate the power of your will.  Do not think for one moment that you can entertainment negative thoughts and reject their consequences.  The key is to lock the door on thoughts that destruct you.  You must with all effort imposed push them from you mind. 

     People who lose weight, have a drinking problem, or drug addiction have incredible difficulty overcoming their obstacles due to will power.  They put their problems constantly in the forefront of their thoughts and then try to reject the outcomes.  They are met with debacle every time.  You cannot reject physically what you have produced mentally.  You cannot WILL away the physical aspects of what your thoughts have produced.  Your will power follows your thoughts and imagination WITHOUT FAIL.  You cannot use your will power as a weapon against thoughts and imagination.  It is their ally.  We refer to our will power backwards so often.  We have deceived ourselves (built up this false belief) into thinking we have super strength to will away what we think about.   However, you get what you think about every single time.

     Often times we find some people get sick, get better, and get sick again.  Or they lose weight and then gain it right back.  Ultimately, the bad thoughts return surging them once again with a notion of weakness.  Why does this happen if thoughts are attracting powerful thoughts and positive beliefs are growing?  How does the bad habit return?  By the time you have lost the weight or have been won over to good health, shouldn’t you continue going in that direction?

     Two aspects of the power of thought occur when we yo-yo up and down in pants size or yo-yo up and down spectrum of health.  First, polarized thinking is ravaging the thought process.  Second, normal neutral keeps you grounded.  You can pivot in any direction away from normal neutral.  However, until you change your normal neutral pivoting point your polarized thoughts will return you to that normal neutral point of inspection.  People plagued with weight problems or illnesses never really change their thinking patterns.  For instance, they may constantly watch food in-take as they slim down.  They obsess over their weight.  They worry about gaining weight back.  If a person is ill, that person may worry about getting sick again.  The habitual thoughts never leave their mind.  They are still focused on the destructive thoughts.  However, they have temporarily moved to the positive aspects of the destructive thoughts.  For example, you can think about how good you feel about your body size or how bad you feel about your body size; but you are still noticing your body size.

     You take any bad habit and you will find that it is a bad habit of the mind.  Your thoughts are where the offenders lay.  When you try to make physical corrections, you lose every time.  You have to rid yourself of the offending thoughts first.  If you attack the outward physical condition but do nothing to correct destructive thoughts, your destructive thoughts will return your destructive physical condition.

     Smalls seeds of beliefs build allowing you temporary positive successes.  However, in the trenches lay the negative habitual thoughts that are very comfortable to you.  Eventually you allow them to creep back in without even an awareness that they are doing so.  Your bad habit thoughts whisper, “We’ve been good.  One piece of pie won’t hurt.”  Remember your thoughts have attracting power.  As soon as you allow a destructive thought in, others will follow.  Soon you have eaten three desserts; gained fifteen pounds back and feel bad about yourself!  The only way to rid the difficulty in your life is to rid all thoughts, positively constructed or negatively constructed, that center round the problem. 

     Remember feelings are navigators that indicate whether you are moving towards harmony, away from harmony or are at normal neutral.  If you do not feel really good about yourself or condition then you must take action to acquire that feeling.

     Whatever your perceived problem is, as it enters your mind, state your ideal you, and then dismiss that thought.  Excuse it.  Tell it you no longer need it.  Any thought about your weight (or problem) brings upon more reasons to obsess over.  Remember, your will power is not a weapon to be used against your vice. 

     Smokers encounter this same sort of failure when they attempt to quit smoking.  They throw the pack of cigarettes out and try to fight the urge not to smoke.  What is the“urge?” That urge is your will power in action bending you; physically pulling you as hard as it can towards materialization of your thoughts.  It is not the nicotine that draws the cigarette to you.  It is the thoughts of smoking spiraling out of control in your mind.  The urge to smoke is your thoughts; your will power drawing to you exactly what you are thinking about.  How do people quit smoking?  They quit by forcing thoughts of smoking from the mind.     

     Just think for one moment of that inescapable power as you succumb to any bad habit!  That is the law of attraction at its finest.  Do you recognize it?  We erroneously call the Law of Attraction an urge.  An urge is repeated cyclical thoughts over and over “I want a cigarette, I want a brownie,” “I want a beer,” set to replay that thrusts you with the force of gale winds towards the object that you choose to think about.  The Law of Attraction is connecting you without fail to your object. 

     You can chock it up to some chemical imbalance or powerful withdrawal effects of drugs.  Call it what you like.  But know this.  The second you redirect your thoughts, the sensation disappears.  Consider driving home from work with obsessive thoughts of I want a cigarette traversing your mind.  Someone calls your cell phone.  Your thoughts of wanting a cigarette are interrupted as you focus in on the conversation with the caller. The moment you hang up you allow the flood gates of destructive thought to usher in.  The urge to smoke that cigarette comes right back.  Your constant cyclical thinking propels you towards the object of your thoughts.  As long as you think that drug has the ability to start and stop your thoughts, you will misplace your ability to quit.  Your ability to quit resides with your ability to redirect your thoughts.  Your ability to lose weight resides with your ability to redirect your thoughts.  As I said before, any bad habit is a bad habit of the mind first!

     You can blame the drug’s effects or a chemical imbalance.  You can blame your thyroid or your genes.  Blame whatever you want.  Understand though that by placing blame you misplace the solution.  With any bad habit you have falsified the joy the habit brings.  You have developed a false belief.  You erroneously believe your bad habit brings you joy.  You think pleasurably of smoking or eating.  Some motivational authors will tell you that if you associate enough discomfort with bad habits, they will dissipate.  To some degree that is true because we generally avoid painful thoughts.  Additionally, painful thoughts are often the catalyst necessary to redirect thoughts.  We generally do not like thinking about painful thoughts so we listen to our feelings by redirecting our thoughts. 

     Ultimately, though it does not matter whether you focus on reasons for wanting something or not wanting something.  It is that microscopic attention that you are giving the habit that causes the problem to linger in your life.  Pain begins in your thoughts.  As you associate pain in your thoughts, you tend to stop thinking about painful thoughts.  For example, people do not like to think about past relationships gone sour, getting fired or in general any bad experiences endured.  It is because these experiences cause the feeling of pain that people steer from them.  The feeling is meant to direct you away from the painful thought.  Often we listen to these types of feelings and do redirect our thoughts.   

     However, experiences always start and stop with your thoughts.  It is better to thrust out all thought of the bad habit.  Any attention given to your habit is thought power.  Remember it is not what you do not want that you do not get.  It is what you avoid thinking about that you do not get.

     Imagine harnessing the urge of your will power in action.  We have all felt that will power before; whether it was for a cigarette, a drink or even for the affections of another person.  Imagine harnessing that power in any direction you wanted; that unbendable, undeniable, unyielding power to serve your thoughts.   Imagine unleashing that power towards your ideals!  It is that power directed and concentrated, like you employ now on all your bad habits, directed towards your ideals.  Guess what is going to come your way?  It cannot be stopped.  Your power to attract is unyielding.

     Our old thoughts continue because like a well worn shoe they fit comfortably.  There is no place like home.  You will keep replaying these thoughts until you break free from the pattern.  We can redirect our thoughts at any time with concentrated effort.  Some people equate effort with massive amounts of work.  Effort is energy.  Directed energy is power.  You do not have to sit in a darkened room sweat brimming from your brow forcing unwanted thoughts from your mind.  You just need to be aware that they exist and expel them the second they arise.  Replace your harmful thought with a new helpful thought.  Soon your new thoughts will feel like that old comfortable shoe. 

     As I was going through a divorce with my husband, I often had thoughts pop into my mind that made me feel angry towards him.  My feelings were an indication that I needed to change my thoughts ‘or else’ more reasons for being angry would be brought upon me.  However, I did not always listen to them.  Sometimes I let the thoughts brew allowing my angry thoughts to attract more angry thoughts.  As I did this without fail greater and greater reasons were brought into my awareness of why I should be angry with him.

     This is how both the Law of Attraction and your point of normal neutral work.  The Law of Attractions gives you more of the same thoughts to think about.  Your normal neutral position keeps you tethered to your current state of affairs. 

          All of the thoughts, emotions, attitudes and beliefs occur in the mind.  My anger was a product of my thoughts. My thoughts were not a product of my anger because I did not feel angry until that first thought occurred.  As I let it grow, the feeling grew.  Again, my feelings were trying to tell me that I was not in succinct with harmony.

     On the occasions that I allowed my thoughts the freedom to explore those angry thoughts, without fail days or sometimes a week later something would happen that would provoke more anger.  It may have been something related to my husband that refueled those thoughts or something entirely different such as finding something a trinket of mine that my kids broke. 

     The point is that by allowing those thoughts to brew, I was attracting more reasons to be angry into my experience.  I was manifesting it.  This is exactly what I mean when I tell you that you form your reality as you.  Most of us do it on the fly.  It then does not occur to us that our thoughts create it.  We think we are thinking those thoughts due to the circumstance.  We do not recall our angry thoughts of yesterday that have brought us incidents to be angry over today.  We do not make that connection.

     It is difficult to thrust out thoughts that are part of beliefs.  They do attract.  They will attract.  They will be brought to your awareness constantly.  Ridding me of my angry thoughts was not easy either.  I kept reminding myself that unless I wanted more of these same thoughts and physical experiences, then I needed to stop my thoughts.  I battled with pushing them out of my mind too.  I found it easier when I changed my focus; that is I thought about something entirely different, something that made me feel good…my ideals.  

     Your will power is unleashed upon your ideals only by developing thoughts and beliefs that give you that elated feeling.  How do you get that elated feeling?  You take action on them.  It is no different than any habit you have formed.  To this point, your ideals have not given you that elated pleasurable feeling because you have taken no action upon them.  As you act, your feel good feelings will surface.  Soon taking action upon your ideals will become an insatiable urge. 

     Think how good you feel when you act upon something constructive.  You get a project done that has been on your to do list.  You take that vacation you have dreamed about.  You go to your child’s school function.  You take a day off and go to the spa. 

     Actions fuels thoughts.  Thoughts return more of the same.  As these “feel good” thoughts occupy your mind, the destructive ones are automatically set aside.  You now have good thoughts being produced.  If you find yourself stuck in a cyclical thought pattern, take action!  Do something that you feel good about. 

     This is how I broke the pattern of returning to myself angry thoughts.  I worked on my book.  I organized my closets (something I felt good about doing).  I engaged in playful activity with my kids.  As I involved myself in physical action, my mental thoughts had to tend to those physical activities and feel good thoughts.  Thoughts precede form.  So, if I am doing something, I have to think about it first.  That left my angry thoughts untended to.  My angry thoughts could not occupy my mind and so they left. 

     To some degree action taken can give relief to your cyclical thoughts, whether your cyclical thoughts are of anger, smoking, weight issues, or problems with your health.  Ultimately, you need to deal with your underlying beliefs in order to pivot away from the problem altogether.  We will talk about how to do that in a later blog.

#43 IMAGINATIVE REDUNDANCY

     We readily consider ourselves creatures of habit.  We sit at the same desk or lunch table.  We follow the same morning routine.  We follow the same bedtime ritual.  However, we do not stop to consider our habitual mental thoughts.  We apply our habits solely to the physical aspects of our lives and are oblivious to our repeated daily mental thoughts.  It is the repeated mental thoughts that produce our daily physical habits, but we are unaware.

     It is the patterned thinking that we need to break away from for the real change to occur.  Our imaginations have been stymied as a result.  Remember those 60,000 thoughts a day we had?  Recall, 95% of what we think are yesterday’s thoughts?  Your imagination produced those redundant thoughts.  You struggle with fresh new ideas, concepts, inventions, or change because you are imagining the same things over and over. 

     These cyclical thought patterns grip us.  For many of us, the last time we allowed our minds to have a truly fresh thought was during childhood.  At some point during adolescent, our creativity was discouraged.  We adopted the belief that imaginative thought belonged in the world of a child.  Certainly our employers want imaginative employees.  However, only along the lines of what they want you to create for them.  While you might consider yourself a thinker, at work for example, you lack imagination in other areas where focus is lacking.   

     Without an exercised imagination, our thoughts stagnate into cyclical patterns.  We are all capable of achieving much more than we currently do.  It is only because we feel powerless and lacking that we pursue so little.  When we connect to the real power source of our imagination, the lack and the feelings of powerlessness will subside. 

     You need to learn to use your minds potential by allowing your thoughts to trail pausing to concentrate not on your usual thoughts but thoughts that are atypical to you.  Atypical does not mean undisciplined.  Atypical means pushing your thoughts in directions you are not accustomed to. 

     Until diligence is employed your current thoughts will plague you.  Change requires effort.  As a child, you employed great effort learning to stand up and walk, hold your spoon to feed yourself, and tie your shoes.  You concentrated heavily on these tasks until they were achieved.  As an adult, you abandoned your diligent thinking in favor of more structured thoughts requiring much less mental effort.  You checked your imaginative thinking in at the door of adulthood.

     You did this at the same time that your limiting beliefs structured walls around you.  As you were told to stop dreaming, or you’ll never be able to do that, or so few people ever become one of those, or why would you bother with such silly ideas you stopped building your aspirations within your mind.  Beliefs formed that confined your thoughts to those that you think are appropriate within the belief. 

     You free your imagination by entertaining a multitude of thoughts just as you would exercise your leg through physical therapy after an injury.  Allow time daily to explore fresh thoughts.  Pick a quiet spot and a random topic and allow your thoughts to trail off.  Do not allow your beliefs to give value to your thoughts. 

     Exercising your imagination will bring forth a heightened awareness of it.  Frequent use will reward you with markedly fresh ideas.  When you are presented with challenges, frequenting the realm of your imagination will help you solve your dilemmas.  The key is the ability to summon up an endless supply of thoughts. 

Supplement: The Cure for All Illness

The cure for all illness lies with the belief in wellness firmly established within the conscious mind.  I realize the audacity of this statement.  I realize there are people who very much want to believe that statement; yet cannot seem to heal their body.  Equally there are people who will say that it is irresponsible and contemptible to make such claims.  However, I assure you the conscious mind creates your physical reality including your body and the perception of the body’s well being. 

          When you think of your whole body, you understand that there are parts within parts.  Your skin is peeled back to reveal organs and tissue.  Upon magnification of your organs and tissues, cells are revealed.  These cells are reduced to molecules which then consist of atoms.  Atoms contain protons and electrons.  You ultimately are reduced to energy. 

     It is at this level of pure energy that your conscious mind excites energy and assembles you.  You are assembled energy bond by the conscious mind.  The energy created by a thought excites other forms of energy creating a process of attraction or creating a repellant.  Your predominant thoughts and beliefs are your strongest attractors.  They form the perception of you.  If this is difficult to understand, I suggest that you read blogs #4, #5, and #6 for an in depth understanding of the human body and the conscious mind.   

     It is the conscious mind that controls the body.  The body does nothing without the command of the conscious mind.  You must think before you do.  Even during periods of inattentiveness to the body, such as daydreaming while driving, the conscious mind still holds the body at its command.  You are aware of your body even though you are thinking of other matters.  Conversely, the body does not have periods of time where its whereabouts vanish from the conscious mind.  The conscious mind can always locate the body.

     Accordingly, the conscious mind is free to roam and has no need for a body.  You already have periods of inattentiveness to the body such as when you are asleep.  The conscious mind is free to explore this alternate reality of which the physical body is not a part.  The body is never a part of a reality of which the conscious mind is not a part of.  The body does not imprison the conscious mind, but rather the conscious mind commands the body.

     When you think of your whole self again, you understand that the mind controls the body.  Yet, we seem unwilling to relinquish this (conscious mind) control at a cellular level, erroneously believing that due to the small size of our body’s cells that they are not organized, controlled or directed by the conscious mind in the same manner as the body as a whole is.  For example, we know our conscious mind is responsible for the movement of our hand, yet lose site that the conscious mind directs cellular activity as well.  When we view the body as a whole entity, it seems unalterable to us.  We have the perception that we are stuck with this body.  But the body is combined at a level of pure energy that is very much directed by the predominant thoughts and beliefs of the conscious mind. 

     You cannot separate your body from the predominant thoughts and beliefs of the conscious mind.  Your body is assembled energy based upon those thoughts and beliefs and so is one with them.   You can change the perception of your body only through your beliefs.  You have altered your body many times already and this does not seem weird to you.  In fact, every cell in our body is replaced every eleven months or so.  We shed our hair and our skin.  Our eyelashes fall out.  Our cells die and form new cells.  We completely accept this.  As the energy of our thoughts and beliefs change over time, so does our body.  What we do not realize is that our perception of our body changes as our thoughts and beliefs change.  So to that extent, we are already molding our body. 

     It is worth reading blogs #9 through #24 for an in depth understanding or your thoughts and beliefs.  You cannot think yourself into a new body that of which is not a part of your belief system since your beliefs (predominant thoughts) are what create your body.  For example, you cannot think your 5’2” frame into a 6’3” giant because you hold the belief that this is impossible.  However, you can change many other aspects about your body which are believable to you, including healing yourself if you believe that is an outcome for you.  If you believe in illness and the perception of power illness has upon you, then you cannot pretend your way to wellness.  People who have sent illness into remission did so by believing in wellness.  They reinforced their expectation of the outcome of wellness through action. 

     Positive thinking and optimism are the opposite side of the same belief:  I am sick.  Thinking optimistically about your illness is vastly different than believing you are already well.  Do you understand the difference?  You must think you are well in order to be well.  To think you are sick and hope to get better reflects only illness.

     Healing yourself is initiated within the mind first and is projected outwardly to the body.  Doubt cannot be a part of your wellness belief system.  Doubt, conflict, reservation, and fear are the epicenter of your current belief system thrusting off your new thoughts on wellness  I must refer you to blog #24 What is Doubt and what it is not to help you understand its role.  When you understand that the mind controls the body and not the other way around, you can begin the healing process.

          The medical community often dismisses the ability of the conscious mind to heal the body.  Often cases in which individuals overcome illness are thought to be rare or unusual.  The reason there are so few cases of success is because the workings of the conscious mind are grossly misunderstood.  The focus of the medical community is exclusively on the body.  Yet, the body is the effect.  The cause is always your thoughts. 

     There is a great deal of research demonstrating the benefits of positive thinking, optimism and hope.  It is commonly accepted that these qualities initiate far better outcomes in terms of recovery than their counterparts of despair, pessimism and doubt.  However, as I stated just a moment ago a positive attitude still supports a faulty belief system, albeit the brighter side of it. 

     Generally, people who face catastrophic illness teeter between pessimism and optimism.  Those who remain on the optimistic side experience far greater positive outcomes than those who wallow in despair.  Thus although it is misunderstood, the medical community gives credence to the power of positive thinking.  They say:  Be hopeful!  Be optimistic!  Ultimately though, the state of the conscious mind in the case of optimism or pessimism reflects and supports the same belief:   I am sick, I believe in illness, I believe that the body is separated from the conscious mind and can act on its own accord, I believe in disease.  If you want to be well, you must first endorse that wellness in the conscious mind.  In other words, to “become,” you must already “be.” You are what you believe yourself to be.  If you want to be well, you must believe in the ideal version of that wellness.

     The reason healing your self is considered rare or difficult is because most people are unaware of their beliefs and how those beliefs actually perpetuate their illness.  It is simply not enough to believe in a positive outcome.  You must believe in what is ideal. Again, this is vastly different than remaining positive.  Remember, the body does not and cannot act out on its own accord.  Your body, all of your body including the small cells, relies upon direction from the conscious mind; so if your cells are not well or your heart is not well or you are overweight, your conscious mind is channeling that to you.  Your body cannot produce outcomes that are not first initiated within the mind.  The medical community grossly underestimates the power of the mind and places the body at the forefront for treatment; but you know your body is not in command and cannot cure that which your conscious mind produces.  Your body is not in charge.  Your conscious mind is.  And for that reason, you must focus on what is ideal in order to achieve it.      

          You may have heard of a man by the name of Norman Cousins who in 1964, laughed his way back to health after he was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a rare disease of the connective tissues.  His chance of survival was stated as 1 in 500.   “Get your affairs in order,” his doctor told him.  Norman had mere months to live.
     Norman changed the course of his outcome by doing something critically different.  He did something that most of us would not do upon receiving such devastating news.  Most of us would get a second opinion, take massive amounts of medication, seek ongoing treatment, and finalize our affairs; thoughts and actions that support a belief in an impending death.  However, at that critical moment Norman did three things that would ultimately change the course of what he was to experience.  He chose to believe in his own manufactured cure, not the illness.  Furthermore, he took action to reinforce with his conscious mind this belief.  He cemented his new thoughts into his mind until they formed a belief.  This is what Norman Cousins did:

    
1. He fired his doctor and left the hospital to check into a hotel. He believed that the hospital signified defeat and overmedicating was not good for his health.  He found a doctor who would work with him as a team member as opposed to one insisting on being in charge.

2. He began to get injections of massive doses of vitamin 'C'.

3. He obtained a movie projector and a pile of funny movies including old Marx Brothers films and Candid Camera shows. He spent a great deal of time watching these films and laughing. In spite of being in a lot of constant pain, he made a point of laughing until his very stomach hurt from it.

How did Norman Cousins fair?  Well, he finally did die.  However, it was not until November 30, 1990!  26 years after he was told to get your affairs in order.

     I will have more to say about Norman Cousins in a minute.  First, when I was in my early twenties, I smoked.  During that time, someone gave me a cassette tape with subliminal messages intended to help a person quit smoking. The tape contained instrumental music with secret messages supposedly embedded within the songs.  I was instructed to listen to this tape three times a day for two weeks.  At the end of the third day, the tape’s instructions said I would not crave a cigarette and would give them up.  I was instructed to listen to the tape for the entire two week period as reinforcement. 

     I have no idea if that tape was actually embedded with smoking cessation messages.  However in 1989, I believed the tape contained actual messages that worked.  The result was that I quit smoking.  I did two things very similar to what Norman Cousins did.  (1) I believed in an outcome (that I would quit smoking) and (2) I took action to reinforce my belief (I listened to a tape that I believed would help).  Norman Cousins watched movies and laughed.  He also took doses of vitamin C, again another measure that aided in developing the belief that he could heal himself.  Because he allowed new thoughts and took action to reinforce those thoughts, he altered his reality to one of wellness.  The power reinforced action has upon a belief you are cultivating cannot be underestimated.

     Why are doctors baffled by cases like Norman Cousins?  Why can't we all duplicate his method?  The cure lies in the belief in wellness, not in the method.  People cure themselves all the time through outrageous methods that they believe work.  It is the belief that produces the outcome, not the method.  Wellness is created within the mind, not treated upon the body. 

     Several years after I had quit smoking, I recall talking to co-workers about my method (subliminal tapes) for quitting smoking as we sat for lunch on a particular day.  To this day, I still recall a particularly offensive comment by a lady who was about ten years my senior.  She said, “Really, Christina a smart girl like you falling for those subliminal tapes. You should know better than that!  Those tapes are pure garbage!”

     That comment really stung at first.  Years later though, I realized that the method I used really did not matter.  The method was not smart or dumb, proven effectual or proven ineffectual. It was not practical or a bunch of hype.  What mattered was that I believed in the outcome that my method would produce.  Since I believed in the outcome, the method worked.  A subliminal tape would never have worked for my co-worker because she did not share my belief in its ability. 

     Will laughter work to cure your illness?  Will treatment or medicine work?  Will prayer work?  Or will nothing work?  Do subliminal tapes work?  I produced an outcome from the tape.  She more than likely would not be able to duplicate my result.  Is my co-worker right or am I?  Essentially, neither one of us is right and neither one of us is wrong.  We both get exactly what we believe in.  What you believe matters! 

     I want to share another aspect of Norman Cousins’ case with you.  Norman Cousins served as an Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities for the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He did a lot of research on the biochemistry of human emotions, which he believed were the key to success in fighting illness.

     As you think, so you feel; and the only way to feel is to think!  Your feelings are the navigators of your thought.  Feelings are intended to help direct your thoughts to harmony and prosperity all while leading you away from dissonance and despair.  Your reality follows your predominant thoughts and beliefs.  If you feel well, you are thinking well.  If you feel sick, crummy, lonely, depressed, devastated, or if you have that awful sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, then be warned.  Your thoughts will produce a reality that follows along the path of those thoughts.  Feelings remind you to keep thinking along a current path by giving you a feeling of euphoria.  They also send up red flags when your thoughts are damaging.  That “pit” in your stomach is an urgent message to get off that thought frequency.  See blog #25 and #26 to gain a greater insight into your feelings.

     Norman Cousins saw a relationship between his emotions and his well-being.  He incorporated laughter, love, faith and hope in his treatment plan.  Emotions follow thoughts!  If he had these emotions, his thoughts had to come first to produce them.  The method of recovery was irrelevant; Norman Cousins’ foundation for wellness was already cemented in his thoughts. 

     The last thing I am encouraging anyone to do is stop their treatment in lieu of watching old Marx Brothers films.  I am not trying to dictate a method for curing yourself.  In our western culture, doctors play a prevalent role.  We are accustomed to seeking their advice and treatment for our illnesses.  We believe in our doctor’s healing abilities. We believe in pharmaceutical remedies.  You cannot thrust off an illness if your beliefs still support the supreme ability of the medical community and the unmitigated power of disease.  You cannot brush off your doctor and your illness, yet hold doubt in your mind as to your own ability to produce specific results.  To do so would be dangerous. 

     When Norman Cousins took matters into his own hands, he still worked with his doctor.  He still held beliefs about medicine and disease.  In fact, it is his beliefs in disease that garnished him with illness.  However, he held a much greater belief in his own healing ability and the power his emotions could contribute to his cure; thus making him secure in his belief that he could heal himself.  He also found a doctor that supported his belief structure further propelling him towards success. 

     The message I want you take from this is one of hope.  You are not at the mercy of a diagnosis.  You are not at the mercy of the beliefs of a doctor.  You are at the mercy of what you believe; and thankfully you can change that. 

     You can change your outcomes by changing your thoughts.  You must (and this is not an option), only permit thoughts of wellness, thoughts that make you feel good, thoughts of the ideal you in a state of wellness.  You must be willing to squeeze out all thoughts of despair from your mind.  And finally, you must believe that being well is an option for you.  How many months do you have to live?  Only you can determine that.  Are you going to accept a 6 month sentence?  Or like Norman Cousins are you going to believe in your cure?

     The next step you must take is one of action.  Act upon your beliefs.  If you believe in the ability of a doctor, then by all means use one.  However, find one who supports your course.  This will lend further credibility to your newly seeded beliefs.  Next, stop validating beliefs on illness.  Only allow thoughts of your well-being to permeate your conscious mind.

     It will be difficult at first.  If you have read my blogs on the power of thoughts and beliefs, then you know they have the power to attract and repel; much like two sides of a magnet.  What you experience will change as your predominant thoughts and beliefs change.  A new reality of experiences may seem unapparent at first.  However, you are building a new foundation thought by thought and until it is built up, it will be unapparent.  Ultimately though, your new thoughts and beliefs will rise up and produce a reality just as consistent and cemented as your thoughts and beliefs are today.  You must first believe in you!

     I want to end by saying that there is nothing wrong with you if you are not able to become well.  Nor is there anything wrong with you as you became ill in the first place.  Illness is an experience.  It is not something dysfunctional within you.  You work well.  I assure you.  Your life is a series of experiences set about to enrich the conscious mind.  Without distress, we would not know pleasure.  Without sorrow, we would not know joy; and without pain we would not know love. 

     The conscious mind is on a journey to enrich itself.  It enriches itself through experience; when you have a traumatic experience you are also enriched by its opposite.  There is great benefit of which you may not even be aware of to all experiences.  Did you consciously set out to make yourself ill so you could experience an appreciation for wellness?  If you do not hold an awareness of the power your thoughts have, then you probably did not consciously direct your thoughts towards illness.  However, you did not consciously direct them away from illness either.  You let your thoughts stroll towards an experience.  You can alter your experience if you chose to do so now by taking command of your thoughts. 

     Please feel free to email me privately at christinabialas@gmail.com if you are struggling with an illness, have a question or comment on my blog.  I would also encourage you to read my entire blog as the material presented here is a supplement to other sections.  To understand how to cure yourself, you must understand how you work.  How you work, why you seek the enrichment of experiences, why a person would attract illness versus wellness, how your cells attract, how your feelings work, understanding doubt, your belief system, setting your ideals, planting successful succeeds of thought and more are contained within my blog.  To repeat it here would be redundant.