Human logic is incredibly limited. Even our best logic is layered upon emotional biases and instinctual behaviors. Logic doesn’t care if we learn and grow. Logic doesn’t care if we’re happy or miserable. Logic doesn’t care if we live or die. Fortunately, logic is only one tool for making decisions. Our bodies have many more layers of intelligence. One of those layers is your gut instinct. Many people experience this as a sensation in the abdominal region. When I used to eat animal products, it was nearly impossible for me to tune into my gut instinct. That channel was almost completely muted. I’d only notice it in extreme situations, like when I got arrested. I think my inability to hear that channel was one reason I did so much shoplifting in my late teens. How could I hear it while so much of my energy was being used to digest a bacon double cheeseburger, french fries, and a milkshake? When I went vegetarian, my gut instincts finally became audible, and they grew louder and clearer when I went vegan, but it still took many years for me to start trusting them. I wasn’t used to receiving information on this channel, so I didn’t consider it important. But as the volume increased, I couldn’t entirely ignore it, so I began exploring these signals through the lens of spirituality. I’d listen through meditation. I’d journal about these signals. I’d discuss my impressions with like-minded people. I interpreted this as a spiritual awakening of some kind. But in my day-to-day practical life, I largely disregarded this information. Over time I slowly realized that my gut instinct was providing useful information, but I only saw this in hindsight. I didn’t act in alignment with these impressions when they first came up, but I eventually dealt with the consequences of doing the opposite. For instance, I paid the price of doing business with people who gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach. Most of the time when I felt this gut instinct, it was a negative feeling. That made it hard for me to listen to it because I saw myself as a positive thinker. My personal bias was to find a way to make a deal happen or to make a relationship work. I wanted to achieve things. Saying yes to new experiences was a key part of my path of growth. I had a strong tendency to discount my gut feelings when they were negative. I figured that it was the voice of fear and cowardice and that I should simply power through it. The way I see this gut instinct now is that it’s a summary reading of the combined energies of a situation. These sensations are usually very general. They don’t come packaged with details or explanations. A gut instinct is like a thermometer. It can tell you if something is hot or cold, but it can’t tell you why.
Finding the Positive Path
For many years my gut instinct seemed like an annoying naysayer. But occasionally it would give me a positive sensation, such as when I was reading personal development books or going to a conference. The negative signals were often louder and more prominent, so when I experienced the positive ones, it mostly felt like a form of escapism. Eventually I began to explore paths that gave me stronger positive signals, such as when I started writing articles in 1999. Reading a good book was something nice to do for myself, but writing articles clearly impacted other people’s lives as well. I noticed that when I considered ideas that involved some form of contribution, my gut gave me stronger positive signals than usual. I began doing a lot of volunteering during this time as well. As I began receiving more positive signals to balance out the negative ones, I felt encouraged to trust these gut instincts a little more and to take more action in alignment with them. I was far from perfectly trusting, but life seemed a little more fair once I began sensing opportunities to pursue instead of only traps to avoid. I felt like this instinct was finally meeting me halfway instead of just being a naysayer. It’s easier to listen to a voice that says yes sometimes and no sometimes instead of only no, no, no. I began taking more risks to act on this voice, and over a period of years, I explored more of its subtleties. The tricky part was distinguishing this voice from other channels like my memories, beliefs, and conditioned emotional responses. Sometimes I’d feel some fear or trepidation about a new experience, like volunteering to speak at a conference, but my gut instinct was telling me to go for it. Making such discernments required patient practice. The more I listened to these signals and practiced deciphering them, the more I could hear their individual voices and make better decisions. It’s like learning to distinguish the voices of different people talking in a crowded room. Your brain will figure it out with some practice.
Turning Up the Volume
I noticed that sometimes my gut instinct was very clear while other times it was murky. I found that the level of clarity was linked to my health habits. When I exercised a lot, the signal was especially clear. If I slacked off from exercise, it was harder to get a clear signal. When I began exploring raw foods, these gut feelings became ridiculously loud and clear. Sometimes I found the signals overwhelming. This is one reason that I’ve been going back and forth between raw foods and cooked foods for so many years. I began dabbling in raw foods as far back as 1997, and I did my first 30-day 100% raw trial around 2003. In 2008 I ate 100% raw for six months straight. In the years since then, I’ve gone raw for 30 or more days many more times, especially when I wanted some extra clarity, but eating raw continuously hasn’t become my default baseline yet. For the past two months, I’ve been eating mostly raw again, including 100% raw for several weeks in a row. Presently I’m eating about 90% raw. I still find it difficult to handle the intensity of my gut instincts when they’re at such a high volume. Eating cooked food has the effect of turning down the volume. Right now this is working well for me. Another aspect of eating lots of raw food is dealing with the extra physical energy. I feel a little stir crazy if I eat raw and don’t move a lot. My gut instinct also tells me I need to spend more time outside in the sunlight. This morning I decided to take a day off from exercise and still ended up going for a 9-mile walk before breakfast. When I eat mostly cooked food, the urge to move isn’t nearly as compelling.
Trusting the Signals
I often like working and playing in sprints, with each sprint lasting a few weeks. This month I had planned to do two different sprints. First, I wanted to create the web pages for the new workshops we’ve booked and to open registrations for them. Second, I wanted to visit Costa Rica. Logically it made sense to do the workshop pages first, then go to Costa Rica. That way people would have more time to learn about the workshops and to figure out which one(s) they want to attend. Going on the trip would be a nice reward for completing that project. So that was my initial decision. But when I started trying to implement the decision, my gut said it was the wrong decision. I’d been eating 100% raw for several weeks in a row at this point, so that voice was loud and clear. I should go to Costa Rica first, then handle the workshop pages after I got back. I decided to listen to the signal, but it didn’t feel like I was making a decision — more like the decision was made for me. I booked a flight and landed in San José the following day. Overall it was a really nice trip. Rachelle and I explored several museums, a coffee and banana plantation, the top of a volcano, two rainforests, several waterfalls, and the capital of San José. We saw huge colonies of leafcutter ants as well as a bullet ant that was almost an inch long. We saw poisonous frogs. We saw orchids galore. We saw toucans up close and held them perched on our arms. We spoke a lot of Spanglish with the locals. A few days before I was to fly back to the USA, I started having an intense allergic reaction. I began sneezing a lot, my nose ran like crazy, and my eyes kept watering. I felt like I had a cat sitting on my head, and I barely got any sleep that night. I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. The next day was no better. Even after I showered and we went to another location an hour’s drive away, the symptoms continued all day long. It didn’t seem like a food allergy because I didn’t have any digestive issues. It felt like I was suddenly allergic to the air. I was puzzled since it was obvious that I was having a strong allergic reaction, but to what? How could it be following me around like this from one location to another? I’m allergic to cats, but normally I’d have to pet one or come into direct contact with cat hair to have any notable issues, and I didn’t spend any time around cats on this trip. This reaction was much worse than any cat allergy I’d ever experienced. While we explored a rainforest and I continued sneezing and blowing my nose dozens of times, a guide told us that one of the nearby volcanos had recently undergone a small eruption, spewing ash into the air which fell all around San José and beyond. He said that some people are allergic to volcanic ash, and he described the symptoms that I was experiencing. I’d never been in the vicinity of a volcanic eruption before, but apparently I’m one of those allergic people. My symptoms continued for the rest of the trip, but once I got on the flight to Miami, I started feeling better almost immediately. I’d never felt so grateful to breathe the air inside a plane before. By the time I arrived back in Vegas, the symptoms were 80% gone. Within a few more days, I was back to normal. Another oddity on this trip was the weather. When I checked the weather app on my phone before and after I arrived in San José, the forecast was 10 solid days of thunderstorms — not a single dry day in sight. I’d never seen a weather forecast like that, not even in Seattle. San José gets so much rain that there are trenches between the streets and sidewalks for the water to flow. You have to step over these trenches when crossing the street. Some are so wide and deep that they have small bridges built over them. Why would I want to go on a trip to a place where the expectation was constant rain? Logically I expected this to be a very wet trip, but in actuality it didn’t rain much at all while I was there. Most days were partly cloudy and partly sunny. When it did rain, it was usually at night while I was inside. A couple other times when it rained, it was while walking in a rainforest, and the canopy served as an effective umbrella. Overall the weather was beautiful while I was there. Despite all the sneezing in the final days of the trip, I had a wonderful time in Costa Rica. It turned out to be a really good time to go. But I didn’t realize how good the decision was till I returned home. A few days after I got back, there was a much larger volcanic eruption, covering the city of San José in tons of ash. Hundreds of people were hospitalized because of it. If I had gone against my gut instinct, I’d be in San José right now. With the minor eruption that happened while I was there, I had one of the strongest allergic reactions I’ve ever experienced, and I couldn’t even see any ash in the air or on the ground. Given the situation there now, with visible ash in the air, on the ground, and inside buildings, I might have been one of those people headed for the hospital. I suppose that now I also have the benefit of knowing that I’m allergic to volcanic ash, which may be a good thing to know when I travel to volcanically active places in the future. 🙂 While many people turn to raw foods to heal from serious illnesses, another attractor is the heightened sensitivity to various forms of energy — the energy of living beings, the energy of places, and perhaps the energy of the planet itself.
Letting the Locking Relay Float
Because these energies are always in flux, I find it nearly impossible to make gut-based decisions far in advance. The signals are very present-moment. When I make a gut-based decision, there’s a certain immediacy to it. I have to run with it right away. It’s not unusual for me to feel a surge of clarity about taking a trip and to be in another city within 24-48 hours. Sometimes I’ve made a decision to take a trip in the morning, and I’m arriving at my destination that same evening. Sometimes my gut screams YES, but I know the YES is time sensitive. I have to act immediately or not at all. Even delaying one day can kill the timing. One of my favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes is “Lower Decks.” It includes the following scene, which begins when Ensign Sito takes too long to obey an order to fire the phasers.
RIKER: What happened back there, Ensign? SITO: I’m sorry, sir. When we changed course I had to re-lock phasers before I could fire. RIKER: Next time, try letting the locking relay float until the actual order to fire is given. They may not teach that trick at the Academy, but it works. SITO: Thank you, sir.
When people ask me about my plans and intentions, especially with a desire to lock me into certain commitments, I often recall this scene. It reminds me not to succumb to the pressure to prematurely commit myself when my gut instincts are still in flux. I understand people’s desire for predictability and certainty, especially when they want to coordinate their schedules with me. But I know from experience that it’s usually best for me to let the locking relay float until the order to fire is given. In other words, I prefer to let my plans and options float until I get a strong gut instinct to go a certain direction. Then I lock the decision into place and fire with immediate action. I hope that what I’ve shared here gives you some insights to further develop your own gut instinct — and to trust it when your signals are loud and clear.
A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple. Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like smoking. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going. Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put. But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV. Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life. Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions. Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life. Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul. Here are some examples from my own life where I used 30-day trials to establish new habits: 1) In the Summer of 1993, I wanted to try being vegetarian. I had no interest in making this a lifelong change, but I’d read a lot about the health benefits of vegetarianism, so I committed to it for 30 days just for the experience. I was already exercising regularly, seemed in decent health, and was not overweight (6’0″, 155 lbs), but my typical college diet included a lot of In-N-Out burgers. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days was a lot easier than I expected — I can’t say it was hard at all, and I never felt deprived. Within a week I noticed an increase in my energy and concentration, and I felt more clear-headed. At the end of the 30 days, it was a no-brainer to stick with it. This change looked a lot harder than it really was. 2) In January 1997, I decided to try going from vegetarian to vegan. While lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy, vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. I was developing an interest in going vegan for life, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I give up veggie-cheese omelettes? The diet seemed too restrictive to me — even fanatically so. But I was intensely curious to know what it was actually like. So once again I did a 30-day trial. At the time I figured I’d make it through the trial, but I honestly didn’t expect to continue beyond that. Well, I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels. I felt lousy the first couple days but then my energy surged. I also felt more clear-headed than ever, as if a “fog of brain” had been lifted; it felt like my brain had gotten a CPU and a RAM upgrade. However, the biggest change I noticed was in my endurance. I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and used to run along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and I noticed I wasn’t as tired after my usual 3-mile runs, so I started increasing them to 5 miles, 10 miles, and then eventually a marathon a few years later. In Tae Kwon Do, the extra endurance really gave a boost to my sparring skills as well. The accumulated benefits were so great that the foods I was giving up just didn’t seem so appealing anymore. So once again it was a no-brainer to continue after the first 30 days, and I’m still vegan today. What I didn’t expect was that after so long on this diet, the old animal product foods I used to eat just don’t seem like food anymore, so there’s no feeling of deprivation.
3) Also in 1997, I decided I wanted to exercise every single day for a year. That was my 1997 New Year’s resolution. My criteria was that I would exercise aerobically at least 25 minutes every day, and I wouldn’t count Tae Kwon Do classes which I was taking 2-3 days per week. Coupled with my dietary changes, I wanted to push my fitness to a new level. I didn’t want to miss a single day, not even for sick days. But thinking about exercising 365 days in a row was daunting, so I mentally began with a 30-day trial. That wasn’t so bad. After a while every day that passed set a new record: 8 days in a row… 10 days… 15 days…. It became harder to quit. After 30 days in a row, how could I not do 31 and set a new personal record? And can you imagine giving up after 250 days? No way. After the initial month to establish the habit, the rest of the year took care of itself. I remember going to a seminar that year and getting home well after midnight. I had a cold and was really tired, yet I still went out running at 2am in the rain. Some people might call that foolish, but I was so determined to reach my goal that I wasn’t going to let fatigue or illness stop me. I succeeded and kept it up for the whole year without ever missing a day. In fact, I kept going for a few more weeks into 1998 before I finally opted to stop, which was a tough decision. I wanted to do this for one year, knowing it would become a powerful reference experience, and it certainly became such. 4) More diet stuff…. After being vegan for a number of years, I opted to try other variations of the vegan diet. I did 30-day trials both with the macrobiotic diet and with the raw foods diet. Those were interesting and gave me new insights, but I decided not to continue with either of them. I felt no different eating macrobiotically than I did otherwise. And in the case of the raw diet, while I did notice a significant energy boost, I found the diet too labor intensive — I was spending a lot of time preparing meals and shopping frequently. Sure you can just eat raw fruits and veggies, but to make interesting raw meals, there can be a lot of labor involved. If I had my own chef, I’d probably follow the raw diet though because I think the benefits would be worth it. I did a second trial of the raw diet for 45 days, but again my conclusion was the same. If I was ever diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, I’d immediately switch to an all raw, living foods diet, since I believe it to be the absolute best diet for optimal health. I’ve never felt more energetic in my life than when I ate a raw diet. But I had a hard time making it practical for me. Even so, I managed to integrate some new macrobiotic foods and raw foods into my diet after these trials. There are two all-raw restaurants here in Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed eating at them because then someone else does all the labor. So these 30-day trials were still successful in that they produced new insights, although in both cases I intentionally declined to continue with the new habit. One of the reasons a full 30-day trial is so important with new diets is that the first week or two will often be spent detoxing and overcoming cravings, so it isn’t until the third or fourth week that you begin to get a clear picture. I feel that if you haven’t tried a diet for at least 30 days, you simply don’t understand it. Every diet feels different on the inside than it appears from the outside. This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I’d do when starting a new exercise program, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish. Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:
Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
List something new to sell on eBay every day. Purge some of that clutter.
Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
If you’re already in a relationship, give your partner a massage every day. Or offer to alternate who gives the massage each day, so that’s 15 massages each.
Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, coffee, or other unhealthy addictions.
Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary. The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule. Source
Addressing a group of students and faculty at the IIT campus in Chennai, India, Sadhguru answers a question on how to maintain joy and happiness, regardless of the external circumstances.
Have you ever felt the urge to explore a totally different field, skill, or interest for a while? What is it you’d like to try, if you only had the time? Music? Programming? Web design? Entrepreneurship? Camping? A new exercise? A better way of eating? A new social group? But then of course, you talk yourself out of it, don’t you? You probably tell yourself things like:
I can’t be starting something new right now. I have too many other things to deal with. It would take a big commitment to get anywhere with this, and I don’t have that kind of time. I’m not ready to transition yet.
No one is forcing you to commit though. Commitment is unnecessary at this point. Why not simply taste and sample your new interest? Give it a day to impress you. Set aside one day to explore your new interest. Say yes to it for one day only. During that day let it guide you, lead you, and make its case for further exploration. Fire up GarageBand, and try writing your very first song. It’ll probably suck, but so what? It will be your own creation. Film some video with your phone, fire up iMovie, and make your first movie. You’ll learn a great deal by doing it. Go to an art supply store, tell an employee you want to try painting, and ask for help to buy the bare minimum supplies you need to paint for one day. Take it home, and paint the day away. See what flows through you. Maybe you’re more creative than you realize. Spend a day researching and reading about a whole new field — the one that keeps coming up for you recently. Go out and visit stores you wouldn’t ordinarily visit. Talk to the salespeople. Ask all the questions you can think of. Become as much of an expert as you can in one day. Go vegan for a day, and you’ll save more water than you would by not showering for a year. There are thousands of free recipes online, so use Google to find them. Make a shopping list, cook up a storm, and have a feast. Read about the equipment in a part of the gym you never visit. Learn some exercises you can do. Then do a full workout there. It will give you a nice sense of accomplishment.
Have you ever played tennis? Disc golf? The equipment is cheap. Go have your first game. After that one immersive day, you’ll be a slightly different person. You’ll have a fresher understanding of your interest. And you’ll be in a better position to assess and evaluate whether you’d like to explore it further. Maybe one day is all you need. You satisfied your curiosity and discovered that the door wasn’t for you. That’s a good outcome since you won’t have to worry about those distracting urges for years to come. Maybe that day triggers many more questions. You got a taste, but it wasn’t enough. You want more. So take more inspiration days, half days, quarter days, or whatever you need to continue your exploration. Lean into it more. Maybe that day was amazing — full of rapid learning and encouraging progress. You walked through a door and discovered a delightful new path. Wonderful! Keep going. Let the inspiration continue to motivate you. What if nothing inspires you? Then you’re not listening very well. If you can’t hear the voice of inspiration, turn down the volume of everything else. Turn off the distractions like the constantly buzzing phone, sit quietly by yourself, and take an hour to simply listen. Reflect on your life, your lifestyle, your work or school, your relationships, your finances, and your body. Listen to your thoughts. Hear yourself think. Notice your feelings. What’s nudging you to change, grow, or shift? Where do you notice a pushing or pulling sensation? Where’s the dissatisfaction? Where’s the disappointment? Where’s the gentle request to try something new and different? Maybe you have many commitments already. Maybe you’re busy. Maybe you have some great excuses. Give your inspirations an outlet anyway — a small slice of your time. Otherwise they’ll poke you… then nag you… then eventually overload you with regret. Give an inspiration a day to make its case. Open the box and peer inside. Listen, taste, and explore.
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste of time to be asking the question when you are the answer. We do not enter the future we create it.
Inspiring words from Ashton Kutcher, Jim Carrey, Steve Jobs, Will Smith, Stephen Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Neil deGrasse Tyson on creating your meaning of life. Meaning is not something to be found in life, meaning is something we create. May these powerful words inspire your day today Source
I’ve been enjoying an abundant year because I focus much more attention on abundance, appreciation, and gratitude than I do on lack, scarcity, and poverty. Some people would say that this mindset is the result of abundance; I recognize the mindset/heartset as the cause of it. When I did the opposite and paid more attention to what was lacking in my life, I experienced a variety of scarcity-based experiences — sinking deeper into debt each year, being kicked out of my apartment due to lack of rent money, not being able to afford what I wanted, feeling stressed whenever my car broke down, always buying the cheapest items and having them break easily, etc. That place of being was compelling enough to capture my attention for a while, but after a number of years there, I got bored with it and decided to try out the abundance mindset to see what that’s like. I would often read books or listen to audio programs that went on and on about the abundance mindset, but I figured that was easy for them to say because they were already living it. What if you’re not living it? Usually their recommendation was to start wherever you are, and some would insist that abundance is a mindset you can create regardless of your starting position. I didn’t really buy into that notion at the time, but mainly because I was desperate to try something new, I opted to give it an earnest effort for at least a few days to see if it made any difference. It’s not like what I was doing before that was working, so I figured it couldn’t hurt, and it might help lead me into new territory where a solution could be found. I began by focusing on feeling grateful for what I did have, like being able to enjoy running along the beach or watching a sunset. I turned my attention away from lack as much as possible. I did my best to ignore my debt, my unpaid bills, and my creditors for a while. Obviously that created some consequences, and I further dealt with those consequences by largely ignoring them as well. This is really a key point that I don’t want you to just overlook. It wasn’t just that I began to focus on abundance thinking. I also did my very best to ignore anything in my life that suggested lack or scarcity. I stopped looking at my bills. I stopped answering the phone since most of the calls were from creditors. I ignored my debt and stopped making credit card payments altogether. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But when I paid attention to those things, they would just bring me down and make me start thinking about what wasn’t working. This shift of attention soon created external shifts in my reality. I became more creative, released a new product, and started making a lot more money. A year later I was debt free, partly from going bankrupt, which was a good thing because it wiped out most of my debt, and then I paid off the rest mostly in one fell swoop with an advance I received for a game I licensed to a publisher. I continued to expand upon this mindset of abundance over time. I imagined enjoying time abundance too. I imagined being more generous, first with my money, but then I felt even better about being generous with my time and creativity. I donated thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to non-profits. I wrote articles for free and hosted discussion forums for free. I didn’t do these things to get any particular result. I did them because I just felt motivated to do them. When I held onto that abundance vibe, I didn’t have to push myself to contribute anything. It just flowed out of me without really trying. I’ve since created a massive body of creative work and gave it away to the public domain, and I continue to add to that collection each month. This month I started doing microloans as well and encouraged others to join our team, which has been making new loans every day. I never would have done these things if I was focused on lack. The vibe of lack didn’t make me feel particularly generous; it merely made me project generosity as something other people should do more of, or something I should get around to “in the future” (which of course means never).
There is value in having experiences across the spectrum of scarcity to abundance. I’m glad for the experience of scarcity since it helps me understand and appreciate abundance more deeply. For example, I enjoyed my recent trip to Paris that much more because I know what it was like to not be able to afford such a trip and having it seem like an impossibility. Every day I spent in Paris, I felt grateful to be there. I didn’t take anything for granted. Through personal testing I came to see that overall I prefer the abundance vibe to the scarcity vibe. Abundance is a better fit for who I am. I neither require nor expect others to make the same choice I did. Lots of people find growth lessons in the scarcity vibe, and I have no doubt they’ll continue to explore it. I’ve tested that vibe and that mindset enough to know that it isn’t such a good fit for me. I’m happier and more fulfilled on the abundance side. But I wouldn’t be so sure of this if I hadn’t had those scarcity experiences first. Many times when I write about abundance, there are people who will take issue with it. It’s interesting to see how they project a boatload of assumptions onto me and then argue with their own assumptions. Some seem to think that abundance is wrong. Others want me to pay more attention to poverty. I pay little attention to poverty, scarcity, and lack, not just in myself but in others as well. My focus is on abundance, gratitude, generosity, appreciation, etc. If you believe that what I’m doing is not enough, it’s because you feel what you’re doing isn’t enough. If you’re in resonance with scarcity, then “not enough” is something you’ll see wherever you look. When you view one side of the spectrum through the lens of the other, your perceptions are greatly distorted. Just as scarcity may look upon abundance as greedy, excessive, selfish, elitist, narcissistic, etc., so can abundance look upon scarcity as lazy, wimpy, foolish, childish, stupid, etc. But these perspectives aren’t helpful to us… again, because they’re distorted. You can only understand the options available to you when you experience them from the inside. And yes, this does mean that you can’t really understand an option until you’ve experienced it to some degree. From the outside looking in, you can get curious, but you can’t really gain much insight. You’re free to do as I’ve done and test different mindsets/vibes to learn which set of experiences you prefer. You have laid out before you a whole spectrum of possibilities to explore. Try to avoid the mistake of judging or condemning someone else’s position on this spectrum. Don’t expect others to change their mindset just because you have issues. If you feel resistance towards what others are experiencing, look to your dissatisfaction with your own vibe. Then remember that you have the power to make the shifts you desire, if you’re willing to embrace those shifts fully and completely instead of resisting them. I’m quite pleased with my choices thus far, even as I continue to explore new points along the spectrum of possibilities. I’m fully aware that some people object to my choices and would prefer to see me focus more attention on problems like poverty. From the perspective of scarcity, they want me to change what they’re unwilling to. They want me to join them in their feelings of being not enough. From within the lens of scarcity, this may seem like a reasonable request, but from the perspective of abundance, it’s a rather silly thing to do. The response to such requests is predictable if you understand how both mindsets work. Scarcity criticizes abundance for being not enough. Abundance finds scarcity’s request silly and so enjoys amusement at the entertainment value of it; additionally abundance is appreciative of the reminder of the contrast between scarcity and abundance. Scarcity doesn’t get its request satisfied and hence validates its experience of not enoughness; it can continue to live in its world where abundance is greedy and unresponsive to its needs. Abundance ends the interaction feeling appreciative; scarcity leaves feeling frustrated. This is a perfectly congruent outcome from all perspectives. Each vibe creates the experience that harmonizes with it. A few people have been amusing me lately, which I’m grateful for, and I in turn have been doing my part to frustrate them. If you desire to shift from scarcity to abundance, how do you do that? There are many techniques that I’ve shared in the past, so I won’t rehash that same content here. A good place to start is to watch the Creating Abundance videos. I actually apply this to an even greater extent today than I did when I created those videos in 2009. Now I’m spending much more time each day doing this kind of vibrational work because I find it extremely powerful. This morning I woke up at 3:30 and then spent a good 2 hours imagining different aspects of my life as I want them to be and getting a clear lock onto the vibes that are consistent with my desires — the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes I believe I’d be experiencing if all my desires were physically real right now. Then throughout each day, I do my best to hold onto these new vibes as much as possible. When I catch myself slipping into a vibe I wouldn’t likely experience on the side of my new desires, such as frustration or worry, I stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath, and reload the vibe I desire. Or if I’m tired and can’t do this very well, I just take a break to distract myself. I continue to practice this because I find it very effective. Not only do I attract and enjoy more of what I want, but my new vibes also become increasingly repulsive to those whose vibes are incompatible, while becoming more attractive to those with compatible vibes and desires — people with whom I can enjoy co-creating abundantly.
EFT Practitioner at Dr. Mercola's Center for Natural Health, Julie Schiffman shows a tool which can help in various aspects of life. It's called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Technique, also known as Tapping.
Tune into a problem. Tune into what your body is trying to tell you. And then do the tapping!
You become an achiever by achieving your goals. If you achieve your goals, you’re an achiever. If you don’t achieve your goals, you’re not an achiever. This is a simple, binary way to think about achievement. To achieve means to reach, attain, or accomplish. What you choose to reach, attain, or accomplish is up to you. The difference between an achiever and a non-achiever is largely a matter of attention. Non-achievers give their goals little attention, if they bother to set goals at all. Achievers give their goals sufficient attention so as to reach, attain, or accomplish those goals. Non-achievers reach, attain, and accomplish something other than their goals. Quite often they will reach, attain, and accomplish someone else’s goals, without consciously making those goals their own. To be an achiever, you must give your goals sufficient attention to reach, attain, or accomplish them. This means you must withdraw much of your attention from activities that are not directly leading to the accomplishment of your goals. In a given week, where is your attention going? If you aren’t habitually obsessing over your goals, then what are you obsessing over instead? What do you normally put ahead of your goals? Do you manage to watch some TV or movies? Do you keep up with email, social media, and text messages? Do you attend to the social obligations that your family, friends, and co-workers expect from you? What exactly are you reaching, attaining, or accomplishing in a typical week? Are you making progress on your goals by giving them many hours of attention, or are you putting your attention elsewhere? Achievers accept that in order to achieve their goals, they must withdraw attention from non-goal activities. Achievers also accept that these competing interests may resist being put on the back burner. The cable company may try to talk you out of canceling. Starbucks may send you a reminder email if you don’t show up for too long. Your mother may nag you about something trivial. Achievers learn to decline these invitations for their attention by default. They keep putting their attention back upon their goals. You must especially be on guard for new invitations and opportunities that come up while you’re working on your goals. These hidden distractions can easily sidetrack you. If an opportunity aligns solidly with your goals, wonderful… take full advantage of it. But if it seems off-course with respect to your current goals, then stick to your path, and say no to the diversion. Generally speaking, it’s wise to be less opportunistic, so you can be more of a conscious creator. You’ll often make faster progress by creating your own opportunities instead of haphazardly chasing the random opportunities that others bring you.
The Scarcity of Attention
Attention is a limited resource. The ability to consciously direct your attention with good energy and focus is even scarcer than the time you have available each day. In any given week, there may be many interests competing for your attention: friends, family, co-workers, random strangers, corporations, organizations, government agencies, media, and more. And these days they have many different ways to reach you. Internally you have some competition as well: your physiological needs, your emotional needs, your cravings, your habitual behaviors, etc. You need to eat, sleep, eliminate waste, bathe, and so on. These activities require some attention too. Somewhere among those competing interests is another voice seeking your attention. This is your goal-oriented nature, your greater intelligence, your desire to live a life rich in meaning and purpose. This part of you craves achievement, and it won’t be satisfied by anything less. It wants you to set your own goals and to reach, attain, and accomplish them. How much of your attention are you giving to your achievement-oriented self? If you starve this part of yourself for attention, it will punish you with low motivation, low self-worth, and a general scarcity of resources. But if you give it the attention it craves, you’ll be rewarded with high energy, drive, passion, abundance, and a sense of purpose and contribution.
Directing Your Attention
Fortunately you have the power to consciously direct your attention. You can let your attention float around aimlessly. You can focus your attention on something other than your goals, such as the goals other people have for you. Or you can focus your attention on your own goals. To really move your life forward requires a major commitment of attention. If you want to improve your finances, you must put your attention on creating value for people, sharing that value, and intelligently monetizing that value. If you want to positively transform your relationships, then give that part of your life some intense and prolonged attention. Unfortunately we have the tendency to remove attention from those areas of our lives that aren’t doing so well. In the short term, it’s wise to shift focus when we feel overwhelmed because temporary diversions can help relieve stress. But for deeper transformation to occur, we need to put lots of attention squarely on those areas that scream for improvement. Setting goals requires focused attention. Planning out the action steps to achieve our goals requires even more attention. Executing those action steps takes more attention still. Achievers make such activities a priority in their lives. Non-achievers don’t. As you get older, keep raising your standards for what deserves your attention. Keep deleting and declining unnecessary fluff and obligations that might otherwise distract you from your magnificent goals. This will free up more attention to focus on your goals. Have you noticed that when you put your full attention on a goal and obsess about it, you can really move it forward quickly, and you do eventually achieve it? But when you let your attention become diluted by too many competing interests, then progress on your goal slows to a crawl, and you eventually lose your connection to the goal altogether. Goals require significant and prolonged nurturing until they’re achieved; otherwise they die.
Say No to Almost Everything
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. – Warren Buffet What does it mean to say no to almost everything? For me this means being able to work full-time on my goals, without letting anything get in the way. It means keeping my schedule free of distracting entanglements. It means that even when I work on goals that seem to be put on my plate by someone else, I must either make those goals my own (and say yes to them), or I must reject them and not give them any attention. If I cannot make a goal my own in some way, it doesn’t deserve my attention. Even a goal like doing your taxes, you can make your own. You can commit to keeping your finances up to date and in good order. You can choose to pay the tax contribution for whatever reasons appeal to you. But if you can’t make a goal your own, and you try to work on it anyway, then you’re fighting yourself, and your progress will be stunted and inconsistent, which is an enormous waste of precious attention. Don’t dwell in the land of half-commitments. Put your full attention on your own goals, including goals you’ve made your own. If you have a job, then either make the commitment to do your very best at that job, or vacate the position and let someone else do it better.
Put Your Goals First
Many achievers have jobs. Many achievers have families. Many achievers have competing commitments of various kinds. But achievers don’t use their job, kids, and other commitments as excuses for not giving sufficient attention to their goals. For everyone who uses these to excuse their inability to set and achieve goals, there’s a real achiever who started from a more challenging position and used those same elements to help motivate them to achieve their goals. Where non-achievers see excuses, achievers find drive. A good way to put your goals first is to set high-quality, holistic goals to begin with. Don’t squander your attention on shallow pursuits like making money for its own sake. Set goals that will help you grow, build your skills, create value for others, and do some good in the world. Ask yourself: Does the goal seem meaningful and intelligent when you imagine yourself 20 years past its achievement? Deliberately put your attention on your goals. When you catch yourself standing in line, dwell upon your goals. Visualize yourself taking the action steps. Make this your default behavior instead of pulling out your phone to attend to something trivial. Carefully plan out the action steps to achieve your goals. If you received my latest newsletter, you’ll find an extensive how-to article about planning the achievement of your goals. Clear time to work on your goals, and make this time sacred and inviolable. If you can only clear a small slice out of each week to work on your goals, then consider setting a goal to reach the point where you have the freedom to devote as many hours to your goals as your energy allows. What specific goals would you need to set and achieve to make that a reality? Imagine being able to devote most of your time every week to working on your most important goals, without anything getting in the way. Many people live this way, and they love it. Why not you?
The Goal of Freedom
One of my past goals was to remove financial scarcity as a potential source of distraction, so I could spend most of my time each week working on my goals, whether they were income-generating or not. I want to center my life around personal growth pursuits and share what I learn as a legacy for others. I devoted a significant amount of attention to that goal over a period of years until it was achieved, and after that I could continue to maintain such a lifestyle with relative ease. I know that some people think it’s unusual to have the freedom to immerse oneself in setting and achieving goals that may have nothing to do with making money or having a job, like traveling around Europe for a month or going vegan or exploring open relationships, but this kind of freedom is important enough to me that I made achieving this goal my top priority for years, sticking with it until it was achieved. It was challenging but definitely worthwhile. I know many people who’ve achieved similar goals. Generally speaking, they tend to be the happiest people I know. Instead of taking orders from someone else as their daily routine, they put their attention on their goals, desires, and interests. They make it a priority to maintain this freedom. They don’t use a job, kids, or the lack of money as excuses — just the opposite in fact. From these people I commonly hear stories of setbacks recalled with laughter and good cheer, not with fear or regret… like the time a couple of friends had to sleep in a park because they had no money for a place to stay. What non-achievers fear as roadblocks are merely stepping stones (and entertaining future stories!) for achievers. If lifestyle freedom is important to you, then make that your primary aim. Put the attainment of this goal first in your life. Working to achieve this goal must become more important to you than keeping up with social media, pleasing your parents, watching your favorite TV shows, and other distractions. If anything else is truly getting in the way, then either drop it from your life, or find a way to turn it into an advantage that increases your drive and motivation. It’s easy for me to tell the difference between people who are committed to achieving lifestyle freedom vs. those who aren’t committed. The ones who are committed are obsessed with the goal; they think of little else. I can’t get them to shut up about it! They’re constantly trying to figure out how to make it a reality. They work hard at it. They stumble and keep right on going. Usually the goal takes longer than they’d like. They often want it to take less than a year. It usually takes 2-5 years to reach the point of financial sustainability. The achievers make it obvious that they’ll get there no matter how long it takes. For them the goal is mandatory, not optional. The non-achievers talk about the goal as a distant fantasy. It’s a wish, a dream, a possibility… something that would be nice to have if and when the planets align properly. Their action plan consists mainly of reading books about the Law of Attraction and listening to Abraham-Hicks recordings. They treat the goal as a casual desire but not a serious commitment. They disrespect the tremendous force of will that’s required to achieve it. They virtually never get there. If the goal of lifestyle freedom matters to you, then drop, cut, and burn whatever distracts you from it. Put your attention squarely on that goal, and obsess about it until you achieve it. If you need more time, cancel cable TV, close your social media accounts, and keep your phone powered off during daylight hours. Take breaks as you need them, but keep putting your attention back on this goal. If you do that, it’s a safe bet that you’ll achieve it. You’ll set yourself on the path to achieving lifestyle freedom when you stop putting other distractions ahead of that commitment.
Everything is always working out for me is a wonderful rampage of appreciation from Abraham, to get us in the Vortex. For more information check out http://www.abraham-hicks.com
