It is also not about becoming paranoid if you have a negative thought. (For the record, negative and positive are relative terms of judgment). The idea of positive thinking is not new, as there were many books written about it even decades ago.

It is very important to realize though that your thoughts do absolutely contribute to the “reality” that you experience and this is now science. If this still sounds like “woo-woo” to you, I have to tell you that you simply don’t know what you don’t know.  In business and life, if you can make your life easier and more enjoyable and on purpose, why not learn how to do so? One of the main missing ingredients though is the energy of feelings.

You see feelings carry far more magnetic and electrical energy than thought alone. It acts as the glue that wires thought into the body’s nervous system and thus, cellular memory. Once we wire our brain, either with strong emotional response or through repetition, it goes into the subconscious mind. This is when you go on autopilot as far as the action or behavior that is wired is concerned.

This is fine if you like the response and it serves to help you experience your hearts desire. If you have all of the love, joy, peace and abundance you desire great – though we all know that circumstances in business and life are constantly changing.

So if your current situation is not expanding you to your next level of purposeful evolution, you may want to consider the following keys as you consciously intend to use the Law of Attraction to affect change. This list is not intended to be inclusive; I just want to point out 3 important yet common mistakes that are made when attempting to consciously shift in areas of your business or personal life.

Three reasons why positive affirmations generally do not work:

1. As I mentioned, it’s been reported that the magnetic energy of feelings are 5,000 times greater than thought alone. We store our memories at a cellular level based on PERCEPTION. If your judgment or perception is based in shame, rage, guilt, self-loathing etc, and years ago you unwittingly wired these feelings into your body, simply trying to stuff positive thoughts on top of these hardwired thoughts/feelings, which now form your belief, is doomed to fail. You need to learn tools and process to dump this old energy out of your body AND learn the wisdom you need to evolve and grow in doing so when you can. Then new affirmations can be wired into the brain easier (when emotionalized, that is).

2. Most people are not really clear about what they DO want. They can tell you in a heartbeat what they don’t want. The brain/mind thinks in pictures or images. The more clarity you have of the end result, the easier it is for your brain to help you to find it. Of course, again, the more passion you have and expectation that you WILL receive it, the more likely your brain will zero in on evidence in your environment that aligns with your desire. You will also start to match energetically with the outcome. Everything is energy – again, this is now Quantum Physics. The Law of Attraction is based on energy. By the way, thought and feelings are energetic also; remember what I said in number one above?

3. Many people are not really enthusiastic about what they think they want. I say “think” because sometimes we are just so influenced by what others do or have that we think that we “ought” to do, be or have certain things. Also, we do have an “Authentic Self” that just may not align with our ego’s version of what we think we want, in which case, you will struggle to get the ego’s wish list filled. The key here is to take the time to go within and listen to your own intuition and come from your place of authentic desires and talents. This is more fulfilling anyway.

My business is a vehicle for me to express my unique purpose, gifts and talents. If I co-create what I “think” I should, instead of what is authentic to me, I am not very likely to be content. This is one reason why some people push and become successful, yet feel stressed and dissatisfied.

Also, when you take the time to deal with those blinds spots that keep you feeling small and insecure, you are more likely to create more wealth, health and happy relationships. Learn how to make friends with change and emotions, and I can tell you, that the empowerment, peace and prosperity attracted, or shall I say manifested, (actually that is revealed from within you – it’s there already) is more than worth the effort. What do you think?

The frequency that you resonate via your feeling/emotional nature is what the Universe matches back to you. Emotional magnetic energy is much greater than thought alone. In fact, it has been measured to be as much as 5,000 times greater (visit The HeartMath Institute for more info).

You initiate what you want with a thought, but the Law of Attraction process works as the thought combines with the feeling tone to set the pattern that you are putting out as your “vibe”. Ever thought that you did or did not like the “vibe” in a room? You were just sensing the energy pattern of the room.

Here’s the main point: the vibration or feeling that is your dominant pattern is what the universe is mirroring back to you. So, if you think or say you want health, wealth and happy relationships, but you walk around all day feeling negative, whining, complaining and judging everything and everyone in sight, don’t be surprised if the good things in life continue to elude you.

You get what you feel, all day long! Once you think on things long enough and with enough repetition or emotional connection, it becomes a belief. Belief is actually wired into your body’s physiology as memory and is stored at a cellular level (and in your bio-energy field).

Just because you believe something does not mean it is the ultimate “Truth”. No, it’s just true for you! Here are 7 preliminary steps you can take to begin to shift your negative thinking patterns:

1. Stop focusing on what you do not want in your life

2. Take the opposite of what you do not want and figure out what you DO want

3. Use your imagination and attention to stay focused on what you INTEND to create

4. Ignore as much as possible what you have already attracted into your life – yes, put your head in the sand and stop talking about it

5. As negative feelings arise, you can release them faster and easier by learning tools such as EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique

6. Re-educate yourself about what emotions really are and stop running from them. They are your guidance system within the creative process

7. Start practicing gratitude as much as you can all the time, everyday – find SOMETHING to be grateful for and start raising your vibrational tone

These are some practical steps to start walking toward a more abundant life experience. As Martin Luther King said:

“Take the next step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the next step”.

If you continue believing what you believe and acting the way you are act, you will keep getting what you’ve been getting. The universe does not play favorites.

The sooner you realize that you are able to respond or “response-able” for your own life experiences, the sooner you will become empowered to use the Law of Attraction to create a life you love on purpose!

The basic building block of our lives is energy. Our thoughts, feelings and emotion are composed of energy. This electromagnetic energy, which is the “stuff” that wires our circuits in our nervous system, ultimately leads to the actions that our body takes or what we create from our imaginative minds.

We’ve had it backwards in so many ways. One way is the idea of “mind over matter” which is like trying to control or change a building after it is built. It is often even the idea that we can “pretend” we don’t see something and that somehow our ignoring it will make it disappear.

It’s the old affirmations and positive self-talk without the energy, the power of belief to make it happen. Well, Law of Attraction actually works in a conscious manner when you start to realize that what you think and FEEL about, you bring about.

The Law of Attraction is working at all times. It’s just that most people are so into blaming and feeling like a victim that they don’t realize that the negative feelings of judgment, self-rejection and lack thinking keeps showing up as the “matters” of their life and they are co-creating the chaos!

Then, once it shows up, they try to “mind over matter it” which is why life feels like so much hard work and struggle. It keeps you feeling off balance as you try to walk the tightrope of your life.  I use to do this for sure.

Thank goodness I finally woke up from the nightmare.

It is liberating to realize that I play a major role in determining the outcomes in my life instead of feeling like a powerless, hapless victim of the universe. The key is to learn how to re-train your brain and drop the old conditioned social mindset that keeps you in victim mentality. Once you realize that YOU are not your thoughts and reconnect with awareness to your spiritual essence, the energy that is your life force, you can begin the journey to empowerment, from the inside out which is the only way to authentic power.

There are many paths, and one thing that you can begin to do is to learn how to slow down your thoughts and separate your sense of self from who you “think you are”. This is best done via mindfulness meditation in its various forms.

Of course, this is a first step and to experience quantum leap change, you need more information that can be posted here in a simple blog post. Learning how to use your powerful mind and brain properly will allow you to use the Law of Attraction to support you in creating great relationships, a healthier lifestyle and more financial abundance. Any thoughts?

Now because there is subjectivity involved whenever we are dealing with emotions and perception, which contribute to your level of consciousness (let’s just call it “awareness”), it is difficult to quantify it and plug it into a formula.

You cannot box it in and this is why many scientists would rather to totally avoid conversations around the “deeper” things of life. Take emotions, this is a terrifying area for many people and there are several reasons for this.

Also, when it comes to “paranormal” events, such as high levels of intuition, for example “entangled minds” or premonitions, science overall tries to write it off as “crazy” or “unscientific”. To me this is utter nonsense.

The issue is, not that it is inherently “unscientific”. The problem is the way “scientific” is defined in the first place. Herein lies the limitation of science which often resembles “fundamentalist” religion. If you ask a question that they don’t want to deal with or can’t plug into a math formula, they belittle the experience of others and call it invalid.

Just because something cannot be reproduced over and over with predictable results, does not make it an “invalid” experience for the person asking the question or relaying their experience. The reason these types of energetic experiences are so difficult to measure is that we are all unique and our “realities” are reflected in this uniqueness.

When awareness gets involved (you’d better believe emotions/feelings play a role here), things become tricky. My life experience will be different than yours. It is empowering to be able to embrace your own conclusion in the face of what others may call “unscientific” just because they do not understand it or have a different mindset.

If there were not fear involved or if it was not a matter of staying within one’s comfort zone, why not try to understand a differing viewpoint?  History has shown that often times, it is a matter of ignorance or lack of technology that prevents us from being able to find the answer at the time.

Like it or not, there is the element of mystery to life, and sometimes, if we want to have inner peace, we just have to “walk by faith and not by sight”. Your five-senses sight is very limited. Your mind’s eye will allow you to see and sense what your physical eye is blind to. Your heart can feel what your logic blocks. Here is a quote I read in IONS magazine from Larry Dossey, MD that I found very interesting:

“As psychosocial researcher David Spiegel of Stanford University School of Medicine says about the role of consciousness in health, “Good science answers questions and questions answers. But it does not declare certain questions off limits. To do so is unscientific . . . this is not the time to close the door on an important and developing area of scientific investigation.”” The source again is Dr. Larry Dossey, in an article from IONS Shift Magazine Summer 2009, written on premonitions and entangled minds (an ongoing topic in quantum physics).

Here’s a tangible example (one of many) from my own life. When my son was about 2-years-old, we were in the kitchen, along with my 5-year-old daughter. At the time, our stove was built within the central island of cabinets in the middle of the room. I had boiling water on the stove.

I went to take the garbage out, (we have a very long kitchen) and while I was at the garbage can, I noticed my kids were on the other end, away from the stove interacting. As I took the bag out of the can and proceeded to walk away toward the exit to go through the family room and out to the garage, I had a very, very vivid image that my son was about to reach up to the stove to pull the pot off so I quickly turned around to look back and this is EXACTLY what he was doing!

Of course I screamed which startled him and stopped him in his tracks. Had I not had that “premonition”, heaven help us. Now, I don’t care if every scientist on the planet declares “premonitions” to be wacky, unscientific and crazy talk, I will still believe in their validity.

Empowerment is about “to thine own self be true”. Science has its place and I appreciate its contributions to our evolution. Learning to trust your own “gut” though is most powerful for your own personal journey. Remember, empowerment is an “inside job”.

As we start the New Year, it is also common to hear references to “New Year’s Resolutions” or goals. A new year gives new hope for new beginnings and hope is certainly a good thing. I once heard someone criticize the idea regarding telling people that they can expect more from life and to take proactive steps life by developing a new vision or using affirmations.

The complaint was, believe it or not was that it was wrong to “give those poor people hope”. Well, that seems like a sorry statement to me. What’s wrong with a little hope?

See hope is an emotional expectation and many people are afraid of their emotions, in fact I believe we are conditioned to avoid feeling our emotions. Also, there is the factor that as little children, we did not understand how to manage inharmonious emotion (“negative” charge), so we learned to fear them easily.

They remind the child that they are not receiving unconditional love or a form of rejection and very young children don’t know how to manage this well. You see, we come in here all bright eyed and expecting to be loved, and though we are to a degree, the expression is all over the map.

If our environment is fear based, we are often not optimally emotionally nourished. Hence, most of us do not know how to manage our emotions in a healthy way.

In fact, many people are so shut down emotionally that they don’t know how to feel anything but lack or anxiety. Here’s the problem with Law of Attraction – we live in a “vibratory” universe. The universe is picking up your feelings a lot more loudly than your thinking and talking.

The magnetic energy of the heart is 5,000 times greater that thought. The Universe is going to match your vibe, not what you say you want. This is why many people say the Law of Attraction doesn’t work. Actually, it works perfectly.

The problem is, people do not realize that emotion runs the engine. The head can direct a thought, but the emotions fuel it. So, since most people live with chronic fear and anxiety, focusing on what they really don’t want, even though they think that using visualization is not working to get them what they want, the missing ingredient is that they are not aware of the role of feelings.

You can want health, wealth and prosperity in your imagination, but if you are not putting your heart into it with FEELINGS, feeling like you already have your desire and truly expecting it to manifest, you are only daydreaming. Emotions wire the nervous system a lot more powerfully than mere thought.

For example, where were you on September 11, 2001? If you live in the U.S. you probably remember. This is because of the power of emotion. The next time you set goals, remember that you must match the desired outcome to “feeling good, feeling grateful” and expect to have it manifest.

Otherwise, your engine is going to stall before you make it to the finish line. If you are really “feeling bad, feeling like a victim”, you are likely to experience this whether you make positive affirmations all day long or not.  Law of attraction is working; you just must learn to use it to work for you instead of against yourself.

The vibration you tune into will be what you resonate with. Therefore, if you want to attract the higher frequencies associated with love, you will need to raise your “vibe”. Haven’t you ever walked into a room and felt its “vibe”?

You see we have been using this terminology for years, but now there is an increasing awareness of what was being noticed unconsciously. The more conscious, or aware that you can become regarding your thoughts and feelings, the more you are able to attune yourself to those frequencies of feelings that bring joy and more of what you want.

This all begins with your mindset. If you are not aware and clear in your intention setting, the tendency is to default to lower, negative thinking patterns. Haven’t you noticed the Internet headlines, or when you are out and about that it is very common to hear “doom and gloom” more often than what uplifts and inspires you?

If you want to start the New Year off successfully, you will need to start tuning your mindset to success now. It is not going to just happen because you say you want it to. It is not so much your conscious thought as it is your FEELINGS, that matter. Actually, while your conscious thought can lead off and point the way, in order to change your vibration to align with success, you have to feel successful now.

The Law of Attraction is measuring the vibration of your feelings in present time, now. Now is your point of power to change. If you cloud your mind with past or future worry, you weaken your focus to create NOW.

According to studies done at the HeartMath Institute in Boulder Creek, California, the energy of the heart is 5,000 greater that that of thought alone. You will have to put your heart into it if you really want results. Just staying in your head is not going to make much of a difference. You need to align your head with your heart; it is a collaborative effort. Here are some pointers for tuning in your mindset to success:

1. Be clear about what you really want and stay away from focusing on what you don’t want. Energy flows where your attention goes.

2. It can be helpful to write your vision down and visit it a few times a day.

3. Be aware that your creative mind lies within your subconscious, which is within your feeling nature. This is why it is important to make peace with your feelings instead of trying to repress them. If you have conflicting feelings with what you are attempting to attain, it will affect your “vibe”.

4. If you do have beliefs such as feelings of unworthiness or that limit what you believe to be possible, it’s best to address them instead of pretending they are not there. There are many ways to address these emotional blocks, and EFT is a simple method that is effective. Visit www.emofree.com for more information.

5. Learn mindfulness practices to slow down your brain waves and become more aware of negative self-talk. This can also make it easier to keep your mind on uplifting thoughts instead of being drawn into the negativity of the world around you.

These tips can help you to exercise your brain to develop new habits for goal setting that begin from the inside out. Establishing new productive habits is a process, and it will be more effective than trying to will your way through the powerful energy of the subconscious.

Remember that the energy of feeling is far greater than that of thought. The Law of Attraction or Vibration is constantly at work, just as is the Law of Gravity. Becoming conscious of managing your thoughts, feelings and emotions is the empowered way to becoming a conscious co-creator. Any success stories to share?

When you want to get rid of something you are giving your focus of energy to it. It works better if you take your attention away from dwelling on the circumstances that you rather not live with and instead, envision – go within and vision – what it is you want and get really clear about that.

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them” ~George Bernard Shaw

I knew this intellectually a long time before I started putting it to practice. The Law of Attraction sounded like a great idea, but what I did not realize is the importance of adding FEELING to the mental pictures. Our minds think in pictures and emotion causes us to take action.

If you do not add feelings to the mix, you are only “in your head” and your heart is not engaged so you will not believe it. Belief involves feelings and thought. The product of combining these two elements will be belief which will cause your subconscious mind to zero in on things that you may not normally take notice of.

You are also wiring your brain to gear your body up to take action. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the brain connections wire together to make it happen. So the abbreviated process is as follows:

1. Get a clear mental image about what it is you desire; you start with the end in mind.

2. Don’t outline the “how-to”; just stay focused on the final outcome. The Universe will fill in the details.

3. Add as much sensory detail as possible, the more the better.

4. Do this process in a relaxed meditative state, so relaxation and a focused mind comes in handy here! This state accesses the subconscious mind better. (Wires the brain/body connection)

5. If you have a clear mental picture it is helpful to write it down in a narrative and even record it in a MP3 file to listen occasionally throughout the day. At least recalling it a couple of times a day can be reinforcing.

6. Pay attention for synchronistic events; the Universe works through people and situations that show up in your life

Now here’s a stumbling block: if you have subconscious emotional blocks that constrict your self-image, negative self-talk that stirs up doubt and self-worth issues or if you are hanging out with “energy vampires”, you will have a much harder time consciously co-creating what you desire. In these cases the Law of Attraction will work to bring you what you may not want as the Universe responds to vibration. The strongest vibe wins. So, you may have to clear out the negative stories about who you think you are or paradigms that teach that you live in a stingy or punishing Universe.

It’s worth the effort, as it will ultimately lead to more inner peace either way. And isn’t this what we all want? When used wisely, especially using visualization via listening to your inner Guidance, the Law of Attraction can be used to create the inner peace you are seeking which can only come, from the inside out!

Emotional wounds and baggage, usually from early childhood even keep us from seeing our vision for our lives clearly. When we are looking through veils of fear,  self-doubt and rejection, the Law of Attraction will only bring to us that which matches our current energetic personal vibration.

This is why even though in our heads, our conscious minds, we think we are sending out a belief for more health, wealth and happy relationships, we continue to only receive more of the same of what we already have. I’ve learned from experience that willpower can only take you so far.

Even when you willfully push ahead and obtain the money you think will make you happy, you will discover that not only does it not bring happiness, but also often it will seem like you have holes in your pockets because you cannot maintain the lifestyle. We can only maintain what is ours by right of consciousness.

What you see in your mind, and feel in your body with expectation, is what you get.

This is why the sooner you start to make the decision to recondition your fear of feeling negative charged emotion and learning how to release these energetic blocks from your cellular memory and body then doing it, the sooner you can get on with breaking old habits that are holding you back from taking action and living a life you love.

Emotion is just energy. Sure, it’s nice to feel emotions that we like, yet, life is full of opposites. If we accept our full spectrum of emotional experiences and learn how to get into the flow with them, we can empower ourselves to manage our emotions like anything else in life we learn to manage. It does not have to be a hard or painful process.

The Law of attraction is always working, so if we want to use it in our favor, we will have to learn to make peace with our emotions and stop vilifying them. Here are some practical examples of how emotional blockages are killing your visioning/Law of attraction process:

1. You are so numb that you really cannot work up passion about what you think you want

2. You can’t keep a clear image of what you want because you keep having feelings of unworthiness or “this will never happen for me”

3. Even though you use affirmations and vision boards, you keep having the same situations, circumstances and people showing up in your life. Remember with Law of Attraction it is “like attracts like” – your vibe is what the Universe responds to

All three of these dilemmas are not something you can see in the physical world, so just taking classes and getting how-to-do information is still not going to clear up the inner emotional block. If you want to be the powerful co-creator you are and do it CONSCIOUSLY, you will simply have to learn how to heal the blind spots, the emotional blockages that are holding you back from creating a life you love! Then you can envision more clearly.

Using the Law of Attraction consciously will work when you learn how to work it!

Neuroscience is connected to the metamorphosis metaphor from my viewpoint. Neuroscience is the area of science that deals with the brain and nervous system in some way.  It could be related to mind and psychology, the visual system itself, or biology and physics.

Because of my educational background in this area, I find it fascinating and I am grateful for the science now to backup what was called ‘soft skills’ in the past.  Neuroscience is giving objective findings to support how our brains and minds work, how beliefs and behavior is formed and how it can be changed.

This is very exciting in that the quality of your life is certainly proportional to the quality of your beliefs.  I think we are in the era of personal responsibility.  It is time to stop barely making it through the week, the old ‘thank God it’s Friday’ mindset, and move into the lifestyle of gratitude and fulfillment.

As the author and poet Maya Angelou said, “Surviving is important, thriving is elegant”.

When I was a child, I LOVED the metaphor of the caterpillar to the butterfly and pretty much from the time I learned this concept, I connected to it from my heart.  I’ve connected to butterflies decades before they became symbolic of our times.

It as a personal metaphor, a journey of my own expansion, from the limited, vulnerable caterpillar, to the beautiful, graceful, freedom loving butterfly.  I believe we are at a crossroads in our world, and I am very hopeful that people will seize the moment and take advantage of opportunities to heal their limited thinking and fears, and rise up and take their places on the stage of life.

Everyone has a purpose and is here at THIS TIME by no accident.  Brain research is clearly showing how what we think wires our brains and these connections can either be strengthened or changed by conscious choice.  The key is CONSCIOUS choice.

We have to wake up, and take responsibility and if we do, we can create a world that is sustainable and a life that is meaningful, happy and overall peaceful instead of the chaotic world that we UN-consciously created.

Understanding how our Spirit, mind and body is connected and our connection to others is crucial to this process.  I am thankful for the objective and ‘soft skills’ discoveries of positive psychology and neuroscience.

It took a while, and now I realize that the only thing that I can absolutely count on is – change. Even as you live life with awareness of Spirit, flexibility is central to a life of faith. Things don’t always go as planned and some experiences take time to understand the good on the other side of the seeming abyss.

Today another Halloween is passing. I used to feel sad, even while I was in the moment of experiencing fun with my children when they were much younger on this day. I dreaded that my children would “one day” be too old to go trick or treating with me – that they would rather be with their friends instead of me. It was a habit I had of focusing on lack instead of fully enjoying the present moment. This of course, blocked my full enjoyment in those now moments.

Fortunately, I eventually figured this out. The energy that we feel in the now moment is creating our future. This used to keep me in a perpetual state of dis-satisfaction as I could not really feel happiness to the extent that I could have. I could not really enjoy the pleasure of funny faces, costumes and laughter as I felt the melancholy feelings that “one day” they would leave.

Well, one day has arrived. My daughter drove off to go out with her friends, no déjà vu for her. My son even choose to skip going to the Northwestern Football game that he and my husband have season tickets for to be with his friends for Halloween. And me? – I’m here writing this blog post!

Good thing my joy is now more often than not centered within instead of looking to maintain happiness by controlling the people around me. Life is change; this is for certain. Learning how to adapt to the seasons of our lives while enjoying the fun, joy and challenges as they happen, in the end will lead to a life well lived.

Inner peace can only truly come from an awareness of the inner presence of Being. What about you, do you appreciate the gift of today called “the present”? Namaste!