Get Money, Health and Weight Loss(Law Of Attraction)
Excerpt from Chapter 7 – Law Of Attraction
Get Money, Health and Weight Loss
Generally, the earlier six steps (replace the word love with the words money, health or weight loss) will also work to manifest money, healing or weight loss, provided there are no significant psychological issues involved. For every health issue (disease, injury, or condition), however, there almost always seems to be a number of psychological issues. For weight loss, also, many issues usually need examining, particularly when weight or food issues were a part of childhood.
Therefore, I recommend that you look to acquire the means to resolve these psychological issues rather than try to manifest a change using the law of attraction or affirmation process. This may involve therapy and/or self help processes that may be relatively quick for health issues but may extend over months and years for overweight people. In the next chapter, I discuss the necessity for most overweight people to “watch their weight,” and I offer some dieting tips that have worked for me.
Getting What You Want Summary Going after what you want is always ego-based. Perhaps your soul and your true personality want what your neurotic ego does, but don’t count on it. Going after “I wants” is always tricky.Manifesting what you want using the law of attraction or an affirmation process is often quick and easy when you have no psychological issues involved. If you fail to address these issues, what you want will usually not manifest for you. Try out the law of attraction as desired, but be forewarned that most people usually do not succeed.
When I was young I used to pray for a bike, then I realized that God doesn’t work that way, so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness.
Popular with some New Age folks is the idea that our minds need to be emptied (empty-mind meditation). They believe that would be a more spiritual state. The question remains: “Why do we have all these billions of brain cells if God did not intend us to think?” Are we calling God stupid for giving us all this “useless and best-discarded” brainpower? Is it really the best thing for us to assume God made a mistake?
Yes, we need to reduce the domination by our minds; but I believe the best goal for most of us is to integrate our minds with our bodies, our hearts and our awareness. In my opinion and experience, a goal of mind elimination/separation sets people up for ongoing pain and suffering. Integration, on the other hand, leads us in the direction of inner peacefulness.
I routinely initiate a conversation with my psychotherapy clients that goes like this – “We often have wrong ideas about our emotional reactions. They seem automatic and we tend to think they are automatic. They are not; they depend upon how we think about a given situation. For example, if I came at you right now with my hands overhead threatening to attack you with a sledgehammer, how would you respond?” Presume for a moment that the client reacts with fear, saying something along the lines of, “I would run out the door.” We then discuss how the client immediately evaluated the situation as unsafe and responded accordingly.
Then we discuss other possibilities such as getting angry and choosing to fight, or crying in the corner thinking about all of life’s unfairness. The client might just laugh at me because the client knows that even if I did have a sledgehammer, the situation was set up by me only for demonstration purposes. Each of these possibilities depends upon the thinking of the person. The angry response derives from thinking that I should not be doing that, as well as a likely evaluation that I can be handled physically. The crying response typically is evoked when old feelings of hopelessness are triggered. Finally, the laughter derives from thinking about a larger concept than just “a sledgehammer is close.”
With the sledgehammer fantasy I am trying to help the client understand that our emotional responses depend upon our thinking processes much more than we think they do. Even in an immediate situation like that of a poised sledgehammer, there is no such thing as an emotional response common to everyone.
This reasoning leads to, “If I can change how I think, I can change my emotions.” Does this mean I can get rid of my discomforts, my anger, my angst, my depression and my sadness just by thinking differently? The therapists who concentrate on changing your thinking processes would say, “Yes!” (Talk therapy treatments of choice these days for depression are “thinking-type” therapies, not the emotionally-based therapies that one might initially think would be most effective with depression. Changing the thinking processes which cause the depression usually is much quicker than attempting to change the emotional processes themselves.)
The judgments which usually cause us the most difficulties and distress are those which judge situations/others as right or wrong, as good or bad, or as possible or impossible.
Humans have been making unhappy judgments for centuries. Shakespeare’s Hamlet expressed the happier accepting belief, “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” If the happier alternative has been known for so long, why hasn’t it been followed? The reason is that we have been thoroughly indoctrinated in right-wrong and good-bad thinking. It is a natural thinking stage for children to pass through. Most of us incorporated a plethora of such messages in our childhoods. We may fail yet to see their tyrannical nature. For right-wrong and good-bad judgments about situations/others cause most of us much unhappiness every single day of our lives.
Another reason for our judgments is our poor self-esteem. Most of us have areas of our lives (our thinking, our emotions, our relationships, our sexuality, our addictions or our hang-ups), which we judge as not being OK, areas in which we have poor self-esteem. We then often try to make ourselves feel better at someone else’s expense by judging them inferior in some way, “Look at how good I am in comparison.” The macho “women are inferior” judgment has its roots in poor male self-esteem; vulnerability, humanness and caring are covered with a facade of strength. Current male bashing also has similar roots in poor female self-esteem.
I personally strive never to feel or think that another’s behavior or action is ever wrong or bad. I can always find some reasoning process to validate and accept what at first glance may seem very wrong or bad. Usually I do this by reaffirming my beliefs that we are all perfect as described later in this chapter or by reaffirming my Earth School beliefs, which require all of us to learn in ways that we might not consciously desire. I can always find a possible reason why such situations or behaviors are as they should be, instead of judging them wrong or bad. By reaffirming my belief that whatever is in our lives is in our best interest, I am able to drop the shoulds. You too have the capability for dropping your shoulds by truly accepting the following happier ways of thinking: we are always perfect, we all are students here on Earth School and everything in our lives is in our own best interest. Where the word should is used, there is an unhappy judgment.
Make sure not to judge yourself as bad or wrong when you find yourself making a judgment. For you and your judgments are, of course, perfect for that moment. The key is to start along the change path towards the goal of dropping that judgment the next time that identical situation arises.
Some judgments as to what is right-wrong or good-bad for me are still sometimes necessary. They are useful (not tyrannical) with reference to selecting action. For example, I won’t do that now because I learned in the past that felt wrong, or that possibility feels wrong for me so I won’t proceed along those lines in the immediate future. Such judgments do not apply to others. Just because I found something did not work for me doesn’t mean that it will not be exactly what you need to do (or, for that matter, what I may need to do in the future).
There are usually objections to this along the lines of, “If I dropped my judgments, then I wouldn’t take appropriate action.” Not at all. If you put your hand on a hot stove, you will take action in response to the pain. Later you can try to find out why you have done that four times in the past week and why someone or something keeps making burns “right” for you. You respond to pain and discomfort perfectly, of course, for you now.
This particular phrase is widespread and is used to justify all sorts of behavior and ideas. And it probably is true today, but the problem is that there is usually no thinking room available to those with this belief. Just because I am a particular way now does not imply that I will be or have to be that way this afternoon. Unfortunately, the possibility of change is usually not even considered by those voicing the words, “That is the way I am” and its close relative, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” The most important question that needs to follow that phrase is, “Do I want to continue to be that way?” Do I want to continue to have that particular unhappiness, that addiction, that low self-esteem, that depression or that loneliness? All too frequently, we deny the possibility for change and therefore it doesn’t happen, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The possibilities for change are much greater than we typically envision. If your spiritual/religious systems of beliefs cause you distress, then consider changing them! If you respond emotionally in unhappy ways, then you can always change your emotional responses, if you are willing to really look at yourself. Consider adopting the following ultimate belief in self-responsibility: if I am unhappy, then I need to change myself. There are things that are usually not possible to change (e.g., some physical characteristics, sexual orientation and overall personality characteristics). On the other hand, it is always possible to change your actions and your emotions, if the choice is made to do so. If you hear the phrase “That is the way I am,” be on the lookout for rigid thinking and being stuck.
This is the favorite accusation of millions. How convenient! I don’t have to assume any responsibility for changing my unhappiness and I can blame you for all of it. An unpleasant fact I usually overlook is that change by you is most unlikely to happen upon my demand. Therefore, I am likely to be stuck forever with this unhappiness. “And it is all your fault that I am so stuck.” Such is a common thought process of victims and of those who are blaming the white male patriarchy for all their problems.
It is only recently that major segments of the women’s movement and the African-American movement have challenged the notion of perpetual victimhood. Many people are now choosing to take more responsibility for their own happiness and for their own lives, rather than remain stuck in the blame game.
There is a major difference, in my opinion, between the responses of children and adults. As children, many of us were squelched in any number of ways. Back then we really were made unhappy by what happened to us, (though perhaps we learned to cover it over and to put on a compliant, happy face). As children, we usually had no real choice but to comply. If we believe that to be true today about our adult responses, then we are still letting others control our happiness, still acting the part of the helpless child. We have given our personal power away to others, most often to our most disliked others: white males, racists, sexists, homophobes and fundamentalists.
The major question then arises. What about real victims, like you, me, and the victimized groups to which we belong? Our choice to see ourselves as victims happens to violate a number of religious and spiritual beliefs (like “God’s will,” the “inky finger of fate” and “karma”). If such spiritual beliefs are deeply held, is it possible for any of us ever to be victims? While such spiritual beliefs are the norm for the world as a whole, they still represent only a minority in the USA, albeit a fast-growing group which is nearing majority status. There is a choice to be made, believe in victimhood or believe in self-responsibility. The former guarantees unhappiness, whereas the latter permits a route out of unhappiness. Straddling these two beliefs is most common, believing in responsibility for some things but in victimhood in other instances. Unfortunately, straddling does not lead to happiness, though it seems to be politically correct for millions of us today.
