Believe and succeed

Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius

A belief is something you consider to be true. You cannot decide to believe one thing this week and another, opposing thing, next week. You might think you can, but it really doesn’t work like that. I read recently that baby circus elephants are tied to a strong metal post with a heavy chain because they will try to escape and expend a lot of energy on pulling at their tether. After some time, they accept that they will not be able to escape and so stop pulling. The adult elephants are tethered to a wooden stake with a light rope: they could easily escape, but they believe they are unable to do so, and so the light tethering works as a kind of symbol of their bondage. It is clear that whether your beliefs are true or not is irrelevant. What matters is what you regard to be true. It seems to me that this is a good definition of ‘belief.’

People believe all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. Some beliefs are trivial and others are very important, but two things are certain:

1. Our underlying beliefs operate at a deep, subconscious level, and
2. These underlying beliefs affect what we experience in life, including our level of success or failure in any endeavor

Where do these beliefs come from?

Philip Larkin said ‘They f**k you up, your mum and dad.’ Which might seem a bit cruel, but then he did admit that ‘they do not mean to, but they do.’ What he’s saying, of course, is that we learn our world view from our parents, and if our parents think that life is a struggle and that money and success don’t come easily, then this will be our ‘defaults mode,’ too. We spend many years being ‘drip fed’ these beliefs and they get embedded deep in our subconscious. It’s fine to say ‘just change your beliefs,’ but it’s not always so easy. We have picked up many limiting beliefs from parents, teachers, friends, religion (dare I say?) and society in general. Some of these beliefs are holding us back, so doesn’t it make sense that we should want to shed them?

Do we really want to get rid of these beliefs?

Actually, it’s no that simple. We can get a tremendous payback from some apparently harmful and limiting beliefs. I’m sure we all know people who seem to identify themselves as a victim, believing that they are helpless and needing someone to look after them or ‘save’ them. These people get a feeling of security (they don’t have to try to be better or take any risks because they know it’s pointless and they will fail), and they get people running around after them, looking after them.

We need to look at our beliefs and examine what kind of payback we are getting from them and so why we might not want to let go of them. Some examples of limiting beliefs might be:

• Everyone is selfish
  
• People are always trying to rip you off
  
• There isn’t enough to go around so you have to grab what you can
  
• You can be struck down by circumstances (illness, accident) at any time
  
• It’s not my fault that my life is like this
  

All of these beliefs do something for us; they give us some validation or some comfort. But they are simply beliefs. Deeply engrained, to be sure, but only beliefs and so susceptible to change. Shedding these beliefs may cause some pain, but growth is often accompanied by pain, and I am confident that they pain of growth is a small price for the loss of a lifetime of limitation.

Change your beliefs and change your life

And so that brings us to the good news – you CAN change your beliefs. I suggest three steps for doing this:

1. Identify a limiting belief (eg Things just happen. I’m not in control of my life)
   
2. Cast the belief in a different way (I am in control and I consciously orchestrate my experience)
   
3. Look around for evidence of this new belief. You WILL find it! After a while, this will sink in and you will start to think the new belief is ‘true.’
   

In a sense, I’m suggesting that you brainwash yourself. This may sound negative, but remember that you’ve already been brainwashed into negative thinking, so some reprogramming won’t hurt. Perhaps ‘condition yourself’ is a better phrase than ‘brainwash.’ It takes time, but you can do it if you really want to.

Beliefs I live by

• I believe the following to be true and I see evidence of these statements around me all the time.
  
• Everything in my life works out well
  
• I orchestrate my own experience of life
  
• Life is naturally abundant. There is enough for everyoneLife, when lived properly, is easy and happy
• Abundance – health, happiness, money and success – flows to me endlessly and easily. All I have to do is reach out and take it
  
• I don’t have to improve myself – I am already as valuable and worthwhile as anyone else
  
• I can do anything if I apply myself in the right way
  
• Circumstances arrange themselves and opportunities are presented for my greatest good
  The tragedy of much adult life is that our vision is so limited. Like the elephant, we can walk away from our tether any time, but we often don’t because we are shackled by our false and limiting beliefs.

I want to end with a wonderful fable from Anthony de Mello, a man who really seemed to understand the human condition.

An eagle lays an egg but somehow the egg finds its way into a chicken coup. A chicken incubates the egg with all her others and when it hatches, she rears the eaglet as if it were one of her own chicks. It learns to peck the dust for food, to flap its wings and to strut around the farmyard. One day, an eagle flies by overhead. The little eagle looks up and sees this, and says to himself, ‘I wish I were an eagle – how majestic, how free, how beautiful to be like that and have such a life.’ The eagle lived like a chicken and died like a chicken, because that’s hat he thought he was.

The law of attraction is a lie!

As I mentioned in another article, the ‘law of attraction’ seems to have grown into something of a cult, with people wanting to identify themselves as ‘believers’ of ‘non-believers.’ Some people have taken this quite far and are defending their position, one way or the other, quite vociferously.

There has recently been quite a backlash to the ‘law of attraction,’ in the form of websites, e-books and blogs propagating an idea called the ‘lie of attraction.’ For example, people like Sam Crowley and Michael Cheney have some significant objections to the law of attraction as it is popularly presented. People are becoming very emotional about it all. An anonymous writer on one blog, for example, writes ‘The law of attraction is BS…Though the basic idea for the law of attraction is nothing new, it has been misconstrued into a materialistic pile of voodoo nonsense.’

What are we to make of all this? Is the ‘law of attraction’ a dangerous lie, as Crowley and others claim, or is it really an inherent feature of the universe that we can harness to bring wonderful results into our lives?

Napoleon Hill, in ‘Think and Grow Rich,’ wrote that ‘whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.’ The only limit to what you can achieve is your imagination. I firmly believe that, in the words of A Course in Miracles, ‘We are Powerful Beyond Measure.’ ‘Think and Grow Rich’ is full of examples of ‘possibility thinkers’ who were scorned and laughed at, but who had a vision and saw it come to fruition. Who could have thought that the systemic racism in the US in the 40s could have been swept away to the point that we now have a black candidate for the democratic presidential nomination? Who could have imagined the end of apartheid in South Africa? Who could have imagined the end of slavery in the British Empire? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and William Wilberforce – they all had a dream, they had a vision, and the results of their visions are with us now. Surely no one can deny the power of the mind.




You cannot expect to get anywhere unless you have a clear idea in your mind. All of the people mentioned above, and the may others mentioned in ‘Think and Grow Rich’ all had a clear vision of where they were going. Of the many people I have known, the most successful all knew where they were going. Not that they weren’t flexible, but they knew what they wanted and they knew they were going to get there.

Jonathan Fields writes ‘even the most dogged focus on the attainment of a goal will bring you nothing without an equal commitment to action.’ If you sit around all day visualizing and saying affirmations, you’re probably not going to get anywhere. You must act. Napoleon Hill is very clear about this. Persistence and determination are key, not letting failure get you down and keeping on going will eventually yield excellent results.

This said, your action must be the right kind of action, it must ‘flow.’ Moving water can be a powerful force – it can generate electricity, it can destroy cities, it can be exhilarating and it can be deadly. But there is no effort in water – it seeks out the path of least resistance, it moves to the lowest point, it goes around things, does not push through them. It achieves everything by making no effort. This is what Alan Watts called ‘The Watercourse Way,’ and is what Lao Tse wrote about in the Tao Te Ching, a book I always keep by my bedside. The right action should not be competitive or confrontational, there should be no force, no strain, no stress. Whenever you are putting in a lot of effort, you are doing something wrong. This way of doing things is the basis of effortless abundance. Our society values work, effort, energy, and industry. The roots of this system of values lie in Puritanism and Calvinism – we take it for granted that work and effort are needed for good results, but there is another way, a more ancient way, a better way.

‘The Secret’ is becoming a belief system. People are starting to miss what is being pointed to, and instead they are grabbing hold of the signpost and defending it to give themselves an identity. Some of the detractors are doing the same. In this way, the idea of the law of attraction is becoming very dominant. It may be interesting to examine the way it is propagating as a meme (According to Wikipedia, ‘any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.’ Richard Dawkins has been a famous proponent of the idea that religion is a meme).

‘The Secret’ has over simplified the message of ‘Think and Grow Rich.’ It is jingoistic and simplistic and superficial. It misses the subtlety which has been explored in earlier books on the way mind and action work together to produce outcomes. It has pulled in some pseudo Science, and been blatantly marketed to attract gullible and needy people looking for quick fixes and easy solutions to their problems. (Some proponents of the ‘lie of attraction’ are beginning to do the same. Just take a look at some of their materials). For this reason, I believe that real success and real happiness will continue to elude most people, and they will simply move on to the next big, hyped up idea which they hope will ‘quick-fix’ their lives. I have read forum posts where people expect to win the lottery by ‘visualizing’ the money. This is not a dangerous thing, but surely that is absurd. We have a wonderful vista before us, but most people will continue to keep their eyes closed.

In a very balanced and well-written article, Jonathan Fields offers a simple and common sense explanation of ‘the secret,’ avoiding any need to invoke quantum mechanics, harmonic resonance and other Scientific ideas. The ‘law of attraction,’ he cays, is a psychological phenomenon. If you keep thinking about something, keep dwelling on it, keep believing it, you will start to behave in slightly different ways; you will say things you might not otherwise have said, you will go to places you might not otherwise have gone, you’ll dress differently, and so on. Eventually, all these little things add up to help you achieve your goal. Essentially, he is saying that you can brainwash yourself, or be brainwashed, either in a good way or a bad way.

The reality is that life is a subtle thing, and we must resist the temptation to over simplify and generalize. If we keep our mind on something and act in accordance with this is a natural, easy and non-forceful way, the universe works out the details and things work out well, though often not as we had planned (usually better). Then we will be effortlessly abundant.

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Can the law of attraction work for YOU?

According to the many exponents of the ‘law of attraction,’ when we really want something and when our desires, thoughts and actions are in alignment, the thing we want will manifest. But is it really that simple? If so, then why are there examples of passionate, hardworking, dedicated people who don’t get what they really, really want. What about the candidates in the run up to the US presidential election this year? Presumably they all really, really want to be president, they are all passionate about this and they are all working hard to achieve it – isn’t everything in alignment? But only one of them can be the winner. Does all this ‘law of attraction’ stuff really work?

First, it’s important to realize that the ‘Law of Attraction’ isn’t just wishful thinking – it has a scientific basis.

The last thing we want to do is get bogged down with quantum theory. I have a Science degree from Oxford, and believe me, quantum mechanics is not a ‘light’ subject. But what we can say for sure (as far as we can say anything for sure) and in simple terms is that, in a sense, nothing is real – everything is energy; every person, every object, every thing is a disturbance in an energy field which pervades the universe. In a very important sense, we are all connected together and vibrations in the energy field tend to accumulate with other, similar vibrations. In other words, like attracts like. When you think about something habitually, you tend to attract it. I will be exploring the area of the Science behind the law of attraction in future articles. In the meantime, an excellent book to read on this subject is The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.


Where you are currently is a result of your past thoughts, beliefs and feelings

You need to accept you current situation. You created it, you chose it, so you need to take responsibility for it. But your current reality is, in a sense, always just an echo of your past thoughts, beliefs and feelings. What you are thinking and feeling right now is creating your new, future reality. What’s in your mind is more important than anything else, because this is where you’re headed.


Be clear about what you desire to create

Because what’s in your mind is so crucial, you need to make sure you’re clear about what it is you’re trying to create. Most people create by default by a random and endlessly changing streams of thoughts and feelings. By becoming conscious of your habitual thinking patterns and how they are making you feel, you can start to replace them with better, more carefully constructed thoughts. Only with consistent and habitual thoughts and feelings will you start to consciously manifest your desires.


Don’t try to control the process.

Once you have chosen, then the universe does everything else. You don’t need to figure out how it will happen – you couldn’t orchestrate things as well as the universe can even if you tried.

Bob Proctor says, ‘everyone that ever accomplished everything did not know how they were going to do it. They only knew they were going to do it.’

Things are going to happen, people are going to turn up in your life, you’re going to see something or get something in the mail that turns on a light. Whatever happens, it isn’t going to be through your manipulation of events. A farmer doesn’t make crops grow by going out every day, watching them, measuring them, pulling them – all s/he can do is to sow the seed and let nature do the rest. We tend to get impatient, to say ‘this isn’t working – I need to do something’ and then we revert to the old patterns of doing things our way. Look back on your life – could you have planned it like that? We need to be open to the fact that we don’t have a clue – not a clue – about what is going to happen tomorrow. But if we relax, let go and trust the universe (or God) to get things done, it will happen, and you will find yourself looking back in amazement at how events lined themselves up and everything came together to deliver what you chose to manifest.


Don’t be too desperate
As I have written about elsewhere, when we try to achieve something too hard, we tend to push it away. The awkward teenaged boy who is desperate for a girlfriend just comes across as desperate and needy, whereas the confident, self assured guy attracts girls effortlessly – this ‘law of reverse effort’ seems to be a constant theme of nature – sometimes it’s called detachment – when you act and believe that all will be well, detached form the specific details of the outcome, then all will indeed be well.

Abraham-Hicks wrote, ‘No matter what it is, if you really want it, and if you get out of the way of it, it will happen. It must be. It is Law. It can be no other way. It’s the way this Universe is established. If you want it and you relax, it will happen.’


Do you really believe what you are thinking and saying?

Affirmations work for some people, not for others. You can stand in front of the mirror every morning repeating your affirmations but, if you don’t really believe them, they’re not going to be effective. It seems to me that affirmations can serve some purpose – they can focus your conscious attention on what you are choosing to manifest, and that can’t be a bad thing. But what’s more important is your underlying beliefs and, even more important, the feelings you have about those beliefs. If you truly believe what you’re saying to yourself, and you feel good about it, then everything is ‘lined up’ and the law of attraction will deliver what you want.

According to Joe Vitale, ‘It’s really important that you feel good, because this feeling good is what goes out as a signal to the universe and starts to attract more of itself to you.’

But often there is a conflict between the way we feel, the things we believe and the things we tell ourselves. And there’s the rub – you’ve got to make sure that every part of you is in agreement. But before you give up or decide to get psychotherapy or make an appointment with a hypnotist, the good news is that it’s not that hard – basically you need to find a way of making yourself feel good about what you are saying to yourself. If you’re saying ‘I am rich’ and then feeling envious about the guy driving the new Mercedes, then you’re associating being rich with the feeling of jealousy, defeating your self-talk.

How you make yourself feel good is something I will be exploring in future articles. There are some techniques such as the Sedona method, the Emotional freedom technique (EMT) and Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) which will be the subject of future posts.


The timing needs to be right

Things will happen at the right time. When everything has come together, the result will manifest. How and when this happens is not for us to say. An oak tree takes a long time to grow, a cress seed will develop into a full grown plant in a matter of days. But you are a magnet, and you are endlessly attracting things to yourself – if the magnet is more powerful then things will naturally manifest faster. Like anything, practice makes you better. But don’t be anxious; don’t keep trying to figure out how things will happen and when. It’s very important to be happy with the current situation – feeling good now is the best way to create an abundant future.

In the end, the key is to keep holding on to the thought, and truly believe it, and find a way of feeling it – thoughts become things.