Monday, January 12, 2009

Focus Series: How to Use Your Manifestation System to Get the Life You Want

You already know how to create the results you want. You’re creating results all the time. You have a powerful manifestation system that’s creating the life you currently have, and that system works perfectly well... to create the life you currently have. You’re extremely powerful. Every thought you have sets off a chain of reactions, starting within you, and extending out into the physical world through your behaviour, impacting on relationships and circumstances around you, to create the results you currently have. If you aren’t entirely thrilled with the results you’re getting, here’s how you use your powerful manifestation system to change your results.

How we create our results: The MANIFESTATION SYSTEM:
Alot of people are familiar with "the Law of Attraction" and the idea that our thoughts create our reality, but there's a wide variety of opinions about HOW this happens. If you feel like the Law of Attraction is over-simplified, pseudo-scientific bumpf, sugar-coated and wrapped in American kitch, then I invite you to consider this alternative model, which is based on the theories of Daniel Goleman. In our daily lives, we have a constant stream of information (reality) coming at us. We can’t pay attention to all of it all of the time (at least not consciously) - it’s just too much. So we filter reality and we only pay conscious attention to some of it, and ignore the rest. We then tell ourselves a story about what reality means, in order to understand it, and so that we can start creating an appropriate response. The story we tell ourselves about reality causes a physiological and emotional reaction inside of us, which then informs our behavioural response. Of course, our behavioural response is what creates our results, and our results provide the fodder for our future reality... and the cycle continues. This is how you created your current results.



There are two ways that we can run our manifestation system: Default Mode or Active Mode.

1. Default Mode: Your mind can’t NOT process and respond. It’s running the manifestation system all the time. The manifestation system is most efficient - and therefore most powerful, when running on Default Mode, and most of our results are created through the Default Mode Manifestation Strategy. We’d be terribly slow mentally and physically, if this wasn’t the case - which would be very dangerous, from a survival point of view. The Default Mode is more efficient because we’re not stopping to consider our options and the implications of those options when we’re filtering and making meaning of reality. While this allows us to respond more quickly, it also increases the risk that we’ll get some “bugs” and inaccuracies in the information we put into the manifestation system, and that could prevent us from getting the results we want. If you’re not feeling powerful, and you’re not getting the results you want, and you feel like your life is running you, then you’re running your manifestation system on Default Mode and have some bugs in the system. In order to de-bug and re-program your manifestation system so that you bring different results into your life, you need to switch your manifestation system from Default to Active Mode.

2. Active Mode: When you’re running the manifestation system on Active Mode, you stop and decide what outcome you want, so that you give your mind clear, consistent instructions to pay attention to the parts of reality that will support you getting the results you want, rather than having your attention grabbed by the familiar and scary parts of reality. When you’re running on Active Mode, you’re aware of the stories you’re using to give meaning to reality, and choosing stories that support you to create the feelings and behaviour that will get you the results that you ultimately want.

The manifestation system ALWAYS works, but your results depend on the parts of reality you pay attention to and the stories you tell yourself about reality. If you’re not entirely happy with the life you’ve created for yourself thus far, here’s how you can use the manifestation system to change your results:

  • Ask yourself, “What results do I want?”
  • Ask yourself, “What results am I currently getting?” Go to the Manifestation System flow-chart and write those results next to “Filtered reality”, at the top of the flow-chart.
  • Now ask yourself, “How to I feel about those results?” And write those feelings next to “Physiological and emotional reaction” on the flow-chart.
  • Now ask yourself, “What stories am I telling myself (about my results), that cause me to feel that way?” Write those stories next to “Story about the meaning of reality” on the flow-chart.
  • Next, ask yourself, “How do I behave when I feel that way?” Write that down next to “Behavioural response” on the flow-chart.
  • Finally, ask yourself, “When I behave that way, what results do I get? How do other people respond to me? How does that affect our relationship, and the potential future results in this relationship?” Write these answers next to “Results” on the flow-chart.

At this point, you’ll probably notice a strong correlation between your last answer that you wrote next to “Results” and your first answer, which you wrote next to “Filtered reality,” Your reaction to your results is keeping you in a cycle, where you’re re-creating the results you don’t want. Changing your results is all about noticing how you’re thinking: changing what you’re focusing on and what meaning you’re making of that.

Now that you’ve switched your manifestation system to Active Mode, you can change what you’re focusing on, by asking yourself, “Are there any results that I want, that I’m already getting, which I hadn’t noticed until now?” Then ask yourself, “What would I need to tell myself about my current results, to generate the feelings and behaviour that would support me getting more of the results I want?” Then, to start to become familiar with your new stories, ask yourself, “What evidence am I already noticing that tells me that these stories are true?” Look for at least 3 pieces of evidence. Then post your new stories somewhere where you’ll see them and be reminded of them. Some people like to get into a habit of reading their new stories at the beginning and end of each day. Finally, come up with 3 behaviours that somebody believing your new stories would be likely to use, and commit to practicing those 3 behaviours over the next few weeks.

Once you’ve “de-bugged” and “re-programmed” your manifestation system, you’ll probably find that you need to run the manifestation system on Active Mode, stopping to consciously choose useful stories, to make that way of thinking familiar. Once it’s familiar, your new stories will become your Default Mode, and you’ll not only get the results you want, but you’ll get them more efficiently.

1 comment:

Rudi said...

Great post Cath. I posted something similar not so long ago about how we are perfect systems for creating the results we have.

We constantly try to change the external factors to get different results but not the system actually generating the results and then the reality is one of "nothing works"!

I have been exploring the idea of homeostasis in nature. How nature has these natural balancing systems that seem counter intuitive - but works. So when our bodies heat up we sweat to help to balance the body temp, how certain species through evolution have these mechanisms to control population through "controlled" miscarriages.

We have justification or as you say "the stories" we tell ourselves - this is our balancing action to create a sense of equilibrium - whether that equilibrium is destructive or not.