Focus Series: How to Get What You Want By Imagining You Already Have It

Last week, I explained how the Manifestation System works to create the results that you’re currently getting. The core first step in any change is to take responsibility, by believing that you create your results. Understanding the manifestation system, leads you to a few other core principles of change that you’ll be able to apply, to get the changes you want:

Experience is not reality.
For me, the most important principle that the manifestation strategy shows us is that OUR EXPERIENCE IS NOT OUR REALITY. This photograph of me and my sister, Sue, on a rollercoaster ride a few years ago does a great job of illustrating this principle.

We’re both interacting with exactly the same reality, but we’re having a VERY different experience - and this is obvious in our facial expressions. She has a huge smile and I have my eyes closed and a terrified grimace. In order for us to respond to reality, we interpret our sensory experiences (what we’re seeing, hearing, touching, smelling) and we tell ourselves a story about what those sensory experiences mean. It’s our INTERPRETATION of reality (the second step in the manifestation strategy) that creates our experience of reality. Clearly Sue told herself a much happier story about the rollercoaster ride than I did!

You’ll find that you’re much more able to set your Manifestation Strategy onto Active Mode, challenge your limiting stories and choose more useful stories that support you getting the outcomes you want, if you recognise that often your stories aren’t an accurate interpretation of reality.

Interpreting reality in a different way changes your experience of it.
Because we usually assume that our experience IS reality, we normally focus our energies on trying to change reality. But reality is complex and often we don’t have much control over it (especially when we’re trying to change it from an inaccurate perspective of reality!), so the ability to change the meaning we give reality is often more useful, and more achievable, than attempting to change reality itself. An important paradox in all of this is that the person who has the greatest ability to change the meaning they give reality (and as a result has more flexibility in how they respond emotionally and behaviourally) will have the greatest influence and impact on reality. Makes sense, doesn’t it? As they say, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.” You’re much more likely to change your reality if you’re willing to try something different.
So how can you use these principles to change your life?

• Think of a situation in your life that you’re finding difficult.
• Write down what results you want in that situation.
• Print out a copy of the Manifestation System, to use as a worksheet. Write the difficult situation next to the heading, “filtered reality.”
• Now ask yourself, “What are the stories I’m telling myself about that situation?” Write these down next to the heading, “story about the meaning of reality.” Then ask yourself, “What would I have to be believing, in order to believe these stories?” Write those down too.
• Next, ask yourself, “How do I feel when I think those thoughts or believe those stories?” Write your emotions down next to the heading, “Emotional Reaction.”
• Then ask yourself, “How do I behave then, when I’m feeling that way?” Write this down next to the heading, “Behavioural Response.”
• Now consider what results are caused by your behaviour. How does it impact on relationships? How do other people react to you then? What other external results do you get? Write these down next to the heading, “Results.”
• Have a look at the manifestation system and notice how you’re creating a cycle, in which the results you don’t want are growing.
• Go back to the page where you wrote what you want instead. Print out another copy of the manifestation system, and write these results at the top of the system, next to the heading, “Filtered Reality.”
• Now ask yourself, “If I already had those results, what story would I tell myself?” “And, What would I have to be believing, in order to believe these stories?” Write that all down next to the heading, “Story about the meaning of reality.”
• Then ask yourself, “How would I feel, if I believed those stories?” Write that down next to the heading, “Emotional Reaction.”
• And then, “How would I behave, if I felt that way?” Write that down next to the heading, “Behavioural Reaction.”
• Finally, ask yourself what results that’s likely to get you... In all likelihood, these results will get you much closer to where you want to be. Now go out and start practicing thinking, feeling and behaving that way, and notice how much more effectively this brings you the results you want.

This is the basic principle behind the idea that Law of Attraction fans preach - that if you start living as if you already have it, you’ll attract the things you want into your life. I’ve said before that I don’t really buy into the whole Law of Attraction theory. For me, rather than believing that my thoughts literally attract things, this is one way that I can see how the “living as if” philosophy could be incredibly powerful in creating the results you want. Besides, “living as if” feels much better - and, at the end of the day, it’s not the material stuff or achievements that we want. It’s the good feelings right now that we all want. And you can have those anytime you want.

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.

Einstein's Answer to Life's Questions

We're all looking for answers to life's big questions... and of course life's little questions too. And so often, in our search for the answers, we tend to be very attached to the idea that there are a list of "right" answers, which can be applied in every situation - what to do to become successful, how to talk to your teenager, what to do to resolve a conflict, how leaders should behave, 7 steps to being happy, and much, much more. Wouldn't it be great if it really was that simple, if all we had to do is just learn a list of rules and apply the rules to every situation, to become happy and successful?! Wouldn't it be great if we only had to develop a marketing plan once, and we could then just roll it out from there, never having to come back and review our marketing strategy? Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could take a course or read a book on relationships and know that the answers we've read are the answers for all time?

Well, as much as we might delude ourselves with the idea that we can learn all the answers, if we just find the right book or course, life is too diverse, people and relationships are too unique, and the world is changing at too rapid a pace, for this to ever be a realistic expectation. I suspect that Einstein's views on "life's answers" are more realistic - and incredibly useful too.

Apparently one of Einstein's student assistants asked him, "Professor Einstein, what test are we giving the students this week?" Einstein replied, "The same test we gave them last week." Bewildered, the student assistant replied, "But Professor Einstein, we already gave them that test." Einstein patiently answered, "Yes, but the answers are different this week."

Einstein clearly understood the importance of life-long learning. People who understand life-long learning are more successful, because they keep reading, listening, watching, questioning and learning, and they keep evolving. They tend to also experience less conflict and more intimacy in their relationships - because they recognise that multiple perspectives exist, are more comfortable with uncertainty, and are less attached to their opinions being "THE RIGHT ANSWER."

Einstein is often considered the epitome of intelligence, for the contribution that his thinking made to the world of science - a world that's all about knowledge, certainty and predictability. The word "science" comes from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge" or "to know", and is described by Wikipedia as the effort to discover, and increase human understanding of how the physical world works. All scientific research is underpinned by the belief that there are rules and laws that govern our behaviour and the behaviour of our environment, and is an effort to discover and articulate these rules. This anecdote reveals an element of Einstein's success strategy - the contradiction of being able to pursue greater knowledge and understanding, whilst maintaining a loose attachment to certainty. Having a loose attachment to certainty is what opens the way to further discovery, creativity and evolution - what Rosamund and Ben Zander (co-authors of "The Art of Possibility") refer to as "living in possibility." Perhaps more importantly, since our beliefs play such a significant role in creating our emotions, having a loose attachment to certainty, and being able to change your beliefs, opens the way to emotional freedom.

So how can you practice living with a loose attachment to certainty, and experience greater creativity and emotional freedom?
1. If you're feeling bad, notice what your beliefs are about the situation you're feeling bad about. Write these down. For each belief, ask "Why?" a few times, to identify the underlying beliefs you're holding.
2. If you're feeling stuck and unsure how to solve a problem, notice what your beliefs are about the situation, and the possible solutions you've already generated. Write these down, and ask "Why?" to get your underlying beliefs.
3. Choose the belief that you feel is most getting in the way of you feeling the way you want to feel or solving the problem.
4. Question the belief, by asking, "Is it true?" Find examples of situations where your belief might be untrue. Find examples of other people who don't believe that particular belief, and get some of the results you're wanting in life. Ask yourself, "How would I know if this belief wasn't true?" Ask yourself, "Would I want someone else I love dearly to hold this belief?"
5. Notice: who would you be without this belief? How would you feel without this belief? How would you go about solving this problem if you didn't have this belief?
6. Brainstorm some other potential beliefs that you could hold instead. Start with stating the exact opposite to your current belief, then add any further ideas of ways you could adapt your previous belief, so that it's more useful. Finally, add examples of beliefs you think other people hold.
7. Evaluate each possible belief, and notice which of the new beliefs could be as true, or more true, than the previous belief you were holding. Choose to practice the new belief (or beliefs) that are both true and useful.
8. Keep reading, observing, and listening widely - this will give you exposure to evidence with which to keep evolving your thoughts and beliefs, so that they remain useful and support you to solve problems and experience emotional freedom.

What do you do, read, or listen to, to support your life-long learning, personally, and in your professional life?

Why less is more...

“If I didn’t care what people thought, I’d quit my job and open up a shoe shop” said Cindy, with a brief sparkle in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. As an intelligent and hard-working young woman, Cindy swiftly made her way up the corporate ladder. She comes from a long line of successful and wealthy doctors, lawyers and businessmen, and her family are very proud of her recent promotion to join her company’s Board of Directors at the young age of 34. But she’s never been particularly passionate about her work, and since her recent promotion, she’s really struggling to motivate herself at work, suffering from daily migraines, and finding herself fantasizing about quitting, and starting her own business. “If I can just think of something more... you know, important, to do... then I think I’ll be able to go out on my own. I just think that owning a shoe shop would seem really superficial. And I really should be putting my engineering degree to use. I’m thinking of doing an MBA so I can learn about running a business, and hopefully by then I’ll have come up with a better business idea.”

And then there’s Sipho: “All this ‘change your beliefs and you’ll change your life’ stuff sounds great - if your biggest problem is that they’re trying to get the courage to leave their comfortable, lucrative corporate job and start their own business. But is it really relevant for real problems, like the problems we have in South Africa - unemployment, crime, poverty..?” Sipho was resistant, even angry, about my prosaic suggestions that just changing your thinking could change your life. And understandably so - Sipho grew up in Nyanga, brought up by his grandmother while his parents migrated to Joburg in search of work. In spite of the lack of parental support, lack of study facilities, and the burden of parenting his two younger siblings and caring for his gran, he pushed his way through an under-resourced school system, and managed to get a job as a tele-consultant in a large corporate, making him the highest paid earner in his family for 3 generations. At 23 years old, he aspires to becoming a successful businessman and leader, but he feels held back by his lack of tertiary education, the financial burden of supporting his extended family, and the belief that perhaps he’s reached the ceiling of what’s possible for someone coming from his background.

At first glance, Cindy and Sipho seem worlds apart. When you look at their life circumstances, they’re certainly being presented with very different challenges. but when you look a little closer, you’ll find that they’re both being held back by the very same thing - their thoughts. And they both think that gaining further knowledge is the only route to their dreams. What they don’t realise is that, while furthering their education might be one useful step towards making their dreams a reality, the most important step they’ll both need to take is to let go of what they “know” - their current beliefs about their own identity and what’s possible for themselves. Knowledge is gained when ideas are added. Enlightenment is gained when ideas are dissolved.

Angelina Nofolovhodwe is one such enlightened South African woman. At the age of 43, she was an uneducated and unemployed mother of 7 children, living in rural Limpopo. She was virtually destitute, recently separated from her husband, and relying on relatives to support her family. Since she had only attained a grade 6 education and been a housewife and mother her whole adult life, she had very few job prospects. To even the most optimistic observer, her external circumstances would have seemed pretty dire. If you had met Angelina at this time and you were asked to suggest a big, yet achievable goal for Angelina, what would you suggest? Most people tell me that, if Angelina could just believe in herself and have a big vision, she could hope to start an informal business - a spaza, a creche, a sewing or beading business, or a small catering business. Some people suggest she could even take night classes and further her education so she could hopefully get some form of semi-skilled employment that might enable her to earn up to R4 000 a month.

Well let me tell you where Angelina is today. The Independent (17 Feb 2007) wrote that Angelina is “well on her way to becoming South Africa’s first self-made woman mining magnate.” She has 13 prospecting licenses to her name, mining gold, manganese and coal. She has offices in Sandton and regularly travels the world to negotiate with investors. She made all of this a reality in only 7 years... and she did it without furthering her formal education.

Angelina didn’t change her life by gaining more knowledge, she changed her life by removing any thoughts that could have separated her from her destiny. There are a lot of very rational and believable thoughts that could have held Angelina back - I know nothing about mining, mining is for men, mothers shouldn’t work, you have to have a formal education to get into prospecting, educated people will think I’m crazy... and much, much more. And that’s what a lot of other people thought. Ross Rankopole, Deputy Director of Mining Licenses in Limpopo Province was quoted as saying, “I thought she was crazy. You must understand, we deal with geologists and engineers. Then suddenly, there comes a woman who can’t express herself properly, and tells us she’s going to own a mine because that’s what she’s been told in a dream.” If Angelina had been attached to these seemingly reasonable, rational thoughts objecting to her dream to mine gold, she’d still be destitute in rural Limpopo. In her latest book, Steering by Starlight, Martha Beck writes about the way we keep ourselves in “mental dungeons” by being attached to our thoughts and beliefs, and how this gets in the way of us living our true destiny. She says, “To say that you can “find” your destiny is misleading because it never goes anywhere... you don’t have to learn your destiny - you already know it; you just have to unlearn the thoughts that blind you from what you know.”

The fact that you’re reading this blog means you’re probably not sitting in a hut in rural Limpopo, with 7 hungry children to feed and no source of income. But if you’re feeling a bit stuck in your job or relationships, or just have a sense that you’re not living the life you want, you can be sure that you’ve got some limiting thoughts that need dissolving. So here’s an exercise to help you find and dissolve the thoughts that are blinding you from what you know:

1. Think of an area of your life where you feel stuck or unhappy.
2. Ask yourself, “Why am I in this job/ relationship/ home, etc. What will it get me? And what will that get me? And what will that get me?" (ask, “And what will that get me?” a few times until you feel you’re at the thing that’s most important to you. Hint: it’s always a feeling)
3. Ask yourself, “Why do I believe that the actions I’m taking are the best, or only, way to get what I want in life?” What do I think is blocking me from taking another route to getting what’s important to me?” For each thought that you write down, ask yourself, “Why?” four or five times, until you get to a core belief.

You should now have a list of thoughts or beliefs that are blinding you from knowing your destiny or preventing you from creating what you really want in your life. Read what you’ve written and choose one of the thoughts that you feel elicits a strong emotional reaction in you - one that really gets you in touch with fear, anxiety or pain. Now it’s time to do the dissolving. Byron Katie, Martha Beck and Jamie Smart offer some powerful questions for dissolving your mental dungeons:

1. Ask yourself, “Is this thought true? Are there any circumstances where this thought would be untrue? How would you know if it wasn’t true?”
2. Ask yourself, “How do I react when I think this thought? How do I think, feel and behave when I think this thought? How does that impact on my relationships and my results?”
3. Ask yourself, “Do I know anyone else who seems to tell themselves a different story and yet gets the results I’d love to get? Is there anyone I know who provides an example or evidence that’s contrary to my current thoughts?”
4. Ask yourself, “Who would I be without this thought? How would I think, feel and behave without this thought? How would that impact on my relationships and my results?”
5. Turn the thought around. The thought you’ve been having is just a story you’ve been telling yourself. What story would be more useful? Ask yourself, “What story, or set of thoughts, would support me in creating the reality I want?”

I’ve often been asked by friends and family, who know me well (and see me fumbling with my own life!) how I know what to advise my clients about their lives. Well they’re right to be anxious about me giving advice to my clients. Having never experienced what most of my clients have been through, I usually have no idea what to advise them - which is why I rarely give advice. The coaching I do is less about giving people answers and adding to their knowledge and more about helping them become enlightened by identifying and dissolving the thoughts that are blinding them from the answers that have always been in front of them.

Basic Instinct? (written Mar 2008)

Do you remember that time when, as a young child, you came across an abandoned baby animal, and brought it home, asking your parents, “Can I keep it?” It might have been a little baby mouse or a tiny stray kitten, or maybe it was a baby bird with a slightly broken wing. Whatever the little creature was, it was small and vulnerable and you decided immediately that you’d rescue it and devote yourself to feeding and nurturing it to full strength and maturity.

Mine was a little baby bird that was teetering around in our back garden one afternoon. We looked everywhere for the mother bird, or at least a nest, but we found no sign of it’s maternal protector. In spite of advice from the adults that the bird had a better chance of survival if we left him in the garden, we became absorbed with the little bird’s needs, from food to shelter, warmth and comfort. We brought him inside and made a little bed out of tissues and fed him pronutro cereal. It turns out that our parenting skills left a lot to be desired and I was devastated when we found the little guy on his back with his feet in the air a few days later.

The adults were right - we should have left him where we found him. What we didn’t understand at the time was that, unlike humans, many animals are born with something called instinct. Instinct is pre-programmed knowledge of essential things like what to eat and what not to eat, and how to find food, get warm, hide from predators, and run from smoke or fire. So there probably was a better chance our little bird would have survived if we’d left him out in the garden, because of instinct.

Humans aren’t born with this sort of instinct. We’re born totally dependent on the adults of our species for survival. We need the adults to tell us what we can and can’t put in our mouths and what is and isn’t safe to do. We need them to teach us not to touch hot things or stick our fingers in dangerous places or pull the grumpy cat’s fur. Think about it - for the first few years of our lives, our survival depends on the care and guidance of the adults of our species. We basically just observe intensely and soak up everything we see, hear and experience. We don’t really have the cognitive capacity, skills, experience or knowledge to challenge the ideas that are being modeled to us. Psychologists believe that it’s only around the age of 6 or 7 years that a child‘s ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality is fully developed. So, in our early years, we tend to take everything adults say literally, and often don’t realise that the well-meaning adults might be using metaphors or giving us a context-specific rule.We don’t realise that the adults themselves might sometimes be speaking from a place of ignorance, fear, anger or misperception, so we accept everything they say.

As a result, we often form limiting beliefs that endure as we mature into adulthood, and act as a lid on our potential. Because these beliefs were formed whilst we were still too young to know any better, and before we had developed all the knowledge and skills that we have now, they’re often based on faulty, inaccurate information or generalisations, yet they continue to have enormous power over the way we feel and behave. Think about the “catch phrases” you grew up on. You may have heard some of these, and more:

“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“You’re the older brother, so you should know better and be more responsible”
“You can’t have everything you want”
“Don’t be selfish”
“After play-play comes cry-cry”
“You have to work hard for the good things in life”
“Big boys don’t cry...”

What impact have these sorts of phrases had on your current outlook on life, and what you believe is possible for yourself? If you want to clean out your limiting beliefs and lift the lid on your potential, here are a few steps to follow:

1. Start a dream list: Start keeping a list of things you’d love to be, have and do in your lifetime, if you had all the necessary money, time, skills and support.
2. Identify your limiting beliefs: As you write your dream list, become aware of your self-talk. If you notice anything along the lines of, “Yeah right, you’ll never be able to do that...” then write this down on another piece of paper titled “limiting beliefs.” Read through the list and just smile and say, “Isn’t that interesting?
3. Decide what you want to believe: Read through your dream list again and ask yourself, “What would I believe if all of these things became a reality?” Write down these beliefs.
4. Start thinking like you’ll think when you’ve achieved your goals: Your current thinking is what’s creating your current results. If you want to change your results, you’re going to have to change your thinking - especially your limiting beliefs. Your old, limiting beliefs were formed through repeated exposure to limiting ideas. If you want to add new beliefs, use the same method. Read your list of new beliefs everyday, until they become as natural and automatic as your old beliefs were.

As humans, we might not be born with the same type of survival instinct as animals are, but this doesn’t mean our minds are inferior. Animals’ minds are like calculators - they arrive in the world with a pre-programmed set of functions or thinking patterns, and they leave with the same. Our minds are like computers - we can upgrade the “software” and continuously improve our thinking and the results we create. When last did you upgrade your software?