It’s Easy! Isn't It?

Like many of you I’m working hard on my own personal development and at times coming up a tad short. That’s really what this blog is all about; “Personal Development for those that need training wheels.” Yup, there’s someone else out there stumbling and fumbling towards life’s goal line. I’ve discovered that after 59 years of being Bill and 30 years of being Bill in the restaurant industry I’ve developed a rather cynical, Murphy’s Law sort of “World View.” Throw in a couple of tough demanding parents and an amazing ability to over analyze everything I do and “Walla” you’ve got an individual that’s become very focused on what’s wrong, what’s missing and highly critical of himself. Of course that only compounds things and before you know it you’re in a downward spiral. Well, thank God I have a sense of humor! Thank God I’m able to laugh at myself when I look in the mirror, because without my daily chuckles and personal discussions with myself, I could really be in trouble!

One of the things I really enjoy is reading, both for pleasure and to educate myself and help me understand "Bill" a little better. Of all the really great books I’ve read, one that really stands out and I’m actually reading it for the third time right now is “The Laws of Attraction” The basics of the teachings of Abraham. Now what’s amazing to me is this is a book written by Esther and Jerry Hicks dealing with a non-physical intelligence called Abraham discussing the Laws of Attraction. Now remember I’m an analytical somewhat cynical character and if anything is going to get me on “The Skeptic Train” it would be this book right? Well actually the answer is “Wrong.” When I warily started reading the book, expecting to go “Aha, that’s a bunch of baloney and whistling the theme from the Twilight Zone,” I actually found that everything they discussed made absolute sense to me. I could not find one thing that they were teaching that didn’t satisfy my analytical senses and fulfill my need to be logical and practical. This particular book, in my case, had really gotten my attention and I was riveted to what it was telling me. I absolutely believed what they were teaching, which when boiled down to its simplest terms said, “You get what you focus on.” If you focused on your lack of anything or the things you didn’t want in your life you got more of it. However, if you focused on your goals and dreams and allowed nothing to come between you and your belief in their inevitability you would be successful. Now here’s what vexed me.

If I believe with all my soul that this is a magnificent universe in which everything vibrates and if I’m convinced how you feel and what you’re focused on will eventually be yours, both wanted and unwanted. AND, if I believe that the Law of Attraction works whether you believe in it or not, why then was I still spending so much of my time entwined with my negative dance partner, my limiting beliefs? Imagine my feelings this morning as I read the following passage: Once you have recognized that thinking of what you don’t want only attracts more of what you do not want into your experience, controlling your thoughts will not be a difficult thing, because your desire to do so will be very strong. Well, I’m analytical so I said to myself, “Easy for you maybe, but changing fifty nine years of habits and negative thought patterns is actually quite difficult!” Noooooo! Of course in saying that very thing I just made it a little more difficult because we get what we’re focused on. How can I keep doing this to myself? I believe you get what you focus on and yet every time I turn around I’m thinking about; “Living alone, or some driver that cut me off, or my lack of personal success, or where’d did this bill come from, and damn those telemarketing calls!” So what happens? Why I get showered with crazy bug eyed lunatic drivers each and every day, the only phone calls I get are telemarketers, not even real people but those little techno voices and my mailman comes to my front door and hands me a stack of bills because he can’t fit them in my mail box. Now I ask you, why would any sensible person do this to themselves, especially if they understood what was going on? Answer; I’m a work in progress and all the trials and tribulations that I’m going through now are valuable lessons on the road to achieving my dreams and actually evidence that I’m working on changing how I look at things right now.

So I start each day anew and give it the best I have. I quit being so darn critical of myself and I quit worrying about what others think. They can’t create in my life, only I can. I spend 45 minutes a day reading, meditating and going through my affirmations. By doing this it gets me into a better frame of mind each and every day. I spend my entire day looking for the positive things that are presented to me and I cease giving energy to what annoys me. Surprise, surprise, you slowly but surely start seeing more and more things that are positive and you begin to start counting your blessings. I've become more sensitive to how I feel inside and in so doing, I begin catching myself miscreating and focusing on my lack or on things I don’t want. In the beginning it happens a lot. But that’s actually healthy and the first step towards learning to think in terms of what you DO want and creating a positive and abundant life. Finally, I realize that all the analyzing, thinking of past mistakes, and finger pointing has gotten me exactly where I am today in my life. Why not try a different way of being? Why not take what I’ve learned, what I know and just run with it. My analytical mind tells me that the odds are, it’s the key to a happy abundant life.