Tips and Techniques For Manifesting A Purposeful Life
Let’s dive right into this.
You are sidetracked. You can’t seem to get your mind to follow through with your affirmations, visualizations and focused intention. You are struggling and fighting your old habits and patterns. You are frustrated and do not know where to turn. You know you are meant for more than the life you are living.
Manifesting is not “one size fits all,” but there are a few very important techniques that you must know in order to make it work for you. Your life is as individual as your fingerprint. Being rich, having the relationship that you want, improving your health or attaining a career that you love all come from being in alignment with your purpose and building a strong self-image.
You first must ask yourself the question, “Who am I living my life for?” If your life is centered around what your friends and family expect of you or what they approve of, you are most likely not living a life you love. Living the life that you really want to live is often like coming out of the closet. It means that you are standing proudly in the truth of who you are. There are, of course, growing pains that go along with living the life you love. Some people who matter to you will not agree with your choices. Showing up and standing up for yourself requires a strong sense of purposeful intent. This will keep you focused when you’re wobbling.
What’s Your Purpose — What is Your Dream?
Before you can wade into the waters of a purposeful life, you must know your purpose. If you don’t know what your purpose is, then you need to discover what you are here to do. You’ll find your purpose right inside of you. It is the dream you dream, the voice that beckons you to take risks, to do things that make you feel power surge from within. That feeling points you to your purpose. Once you know what you are here to do, what you are meant to express, and how you will be of service to others, worrying about what others think of you fades.
Caring about what others think gives away your power — plain and simple.
When I first arrived in Berkeley, I visited a local coffeehouse near Sather Gate. The barista was a young student named Dennis. Something about him seemed familiar to me, and I connected with him immediately. I struck up a conversation by asking him if he was attending UC Berkeley and, if so, what he was studying. He told me that he was studying biology, but that he wasn’t sure he would be able to stay at Berkeley. His parents were insisting that he finish a degree for which he had no passion. He hated his classes and was losing his motivation.
“What are you passionate about?” I asked him.
“Social sciences,” he answered. “I want to make a difference in society, in the lives of others.” He told me that his parents had threatened to cut him off financially if he refused to follow their rules. He was not driven by excessive money or the desire to “get more stuff.” Instead, Dennis was passionately driven to find a way to contribute to making society a better place. That feeling was palpable — he was excited. His desire made his heart sing. He knew that the money would follow; he just needed a road map to pursuing social science.
“Study social science,” I told Dennis. “If it is your passion, you will find a way to make it work. Sure, you will disappoint your parents, but this decision is the difference between living a life that you love or living a life that you despise. Moreover, the decision to pursue your inner purpose will lead you to live a life that is fulfilling and passionate, and it will be yours.”
Our conversation lasted only 20 minutes.
Two months later, I ran into Dennis at the same coffee house. As I ordered my coffee, he interrupted, “This is on the house. I want you to know that you changed my life, and although it’s only a cup of coffee, I want to say thank you.”
I did not change his life — he did. I simply gave Dennis permission to follow his purpose. Not surprisingly, his parents did not approve of his decision at first. However, when they saw that he firmly intended to pursue his purpose, they eventually agreed to pay for all of his necessary living expenses — but not for his degree. Fair enough. If freedom to pursue his dream came at a cost, it was certainly a cost worth bearing.
Understanding and Trusting the Process
“You must first understand the process and then trust that process, because it is a process. “ My mentor instilled this into me ad infinitum.
Three factors determine success, failure or only achieving a portion of what you want. They are, in this order:
- Knowing your purpose
- Having passion and willingness
- You control timing
Knowing your purpose.
No one else can tell you what your purpose is. Only you know it intimately because it is the thing that makes your “heart sing,” as Steve Jobs once said.
Passion and willingness
These are the driving forces behind achieving anything. If you are passionate, you will be willing to take action because you are possessed by passion. Passion and willingness go hand in hand. If you are not passionate, you are not willing. Likewise, if you are not willing, you are not passionate.
Timing
Timing is not everything. Timing is man-made. It’s merely a measuring tool. The end result — the timing — is created by you. Only when you let go of your truckload of accumulated shit (that is composed of the ideas and beliefs that are keeping you from your purpose) will things miraculously come together.
After years of experience in working with clients, I have come to recognize a pattern. Clients will have a consultation with me, then two months later call to tell me, “Nothing is happening. All the things we discussed are not coming to fruition,” as if their life was my responsibility. My questions to them, and to you, are:
What have you done to change your life? Have you let go of your animosity, jealousy, hatred, and blame? Have you forgiven yourself, or another? Have you acquired any new skills? Have you begun to change your negative thinking? Have you worked on improving your self-image? When you change, everything changes.
Clients who have called me, unhappy that nothing has changed, were still energetically in a state of mind that was attracting the same unhappy circumstances they had been in just a few months earlier.
Lovers don’t come back to you if you are still the same jealous, controlling, unbending, emotionally out of control person.
You will continue to be held back from promotion and fired from jobs when you do not respect yourself or others.
You will continue to struggle with money if you continue to see yourself as lacking, or that you’re not deserving, or if you still view money as the root of all evil.
You will not feel healthy or you will not heal your body if you continue to see yourself as sick.
You will not live a life of purpose when you continually search outside of yourself for what is very intimately within you and meant only for you.
Timing responds to you and your energy. When you change your energy and your state of mind, you are living in the state of being that which you desire. You have cleaned out the proverbial closets of your mind, heart and soul, dusting off your fears, facing them, tossing them in the trash, and then, last but not least, recognizing that obstacles are opportunities for you to grow. Only then will you see results.
The Process
My mentor taught me the following process during a most stressful time. The market had crashed hard in 2008. Investors had money, but it appeared that none were willing to invest any of it. A developer needed $150 million to build Rincon Tower One at the base of the Bay Bridge. My mentor told me that he would have the money within two weeks.
That evening at dinner, I asked him where he thought he would find the $150 million. He revealed his secret. “I am going to turn it over to my subconscious mind before I go to sleep tonight,” he told me. “When I wake, I will have the answer, or it will come to me during the day.”
This was not a foreign concept to me, but I was astonished to think that a man this powerful would use such a simple technique. And use it he did! He relied upon it, trusted it, allowed it and was ultimately a master of it.
He knew that his subconscious mind had a process, and that, if the answer was not in the forefront of his mind in the morning, it would be within three days. “Trust the process,” he said, “because it is a process.” He emphatically and gruffly stressed that it is a process and it must be trusted.
To trust the process, you must have an unshakeable self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is possessing a confidence that reflects your inner ability to exert control over your mind, your emotions, your behavior and, ultimately, control your environment.
In one week, my mentor had funded the $150 million that built Rincon One Tower. He was known as “the magic man that could pull rabbits out of hats.” He never doubted his ability to direct the energy using his subconscious mind, and he never doubted the process.
Building A Strong Sense of Self
The most important component that will get you to your end goal is believing in yourself with a good dose of self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-image. It’s all about SELF.
Make no mistake — self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-image must be constructed. Whether these concepts were instilled into you as a child or not, you have the opportunity to build them now. They make up the secret sauce that is responsible for manifesting a successful, happy, life, whatever that may look like to you.
In past blog posts, I have detailed about how our neural networks are wired together and how they fire together. These networks determine your choices, how you perceive reality and much more. The beauty of the brain is that it is plastic. It is malleable and pliable and loves to work and change. It loves to be challenged with new things.
Your brain is a computing system. Its job is to make sense out of chaos. Your outer world is constructed by your brain based on what you already know. The brain makes sense of the similarities it experiences. This is why you keep having the same relationship and career issues, money challenges, and health problems. You’re wired for it.
How much of this SELF you possess is going to determine if you succeed, fail or only get a portion of what you desire. When you are loaded with self-esteem, you are acutely self aware and are connected to your inner voice. You learn that NO means “Next Opportunity.” You follow your passion with a vengeance. You trust that the doors will open. They must open because you know and trust the process.
Building Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy and Self-Image Means Unwiring Old Habits
The trick to this is simple: you must undo what has already been done. You must get your subconscious mind to accept and agree to wire new habits and behaviors. New habits and behaviors create a new reality. This is very empowering. It means that you can consciously shift your beliefs and change your reality.
The subconscious mind does not reason. Your conscious mind does all of the reasoning and argues with you. Your subconscious mind believes what you tell it. It communicates through feeling. What you feel and reinforce through feeling, it believes. Feeling is the secret to having what you want. Feelings are cultivated in manifesting what you want, including self-image, self- esteem and self-efficacy.
Be patient with yourself when you are building your self-image, self-esteem and self-efficacy. Below are a few techniques we use to manifest:
- Music: The perfect music will put you in the right mood quickly. Find music that relaxes you, motivates you or invokes a feeling you desire, whatever that feeling is.
- Exercise: Your body will release hormones when you begin to move it and exercise. Dance, run, walk, lift weights, ride a bike, do whatever you love, but get moving. Hormones like dopamine make us feel good. When we feel good,we believe that we can achieve anything we desire.
- Meditate: Relaxing your mind and body creates a state of being that is receptive to what you want to feed into your subconscious mind. Remember, you are rewiring your neural networks. You want to create a mood, a state of mind, that feels like you already have what you want and that you already are that which you desire. This practice can be done in the morning and evening as well as whenever your mind is in a theta state.
When you are feeling good, ask yourself these questions:
What would it feel like to have and/or to achieve the things that I want?
What would I be doing?
What would I hear someone say to me?
Where would I be?
What would it feel like to be, to do and to have this life?
Then, drop it into your subconscious mind by cultivating the desirable feelings. A desirable state of mind and effects will follow without effort.
Effort should be used to direct your thoughts, feelings, emotions and states. If you find yourself becoming a victim to your old habits, you are not taking care of your mind. It will feel a lot like babysitting a child. You’ll be fidgety, you’ll squirm, you’ll feel frustrated, doubtful and want to give up. Don’t give up! These feelings are a sign that success is right around the corner. Persevere. Remember, you are only competing with yourself.
Focus your mind on your state by cultivating it and LIVE IN THAT STATE. Make it stronger and stronger. Your outer world will provide you feedback, but persist anyway. Within 14 to 21 days, you will see the magic of self-esteem, self-image and self-efficacy kick in.
No matter how many times the world says NO, you KNOW you’ll find your YES. What you feel you can achieve and what you feel you deserve will be the result.
Life, your perceived experience, is always giving you the feedback of your mind.
What Authentic Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy and Self-Image Look Like
Authentic self-esteem is being willing to say yes and then identify with what you want. That means changing your habits. It means remaining in the state of having, even when the odds are stacked against you, and your outer world screams, “you’re dreaming, kid.” It means BEING THAT WHICH YOU DESIRE. Not acting, not forcing, not craving the outer world see you as that, but BEING IT. Being that makes you the embodiment of that person and of the life you want. When you embody this state, you easily do the things that say yes to your desire, with the passion and willingness to make it happen.
You can have what you want.
How Badly Do You Want It?
You have to want it badly enough to make the change. How badly do you want to live in a world that will give you exactly what you want? Your answer will determine the outcome.
You and your life are inseparably linked. Your mind is cause, your reality is effect. Your mind creates reality and then it sustains it — until you change your mind.
Excuses are a sign that you are blocking what you want. Ask yourself how badly you want it. If you want it badly enough, you will find a way. There is always a way. You can design your life around your family, kids, wealth, health, career, travel and make it exactly what you want.
Remember that you are dealing with substances of your own mind, and so changes must be done in the mind — your feelings, mental images, assumptions and expectations all must change. If you want it badly enough, it will be yours.
When you cannot change a situation, change yourself. Change your mind, change your perception, change your behavior. But by all means, change.
Do not give up, and do not quit. Push your limits and remember where you want to be now. Keep going and trust the process, because it is a process.
