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The bottom line: visualization is a powerful tool used by world-class achievers across every field. It doesn’t matter what college you went to or how privileged you are. Those who truly know what they want outperform everyone else by miles.
I want you to practice visualization whenever possible: in the morning when you first wake up, to bring direction to your day; throughout the course of your day, to bring awareness to your immediate actions, no matter how small or inconsequential they may seem; and before you go to sleep, to reflect on your day and refocus for the next. Your imagination can create fear and limitation, but it can also break right through it. Start using it to your advantage to create a new, positive reality.
CHAPTER THREE
SAY A LITTLE PRAYER
(That’s Right, I Said Prayer!)
Okay, get ready, because this is the most controversial part of the book. If we’re talking about realizing your dreams, there is something we MUST cover, and that’s the power of prayer. If that word gives you the jitters or hives, or just makes you a tad uncomfy, you can call it meditation, manifesting your reality, wishing on a star—call it whatever you need to get through this chapter. They all basically mean the same thing. They’re all about the act of concentrating on a hope and tapping into a source of energy bigger than yourself to turn that hope into a reality.
People who write self-help books tend to pussyfoot around this issue, not wanting to use religious terminology for fear of turning readers off or upsetting the masses. As you probably know, I’m not one to pussyfoot, so before we go on, I need you to jettison any stigma that you may or may not have attached to words like God/universe, spiritual, prayer, and so on, because what I’m about to share with you is absolutely critical to your success. And I’m going to be using those words. Whether you’re a believer or not—and I use the word believer as loosely as possible—there is no denying the power of our minds. Whether we’re talking about praying, meditating, or simply focusing on a goal, scientific proof shows that what we think and believe have a huge effect on our reality.
Proof Positive: Scientific Studies of Mind and Spirituality
The past fifteen years have seen great and growing interest in researching the power and efficacy of prayers, meditation, and mindfulness. Many of these studies raise more questions than they answer, since the unquantifiable nature of spiritual phenomena (such as prayer, compassion, and meditation) presents a challenge to traditional scientific methodology. But the more studies that are done, the more scientists are realizing that valuable insight can be gained from the power of the unseen over the seen, of what we traditionally think of as the unreal over the real.
One of the most fascinating and controversial topics in this field is the power of praying on behalf of other people. The past ten years especially have seen an explosion in the number of studies done in this area—more than six thousand! David R. Hodge, of the College of Human Services at Arizona State University, conducted a comprehensive analysis of a number of these studies, and in 2007 he concluded that, with all variables taken into account, sick people who were being prayed for tended to have better recovery rates than sick people who were not being prayed for. In other words, prayer has been proven to be effective in creating very real positive outcomes.*
Okay, next up: the power of meditation. This one is tough because meditation is even more unquantifiable than prayer. But slowly scientists are opening their minds to the idea that intense meditative training can have all sorts of powerful positive effects on your physical and emotional well-being, and consequently your life as a whole. The studies are ongoing, but so far the research indicates that focused meditation can at the very least have profound effects on our brain chemistry, enabling us to increase positive emotions such as compassion and forgiveness simply by harnessing our minds.*
A truly weird but amazing study on the power of the mind comes from Japan. Dr. Masaru Emoto, author of The Hidden Messages in Water, wanted to see if anything happened to water at a fundamental physical level, when various mental and verbal forces “acted” on it. He exposed water to blessings, anger, love, hate, and a whole range of human emotions and expressions. After exposing each container of water to the different forces, he froze the water and photographed the crystals. The crystals from the water that had been exposed to love and blessings were consistently and noticeably more beautiful than those from the water exposed to negativity. He has also shown that the same effect can work across vast distances.†
None of the above prove the existence of a god out there or the absolute quantifiable power of this stuff. But it does prove beyond a doubt that what goes on in our heads is strongly connected to what goes on in the world around us.
* “Does God Answer Prayer? Researcher Says ‘Yes’,” Science Daily (March 15, 2007), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070314195638.htm.
* David Biello, “Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate,” Scientific American (March 26, 2008), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=meditate-on-this-you-can-learn-to-be-more-compassionate.
† From the film What the Bleep Do We Know!? (www.whatthebleep.com).
I’m not asking you to abandon your beliefs—don’t worry, this chapter doesn’t come with a side of Kool-Aid. But you need to be able to expand upon them, question them, and open yourself up a little to the things I’m going to tell you and to the concepts we’ll be exploring. I’m asking you to keep enough of an open mind that you can take this next step with me. Revered philosopher and spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said, “Truth is a thing that is living, and to a living thing there is no path—it is only to dead things that there can be a path. Truth being pathless, to discover it you must be adventurous, ready for danger.” Often we are frightened and search for a path to reality and truth as a means of security via an organization, a belief, or a guru. But to do that is like being a blind man clinging to a wall, ultimately closing you off to all possibilities, including the very thing you were searching for in the first place.
Upending yourself in this way may disorient you a bit in the moment, but if you are strong enough to endure this loss of bearings, the end result will yield limitless hope and potential. And what have you got to lose, anyway? If your life were perfect, would you be reading this book right now? So relax, don’t be uptight, and go with it.
Let’s start with something fun: we’ll take a stab at defining the common essence of religion, subatomic physics, psychology, biology, and neuroscience. (What the hell, someone’s gotta do it, right?) Okay, so I may not be able to unite spirituality and science definitively once and for all—I’m ambitious, but not delusional—but I do know there’s a link between them. Ultimately, of course, I can only speak to what I have studied and to how this holistic, integrated approach to understanding the world has changed my life and helps me to change others’ lives every day.
I’m probably one of the most spiritual people you’ll ever meet. Yes, I curse a lot, and I’m tough as nails, but I am also spiritual. And although I am close to “God,” science is at the root of my spirituality. Let me explain.
I believe that everything in the universe is made up of energy and information, including you, your emotions, and your belief systems. Your body, your being, is no different in its makeup from the body of the universe, of God, or (insert whatever vernacular you prefer). The universe is clearly purposeful, with an intelligence supporting its creation and continuing evolution, and we are pieces of this intelligence by virtue of having emerged from it. The energy that you are focusing on this page right now is exactly the same as the energy that created and sustains our world. At an even more literal level, according to astrophysics, the atoms in our bodies once belonged to stars far away in time and space. In every way, you are the universe, and the universe is you.
Am I getting too New Age kooky for you? Just chill out and bear with me. No one ever died from an open mind. Your thoughts and intentions, the things you focus on and hold in your
mind, trigger a transmission of energy and information out into the world. By choosing to change the energy and information within your own body and mind, you can literally change the energy and information you send to the world around you. In doing so, you can eventually cause things to change in your favor.
Your journey to a purposeful and inspired life begins when you acknowledge the primordial creative power within you—the godliness—and then harness that power to achieve the results you desire.
GETTING WHAT YOU WANT:
(SOME OF) THE SCIENCE
If you’re getting a little twitchy at the mention of God, we can actually throw that word out of the equation altogether if you need to. The fact is, faith and spirituality have positive effects on us physically and emotionally via our biochemistry alone—no god about it.
Mind-body medicine has become so widely accepted, it’s difficult to remember when it was considered one step up from mumbo-jumbo witch-doctoring. It’s even got a fancy name: psychoneuroimmunology or PNI. It’s the study of how your thoughts (that’s the psycho part) affect the chemicals in your brain (neuro) and the hormones that fight disease (immunology).
But the mind-body connection goes far beyond disease—it relates just as much to our mood, our overall wellness, our outlook on life, and ultimately, whether we get what we want out of that life. What it boils down to is this: nonphysical things, like our thoughts, emotions, and moods, affect our bodies on a cellular level. Anger, fear, joy, love—each has very specific effects on our physiology. Being happy and fulfilled is healthier than being frustrated and miserable. So by sending out wishful vibes (read: dreams), you are actually preconditioning your body to experience the results you desire through your hormones and body chemistry. If you have trouble with the idea of a higher power, or supporting intelligence, you can say that prayer, or sending your hopes out into the physical world around you, is useful because of its benefits to your biochemistry.
We can take this mind-body connection still further and apply it to psychology. You may think your thoughts are just your thoughts, that they’re inside your head and that’s where they end. Dead wrong.
The way you think, even in the deepest part of your subconscious, affects your behavior in ways you can’t see. Your behavior in turn shapes your reality, again in ways you often aren’t aware of. Being as simplistic as possible, you could say that positive thinking makes us act in positive ways, setting in motion a chain reaction that turns a situation’s outcome our way. We will get into this in more detail later in this chapter, but for now let’s just think about this idea for a minute. If there’s something you want, and you believe you can achieve it, you will automatically conduct yourself more assertively and confidently. You’ll feel successful, even if you haven’t achieved it yet. You might speak up in a meeting at work, get noticed by your boss, and get that promotion. You might strike up a conversation with that guy or girl at the dinner party, and he or she might ask you out. Get the idea?
The things you think, in general and especially about yourself, form the basis of your every action, large and small. Feeling strong and confident frees you to take the powerful actions needed to get powerful results.
Now, let’s go a little further out on that limb—in fact, as far as we can go: geek out with me as we delve into quantum mechanics. (Don’t get scared, this will be simple.) Quantum mechanics deals with the nature of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic levels. Remember at the beginning of this chapter I said we’re all made up of the exact same energy as everything else in the universe? What I was getting at was the belief among quantum physicists that everything is made up of strings of energy. Atoms, once considered solid matter, are now known to be composed of pulsating energetic vibrations.
Since everything in the universe is made up of atoms, that makes us all one. Not in a “Kumbaya,” let’s-all-hold-hands sense but in a literal subatomic-composition sense. We each emit our own unique energy, what quantum folks call vibrational frequency. It is a specific wavelength of energy that changes according to our will and consciousness.
Because all of us and everything in the entire universe are connected by energy and information, when you hurt, it hurts. Literally. When you are happy, the vibration of the universe rises a little. Okay, maybe very very little—you’re not going to have parades thrown in your honor around the world if you get that raise; after all you’re one person, and the universe is, well, the universe. But that doesn’t make it any less important for every single one of us to find the joy and meaning in our lives. This goes back to my point about the absurdity of thinking it is selfish to follow your dreams or to want to create happiness for yourself.
When you look at it from a quantum physics perspective, you actually owe it to yourself, to everyone you know, and yes, to the universe, to find your purpose in life, so that you can find your optimum “frequency,” and contribute to the harmony of the big picture.
If quantum mechanics is too much for you to take, think about this. We can’t see atoms, right? But we all know the power harnessed within them. Look at the atom bomb! Well, we’re made up of millions of those little suckers. That’s a hell of a lot of energy. You just have to choose to harness that energy to work for you, rather than against you.
No matter how you come at it, the undeniable truth is that your energy and consciousness determine the outcomes you will experience, and ultimately the life you build. What seems like magic to some is actually the workings of the energetic world. What some wonder at as mystery, others see as the expression of scientific patterns. Either way, you are a force, and by taking control of the cosmic power we all contain, you are tapping into a source of infinite abundance, accessing all the insight and power you need to achieve everything you want. (Yes, I’m still going to talk like this even after the physics. Get over it, this stuff works!)
GETTING WHAT YOU WANT:
THE TECHNIQUE
So how do you harness all this power for your benefit?
By broadcasting a message that is in alignment with your greatest hopes and desires.
Even in your sleep you’re sending and receiving energy. In our daily lives television, radio, phone, and satellite signals pelt us from every direction; if we have the right receiver apparatus, we are able to interpret them. Well, you’re kind of like one of those satellites, picking up signals from others and projecting ones of your own into the world around you. Whether you realize it or not, your life is a direct result of your personal energy field. The good news is that if you don’t like what’s coming in, you are free to change the energy and information you’re sending out.
It’s all well and good to talk about broadcasting your desires, but you have to do it in a very specific way. You attract what you feel, not what you “ask for,” so it’s imperative that you come from a place of abundance and peace rather than deprivation or fear. It works something like this: the energy we emit is electromagnetic (magnetic being the key part) and driven by our emotions, which affect our biochemistry and our atomic makeup and thus play a huge part in what we communicate to the world.
Think of it like throwing a boomerang (if anyone actually knows how to do that): whatever you think and feel comes back to you. And thus the word karma. So if you’re going to broadcast your desires, you have to come from a place of have instead of have not.
Whether you want true love, a sports car, or a successful new career, you can’t ask for anything if you’re focused on your lack of it, because that’s what you will invite into your life: lack. Instead, think about what it would feel like to already have what you want. Imagine you have already found your soul mate, bought that Porsche, or started that home business. Use those powers of visualization we talked about in Chapter 2, really feel the happiness and contentment that you imagine your success will bring you. This way you send a message of affluence and comfort out into the world and invite the same to come back to you. These powerful prayers from positive emotions will establish the first connec
tion between your dreams and your reality.
Let me give you a couple of examples of how this can translate to real life. Say you want a promotion. Don’t be jealous of your successful coworkers, because you will be sending the subconscious message that you are less than they are. Instead, focus on yourself and how you can advance in your career by using your passion and drive to get better at your job.
If you want to meet your true love, don’t focus on wanting someone to take away your loneliness or make you feel less unloved. Instead think about everything you have to offer the right person, and imagine the beautiful, productive relationship you will have, which is what you will project and attract.
If you want to be healthy, don’t think to yourself, I don’t want to get sick, because that message focuses on sickness. Instead think of feeling strong and joyful and vibrant; your appreciation will put positive, deserving energy out into the world.
If you can desire it, the universe can produce it. Think about it: all this great stuff is happening out there. People are falling in love, making money, and enjoying great health and deep fulfillment. So these things exist—and it’s time they existed for you. I know this chapter has gotten a little “out there” for some of you, but I’m trying to help you recognize the flow of abundance in the universe so that you can tap in to it, allow it to rush into your life. Oprah allows it. Derek Jeter allows it. Mick Jagger allows it. I allow it. Name anyone you admire—he or she allows it. Are you going to tap in to it, too?
Now, here I must slap you back to reality a little. I cannot be emphatic enough on the following point: you MUST bring action to your aspirations and intentions. Prayer and meditation and everything I’ve talked about are powerful, effective, passive methods, but if you don’t do the work, if you don’t take precise, methodical action to make your dreams a reality, they most likely will never materialize.