What is the cure for resistance? It’s all about making a clear decision to change, and then sticking to that decision. If you are like me, though, you have made decisions to change many times and given up on them. So how do you make sure that change sticks?

Most people are operating under the false impression that change is a superficial thing, that to change they simply adopt some behavior and add it on top of everything else they do. This assumption is based on a misunderstanding of change at a base level. In order to understand what change really is you first have to look at the self. The self is what you are changing, after all.

So what is the self? If you really explore the subject, you find that our sense of self is made up of conditioning. Our self is nothing but a mental construct, a collection of notions, habits, and patterns about who we are. So to change our life we have to actually change the structure of our self…we have to give up that old pattern, completely let it go and form a new sense of self that includes the new habit. For instance, we don’t just give up the physical action of smoking to stop the habit. We give up the identification with being a smoker, we give up our self as a smoker…then stopping is easy.

Changing habits is all about adopting a sense of self that the desired habit fits with. Tony Robbins says it beautifully with, “The most powerful force in the human psychology is the need to remain consistent with how we define ourselves”. We have to change how we define ourselves a fundamental level, and the habits that fit that identity naturally become our own. To change a habit, we have to change ourselves.

Why do we do it? When nearly everyone else is operating reactively, that becomes the paradigm that is programmed into us all through our lives. Everywhere we go and everyone we talk to re-enforces the idea that reaction is the appropriate way of dealing with life. The idea never crosses our minds to act differently because we take it for granted that reactionary living is normal. It is normal, but by no means is it optimal.

Most people are following the programming their parents gave them. It doesn’t stop there, though. They are operating based on conditioning that has been passed on for generations, going back hundreds if not thousands of years. So not only are they living in a reactionary way, they are reacting to a world that no longer exists. Think about when someone is in a situation where they don’t have enough money. Most people would look at that situation and decide to cut back on spending. Why? Because that’s what you do when money is short if you live in medieval times. You could very well die of starvation back then. But that decision is the worst possible thing someone can do in our modern world. Instead of cutting back on spending, make more money! It’s just a matter of deciding to move forward instead of back. The normal reaction in most instances will lead back into perceived safety and powerlessness. That is madness!

The shift in perspective that I am pointing at in this series is about moving from that feeling based processing style to one based on ideas. When a person acts from ideas, they form a clear image of what they want and then consistently put in the effort to move that image into the subconscious mind, which is the feeling mind. Put simply, the shift is about learning how to act based on your thoughts and dreams rather than your impulses and feelings.

How does someone act on their thoughts and dreams without the subconscious fear constantly setting them back? The simple answer is any and every way possible. We are attempting to re-program thousands of years of very deep conditioning. This is why it is a high price to pay to enjoy abundance.

In a future article, I will explore the idea of acting on your dreams in more depth and give some practical tools for making the shift. It is a radical shift to make, and astonishing as you begin to notice the changes it makes in all areas of your life.

Success in anything comes from acting off of your dreams rather than acting off of your present reality.

That sounds pretty simple, but applying it is quite a task indeed. It means reconditioning your entire sense of self to operate at a higher vibration. It is such a massive shift in perspective that for most people the price is too high. This is why people buy a book, listen to a program, attend a seminar, etc but still don’t follow through. The follow through is just too much work. So, the question to ask yourself is, “Is the price I will pay in effort worth the reward of abundance”?

If you are willing to pay the price in effort, I will show you exactly what you need to do to make it happen. It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. But it will happen.

The next few articles will explore this subject in more detail, so keep reading. It’s going to be exciting.

Soon after that time I got a job painting animation at a local studio in Vancouver. I took the tape with me to work and listened to it all day long in the background as I worked. The job was so repetitive that I could divide my attention easily between the two things. The constant stream of positive affirmations elevated my state of mind. I felt really good about myself for the first time in a long time.

A few months later, I happened upon a contest that was being held by the Vancouver Art Gallery. There were two prizes being awarded. The one was a $500 shopping spree at a local art store, and the grand prize was a $10,000 trip for two to France. The winner would get the chance to spend 3 weeks painting and drawing in the French countryside. It was literally my dream. I couldn’t think of anything on earth I would rather do at the time. I made it clear that I was going to win that contest. Robbins had affected something in me. I was on fire.

Before work the next day I rushed to the information desk where applications were being given for the contest. I took one and read it carefully. The conditions for entry were that you needed to submit one drawing with the application. It was a random draw, not based on the quality of the artwork submitted. Plus, you could enter as many times as you wanted.

I sat down that night to work on a drawing to enter. It took me about 8 hours to complete, and when I was done I took it back to where I got the application. As I was leaving I saw a bunch of the other drawing entries hanging on a wall near the information desk. It was disheartening. There were so many. I didn’t stand a chance of winning with just one entry.

I knew that listening to Tony Robbins had affected me in some way, but at that moment it became clear just how. A voice popped into my mind saying, “You’ve got to make it a must”. I turned around and went back to the information desk. I took 5 more applications with me, and went home to complete them. The next day I brought them in, and that voice popped back up. “You’ve got to make it a must to win”. Then it hit me. If I could enter as many times as I wanted, and the only thing I needed to enter was a drawing, I could take all my old drawings and use them to enter the contest with. I turned around and went back to the desk. This time I walked away with 50 applications. I was full of energy.

I went through old sketchbooks and cut out 50 drawings and filled out the 50 applications. I took them in and went to work. As I was sitting there at my desk, I realized that this was my chance. This was an amazing opportunity sitting right in my lap. 50 entries were not nearly enough. I had to win!

The next day I walked up to the information desk. “I’d like 500 applications please”, I said. The woman behind the desk looked at me with a stern look. “I can’t do that”.
“Why not?”, I asked.
“I just can’t”, she replied.
There was a small stack of application forms sitting right on the desk in front of her. I turned the top one to face me and read the line about entering as many times as I like.
She begrudgingly reached under the desk, unlocked it and pulled out a stack of applications. As I was walking away with my stack of 400 applications, the most she would give me at a time, I heard the guy that had been behind me say, “I’d like one, please”.

Over the course of the next four days I was filling out applications every second that I wasn’t doing something else. I even encouraged my girlfriend, Inha, to help me with it. I had a couple life drawing pads from film school that were filled with sketches that I used to accompany the applications. The drawings were something I had been holding onto because I used them for my portfolio for looking for work. In the end, I had no art to use for my portfolio. ‘God, I had better win this thing’, I thought.

I had put so much in it, that by the day the draw date came, I was burning with anticipation. About an hour after the draw, I called in to ask for the results. They weren’t in yet. But what they could tell me was that there were about 800 entries. I had over half the entries. I had effectively made my odds about 50/50. I put down the phone and waited.

About 2 hours later I got a call. I looked at the screen of my cell. It was a number I didn’t recognize. My heart exploded in my chest. I picked up the phone. “Hello”.
“Is this Michael Mueller?”
“Yes.”
I can’t quite remember what was said after that, but I had won the grand prize. I hung up the phone a few minutes later and ran around my room screaming with delight. I won. I had actually done it. I won.

I ran to Inha’s place. We both screamed with delight for a bit and then went out for lunch to talk about our upcoming trip to France.

Winning this contest was a massive lesson for me. The only reason I entered as many times as I did is because I was literally programmed by Tony Robbins to believe I could do anything. I know my old programming. I would have entered once, maybe. But the way I handled this was a radically new way of thinking that would change everything for me from then on. Winning this contest solidified the idea that I could do anything. I had proven it.

It’s interesting that up until the draw date I told everyone I worked with about the contest. They all knew what I was up to, and not one of them entered. They were artists. They could have done what I did. Anyone could have. But most people believe that incredible things don’t happen. Even when the opportunity is right there, people ignore it. We are programmed by popular culture to believe life is boring and nothing amazing happens. But if we can step out of that way of thinking, amazing opportunities are all around us.

A few months later, Inha and I went to France for 3 weeks for free. It was incredible.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

- Stephen R. Covey

By loosening our identification with our limiting habits and replacing them with more empowering ones, we can manifest the life we want. In this article, I’ll share a powerful way to effortlessly change your habits.

Who am I? If you go into this question deeply, you realize that the you that you have been identifying with for most of your life is nothing but a collection of habitual thoughts and actions. Take them away and you are left with nothing. The self is just a mental construct. This is good news because if the self that we have been attaching to doesn’t exist beyond a self created thought structure, there is nothing about the self that is important to defend and maintain. Why not create a new self that has the potential to achieve way more?

The process of creating a more evolved self is somewhat like reverse engineering a piece of technology. When a company creates an invention, other companies will take it apart and figure out how it works. When they have an intimate knowledge of the function of all the parts, they can then construct their version of the invention. The point here is that the technology already exists. We just have to figure out how it works and apply that knowledge. In our case, the advanced technology we will model is ourselves in a more evolved state, and we will do this through the practice of visualization.

By experiencing life through the eyes of your more evolved self, you will get an understanding of the things that self does. Remember, the self is nothing more than a collection of habits, so pay particular attention to the habits that your more evolved self has.

Sit with your eyes closed and when you feel comfortable visualize yourself living your dream life. Make the vision as clear and emotionally rich as possible, using all five of your senses. Imagine doing the things that you would do in that life. What kind of house would you live in? What kind of vacations would you take? What kind of attitude would you have? Get as detailed as you can, and play the vision like a movie in your mind. The difference here is that you will want to experience this movie in first person perspective. It is very important to feel like this is really happening, like if you opened your eyes this vision would be the reality you see.

Do this exercise for about 10 minutes or so every day and you will start to imprint your visual memory with these images. The burned-in images from these visualizations will form the framework to build our new habits.

Once you begin to get familiar with this evolved self in detail, sit down and write out the habits that the more evolved self has. Make a list of the kinds of things you would do daily if you lived that dream life now. This list will become an action plan for you to follow to achieve that life you want. If you notice that your wealthy self exercises every morning, start exercising every morning. If your wealthy self follows their intuition more often, start doing that, too. The more you can match the habits of your wealthy self, the more you will start attracting the wealth you want into your life.

Our habits are the programming mechanism for our unconscious beliefs about what we can and cannot do. Because it is repeated over and over, a habit conditions our mind into believing things are so. This can have unfortunate consequences if it is unconscious. However, by consciously taking advantage of this process, we can program our mind to achieve anything and everything we dream of.

The first step in making this shift is to learn to tell the difference between the energetic nature of love and fear.

We all know what fear feels like. It starts in the gut as a tightening or knotting, and is followed by agitation and a desire to push back from whatever we think is causing the emotion. This “pushing away” from the perceived cause of fear is what we should be watching for. If we become conscious of this reaction as it happens, we can start to recognize the energetic nature of fear. Fear is always a resistance, a pushing away.

Love by nature attracts, and fear by nature repels. If you are constantly in a state where you repel things, it is very hard energetically to attract anything you value. You might accidentally bump into something you want while pushing away from something you don’t like, but the thing you want won’t stick around if you continue to repel through fear. Attracting (moving towards) and repelling (pushing away) are opposite forces.

The important point here is that since each of these states has different vibrations, you can’t be in both states at the same time. Making the conscious shift to a life centered in love is the quickest shortcut to taking full advantage of the law of attraction in your life.

So, how do you initiate the shift to a more loving state?

Experiencing certain emotions increases the brain’s circuits for those emotions. The more you allow yourself to feel love, the more you cultivate it, the easier and more often you will experience that emotion in the future. Therefore, it is extremely important to train your brain for love.

There are many practices for cultivating love. The one I use most often I call “being love”. To practice this technique, simply sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. When you begin to feel relaxed, notice your identification with your body and mind. Then, think of someone or something that you love. As this emotion comes into your awareness, begin to identify with it in the same way you identify with your body and mind. Bring your sense of self into the center of the emotion and feel it all around you. Imagine that love is all that is in your awareness, as if every other object is actually wrapped in and suffused with love. When you hear a sound or feel something, extend your love to that thing. Feel love wrap around it like an embrace. Continue to do this for at least ten minutes. Open your eyes and pay attention to any changes that may have taken place, then go about your day.

The act of loving is an act of embracing or attracting. If we are predominantly moving away from things through fear, it makes it impossible to attract all the things we want into our life. As we’ve seen, they are opposite forces. By focusing on love, we shift our flow of energy to one of acceptance and attraction. Then anything and everything we want in life is effortlessly attracted to us by law.

Most people approach life without a clear goal in mind. They have many desires, but most of the time don’t consciously move towards any one of them. When a decision is formed, it’s usually weak, and most often leads to self-sabotage. When you do what you don’t want to do in the first place, you can’t possibly achieve what you want.

Earlier in life I heard a quote from Woody Allen. He said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. I thought it was pretty accurate, because I knew that a lot of my success up till that point was from being in the right place at the right time. Now I think there is much more to it, though. Showing up is not just about being somewhere physically. Showing up means being there with every part of yourself. To really show up is to be conscious and clear, to have intention.

In any situation, ask the question, what do I want? Then go deeper. What do I really want? Get clear about why you are doing what you are doing. Then form the intent as a phrase. For example, “My intent is to be fully conscious in this moment”. Speak your intent out loud with as much awareness as you can bring. The more you can engage your mind and body, the more you will align yourself with your intent.

A lot of us feel as if we have been thrown into this world without a choice in the matter. We do our best to deal with events as they arise, but deep down we mostly feel lost. It takes courage to face reality as it is and consciously decide to be here now. That is the choice everyone is faced with at all times. Every time we choose to be conscious, we move from a life of reaction to a life of intention. Then we move towards what we want, and what we want moves towards us.

A lot of us have the false impression that we need to do something in order to enjoy happiness. Because of this reason, we hold off happiness until we meet the criteria that we have set up for ourselves.

About 5 years ago, I thought that if I could optimize my schedule I would complete my goals faster and as a result experience more happiness. However, the more I put in my day-timer, the more that new tasks seemed to pop up. I was always just a bit away from reaching all my goals. One day I had a realization. I was never going to arrive at the end, because the end kept getting pushed farther into my future. I was denying myself joy by putting it off with ever bigger goals.

There was no way i could continue to delude myself. I needed a new strategy for feeling joy. Soon after my search began I realized the obvious answer. I didn’t need to do something to be happy. I could be happy regardless of where I was in relation to my goals. It was a major breakthrough. In the book Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff says of this idea, “When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live happiness, rather than for happiness”.

This is echoed in Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth. He says, “Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one. The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace–if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that…The ego doesn’t know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now”.

Where does happiness arise in your awareness? It always comes from within. This means that happiness is not something to get, but something that is a part of your inner landscape. It is a part of you. This can be felt very intensely by closing your eyes and identifying with happiness directly, as if it is your essence. The same way that you feel like your body is you, you can feel like happiness is you.

To experience this, sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Remember a time when you last felt really happy. As the feeling of happiness comes back, begin to focus on it. Now, while feeling happiness, imagine becoming happiness. There is a vast difference between experiencing an emotion and being that same emotion. The purpose of this practice is to be happiness. Let the emotion fully suffuse your body. Sit with this awareness for at least five minutes.

By sitting as happiness, soon a sense of relief begins to wash over you. It is the relief that you can be happiness at any time. Even in the most depressed state, when the body is in pain, and the mind is lost, happiness is there. To a mind starved of deep happiness, this experience is truly refreshing.

Happiness is the experience of accepting and embracing what is. By becoming open and accepting of whatever is in your awareness you can begin to feel a profound and natural joy. True happiness is the emotion that naturally arises when we let everything be as it is. True happiness is you.

When I got the list of words, I started the exercise of repeating them every morning to myself. That was great. I kept coming up with new words, and the list kept growing. Then one day I found a game to use the words. It works best with someone else, but you can do it alone as well.

So here’s what you do. If you have someone else to play the game with, one of you start with the phrase, “This is amazing”. Put as much emotion and energy into it. Then it’s the other person’s turn. They have to come up with another word. For instance, they could say, “This is brilliant”. If they aren’t brimming with emotion, kindly remind them to do it again with more energy. Back and forth you go, until you can’t possibly think of another positive word.

Here is my initial list. Start here and see how big you can make your list.

• Amazing
• Spectacular
• Phenomenal
• Fabulous
• Terrific
• Sweet
• Invigorating
• Mouth-watering
• Refreshing
• Splendid
• Superb
• Luscious
• Heavenly
• Exceptional
• Divine
• Fantastic
• Extraordinary
• Astounding
• Fun
• Blissful
• Bountiful
• Overwhelming
• Gorgeous
• Beautiful
• Enlightening
• Jaw-dropping
• Blessed
• Orgasmic
• Delicious
• Exquisite
• Genius
• Juicy
• Dynamic
• Sensational
• Stunning
• Thrilling
• Dazzling
• Wonderful
• Mind-blowing
• Magnificent

In the first part of the program Bob Proctor talks about people not knowing how electricity works, yet still enjoying the benefits of it. This is the perspective you are expected to take – blind faith. For most rational people this is like nails on a chalkboard. I believe that a more thorough explanation of the core concepts behind the law of attraction really is needed to bring it from a nice idea into the realm of clear understanding.

“When you release your inner blocks to your success you can have, do, or be anything you want”. This is a quote from Joe Vitale, teacher in the Secret and author of The Missing Secret. Joe is talking about non-conscious intent, something that is just barely touched on in the Secret DVD. It should have been focused on more, though, because it really is the key to understanding how the law of attraction actually works.

You might be wondering what the difference between the conscious and non-conscious mind is. John Assaraf describes the conscious mind as, “The part of the brain that thinks and reasons, and the part through which you exercise free-will”. It is also the part of the mind that is used for focus, concentration and learning. On the other hand, the non-conscious mind is in charge of emotions, symbolic representations, and everything else unrelated to conscious activity. Research shows that the conscious brain accounts for a mere 4% of perceptions and behavior, while the non-conscious mind accounts for 96%. Our conscious mind is basically just the tip of the iceberg, and to really use the law of attraction you absolutely have to enlist the help of the non-conscious. It all comes from there.

Most of us identify with our conscious mind and see the non-conscious activity as a mysterious part of ourselves or even worse disidentify entirely and feel like it controls us. We are all of it, though. Assaraf says, “Because we so strongly tend to identify with our conscious thoughts, we naturally tend to think of our conscious thoughts as me. We assume that our conscious mind is calling the shots and it is at the controls and in charge of what we actually do. But that is simply not true”.

“Setting goals is a conscious exercise. Achieving goals is a spiritual and non-conscious exercise”. This is from Assaraf’s book The Answer. He goes on to say, “To achieve our goals…we need to become experts at using both parts of our brain”. So how exactly do we “use both parts of our brain”?

Essentially its a two step process. Step one is to get really clear about what you want. Think about it, write it down, and send it out into the universe. That takes care of your conscious mind. Then you need to work with your non-conscious mind to make sure it is aligned with that purpose you consciously set. If not, you will find a million ways to sabotage and hold yourself back from your goal. No matter how hard you consciously want something, if you don’t have your non-conscious mind on board it won’t manifest.

Replacing limiting and negative beliefs with empowering positive beliefs is the surest way to get what you want. In fact, it is probably the single most important key to making the law of attraction work. You can do this many ways, and the more the better really.

One way to get in touch with and affect your non-conscious mind is to meditate. During the commentary for the Secret, Rhonda Byrne mentions in passing that almost all the teachers on the DVD meditate. I started meditating in 2006 and it has been absolutely mind-blowing for my development. It’s quite simple and there are tons of resources on the web for learning any one of the many techniques. In fact, I recently wrote an introduction to the practice of meditation with an accompanying 10 minute audio timer. I recommend starting there.

Another way to affect the non-conscious mind is through visualization. Visualization is talked about in the Secret but I want to emphasize it again. By taking time every day to enter an abundant state of mind you train your mind to recognize and identify with the energetic frequency of that feeling. Then when something in your awareness pops up that matches that feeling you will know it is in line with your goals. It will feel right. So take 15 minutes a day, close your eyes and experience all the things you want. Be there and feel it fully.

Incantations are also an absolutely amazing tool for programming your non-conscious mind. An incantation is a phrase that you repeat to yourself out loud while moving your body and engaging your mind. Tony Robbins uses “All the wealth I need is within me now” as an incantation during exercise. If done with enough intensity and focus it will change your state immediately. In The Power to Shape Your Destiny Tony says the following about incantations:
“Knowing better will not make you better. Speak that which you wish to become. You can not get rid of a (negative) incantation. You must replace it with a positive one, one that consistently causes you to feel, experience and be your best. What you consistently speak you will become, what you consistently speak you will create, and what you consistently speak you will find in experience…What you say over and over again is the absolute programming device of the software and the hardware of your nervous system. So you’ve got to do it more consciously. The more powerful the emotional state you are in when you do your incantation the more powerful the conditioning is…emotional intensity is everything”.

As with all these tools, you have to really do it. I have read so many books and listened to so many programs where I did so passively. The moment I decided to start engaging with the material in a conscious, associated and active way was the moment the information moved from a cognitive understanding to an experiential understanding. It all made sense on a deep level and became valuable beyond description. It makes all the difference.

The Secret is simply amazing. When you understand that intent and attraction rule success, you can move toward whatever you want with absolute passion and purpose. The key is becoming a master of both parts of your brain, your conscious and non-conscious. Then you can use your brain to its full potential by programming your non-conscious to be in alignment with your conscious goals. Then you truly can have, do, and be anything you want.