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Some time ago, a good friend of mine became pregnant after years and years of trying. Initially, she was so focused on having a baby that every waking minute was taken up with thinking about it. She would obsess about the best times for fertility, best diet and many different things but more importantly, she would focus intently on why it wasn’t happening. Then, after a good few years, she gave up the obsessing, the focusing and trying too hard. That’s when she became pregnant.

Have you heard a story like this before? It might sound familiar to you because it’s really common, not only with couples trying to conceive but in many other different situations. When you focus on something so intently that it’s all you think about, the focus is on lack and the fact that you don’t have that thing in your life. I have another friend who for years was obsessed with finding ‘Mr Right.’ The desperation was cringe worthy, especially when you heard words like, “1:45, okay, 15 minutes to find a man.” (The nightclub closed at 2am, you see.) Sometimes she did find a man, sometimes she didn’t but he was never good enough to be Mr Right, only Mr Right Now! The sad thing was that she always thought tonight would be the night to meet him and since those she met were always ‘less than perfect,’ she would drive them away with her obsessiveness, only to hook up with someone else the next again week. Then finally, after another disastrous relationship, she took time off work and her endless clubbing to take care of a relative. Not long after this, she met the man she would later marry, in the place that she had been working for the previous 15 years.

So what’s the moral of these 2 very similar stories? Let it go!

When you cling to a dream or hope there is real desperation in that clinging and the focus is on how empty your life is without it. So it is no surprise that we attract this same recurring emptiness if that is all we focus on. Your mind is immersed in the thought that you are incomplete in some way. Wake up to the fact that you are 100% complete as you are, truly know and understand this. Self love and compassion, as I have spoken about previously, is the first step to peace and creating the life you want. By doing this, you are letting it go, whatever it is and when you begin to feel thankful and appreciative for what you have and how you don’t need anything to make your life complete – who knows what may be around the corner.

Day 41 of 50 ideas in 50 days is Money and the Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Perhaps another of those books I may have put off reading had I not been doing 50 ideas in 50 days. I’m so glad I have been introduced to the wisdom in another of Esther and Jerry’s works.

The most important thing to consider where the Law of Attraction is concerned, for anything, be it money, relationships, job etc, is what state of mind you are in. The more positive frame of mind you are in indicates your connection to source and inner guidance, this allows positivity and abundance to flow. The book says, “shortage of time is not your problem. Shortage of money is not your problem. Shortage of Connection to the Energy that creates worlds is at the heart of all sensations of shortage that you are experiencing.” So, in other words, when we are having a bad day, we are probably running a whole lot of negative chit chat and are quite disconnected from our inner source.

So, in order to live in a place that is more connected and as a result, manifest the kind of life we want, “the most valuable skill that you could ever develop is the skill of directing your thoughts toward what you want – to be adept at quickly, evaluating all situations and then quickly coming to the conclusion of what you most want – and giving your undivided attention to that.” So if you find yourself thinking about what you don’t want, or about the lack of something in your life, stop and immediately direct your thoughts to something more constructive, creative and positive. Practise this often. Even if it seems really difficult at first if you are so much in the habit of focusing on the negative or the lack of something, Esther and Jerry suggest something very helpful. It’s called The Pivoting Process. Simply put, “whenever you recognise that you are feeling a negative emotion (it is really that you are feeling the lack of harmony with something that you want)…ask yourself, what do I want?” It’s important to stop that flow of negative thoughts and focus on what you do want to manifest in your life. After all, the Law of Attraction works like a magnet with your thoughts and how connected you are to your inner source.

So understand that money, like everything else is fundamentally energy. Stop the flow of negative thoughts, practice positivity, the Pivoting Process, you will find a greater connection to your inner source and the positive, more fulfilled side of the Law of Attraction.

Day 37 of 50 ideas in 50 days is The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer. This week is turning out to be quite an amazing one, there are two Wayne Dyer posts this week (the other is on Friday) what a treat! Dr. Dyer is another of my favourite writers, he is an incredibly learned man and is a strong individual who lives his methods 100%. I read The Power of Intention a few years ago and I particularly love listening to the audio programme for the sole reason that I love his beautiful voice!

Wayne gives us 4 steps for connecting to The Power of Intention:

Exercise your discipline by building strong habits. Do the things you know that you should be doing and live with the connection to your intention/ideal.

Develop wisdom every day, your greatest classroom and teacher is your day to day life and you.

Open your heart and learn to love more and more, love who you are, what you do, everyone and everything around you. Practise unconditional love.

Surrender to the force that’s bigger than you. Life can be an uphill struggle if you fight against it instead of connecting to the flow that is intention.

And to help us along the way, Wayne suggests another of my mind fooling tricks, ‘acting as if’ - until you are! He says, “act as if everything you desire is already here…treat yourself as if you already are what you’d like to become.” What happens as a result? You’re brain is fooled into believing that what you are imagining is actually reality and the more you focus on it, the more your psychology and physiology is adjusted. Importantly, with the Law of Intention, you must be in alignment with that which you are seeking. Wayne says, “this is a universe of attraction and energy. You can’t have a desire to attract a mate who is confident, generous, non-judgemental and gentle and expect that desire to be manifested if you are thinking and acting in non-confident, selfish, judgemental or arrogant ways.” What are you projecting? Remember that the universe always finds a vibrational match. Act as if, truly believe it and you will notice the changes in your experiences, your appreciation and the people that come into your life. Dr. Dyer details the seven faces of intention as, “creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, unlimited abundance and receptivity.” Intend to have each of these in your life every day by practising and incorporating them into your day to day experience.

Day 28 of 50 ideas in 50 days is Focal Point by Brian Tracy. Brian is one of the top writers and mindset experts in his field. He has had decades of personal development sales and training delivery. The book Focal Point is all about focusing your energy which is something that many success writers stress the importance of. It is a must for productivity. He says, “among the most important personal choices you can make is to accept complete responsibility for everything you are and everything you will ever be…the acceptance of personal responsibility is what separates the superior person from the average person.” To me, this is crucial. What kind of life is it if you spend it blaming others for your mistakes and live your days as a victim? This most certainly separates the high achiever from the average person. He says, “accepting complete responsibility for your life means that you refuse to make excuses or blame others for anything you’re not happy about. You refuse, from this moment to critisise others for that reason.” Wow, this is huge, from now on don’t criricise others for something you are not happy about yourself. Stop the blame, begin to be the creator and not the result of conditioning by other people.

So what does he say about focusing? “Once you have thought through your work and decided on your most valuable task, you must discipline yourself to start it immediately and stay until it is complete. When you concentrate single-mindedly on a specific task, without distraction or diversion, you get it done far faster than if you start and stop, then come back to the task and pick it up again.” Isn’t that the truth? If you leave it and come back to it, a considerable amount of time is spent thinking about how you left it and how you will continue.

Another important point Brian makes is the importance of what you want and not on what you don’t want, one of the crucial aspects of the Law of Attraction. He says, “in this respect, charity is terribly important. Successful people have tremendous clarity about who they are, what they want and how they are going to get it.” It is so important to change your confusion and indecision into precision and clarity, then you begin to see results, often much quicker than you ever imagined. Sharpen up, tailor your productivity and focus with clarity – you will see some tremendous changes.

Day 11 of 50 ideas in 50 days is The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D Wattles. I am very broad minded when it comes to books and books about getting rich for some reason always have a bit of a mental block for me. Perhaps it’s the years of conditioning about hard work! However, very often, books that are so titled are more than just about money. I’d like to share with you a couple of my favourite ideas from Wattles’ essay.

Wattles gives a beautiful analogy of a seed and says, “a seed dropped into the ground springs into activity and in the act of living, produces a hundred more seeds; life by living multiplies itself.” It’s important to consider what seeds you are planting in your life as it will produce many more in it’s image. Think of how laughter is infectious or how a bad mood can spread to others around you! There are also similarities here with the Law of Attraction in that like attracts like and what you focus on increases.

The other important point I’d like to focus on is ‘becoming a creator, not a competitor.’ Wattles says, “you are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it, every other man will have more than he has now.”  There is a huge difference between these two things and when you come from a place of creativity, everyone benefits from your wisdom and individual talent. It’s also about valuing your worth and focusing on how best to serve others by your creation, not, ‘what can I get from this person or how can I compete?” When you do this, the other person has to lose and it’s much better for everyone to have a win/win situation. Like many other self-help writers, Wattles focuses on gratitude as the thing that keeps us connected to the ‘one intelligent substance from which all things proceed.’ It is the one thing that I know I will continue to see in the pages of  the 50 ideas books within the coming weeks and one that Wattle decided to include in his essay because of it’s utmost importance to happiness and fulfillment.

Day 5 of  50 ideas in 50 days  is Esther and Jerry Hicks’ ‘Ask and It is Given.’ The ideas in this book are similar to many self-help books in that it deals with fully living and realising your potential. The source of the ideas is very different in that it is a channelled source from a collection of beings called Abraham. Quite apart from what you may think of this source, the book has a very important message that is age old wisdom but fashioned in a different way. If you are familiar with the new age book market, you’ll have heard of Esther and Jerry. Their books, and this one in particular, created the buzz expression, ‘the Law of Attraction’ and Ask and It Is Given was also a precursor to The Secret.

The Law of Attraction can be summed up quite simply as, ‘like attracts like,’ specifically concerning what you are thinking and how you feel about yourself at any given time. Now if you are under the control of your conditioned responses, deep down if you don’t believe you deserve to be treated well, then you will attract that treatment from others. Powerful stuff if you are aware of this. They quote, “every thought vibrates, every thought radiates a signal and every thought attracts a matching signal back.” So, if you are emitting negativity and expecting it, you can’t expect to receive much positive energy from the world. When you really become aware of this as the very heart of how the Law of Attraction works, it puts you in a position of having complete control of your life, depending on where you put your focus.

One important point I want to make here is that this isn’t rocket science. If you focus on what is good about the world and your life then of course your day will be full of positivity because that is exactly what you are consciously noticing. Alternatively, if, for example, you believe that Friday 13th is an unlucky day and bad things will happen then of course you will notice all the things that go wrong on that day but I’d bet if you thought that way about Saturday 14th then you would notice just as many negative things on that day too.

The Law of Attraction is incredibly powerful when you believe it and I also think that having a strong positivity directly affects situations and those around you. There is one ingredient though that for me, is the most important thing about Ask and It Is Given and that is, appreciation and gratitude. It is essential to come from a place of humility and be thankful for what you have, the people in you life, the lessons you have learned, the beauty of nature…the list goes on. For me, it’s not about about, ‘what can I get?’ and unfortunately this wrong view has inspired many to see the Law of Attraction as just that. Put your happiness outside of yourself and make it reliant on material gain or in the hands of others then you will always be left waiting.

The key to all of this lies in appreciation, gratitude and thankfulness, it puts your life in your hands and makes you a conscious creator of your life and future. You won’t live a life of wanting because you already have it.