Can you change your life with strategies like affirmations, Law of Attraction, and manifesting?

You can absolutely make each of these work for you!

LAW OF ATTRACTION: 

The Law of Attraction is based on the idea that your thoughts and beliefs have the power to influence your life and manifest your reality.

If you consistently think about all your mistakes, you’ll not only be prone to making more, but suppose you don’t actually make that many mistakes, just focusing on them will seem like you make a lot. Your thoughts will go downhill from there- less confidence, more doubt, less opportunity.

What you focus on, expands. If you focus on your mistakes, they’ll rule your life, and the same principle goes for other things in your life.

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Can I change my life with my thoughts? 

Thoughts reflect our beliefs and together, they influence our reality. “Change your thoughts, change your life.”

If you want to experience the power of thoughts and words, just notice how you feel when you listen to someone negative complain for an hour. Then listen to someone upbeat and inspiring. What a difference!

Thoughts can shift our physical reality too!

Try this: Stand arm’s length away from a wall, extend your arm straight out so that your fingertips are barely touching the wall. Now raise your arm straight above your head. Close your eyes and repeat, “my arm is shorter…shorter…shorter…shorter.” Now lower your arm and see if you can touch the wall in front of you. Chances are you can’t. You may even be inches away! Your body shifted to align with your thoughts.

95% of our thoughts are repetitive so that’s why change can be hard.  The odds are good we’re attracting more of what we already have because we’re thinking what we’ve always thought.

If you want to uplevel your life, your thoughts and beliefs must change.

Yes, your beliefs are a crucial part of your thoughts too!

Your beliefs influence your thoughts.

If you have positive beliefs about love, your thoughts will reflect that, and your reality will too. If you have limited beliefs about love, your thoughts will be low on love and your love life is more likely to suffer.

What’s likely going on is that your positive beliefs about love make you more open to love, noticing opportunities for love, and reaching out to others more often.

Where it gets tricky is if you’re determined to have good thoughts about love, but your underlying belief is that you’re unlucky in love. This creates some internal conflict. However, there are still ways to change your thoughts and beliefs to align with what you want in life.

How do beliefs influence thoughts?

There’s a reason I put emphasis that at the helm of your thoughts is your beliefs. They are a big factor here.

One time, I stumped a bunch of Law of Attraction enthusiasts by asking them, “If 99% of the things we worry about don’t actually come true then how is that these worrying thoughts don’t “attract” these scenarios in real life?” No good answers.

I have an explanation.

Sure, my thoughts may be full of worries about scenarios that will never likely occur, but my belief is that by worrying about them, I am doing something to keep them away. Therefore, the thoughts probably won’t attract the things I worry about because my underlying belief is that the worrying keeps the bad things at bay.

But if I have negative beliefs about my health, I may attract illness the more I worry about it. It’s so important to know what your beliefs are, especially if you want to make changes.

Thoughts are most powerful when they align with the underlying beliefs.

How do you change beliefs? 

The first way is through subconscious work. Your beliefs reside within your subconscious.

Subconscious work: This means making the subconscious (what you’re not aware of), conscious (what you’re aware of).

If you aren’t able to manifest what you’d like, or you feel resistance to something you consciously want, your subconscious beliefs could be making you think and act counterintuitively so that you can’t obtain what you want.

If you have a hard time manifesting something in particular, identify your beliefs around that:

• What are your beliefs in various areas of your life? (In good areas and in those areas that need improvement).
• How do you think your beliefs are influencing your outcomes?
• Where did those beliefs come from? (I’ve gone back as far as Past Life Regression with some people).
• Why do you believe those things?
• How do they show up in your life?
• What do they protect you from? (Many beliefs and coping mechanisms are the subconscious protecting you from something that is no longer a threat, but now the belief has become a semi-permanent pattern- Inner Child Healing is great for this).

[For more self-awareness and questions like this Download my free Therapeutic Journal]

Awareness of your beliefs is key:

• Beliefs appear as matter-of-fact rules we live by- sometimes we go years without questioning them. I’ve done subconscious work with people who didn’t even realize they held certain beliefs until I asked their subconscious in hypnosis.
• Beliefs also show up as expectations; how we expect things to turn out. We can have good intentions or hope for the best, but secretly (subconsciously) expect the worst. What’s behind the “worst”? Why do you believe that? Is it related to something that happened or something you were told repeatedly?
• Beliefs can sound like people from our past, like our parents. Voices from the past can take up residence in our subconscious. They seem like things we’ve always thought or known. When we were first learning about the world, we got our information in our formative years. These things may not be true for us anymore.
• Stories you tell yourself: “I’m the victim of…“. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are like the lies we tell ourselves.
• Self-fulfilling prophesies and self-sabotage, “This never works out for me.“
• Beliefs are reflected in our judgments and assumptions about others and the world.

Sometimes awareness is enough to improve your habits and take positive purposeful action towards changing.

It’s when we dive a little deeper into something and question things, that we’re already beginning to change and do the work.

If we don’t question ourselves, we accept what we already have, and we’ll continue to get what we’ve always gotten.

Awareness: I started to develop a negative belief about me and technology to the point that my husband was saying, “What is it with you and computers?” He’d say he doesn’t have these issues. On the surface it looked this way.

Just having some awareness about it though, I realized I do A LOT more with tech than he does- he also has an IT team checking for issues each day. I don’t. But I spent two years believing I had bad tech luck.

Other times. you need to go a little deeper and heal the trauma or turmoil surrounding the beliefs.

When healing beliefs, it’s necessary to work through them to the point that you find some closure and understand how they’re affecting your life. Break them down by asking if they’re really true and where did the beliefs come from?

In addition, therapy, hypnosis, meditation, journaling, are all helpful.

[Therapeutic Meditation or Hypnosis Sessions]

Positive Beliefs: The best way to explain how positive beliefs show up in your life is an example of my own. I’ve manifested money in the most amazing, sometimes odd, ways. I believe money can come in the least expected ways because it has. I grew up with good money the first half of my childhood then on the poor side for the other half. However, enough money always seemed to land on our doorstep, sometimes literally.

I do not have a money-scarcity-belief bone in my body. I don’t ever say, “I’ll make more money this year” because money comes in more ways than hours on the clock. I will typically imagine and visualize money falling from the sky or landing in my hand, because I’ve learned money can come from literally anywhere, anyhow.

When I was growing up, I knew a lady that was always signing up for contests to win things. She had so much fun, and she won so much! It inspired me to open my mind about how good things can come to us.

Positive beliefs feel expansive!

You may notice you have less limiting or constricting thoughts in areas of your life that are supported by positive beliefs.

Two years ago, I wanted to manifest an RV. We went RV hunting. I didn’t know how we’d get one and I wanted to pay for it in cash. Six months later, I managed to manifest the extra money for an RV. I didn’t end up getting one because I thought it would be too much extra work at the time, but now with the pandemic, I think it may be ideal.

I just explained my money beliefs, so you’ll see why manifesting money is easier for me and not a huge deal. However, I may have a cap to believing how much I can manifest- I’m looking into that.

Someone who has limited money beliefs may find manifesting money initially more difficult.

Negative Beliefs: I come from an entire side of the family that bonds over health issues. A dinner with them is full of backaches, body fluids, and MRI’s.

Because of this, I worked out six days a week and ate healthy most of my life. It always took me more than the average person just to feel good. Perhaps I inherited some of this biologically, but I know better. Thoughts and beliefs also influence health.

After the birth of my first baby, I was super tired. I had always prioritized my health and my sleep, but now I was feeling the pressure from a demanding career and a new baby who was, guess what? Always sick.

My sleep was sometimes non-existent. I was drained. My doctor shrugged it off and said it was all “normal”. A year later, my blood tests were not normal. It confirmed my symptoms- I had an autoimmune illness.

I felt so defeated. I had worked so hard not to be in this place, and here I was. All that work though, was fear-based, driven by the underlying belief (and expectation) that illness would probably come knocking at my door.

I’ve managed symptoms with things like meditation, hypnosis, and a plant-based diet and I know I’m in a much better situation than most people with my illness. I’m aware that I have deep roots of ill health beliefs running through my veins. This is the bulk of my personal work. So you see, manifesting good health comes with some obstacles for me.

You may have particular areas of your life, like love or career, or health like me, that always seem to trip you up. This may take the extra work, but also remaining open and expansive for good things to happen too.

Affirmations: Identifying and healing your beliefs takes time so affirmations work as a best second best.

You can do affirmation work to reprogram your thoughts and beliefs. “Repetition is learning!”

[Download my free BIG List of Affirmations]

Being consistent with affirmations is what works to retrain the subconscious beliefs. Find ways to insert them into your everyday life.

At first you may notice a general attitude shift or a positive shift in your energy. This is great! You’re on the right track!

Personally, I wrote out all the negative comments and beliefs from my childhood- anything I could think of. Then I flipped them around into the opposites, which made them into positives. I recorded the positives and listen to them regularly. That’s good ol’ fashioned reprogramming. (You can listen to it here).

Side note: Use affirmations that make you feel good; affirmations that really resonate with you and your values. But also, notice what affirmations you’re resistant to and why. There’s knowledge in those too. Ask yourself what is it about certain affirmations you’re resistant to?

Another beautiful option for affirmation work is downloading and repetitively listening to Lousie Hay’s, 101 Power Thoughts. I did this a couple years ago and week #2 (listening twice a day), I was talking to myself with compassion and positivity. I wasn’t putting up with people’s sh*t anymore. A lot of things changed. Download 101 Power Thoughts here.

More: Find a belief (or energy) clearing ritual. This can help clear the old in order to manifest the new! I enjoy guided meditations for letting go. The imagery and symbolism of letting go, surrendering and releasing, helps me do a mental and spiritual check-in. What do I no longer need to hang onto? What am I holding onto that is holding me back? 

Try regularly journaling about patterns in your life as you notice them. How are they connected to your beliefs? It doesn’t take much to identify patterns since 95% of our thoughts and behavior is repetitive.

The Power of Beliefs:

I remember a study coming out about stress that stated it wasn’t stress that was necessarily a problem, it was the belief about our stress that caused the issues, especially in terms of our health. Those who viewed stress as harmful to their health had a higher degree of mortality than those who had similar levels of stress but viewed it as less harmful.

This means that the belief about stress is an actual cause of illness and death; not the stress itself.

The Power of Possibility:

We are less likely to accomplish our goals if we’re certain we’ll fail. Certainty takes hope and possibility out of the equation, yet we try to control our lives for increased certainty.

When I see people running around super busy, I wonder what universe they’re in charge of. Chillax and leave some of it up to the stars… or God… or your angels… or possibility. You weren’t meant to control so much!

Be open to possibilities that are in your highest good. Have an open and receptive mindset to offset controlling tendencies. When we control things, we limit how things can turn out, even when they may turn out better than we can imagine.

If you force too much or control too much, you either end up burnt out or disempowered, and back to square one.

When you leave room for the element of possibility, you have the ability to take on less and trust a higher power or the universe to fill in the details or tie the loose ends.

What kind of possibilities do you believe in? Serendipity? Miracles? Law of Attraction? Good luck?

What works? 

To summarize the ingredients of an effective law of attraction practice:

• Easy work: Upgrade your thoughts by using positive affirmations- repeating them often enough to reprogram your subconscious beliefs. (Science supports the effectiveness of affirmations as long as they’re used repeatedly and consistently.)
• Deeper work: Identify, understand, and heal some of your beliefs, in relation to what you want to attract and manifest, and the specific obstacles you face.

Most of life is about learning what works and what doesn’t. People become stuck when they stop learning. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If we’re learning, we’re always growing and improving. It’s when we refuse to learn from past mistakes or things that aren’t working for us, that we get stuck in the suck.

Looking back on your life, reflect on the really good things that have happened. Reverse engineer those things- what occurred before those things happened, perhaps steps you took leading up to the really good things? Was your energy positive? And apply your own formula to attract other good things you want in your life.

Good fortune Meditation:

Or listen on Youtube: The Fortune Teller Meditation

 

Affirmations: Download the BIG List of Affirmations

 

Happy 2022

Peace and Be Well,

 

Laura