• I was wasting time on on my Blackberry.
• Getting caught up with surfing on-line for not so useful stuff.
• making extra snacks and foody bits.
• Watching a little more TV.

I was getting involved in this stuff rather than meditation, doing Yoga or focusing on my goals and as a result I felt things were getting a touch frazzled. I started feeling that time was up against me, which I hardly ever do these days, and that pressure was making me indecisive. It was as if I didn’t know where to start with my usual stuff so I let it slide.Things were becoming less clear.

Now everyone needs a break now and again from pushing ourselves to improve, indeed if it becomes a struggle and an effort, you really should step back a bit and give yourself some breathing space. It is important though not to get caught up in modern distractions rather perform our than mental and physical exercises.

Now don’t get me wrong  – I love a bit of telly. I also love playing the odd video game, playing with my Blackberry and messing about in the kitchen or just chilling out but I have usually worked on my positive state for that day so I’m really present and aware of what I’m doing and grateful. If we let too many distractions in it can capture our minds. Our ego whispers “come and enjoy this for a bit” and then leads us away like some Pied Piper.

Practising being more conscious of life and who we are may sometimes slip from our grasp but we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about it, just relax and get back into the routine.

None of these things are really a concern though as it really is something that is available and useful to all and is neither esoteric nor airy fairy but powerful and potent.

There are no mantras needed or special uniforms or incense that are compulsory. Creative visualization practice only needs you and somewhere quiet for you to relax in for anything from 5 minutes to half an hour.

So how do we practice the basics you may ask? Ok.

All you need to do to get going is as I said above find somewhere you can relax without being disturbed.

Lie down flat and support you neck with a slim pillow. Aim to keep the spine fairly straight.

Close your eyes.

Let go of any tension you feel. Do this systematically starting at the bottom of you body – with your feet – and move up just tell yourself and your muscles to release and relax.

After a few minutes you should be more relaxed than when you started.

Creative visualization can now begin as your brain wave patterns will be descending into a state of gentle focus and concentration that is effortless. You will also be opening up the pathways and communication with your unconscious mind which is the seat of all inspiration and ideas.

Once relaxed it is time to visualize anything you want to happen in your life but do it in a positive way. This time is for positive reinforcement and not ‘worry’. Visualize your goals, your hopes and dreams.

That’s all there is to it.

This isn’t to suggest that meditation is some kind of difficult and esoteric discipline that can only be mastered by a few monks in a cave in the Himalayas. Far from it, meditation is a strategy for dealing with life’s pressures that can be learnt by everyone, in minutes.

How long will it take?

However the practise isn’t something you can try for a year and then say you have accomplished an end result. You will have gained immeasurably in ways you probably wouldn’t even realise. But really, there is no end to it once you begin – there are only levels of awareness and a gradual unfolding of knowledge. The more you do it, the more you gain. If you stop you won’t go backwards but why stop? There would have to be a limit to the human mind and spirit for there to be an end point in a meditation practise.

How do we meditate?

If you have never tried meditation before then a good way to begin is to use a common object such as candle. Make arrangements so that you will not be disturbed for ten to thirty minutes – take the phone off the hook and minimise any distractions that you can. Settle yourself about three feet away from the candle itself and get yourself into a comfortable position. The candle should be lit as the flame will be the object of your attention for this exercise.

Should I be thinking?

As you sit, breathe slowly in and out and let your breath become deep and even without any sense of being in a hurry. Gently let go of any thoughts you have about your day so far and focus on the candle flame. Let any thoughts come and go without analysing them. You shouldn’t be trying to “think” too much – this isn’t about working anything out with your brainpower- it isn’t a puzzle to be solved. Don’t be distracted by random thoughts but let them be and float away. The more you let go of these thoughts the less they will fight for your attention. The more you resist them, the stronger they will seem. Every time you are distracted, patiently refocus on the candle flame. Our purpose here is to let our awareness of the world around us diminish and our mind to become calm and poised.

Practise once per day, either early morning or evening, before you become too tired to concentrate and after several days you will find the whole thing becoming easier and easier. With time, you will notice a greater sense of awareness, not just about yourself but about everything in your world and with that comes a greater ability to deal with the trials and tribulations in our daily lives in a peaceful and effective manner.

We can’t always control where we work but we can do something about our home environment in order that it will support our enthusiasms and propel us forward in those projects that we focus on in our own time. So how do we create the most suitable place to spend our time?

Space

Tidy your work space and get rid of those little things that are annoying you or grabbing your attention. Bits of paper, marks on the wall, coffee stains all vie for our attention and need to be removed.

Sitting

Find yourself the right chair to sit on. This is crucial if we are to work in comfort and maintain productivity as bad posture will impact your efforts over time and could leave you with back problems. Equally, find a good position for your hands if typing for long periods – there are plenty of aids to cushion your wrists and forearms on the market.

Airflow

Plenty of fresh air is good for the brain and the soul so good ventilation should be a priority.

Music and ambient sound

Play some soothing music or anything that you find appealing as long as it doesn’t stop you from working. Many folks like rock music in the background, which is fine, as long as you can focus and not fill your time with air guitar!

What is that factor?

It is your subconscious mind and the thoughts stored in it. So you have to ask yourself: Is my subconscious mind working for me or against me? Now your subconscious mind isn’t a separate entity with its own plans and designs. It is present in every part of you. It is within your entire being. It is your energy and your deep seated beliefs. It is the part of you that governs all those processes that we don’t ever have to think about like breathing, digestion etc.

It is also our connection to infinite creative power, limitless energy and timeless wisdom. It is entirely on our side and work for us 24 hours a day. So how then can it be stopping us from reaching our objectives in life?

The subconscious is very sensitive to impressions from our environment and has been since we were brought in to the world.  During our development as human beings we were exposed to all manner of influences that our ‘conscious mind’ hadn’t yet learned to discriminate against. These influences come from parents, family, friends, social beliefs, world beliefs, and economic beliefs and so on.

Much of this input is positive, constructive and sets us on the road to becoming productive individuals. However many ideas and concepts that we are exposed to have a tremendous negative impact upon us and are driven into our subconscious mind where they become deeply ingrained and powerful.

As the mind is creative and very efficient, it will set about creating the circumstances which will support the ‘faulty belief’ systems that we have unknowingly allowed into our lives. Eventually, we end up creating, building and becoming attracted to a reality that supports these unhelpful beliefs!

Why do we allow this?

Unfortunately we are not taught about the power that exists inside ourselves. This is the power of choice. This is the power of being able to choose what enters our life and how it enters. This is the power to create exactly the type of life we desire in order to fulfil our highest destiny.

In general, we are taught the opposite; that we do not have the power of choice.  We are taught that we are slaves to circumstance. We are taught that factors outside of ourselves govern our life. We are taught that the economy, the stars, other people or the environment has more power over the course of our life than we do. This is false.

Our external world is reflection of our mind and beliefs. It is a reflection of our subconscious mind. One is the perfect mirror of the other. If we change the content of our subconscious mind we change our world. We can create the life we desire by influencing, directing and commanding our subconscious.

Once implanted, the subconscious mind and its negative or unhelpful beliefs are hidden deep and can be removed only through an alternative powerful emotional experience or through consistent emotional work on ones attitude using positive techniques. It is good to know though, that our negative thoughts can always be changed, improved or banished altogether and positive beliefs put in their place, permanently.

Discovering the inner workings of your subconscious means becoming aware of what and how you are thinking on a day to day level.  It is the small thoughts and seeming inconsequential thoughts that we have all day long that indicate to us the deeper attitude or belief at work.

How can we find out which thoughts are influencing us?  Let’s take an example of a faulty belief system that most of us have to fight against at some point in our lives; our attitude about money.  Money is the classic example of misdirected thoughts.

Beliefs about money include:

• ‘Money is hard to find.’
• ‘It’s hard to get a job.’
• ‘I’ll never have enough money.’
• ‘I’ll never be rich.’
• ‘Having money isn’t for me. It’s not who I am.’

Money is an energy that is positive and always flowing.  With a healthy, positive mind you should have a plentiful supply circulating in your life.  If you always have money troubles or never have enough it is a good bet that you have some deep seated, unhelpful attitudes about it in your deeper mind.

For instance, if we see something that we would like to buy and our first thought is: “I’ll never be able to afford that”, then, at once, we know that at a deep level we must be feeling limited in a financial sense. We most likely have a negative belief working here. Perhaps at a young age we may have been exposed to great poverty or limitation or some constricting financial situation which left a deep impression or possibly there are guilty feelings associated with ‘having money’.

This negative belief will then work against you in subtle ways. It may result in feelings of unworthiness, dissatisfaction around career issues, difficulty obtaining a promotion, fear of running out of money, paying bills, always being in debt etc.

In order to reach our highest potential we need to change whatever unhealthy attitudes we have inside ourselves. We must become more aware of the patterns and types of thoughts that we hold whether they’re about how good we are, money, health, the world or humanity in general.

Begin to become aware each day of exactly what you are thinking and its nature. At different times during the day, ask yourself:

• Is what I’m thinking positive or negative?
• Is this constructive thinking or destructive?
• Is this helpful or unhelpful to me?
• Does this make me feel good or bad?

It can be quite a revelation to find out exactly what you have been thinking.  When you have begun the process of bringing these thoughts into conscious awareness you can then begin to develop a strategy to deal with them or replace them with something better. Once we begin to change our minds, our reality will soon follow.

Sometimes it can be awfully tricky to make those hard decisions in a short time and there is always the nagging doubt that we may have taken the wrong road. Is there another way to cope with this situation when it appears other than hair pulling, lack of sleep and grumbling at our loved ones as they try to be encouraging?

Well there is another way but it requires a level of trust you might not have yet. It requires asking your deeper mind for its wisdom and letting it give you the answer when it is ready – but, rest assured, it will always be the right decision and at just the right time.

By “deeper mind” I am talking about the subconscious mind and our intuition. Everyone has intuition even though they might not think they have. The subconscious has stored within it an enormous amount of information gleaned from the world around you and it can make connections in ways your conscious mind would never be able to so why not take deliberate advantage of that. Most people do rely on their intuition or gut instinct probably more than they realise but did you know you can get an answer from it whenever you want and not just by chance.

How do you get an answer from your subconscious when you need it? The best time to seek or ask for an answer to your question or a solution to your problem is right before you go to sleep. Concentrate on the problem for five minutes all the while asking for an answer. Try to let go of any anxiety or bad feeling as it isn’t good to dwell on this. You want to maintain a positive frame of mind before sleeping. Ask out loud if possible, something along the lines of, “give me an answer to this question” or “how can I achieve so and so…” and so on. Just word it in a way that makes sense to you.

The key here is desire. The more you desire an answer to your question, the quicker it will arrive. The more passion we can generate around the issue, the more important our mind will assume it is and the quicker it will produce the solution. It may take one night or a couple but if you trust in the process you will find exactly the information you seek coming to you at just the right time.

Here are some practical ways to do this and get back to the present:

1. Practice watching your breath for a few minutes at a time. This simple exercise practise. several times a day can really help you calm and clear the mind of distractions
2. Be conscious of where you walk with every footstep. When you are walking to and from work or home, narrow your thoughts into your steps and become aware of the weight of your step, the ground beneath, your toes leaving the floor. Keep one eye on where you’re going though
3. Spend one minute concentrating on any thought or object to the exclusion of all else. This is a great one for the desk or travelling home, just shut your eyes and let go of the days hassles.
4. Stand outside in nature and simply watch the world around you without judgement. Let go of your critical self just for a little bit (give it a lunch break) and look at everything with a fresh and forgiving eye. Too much overly critical thought uses up a lot of mental energy leaving you drained.
5. Several times a day ask yourself where you are? “Am I here? ” is a fine way to determine whether you are in the present moment or whether you are dreaming of the future or thinking about the past.

Trying some of these simple exercises can release us from unhelpful and negative thought patterns and allow the energy and power of being in the moment to return.

Please DO NOT spend your money on every EBook out there that promises to give you:

“secret techniques to attract all the wealth you ever dreamed of”

…or something like that.

Most of these e Books are just rehashed and plagiarized material from other law of attraction authors, such as ‘Wallace Wattles’, and other old books on the ‘Science of Mind’, ‘New Thought’ and so on.

I should know, I’ve bought most of them!

They will often have a long page of key buzzwords to entice you and draw you in as well as an enormous amount of free (everyone likes freebies right?) giveaways worth $500 dollars, $275 dollars etc and so on.
Now, for the most part many of these books and their writers are ok and well-intentioned and there may be a few nuggets of information inside that are useful. You could probably find most of that on the web from websites such as this. But many are just cleverly marketed pages designed to excite you and take your money in return for average ‘copies’ of information you have read before!

Ok, I’ve finished ranting! How, then, do you find out which materials are worth investing your money in?

Well, there are a couple products that I would recommend as the best and I promote them here on the site. I do this because I know they worked for me. They have worked for me in small ways and in BIG ways and they have contributed immeasurably to my own personal growth. I wouldn’t be able to recommend them otherwise. I couldn’t recommend something which I knew didn’t work; its not my way and I would be creating too much bad karma for myself. Nothing is worth that.

More importantly than this though, I feel the teachings and the teachers themselves have real insight into the fundamental truths of subjects like the ‘Law of attraction’ and ‘manifestation’. I believe this can really help us to create more happiness and more success in our lives.

I believe you can tell this when you read something truthful. You can feel it inside you and you know this is right. You get a sense that what this person is saying is so true you can almost feel the power of the knowledge beginning to resonate inside you. When you get this feeling then, for me, it is a sign of real integrity, authenticity and understanding. This is rare with so many so called law of attraction teachers and e-book sellers.

There are three products and teachers that I recommend and they are:

The Wealth Beyond Reason program
Bob Doyle lives and breathes the law of attraction. He was recently featured in the movie ‘The secret.’ I found his writing and easy to follow explanations, not only inspiring and uplifting, (like an injection of pure, positive mental attitude) but also very simple to put into practice. There is an awesome amount of material on his site from downloadable written stuff, audio and online lectures. He is a teacher with real passion and integrity. If you want great results with the ‘Law of Attraction’ and ‘true abundance’ on an energetic level, you need to listen to this guy!

Revolutionscape: A happy pocket full of money
This e Book took my understanding of all things quantum to a whole new level. Again easy to read and understand but incredible in its simplicity and power. It makes you think about time and our mental states and how to almost flick a mental switch between poverty and wealth. Amazing. You have to read this book if you haven’t already. If you are lucky enough to already have it in your life then you well done; go away and read it again now! You can follow the link aboveto the ‘Revolutionscape’ site where you can buy the book on its own or get it as part of a bigger wealth fundamentals package!

The Super Manifesting program from Enlightened Beings
This ‘manifesting’ program has incredible exercises for generating everything from ’showers of money’ to whole new career paths, relationships and massive personal growth. Many of the detailed visualizations I have used to incredible effect on a regular basis. If used consistently just one of the visualizations will rocket your ‘vibration’ to a higher level and keep it there. As well as this, there is a complete ‘ninety day plan’ for increasing the level of wealth, joy, satisfaction, personal power, health in your life and being, to the point where nothing will ever be the same again.

These three systems each allowed me to see things in a significantly different way and opened my eyes to new perceptions and I wholeheartedly recommend them. Like I said above, I have used these three systems on a regular and consistent basis in my life for the last three years and I can vouch to their effectiveness.You will find links to the websites and the material through the site.

All the best,

Michael.

Relaxation
Practising the art of relaxation affords us a natural method to control and eliminate stress. By learning to completely relax our bodies and minds we allow room for more constructive, harmonious thoughts to be deliberately ‘planted’ into our subconscious mind. This can be the powerful basis of all our self improvement strategies.

Meditation
This allows us to focus our consciousness to a single thought, object or idea. This in turn has tremendous benefits which affect all aspects of our every day life such as the ability to think more and more clearly, greater decision making ability and becoming aware of our own intuition.

Visualization
With visualization we can sense an image in our mind’s eye, a picture of our future goals and the ambitions that we desire to appear in our lives. By always keeping in mind the images of our goals, the possibilty of reaching them becomes more and more believable.

Affirmation or Auto-suggestion
The interior dialogue that goes on inside our heads has a profound impact upon our state of mind and our ability to achieve the success we desire. Replacing any habitual and ongoing negative self-talk is essential if we are to create a happier and more successful future life. Any positive ‘suggestions’ we can make to ourselves, can have a dramatic influence upon our subconscious mind and therefore our ‘reality’ for ‘as we think, so shall we be’.

Inspired Action
Taking action follows the changes that we make on the inside. It is not as difficult as you might think once you have realised the direction you want to go in. No-one should feel afraid of taking action. Inspired action is not like work or a chore it is exciting, thrilling and an expression of our greatest self. You too will be able to take action in the most effective way and at the perfect time by putting these tools into practice and making them a part of your life from now on.

These strategies can help to create acceptance of who we are because they help to bring about rapid change in how we feel about ourselves and are the foundation of a powerful, positive mental attitude. Once we have created a positive mental attitude it is far easier to then begin taking the right kinds of actions in our daily lives that help us to move forward toward our most cherished goals.

Wealth Beyond Reason
The Truth about the Law of Attraction

‘Wealth Beyond Reason‘ provides you with the mental and emotional tools to overcome the financial problems and obstacles in your everyday life!

The program takes you STEP-BY-STEP through how you look at your life to how you change for the better vibrationally and energetically. Bob Doyles’s teaching is about your own power to attract everything you want almost effortlessly. Effortlessly because when you start attracting the right opportunities for you, following up those opportunities becomes more like play than work; the way it should be! No complex theory, just eye-opening and effective tools and techniques you can start implementing immediately. With Wealth Beyond Reason you get instant access to videos, downloads and literature. I really recommend it if you feel you should be getting more out of life, more money, more abundance and more wealth!

As I mentioned on the page about ‘E books’ and ‘what you should know about them’, Bob Doyle’s teachings are some of the best around and that’s why I’m so enthusiastic about this stuff.