How to Make 2014 Your Best Year Yet: Part I – New Year’s Resolutions That Stick
As we reach another New Year’s Eve, it’s time to look back on how well we have (or haven’t, as the case may be) achieved our goals of the previous year, and look ahead to how we can achieve more of what we want in the coming year. Sadly, many people find at this time that they’ve fallen far short of their expectations for themselves over the previous year, a fact that’s given New Year’s resolutions a bad name. But the truth is, with millions of people worldwide all setting intentions for the year ahead, there’s no better time to put your energy into the mix and benefit from group intention. So how do you do it in a way that works? How do you set New Year’s resolutions that stick?
The first and most important step is setting specific goals. The more specific you can be about what you want, the easier it is to achieve it, and the more likely you are to be successful in achieving it. For example, a goal of saving £1,000 by December 31, 2014 is a lot more useful than a goal of saving more. Why is this?
Because when we get specific, we put our minds to work. You want to save more? Fine. How much more? Why? What do you plan to use that money for? Why £1,000 and not £500 or £2,000? Why December and not September? All of these questions, and more, come into play when getting specific about your goal. And when you put your mind to work answering these questions, you put more of that psychic, magnetic, manifestation energy out into the universe to help attract that goal to you.
What’s more, getting specific about your goal helps you visualise the achievement of that goal. You want £1,000 to start your child’s college fund? In order to come up with that answer, you actually had to imagine your child going to college, visualise her getting her education, her diploma up there in cap and gown, her first job. Maybe you want £1,000 to redo your bathroom. That gets you visualising the bathroom you want, and that visualisation is what helps draw to you the money necessary to make it happen.
As I tell my clients life coaching in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the more you know precisely what you want, the easier it is to get it. Use New Year’s 2014 as an opportunity to get more in touch with what you really want. And then hop on the global psychic manifestation energy train of people worldwide making New Year’s resolutions too, and put the power of group intention to work for you.
Wishing you all a HAPPY and ABUNDANT New Year!
’til we meet again,
Walk in Beauty;
Walk in Peace.
‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘
Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’. And is based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.
Manifestation: The Problem of Proof
A problem most of us face in trying to manifest the things and situations we want in life is proof. For whatever reason – maybe human nature, maybe the scientific method – we tend to require proof of things before we believe in them. The problem with this is that manifestation doesn’t work that way.
Think of it this way:
If a person wanting to lose weight bases their diet on proof that it’s working, they’ll likely never stick with the diet long enough to see it to fruition.
If a person wanting to curry the affection of a certain party was waiting for proof that party returned their secret affections, they may never take the initiative that would break that ice and get the romance underway.
In my life coaching sessions in Tunbridge Wells, Kent I am telling people all the time: in the language of manifestation, proof comes second; belief and trust comes first. Decisive action comes first. Decision is action, in the language of manifestation. You demonstrate your belief and trust to the universe by taking decisive action upon it, independently of any proof that what you’re doing will yield the desired results.
Proof is a hindrance. A barrier. An obstacle to getting what you want. Decisive action is your way through it. Then proof will follow. Whenever you feel blocked, try this exercise:
1. Think of a goal, then visualise it and ask yourself ‘How does it feel to have it?’ Ideally, something you’ve wanted to manifest but feel stifled taking action on, perhaps because you’re waiting for something else to happen first.
2. Imagine a Genie in a Lamp granting you this wish, this goal. You still have to take the actions required to get it, but you are now guaranteed success. The other chips that are out of your control, those things you’ve been waiting to happen first, will fall where they must to ensure your success.
3. What is the first or critical actions you would take, knowing this?
4. Take that action.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 as necessary, until you have achieved your goal.
The Native Americans always say ‘Thank you!’ after their prayers for something; it’s an act of trust that the answers to their prayers are on their way. We too can act ‘as if’ it’s a done deal. Have trust in the universe!
’til we meet again,
Walk in Beauty;
Walk in Peace.
‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘
Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’. And is based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.
Why Positive Thinking Works
When you give a child praise for behaving in a desired fashion, then you help to encourage the personal development of those behaviours into a good habit (life coaching and especially EFT is very effect with children that I have found in my in my practice in Tunbridge Wells, Kent). In the same manner, when you focus your attention on the positive aspects of your life (and life in general) then you encourage more of those positive things to happen until they become your life.
Positive thinking is like praise a child for wanted behaviour and negative thinking is like scolding a child for unwanted behaviour. By praising a child for wanted behaviour, you are by no means ignoring the fact that unwanted behaviour does exist. And likewise, by thinking positively, you are not ignoring the fact that negative influences exist. You are just choosing to put your attention where it does you more good than harm.
Because here is the thing about your attention. It is very powerful. The power of your attention is no less than power of creation. Your attention, like everything else in the universe, is energy. When you focus your attention on something, it is like you are sending a beam of energy to that thing. And when you feed something this energy, you make it grow.
Feeding positive thoughts your attention, this universal energy, the lifeforce that is the source of all that is, is like pouring water on a plant (except you can never overwater it). Or, like blowing up a balloon (except this balloon will never pop).
This is why visualisations work. This is why affirmations work. And this is why positive thinking works.
But as suggested above, the reverse of this is true too. Feeding negative thoughts your attention makes that negativity grow. And this is why fear works. This is why guilt and blame both work. And this is why worry and doubt and shame all work. Because they’re all forms of placing your powerful attention on something negative.
Here is a very simple experiment you can try to see this power in action. Start smiling at strangers. And this is a warm and friendly smile we’re talking about. We all know the kinds of smiles this is not referring to.
When you start smiling at strangers what you will notice is that most of them will smile back at you. Some of them, who are accustomed to smiling at strangers themselves, will do it right away, without blinking an eye. Others will be thrown for a moment, not accustomed to having a random stranger smile kindly at them. Not seeking anything in return. Just passing along a friendly blessing. And you watch – most of these people too will start to show a return smile coming over their face as well.
Yes, in today’s day and age some people will give you a strange stare for smiling at them. But even those people are having fun! Have you ever given someone a strange stare? Fun isn’t its original purpose. But somehow it ends up being fun anyway. And even those sourpusses whose sourness won’t be moved for anything or anyone, they still benefit from your smile as well. Because, whether they like it or not, you just injected a bit of positivity into their world. And that can’t help but do them well. So there is not a person you can smile at, really, who doesn’t somehow benefit from it.
And when you put out that kind of positivity into the world, it can’t help but come back at you.
Now this was just an example, just one experiment – smiling at strangers. But it shows how the smallest amounts of attention placed on positive things produces more positive things for you and everyone you touch.
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Live life purposefully manifesting, through focusing!
’til we meet again,
Walk in Beauty;
Walk in Peace.
‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘
Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’. And is based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.
Writing Your Own Future: A Visualisation
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create” ~ Albert Einstein
The past is in the past. It’s behind us and there’s little to nothing we can do about it. What we can do, however, is put our eye on the future and plant our feet in the present and get moving toward the life of our dreams.
Because you can do that, no matter what your past. No matter where you’ve come from, you have the same infinite power to write your own life story from this point on. Everyone can do it, and it’s not even hard.
All that writing your future entails is being as crystal clear as you can be on what that future is like, and then start living from a place of total confidence and trust that this indeed will be your future.
The first part of this is easy. Most of us know what we want. In fact, there’s a good chance that you already have a Want List or a Goal List or some such other similar accounting of the life you dream of. But a list does not a vision make. When we talk about being crystal clear about what you want, we’re serious. You need to gaze deeply into your crystal ball and examine every last detail of this perfect future of yours.
More than just knowing it, you need to smell it, touch it, taste it. The more specific you can be about the future you’re writing, the better. Imagine yourself an author, in fact, penning a novel of this future of yours. You wouldn’t just write, “She got a new house.” You’d be writing about its style, size, color, history, the reason you loved it so much you just knew it was the one you had to have, and the circumstances of finding it and of course, the joyous move-in day.
So that’s the first part. The next part doesn’t seem as easy for people.
Many people set goals for their future and then immediately go back to living their lives as if that future’s never going arrive. But that doesn’t manifest anything more than just life they’ve created for themselves while they’re sitting around waiting for their goals to happen.
You don’t have to make your dreams come true. The universe has already got that covered. You just have to let them come true, Law of Attraction. That is, you have to start acting ‘as if” though you know that it’s going to happen.
You don’t spend much time wondering if your birthday is going to happen each year, do you? Of course it’s going to happen! All you do is start getting ready to celebrate. If you’ve been invited to a wedding, you can be pretty sure that when you show up at the given address on the given date and time, there’s going to be a wedding going on there. This is what we mean by acting as though you know it’s going to happen.
Don’t live your life preparing yourself for your dreams never to come true. Live your life preparing for their imminent arrival. Just like you would have to assemble the right outfit to wear to this aforementioned wedding, you also have to make the appropriate preparations for your dreams to come true.
That means making the choices that align with them happening, and not spending so much time protecting yourself “in case” they don’t happen.
Live life purposefully manifesting, through focusing!
’til we meet again,
Walk in Peace; Walk in Beauty.
‘Causing the Miraculous by Spreading Beauty, Truth & Harmony‘
Johnathan Brooks, MAC, PG Dip is a Life Coach who has trained in a wide range of personal development treatment methods including the “Power Therapies” (CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (postgrad), EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Master NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming) and has a Post Graduate Diploma in ‘Coaching and NLP’ which he passed with a ‘Commendation’.
He is a full member of the Association for Coaching (MAC) and is a Gold member of The Professional Guild of NLP.
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