Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life (5 page)

By connecting to your visualization emotionally, you can approach your dream as though it already exists. Instead of marinating in sorrow at not having what you want, switch it up and indulge in the feelings that come with experiencing exactly what you want. You get what you give, so try at all times to come from a place of feeling life’s abundance. Send this kind of positivity out into the cosmos, and you
will
get positive things back. (See
Chapter 3
for a whole lot more on that.)

SENSE IT

Engage your physiology, and you can bring your body in on the visualization as well. I want you to feel the physical sensations in the vision. If you’re visualizing a swish at the free throw line, feel the powerful jumping movement explode through your legs and then the descent of your body lowering back down to the ground. If you’re visualizing being fifty pounds thinner, imagine what it will be like to fit into a great dress and walk around feeling slim and
healthy. If it’s your dream to teach kids how to ride horses, imagine how it will feel to be outside all day. Feel your vision as if you’re already there and it is actually happening to you. By connecting emotion to physiology, you are completely engaging yourself. It may sound silly, but top athletes use this particular technique a lot, and studies have shown that Olympians with the most gold medals incorporate visualization into their regular practice. Attaching physical sensations to your mental musings makes them all the more familiar and real
.

GET EXCITED ABOUT THE PROCESS

You may be thrilled at your vision of success, but can you generate the same positive feelings when it comes to doing the work to achieve your goal? If you visualize yourself winning the Tour de France, can you see yourself sticking with the strenuous practice schedule needed to get there? The strict dietary guidelines? Do you see yourself being okay with spending that much of your time on it? Will you be able to find the process enjoyable and empowering? You must envision yourself being happy doing the work to achieve your goal—because there
is
going to be work
.

Think about what you’re actually going to have to
do
to get where you want to be, and then feel the joy that doing these things will bring you. If you can’t get excited about the work, then your ultimate vision may be out of alignment with your essential being. You don’t have to love every second of every step of your journey. But overall you have to be able to see yourself doing the work, going through the process, and finding happiness within it
.

CREATE A VISION BOARD

Vision boards are kind of a thing right now—even Oprah’s doing them. I have to tell you, they’re kind of fun, a little like being in an arts and crafts class at summer camp. The idea is very simple, although you can get as creative and elaborate as you want. Get a corkboard and assemble images and pictures of your goal. Put anything and everything you want on there. Seriously. Houses, cars
,
awards, luxury travel, six-pack abs. Go to town, be shameless. See a picture of something else you want? Slap it on there! I’m always adding to mine. I’m on my third corkboard
.

This exercise is key in that it urges you both to have fun and to learn more about your dream. It’s sort of a visual equivalent to writing your goal down (which we’ll get to in
Chapter 10
). It helps you guide your mind toward positive thoughts of success, solidify your agenda, and form that all-important emotional connection to the things you want. Keep your vision board where you will see it as often as possible. Put one in your office. Create one as a screen saver. The more exposure you have to your goal, the more it will become a reality in your subconscious mind
.

The bottom line: visualization is a powerful tool used by world-class achievers across every field. It doesn’t matter what college you went to or how privileged you are. Those who truly know what they want outperform everyone else by miles
.

I want you to practice visualization whenever possible: in the morning when you first wake up, to bring direction to your day; throughout the course of your day, to bring awareness to your immediate actions, no matter how small or inconsequential they may seem; and before you go to sleep, to reflect on your day and refocus for the next. Your imagination can create fear and limitation, but it can also break right through it. Start using it to your advantage to create a new, positive reality
.

CHAPTER THREE

SAY A LITTLE PRAYER

(That’s Right, I Said
Prayer
!)

O
kay, get ready, because this is the most controversial part of the book. If we’re talking about realizing your dreams, there is something we MUST cover, and that’s the power of
prayer
. If that word gives you the jitters or hives, or just makes you a tad uncomfy, you can call it
meditation, manifesting your reality, wishing on a star
—call it whatever you need to get through this chapter. They all basically mean the same thing. They’re all about the act of concentrating on a hope and tapping into a source of energy bigger than yourself to turn that hope into a reality.

People who write self-help books tend to pussyfoot around this issue, not wanting to use religious terminology for fear of turning readers off or upsetting the masses. As you probably know, I’m not one to pussyfoot, so before we go on, I need you to jettison any stigma that you may or may not have attached to words like
God/universe, spiritual, prayer
, and so on, because what I’m about to share with you is absolutely critical to your success. And I’m going to be using those words. Whether you’re a believer or not—and I use the word
believer
as loosely as possible—there is no denying the power of our minds. Whether we’re talking about praying, meditating, or simply focusing on a goal, scientific
proof shows that what we think and believe have a
huge
effect on our reality.

Proof Positive: Scientific Studies of Mind and Spirituality

The past fifteen years have seen great and growing interest in researching the power and efficacy of prayers, meditation, and mindfulness. Many of these studies raise more questions than they answer, since the unquantifiable nature of spiritual phenomena (such as prayer, compassion, and meditation) presents a challenge to traditional scientific methodology. But the more studies that are done, the more scientists are realizing that valuable insight can be gained from the power of the unseen over the seen, of what we traditionally think of as the unreal over the real.

One of the most fascinating and controversial topics in this field is the power of praying on behalf of other people. The past ten years especially have seen an explosion in the number of studies done in this area—more than six thousand! David R. Hodge, of the College of Human Services at Arizona State University, conducted a comprehensive analysis of a number of these studies, and in 2007 he concluded that, with all variables taken into account, sick people who were being prayed for tended to have better recovery rates than sick people who were not being prayed for. In other words, prayer
has been proven
to be effective in creating very real positive outcomes.
*

Okay, next up: the power of meditation. This one is
tough because meditation is even more unquantifiable than prayer. But slowly scientists are opening their minds to the idea that intense meditative training can have all sorts of powerful positive effects on your physical and emotional well-being, and consequently your life as a whole. The studies are ongoing, but so far the research indicates that focused meditation can at the very least have profound effects on our brain chemistry, enabling us to increase positive emotions such as compassion and forgiveness simply by harnessing our minds.
*

A truly weird but amazing study on the power of the mind comes from Japan. Dr. Masaru Emoto, author of
The Hidden Messages in Water
, wanted to see if anything happened to water at a fundamental physical level, when various mental and verbal forces “acted” on it. He exposed water to blessings, anger, love, hate, and a whole range of human emotions and expressions. After exposing each container of water to the different forces, he froze the water and photographed the crystals. The crystals from the water that had been exposed to love and blessings were consistently and noticeably more beautiful than those from the water exposed to negativity. He has also shown that the same effect can work across vast distances.
^†

None of the above prove the existence of a god out there or the absolute quantifiable power of this stuff. But it does prove beyond a doubt that what goes on in our heads is strongly connected to what goes on in the world around us.

*
“Does God Answer Prayer? Researcher Says ‘Yes’,”
Science Daily
(March 15, 2007),
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070314195638.htm
.

*
David Biello, “Meditate on This: You Can Learn to Be More Compassionate,”
Scientific American
(March 26, 2008),
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=meditate-on-this-you-can-learn-to-be-more-compassionate
.

†
From the film
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
(
www.whatthebleep.com
).

I’m not asking you to abandon your beliefs—don’t worry, this chapter doesn’t come with a side of Kool-Aid. But you
need
to be able to expand upon them, question them, and open yourself up a little to the things I’m going to tell you and to the concepts we’ll be exploring. I’m asking you to keep enough of an open mind that you can take this next step with me. Revered philosopher and spiritual teacher Krishnamurti once said, “Truth is a thing that is living, and to a living thing there is no path—it is only to dead things that there can be a path. Truth being pathless, to discover it you must be adventurous, ready for danger.” Often we are frightened and search for a path to reality and truth as a means of security via an organization, a belief, or a guru. But to do that is like being a blind man clinging to a wall, ultimately closing you off to all possibilities, including the very thing you were searching for in the first place.

Upending yourself in this way may disorient you a bit in the moment, but if you are strong enough to endure this loss of bearings, the end result will yield limitless hope and potential. And what have you got to lose, anyway? If your life were perfect, would you be reading this book right now? So relax, don’t be uptight, and go with it.

Let’s start with something fun: we’ll take a stab at defining the common essence of religion, subatomic physics, psychology, biology, and neuroscience. (What the hell, someone’s gotta do it, right?) Okay, so I may not be able to unite spirituality and science definitively once and for all—I’m ambitious, but not delusional—but I do know there’s a link between them. Ultimately, of course, I can only speak to what I have studied and to how this holistic, integrated approach to understanding the world has changed my life and helps me to change others’ lives every day.

I’m probably one of the most spiritual people you’ll ever meet. Yes, I curse a lot, and I’m tough as nails, but I am also spiritual. And although I am close to “God,” science is at the root of my spirituality. Let me explain.

I believe that everything in the universe is made up of energy
and information, including you, your emotions, and your belief systems. Your body, your being, is no different in its makeup from the body of the universe, of God, or (insert whatever vernacular you prefer). The universe is clearly purposeful, with an intelligence supporting its creation and continuing evolution, and we are pieces of this intelligence by virtue of having emerged from it. The energy that you are focusing on this page right now is exactly the same as the energy that created and sustains our world. At an even more literal level, according to astrophysics, the atoms in our bodies once belonged to stars far away in time and space. In every way, you are the universe, and the universe is you.

Am I getting too New Age kooky for you? Just chill out and bear with me. No one ever died from an open mind. Your thoughts and intentions, the things you focus on and hold in your mind, trigger a transmission of energy and information out into the world. By choosing to change the energy and information within your own body and mind, you can literally change the energy and information you send to the world around you. In doing so, you can eventually cause things to change in your favor.