Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life (6 page)

Your journey to a purposeful and inspired life begins when you acknowledge the primordial creative power within you—the godliness—and then harness that power to achieve the results you desire.

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT:
(SOME OF) THE SCIENCE

If you’re getting a little twitchy at the mention of God, we can actually throw that word out of the equation altogether if you need to. The fact is, faith and spirituality have positive effects on us physically and emotionally via our biochemistry alone—no god about it.

Mind-body medicine has become so widely accepted, it’s difficult to remember when it was considered one step up from mumbo-jumbo witch-doctoring. It’s even got a fancy name: psychoneuroimmunology
or PNI. It’s the study of how your thoughts (that’s the
psycho
part) affect the chemicals in your brain (
neuro
) and the hormones that fight disease (
immunology
).

But the mind-body connection goes far beyond disease—it relates just as much to our mood, our overall wellness, our outlook on life, and ultimately, whether we get what we want out of that life. What it boils down to is this: nonphysical things, like our thoughts, emotions, and moods, affect our bodies on a cellular level. Anger, fear, joy, love—each has very specific effects on our physiology. Being happy and fulfilled is healthier than being frustrated and miserable. So by sending out wishful vibes (read: dreams), you are actually preconditioning your body to experience the results you desire through your hormones and body chemistry. If you have trouble with the idea of a higher power, or supporting intelligence, you can say that prayer, or sending your hopes out into the physical world around you, is useful because of its benefits to your biochemistry.

We can take this mind-body connection still further and apply it to psychology. You may think your thoughts are just your thoughts, that they’re inside your head and that’s where they end. Dead wrong.

The way you think, even in the deepest part of your subconscious, affects your behavior in ways you can’t see. Your behavior in turn shapes your reality, again in ways you often aren’t aware of. Being as simplistic as possible, you could say that positive thinking makes us act in positive ways, setting in motion a chain reaction that turns a situation’s outcome our way. We will get into this in more detail later in this chapter, but for now let’s just think about this idea for a minute. If there’s something you want, and you believe you can achieve it, you will automatically conduct yourself more assertively and confidently. You’ll
feel
successful, even if you haven’t achieved it yet. You might speak up in a meeting at work, get noticed by your boss, and get that promotion. You might strike up a conversation with that guy or girl at the dinner party, and he or she might ask you out. Get the idea?

The things you think, in general and especially about yourself, form the basis of your every action, large and small. Feeling strong and confident frees you to take the powerful actions needed to get powerful results.

Now, let’s go a little further out on that limb—in fact, as far as we can go: geek out with me as we delve into quantum mechanics. (Don’t get scared, this will be simple.) Quantum mechanics deals with the nature of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic levels. Remember at the beginning of this chapter I said we’re all made up of the exact same energy as everything else in the universe? What I was getting at was the belief among quantum physicists that everything is made up of strings of energy. Atoms, once considered solid matter, are now known to be composed of pulsating energetic vibrations.

Since everything in the universe is made up of atoms, that makes us all one. Not in a “Kumbaya,” let’s-all-hold-hands sense but in a literal subatomic-composition sense. We each emit our own unique energy, what quantum folks call vibrational frequency. It is a specific wavelength of energy that changes according to our will and consciousness.

Because all of us and everything in the entire universe are connected by energy and information, when you hurt, it hurts.
Literally
. When you are happy, the vibration of the universe rises a little. Okay, maybe very very little—you’re not going to have parades thrown in your honor around the world if you get that raise; after all you’re one person, and the universe is, well,
the universe
. But that doesn’t make it any less important for every single one of us to find the joy and meaning in our lives. This goes back to my point about the absurdity of thinking it is selfish to follow your dreams or to want to create happiness for yourself.

When you look at it from a quantum physics perspective, you actually owe it to yourself, to everyone you know, and yes, to the universe, to find your purpose in life, so that you can find your optimum “frequency,” and contribute to the harmony of the big picture.

If quantum mechanics is too much for you to take, think about this. We can’t see atoms, right? But we all know the power harnessed within them. Look at the atom bomb! Well, we’re made up of millions of those little suckers. That’s a hell of a lot of energy. You just have to choose to harness that energy to work for you, rather than against you.

No matter how you come at it, the undeniable truth is that your energy and consciousness determine the outcomes you will experience, and ultimately the life you build. What seems like magic to some is actually the workings of the energetic world. What some wonder at as mystery, others see as the expression of scientific patterns. Either way, you are a force, and by taking control of the cosmic power we all contain, you are tapping into a source of infinite abundance, accessing all the insight and power you need to achieve everything you want. (Yes, I’m still going to talk like this even after the physics. Get over it, this stuff works!)

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT:
THE TECHNIQUE

So how do you harness all this power for your benefit?

By broadcasting a message that is in alignment with your greatest hopes and desires.

Even in your sleep you’re sending and receiving energy. In our daily lives television, radio, phone, and satellite signals pelt us from every direction; if we have the right receiver apparatus, we are able to interpret them. Well, you’re kind of like one of those satellites, picking up signals from others and projecting ones of your own into the world around you. Whether you realize it or not, your life is a direct result of your personal energy field. The good news is that if you don’t like what’s coming in, you are free to change the energy and information you’re sending out.

It’s all well and good to talk about broadcasting your desires, but you have to do it in a very specific way. You attract what you
feel, not what you “ask for,” so it’s imperative that you come from a place of abundance and peace rather than deprivation or fear. It works something like this: the energy we emit is electromagnetic (
magnetic
being the key part) and driven by our emotions, which affect our biochemistry and our atomic makeup and thus play a huge part in what we communicate to the world.

Think of it like throwing a boomerang (if anyone actually knows how to do that): whatever you think and feel comes back to you. And thus the word
karma
. So if you’re going to broadcast your desires, you have to come from a place of
have
instead of
have not
.

Whether you want true love, a sports car, or a successful new career, you can’t ask for anything if you’re focused on your lack of it, because that’s what you will invite into your life: lack. Instead, think about what it would feel like to already
have
what you want. Imagine you have already found your soul mate, bought that Porsche, or started that home business. Use those powers of visualization we talked about in
Chapter 2
,
really
feel the happiness and contentment that you imagine your success will bring you. This way you send a message of affluence and comfort out into the world and invite the same to come back to you. These powerful prayers from positive emotions will establish the first connection between your dreams and your reality.

Let me give you a couple of examples of how this can translate to real life. Say you want a promotion. Don’t be jealous of your successful coworkers, because you will be sending the subconscious message that you are less than they are. Instead, focus on yourself and how you can advance in your career by using your passion and drive to get better at your job.

If you want to meet your true love, don’t focus on wanting someone to take away your loneliness or make you feel less unloved. Instead think about everything you have to offer the right person, and imagine the beautiful, productive relationship you will have, which is what you will project and attract.

If you want to be healthy, don’t think to yourself,
I don’t want to get sick
, because that message focuses on sickness. Instead
think of feeling strong and joyful and vibrant; your appreciation will put positive, deserving energy out into the world.

If you can desire it, the universe
can
produce it. Think about it: all this great stuff is happening out there. People are falling in love, making money, and enjoying great health and deep fulfillment. So these things exist—and it’s time they existed for you. I know this chapter has gotten a little “out there” for some of you, but I’m trying to help you recognize the flow of abundance in the universe so that you can tap in to it, allow it to rush into your life. Oprah allows it. Derek Jeter allows it. Mick Jagger allows it. I allow it. Name anyone you admire—he or she allows it. Are you going to tap in to it, too?

Now, here I must slap you back to reality a little. I cannot be emphatic enough on the following point: you MUST bring action to your aspirations and intentions. Prayer and meditation and everything I’ve talked about are powerful, effective,
passive
methods, but if you don’t do the work, if you don’t take precise, methodical action to make your dreams a reality, they most likely will never materialize.

This step doesn’t stand alone.

You can’t just think promotion, you have to kick ass at your job. You can’t just think love, you have to put yourself out there and meet people. You can’t just think healthy, you have to take care of yourself, eat healthfully, have fun, and exercise.

Everything I’m telling you in this chapter, the prayer, the meditating, the broadcasting, all of it is necessary to make
room
for cosmic intervention, but when that intervention comes, you’d better be ready. There’s no such thing as luck, so kiss that idea goodbye. Life is about preparation meeting opportunity. When your destiny comes calling, you’d better have taken the proper actions so you can rise to meet it, or you could blow it.

This action part is the key to why so many of the self-help/law-of-attraction books already out on the shelves are ultimately not very helpful and even potentially harmful. Like a diet book that tells you that you don’t have to count calories, they prey on your
apathy and indirectly encourage lethargy and laziness. They’ll talk about the power of positive thinking and tell you that if you just wish it, it will come, but they leave out the part about putting in the effort. In effect, they tell you it is okay to be a passive bystander watching your life rather than living it full throttle.

This type of entitlement talk is dangerous. Having the right to happiness means having the right to earn it, not having it given to you without effort and action on your part. When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life is easy, they may lose the courage and the determination needed in the face of adversity. This doesn’t mean that our natural state isn’t contentment and happiness; it just means that success in life is a proactive formula. Often we have to fight for what we believe in and persevere. Remember the old saying “God helps those who help themselves”? Make it your mantra.

Books that promise success without action sell because their messages are easy for people to swallow, but they don’t work. The formula is incomplete. You’ll notice that this book has three parts. That’s because this book is
not
BS. This is just the first step; it’s important, but without the other two, it’s useless. Sort of like an engine with no gasoline. Dig?

Even if you are a manifesting machine, visualizing your goals and bringing action to your intentions, sometimes in life things don’t turn out the way you want. In life there are such things as paradoxes, when outcomes contradict our expectations. But if our intentions are good, our actions will be, too, and they
will
have a positive result, even if it’s not the one we expected or thought we wanted.

Let’s say that I want McDonald’s to go out of business, and I visualize their stores closing down and being replaced by their opposite, healthy mom-and-pop restaurants. I take as much action as possible to make it happen. I spread the word about McDonald’s use of unhealthy ingredients, I picket outside their restaurants, and so on. Here’s the catch: simultaneously, McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner is dreaming the exact opposite. He is visualizing
billions of people walking through those Golden Arches to buy his burgers and fries. He is starting initiatives like the dollar menu to bring people flocking to his franchises in droves.

Bottom line: one of us will NOT get exactly what we want. But remember that on a subatomic level, we are all one and all connected. So when our intentions are in alignment with the greater good, positive things
will
happen.

Maybe you’re thinking,
What’s the point? If I want something and someone else doesn’t, what are the chances I’m going to be the one to get my way?
The reality is that when you put that intention and action into the world, it
has
to come back to you. It might not look
exactly
how you’d planned. I might not shut down McDonald’s, but my efforts to do so might inspire McDonald’s to offer healthier menu options and alert their billions of customers to pay attention to the foods they are eating and get healthier. I might even end up opening my own chain of health food stores to help to change the world, and I might find happiness in that endeavor, despite the fact that McDonald’s is still a profitable company. And down the road, McDonald’s might do something with their profits that helps to cure a disease like cancer. I doubt it, but hey, you never know.