Achieving The Change You Want To Manifest

“Imagination is everything,” according to Albert Einstein—one of the greatest minds that ever graced the earth surface. Einstein had a valid point. We can never really understand the full power of imagination.

Make Use Of Visualization To Achieve The Change You Want To Manifest

In the book, Being Happy, by Andrew Matthews, he said that if we can set our mental waves to higher oscillation, we can definitely influence the physical world. We haven’t discovered yet the full power of our mind, yet many people have vouched to the fact that if we can visualize a certain happening beforehand, we are on our way to manifesting that event in reality. If we want to effectively achieve a certain change in our life, we must visualize it first in our mind every day.

For example, it is not unusual to see great golf players visualize the trajectory of the golf ball. Prior to hitting the ball, they would usually visualize the ball being hit by their cub, flung high into the air and hitting the desirable point in the green. They do this visualization because they believe in its power. Visualization allows a person to perfect something in his or her mind before it happens in reality. Hence, if you want to develop a certain competence on a job, it would be good to visualize yourself doing and perfecting that competence in your mind beforehand.

We may never really totally understand how visualization can effectively manifest what we want to achieve. Yet, it is believed that visualization operates on the subconscious level and that the subconscious level is not limited by time and space. This means that if we want to operate in the future, we can indulge ourselves in visualization to control the future. Some experts in visualization advised us that the best times to visualize are just fifteen minutes before we sleep and fifteen minutes after we have awoken. The reason is that our brain is operating on the alpha frequency during these moments of half-sleep. Alpha frequency is the relaxed state of our mind and many experts in visualization believe that this is the ideal time for visualizing what we want to manifest in our life. Hence, the alpha state is also the best time to imagine the change that we would like to achieve in our life.

Make A Thorough Assessment Of Your Assets And Talents

Together with the visualization, we should make a thorough assessment of our personal assets and talents. When I was in my first year of college, I was once embarrassed in front of my class because I made a guffaw about a mispronunciation of a certain difficult word. That embarrassing experience made me promise myself never again to be embarrassed because of a mistake in pronunciation. So I made it sure that I checked in the dictionary every unfamiliar word I encountered in my readings. I gave myself a timetable of one year to gain mastery of every pronunciation of words. I knew my limitation so I worked on it to improve it. A year later, I became the most admired speaker of my class. The change in me happened because I was able to figure out and accept my deficiency. My point is: we should know where our weakness lies so that we can work on it. Demosthenes, one of the greatest orators of all time, had a speech problem as a youth. He vowed to himself that he would one day become the best orator of the ancient world. Every morning, he would put some pebbles inside his mouth while he made his imaginary speeches along the beach. Later on, he became renowned as the greatest orator of the ancient world. He achieved this because he worked on his weakness and he was open to turn that weakness into a veritable asset.

Clarify Your Motive And Goal For Change

Nothing can stop a man who has a clear view of what he wants to achieve. This is definitely true. Alexander the Great, as a boy, was encouraged by his mentor Aristotle to achieve something great. Early in his childhood, he had a clear understanding of what he wanted to achieve—he wante d to unite the whole world by sword. He almost achieved this at the age of thirty three. What I am saying is that if we have a clear vision of what we want to achieve, we are definitely on our way to achieve it. If we know our motive for change and the end result that we would like to achieve, we put ourselves in a favorable position of achieving our goal. Many among us live life without any clear goal. Not many among us even plan our life like the way we list the items we would like to buy from the grocery store. Yet, if we could do it, we will never really be sidetracked along the way. Clear motives and goals give us the inner confidence which allows us to achieve to the desirable competence.

Change Your Negative Mental Programming

We never really know up to what extent our mental programs can hamper our growth and development. Yet, there are plenty of instances wherein we are precluded from achieving something because our inner programs say otherwise. Negative mental programs are the inner forces which make us cringe before a great challenge. Likewise, our subconscious programs are sometimes beyond our access. They only subtly come out in our dreams and self-talk. Once we become clearly aware of them, we can then take the necessary steps on how to change these mental programs. Say for instance, you hate the lifestyle of the rich and famous because you see that they flaunt their lavish lifestyle to other people. This inner abhorrence of the rich may be an inner program infused into our subconscious mind because of our bad experience with a rich person in the past. On the other hand, we really want to become rich. There may be a dichotomy between what we want and what our inner program is. You can never really become what you subconsciously hate, and hence, in your life, you always experience a sense of extreme poverty. There are plenty of instances wherein there is great dichotomy between what we want and our subconscious programs. Thus, if we want some real change in our life, we must start with the altering of our negative subconscious programs. If you have a pessimistic view of life, you need to debunk this view in favor of an optimistic worldview, because like computer software programs, mental programs are the programs which play pivotal roles behind our success and failure. Likewise, subconscious programs are mental habits which play themselves well when we least expect them to be working. Hence first, we have to work on changing our negative mental programs if we want to achieve our full potential.

Create A Mental Map For Change

Another useful method for manifesting real change in our life is through the use of mental maps to guide us into the desired change in our life. Similar to mental programs, mental map can greatly assist us to achieve good results. Use visualization to create these mental maps. Create good mental habits which will enable you to achieve your goals. Make a schematic diagram of the mental habits you would like to develop and work on developing them. Every time we tend to revert back to the old negative mental habits, remind yourself of the mental map that you are following. Remind yourself of the end results you would like to achieve in your life, and always assess your progress according to these mental maps.

Write Down Your Good And Bad Qualities

It would also be beneficial to you to write down your good and bad qualities. Then make a “to-do” list on how to improve your good qualities to make them better, and another “to-do” list on how to overcome your bad qualities. Follow the example of Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. In his life, he gave himself timeline on improving different virtues which he wanted to develop in himself. He created for himself a hierarchy of virtues which he desired to strengthen every month. He made sure that he note down his progress in that virtue every day. In the end, he became the most prolific and most loved American in both the United States and France, and maybe all throughout the world. There is something good in writing down the things we would like to achieve because our conscious mind usually has very short memory; it has to be reminded every once in a while.

The previous example of writing down the list of items we would like to buy in the grocery store is perfect in explaining the very short span of memory we have. It saves us a lot of effort and time in our daily life if we know how to make the “to-do” list. Likewise, it keeps us focused. If we usually take note when we plan some non-essential things every day, we can also do this in planning our life and I know it will reap you the best results. So start with identifying your qualities which you would like to change and improve. Write down the things you would do to change those qualities. Say for instance, you have a nasty way of being obnoxiously tactless in speech. You can remove this bad behavior if you can make a “to-do” list on how to eliminate this bad habit. You can include in your to-do list statements like: “I will slap my lips a bit if ever I begin to hurt another person by my bad habit of tactlessness.” You may also include statement like: “I will instead talk of the good quality of another person than say something bad.” With the reminders coming from the “to-do” list, you will soon eliminate the bad habit of tactlessness and develop the opposite virtue tactfulness. Likewise, make a “to-do” list on a daily basis. Moreover, you should make the effort of monitoring your progress and measuring your progress against your “to-do” list every day.

Reward Yourself For Every Goal Achieved

Now, the last point about this chapter boils down to the act of rewarding yourself for every goal that you have achieved in your “to-do” list. Make sure that you compliment yourself by giving yourself a good tap on the shoulder every time you see that you are making a significant progress towards your desired goals. Make sure that you give yourself a positive regard every time your monitor indicates that you have made a great stride towards positive change. When your every small success accumulates, you will notice someday that these small successes are the building blocks behind the great successes in your life. So affirm yourself every time you make a significant progress. This will give you enough confidence to further strive towards the improvement and development of yourself.

The Power Of Affirmation

There is something very potent about the act of affirmation that we should always affirm ourselves every time we achieve some small successes in our process of changing. Affirmation is akin to visualization wherein we imagine the desired results already taking place in reality. The mind, specifically in the alpha state, can manifest anything in reality for if the experts in visualization are right, the mind in the alpha state transcends time and space. Affirmation is stating something in a positive way. Say for instance, you want to be healthy; you can say an affirmative statement such as: “I am always healthy!” Such statement when repeated always sinks in into the subconscious mind and become a new program. Once it gains a foothold in the subconscious mind, its realization in actuality becomes automatic. Thus, many great men of achievement had used the power of affirmation in crushing the negative mental programs and replacing them with positive ones. Think of how you feel good when you were affirmed by your significant others for whatever good things you have done. We can live happily for one month with a single sincere compliment said to us by someone we respect so much. So if those affirmative statements are powerful enough to move us, repeated self-affirmations will also do us a lot of service in our effort to change some aspects of our life.