Making your thoughts a reality

I have to admit one of the big thrills of my life is manifesting whatever it is I want to create in the world. Until you have done this (in my opinion) you are only half alive. Some call it self-actualization.

I remember my grandfather (a very brilliant self-made man) telling me that nothing could match the feeling of making your own money, creating your own success, and that being given money or things did not bring the satisfaction of creating them for yourself. I thought he was nuts, of course. "Just give it to me," I thought. "I don't care how I get it. I just want it." I now know he was right. Part of what he was saying was that the having is great, but the real thrill is in the creating. It's nice to have money and things, but (as they say) things don't create happiness(though they do make unhappiness easier to bear). Ultimately, the knowledge that you have the power to manifest whatever you need brings not only satisfaction, but a solid sense of security.

The truth is, most people have never been taught how to achieve what they want. It isn't taught in schools, and few parents teach it to their children (probably because few know how to do it themselves). The following is a checklist of the process you have to go through to create your thoughts into reality. The simple checklist can be summed up, however, in one sentence, one rule:

"If you think like a successful person, and act like a successful person, you will be a successful person."

This rule applies to anything, whether to creating a company, making money, becoming a better parent, having a good relationship, being a more spiritual person, learning a skill, being happier, mastering a sport, overcoming an adversity - anything. Here is the checklist of the things you need to handle in order to succeed at anything:

1. You need to know exactly what you want. You must create a clear, succinct, specific goal statement. Your mind cannot help you create something unless it knows exactly what it's supposed to create.

2. You need to determine what the price is that must be paid to achieve what it is you want (there is always a price), and be willing to pay it in full.

3. You must create a plan of action and immediately begin working the plan, improving it as more information becomes available.

4. You must determine what a person who would, could, or has achieved what you want to achieve believes about achieving that goal, and also what you believe about achieving that goal. You must rid yourself of the beliefs you have that are holding you back and adopt the beliefs of the person who is successful. In other words, you must develop the resourceful beliefs necessary to achieve your goal.

5. You must develop the values that support achievement of your goal, and rid yourself of values that either do not support it, or are in conflict either with the goal itself or with other values that do support it (for example, you might value both risk-taking and security, and this conflict must be resolved or it will create problems).

6. You must create resourceful internal information sorting processes (this one is too big to explain here, but it is a biggie). These are largely unconscious processes, and have to do with how you decide what incoming information to delete, what information you decide to focus on, in what ways you might distort incoming information, and how you create internal generalizations about that information. There are resourceful ways to do this and unresourceful ways to do this. Having unresourceful methods in this department is one way people sabotage themselves without knowing how or why.

7. You must know how to deal with adversity, "failure," and setbacks so as to turn them into opportunities. There will be no straight shot to success, and you have to know how to deal with the challenges that come up and make them into ways to move forward again. Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit, and you have to know how to find it.

8. You must develop the personality traits that support success in whatever it is you want to do, and eliminate the personality traits that do not support it.

9. You must learn how to control your state of mind, so as to create motivation, faith, self-discipline, ability to focus, certainty, persistence, and other resourceful states, and to avoid or shift out of fear and discouragement and other unresourceful states.

10. You must gather around you the resources, both material and human, that will help you achieve what you want. The creation of the human part of this is sometimes spoken of as creating a mastermind group.

That's it. If you handle all of this, you will succeed at anything. Success is a mental attitude. (via Bill Harris).