How I Get What I Want Easily

Amy Shamblen Not Sorries FB
Photo: Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

The best happiness is conjured. It’s how I get things easily. Getting what I want should be easy. That’s the way life can be for everyone. For me it is.

It hasn’t always been easy.  I had to learn how reality happens before getting what I want came easily. I appreciate what I learned. So I’m sharing it.

In the old days I didn’t know all this. By “old days” I mean a few years ago. 😀

Back then, I got a lot of what I wanted and some of what I didn’t. I got that the same way you likely do. Random!

I became pretty successful, but it was hard work, struggle, sacrifice.

Instead of talking about the old days, I want to talk about today’s days. But I guess I can’t without referring a little bit to the old days for context. 🤷🏽‍♂️

 

How Do Things Happen?

First, let me clarify something: Getting what I want means creating reality.

Many people scoff when “new agers” talk about “creating reality” and “manifesting”. Here’s the thing about that.

A lot of what I want is “real”. Physical events, physical things and, yes, some intangible things too. Like peace of mind. And understanding how life works.

But everything I want, including intangible stuff, must happen in the physical world. I call that “reality”. You probably call it that too.

So getting what I want means experiencing realities different from what I have. New realities that include in them what I want. Somehow, those realities must come about.

How do they come? Aren’t they being created? If so, who or what creates them?

I explored these questions some time ago. I’m glad I got super-clear answers.

· · ·

So when I talk about getting what I want, I’m talking about creating new realities. Realities that weren’t realities before. I’m at the center of “how”. And I’m getting better  proving to myself how that “how” works.

Fig. 1 below shows how I used to create reality. I call it “The Haphazard Way”. Here’s how that process worked for me. Maybe it works for you this way.

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Illustration by the author

 

Reality Needs A Perceiver And It Shapes That Which Perceives

Reality doesn’t exist if there is no perceiver. So reality needs a perceiver for it to “be”. Any consciousness capable of perception will do. In Fig. 1, I’m using me as the perceiver. But it could as well be a dog, bird, cockroach or single-celled organism.

In The Haphazard Way, as perceiver, I look at the world (Step 1 in Fig. 1) and see what’s happening. From that, I choose what I want.

For example, when I was young, I realized having money was a good thing. In high school, I looked at professions where my talents (love of writing, art, etc) would pay most. Then I planned my life to match that trajectory.

So far so good.

But while spending so much time looking at the world, I also couldn’t help see how other people got what I wanted. Sounds normal, right? You set a goal, then look at others’ success as a model for yours.

The problem is, I’m not here to copy what others did. I thought I was. And I succeeded at that for a while. It wasn’t fulfilling though.

I’m a creator. I’m here to do it my way. A fresh way. You are a creator too. You’re not here to copy others.

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llustration by the author

Besides, the majority of humans (like 99.999 percent) create what they want haphazardly (Fig. 1). That works. But it’s not easy. That’s why so many people describe getting what they want as “working your ass off,” “sacrificing”, “paying your dues”, etc. Then they feel proud about that.

Why would I want to copy that? If they knew what I now know, I don’t think they’d feel proud.

But it’s what they know. So I don’t blame them. Instead I say “more power to you!” Because they’re going to need it.

In their reality (Fig. 1), working your ass off (or who you know, or having money, or paying your dues or whatever) is necessary. It’s necessary because they’ve looked at how others have done it. And they are copying that.

I was doing the same. Here’s why I don’t do that now.

 

Living Other People’s Experience By Default

When I copied another’s way, I also accepted their beliefs about reality. Everybody’s doing that. Which is why we have the world we have where pretty much everyone thinks the same way about reality. I thought that way too.

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Illustration by the author

Back to fig. 1: Looking at the world (Step 1) formed beliefs within me consistent with what I was looking at (Step 2). Including other people’s beliefs. If I believed as everyone else, my actions would match everyone else (Step 3). Not my original, pure inspirations.

Beliefs dictate actions in The Haphazard Way

My actions reflected what I believed. Next I’d look at results my actions created (Step 4) to check (Step 5) if they matched my expectations. “Expectations” is another word for “beliefs about the future”. Based on beliefs I got from others, I formed beliefs about the future containing what my acts should produce.

Make sense so far?

Here’s the problem. My adopted beliefs included ways to get what I want. But they also included negative beliefs about the world. About me too.

A major negative belief about the world, which I adopted from others was “there’s only so much to go around”. Another: “I’m in competition for those limited things, whether it’s money, women, cars, etc.” Another: “money doesn’t grow on trees” meaning: it’s scarce.

These are beliefs new agers call “scarcity consciousness”. They make an unlimited thing limited.

My beliefs also included other people’s beliefs about people like me. For example, I had a lot of negative beliefs about being African American and queer. These negative beliefs shaped my self-worth, self-respect and, most important, what I thought was possible.

Maybe you have these too. Where do these come from? I got them looking at the world. I listened to what my parents’ said about the world and believed them. I watched their personal experiences, then formed beliefs from that. I got beliefs from my personal experience. I shaped beliefs listening to TV and radio. I got beliefs from reading stuff.

In other words, I got my beliefs from looking at the world around me (Step 1).

How about you? Where do your beliefs come from? Have you thought about that? Some people I talk with are open enough to say they get their beliefs the same way I did. “I was raised to believe…” is how it usually starts.

Maybe you were “raised to believe…” a certain way too…

Back to Fig. 1.

How_Reality_Happens 2
Illustration by the author

So when I checked my progress (or lack thereof), I would make up stories reflecting my messed up (inaccurate) beliefs. “This happened because I was black” or, “I can’t do that right” or, “I wish I could do it like that guy”, or “I need money to do that and I don’t have money so…”

The thing is, the world I saw matched beliefs I had. It’s tricky to sort out beliefs I hold from the world I see. They are so intertwined. In reality, they are one. They both reflect each to the other. I know that now.

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Illustration by the author

So no matter what happened from my actions, I interpreted them according to my beliefs. I still do that. That can’t be helped. Life will always reflect my beliefs.

But today, I have a whole new set of beliefs. They come from a new way of creating reality.

What’s interesting is, I wouldn’t have my new way, were it not for the old way.

Life will not differ from how I believe. “Life” is the cycle illustrated in Fig. 1 and 2. Both cycles repeat themselves over and over. Beliefs become automatic. Acts born of beliefs recede into the background. What’s left are results and interpretations.

If I want any part of my reality different, I must change my beliefs. To change beliefs, I must know how they happen. Then use that process differently.

That’s where Fig. 2 comes in.

How_Reality_Happens_2 2
Illustration by the author

 

The World Turns From One Thing I See To The Next

I questioned early on why things happened the way they did. So The Haphazard Way helped me. It’s not wrong. I think it serves this exact purpose.

I’m not the only person who knows about this. More are learning it all the time. Here’s how it works:

First, I look at the world (Step 1). But I don’t accept that world as factual. Instead I look at what is and use it to decide not only what I want, but how I would like it to happen.

I don’t think about the specifics of how it could happen. I only think about how it would feel to have what I want (Step 1).

Once I figure that out, I choose beliefs (Step 2) consistent with what I want.  I literally make up beliefs. The more original the better. The beliefs boost the feelings.

Next I hold the feelings the beliefs have boosted. I keep feeling the feelings. I pay as little attention as I can to current reality. Including the fact that it doesn’t contain what I want. I don’t think about what I want either. I only feel how it feels having what I want.

I’m not always successful. But you’d be surprised how little success is needed for this to work.

If/when I’m successful with Fig. 2 Step 2, the universe and the larger part that is me gives feedback, suggestions and impulses about acts to take (Step 3). I try never to act unless I get inspiration. This is important.

Sometimes it takes a long time before I get inspiration. Just ask my wife! 😜

Other times, inspiration comes immediately.

Sometimes I have to sort out where the inspiration is coming from. Old beliefs sometimes draw ideas to me. They sound like “you should be doing….”

The right inspiration doesn’t sound that way.

When right inspiration does come, I try to act immediately (Step 4). Next, I do my best to not look for evidence my acts create. I don’t check. Instead, I use observing the world as fuel. Fuel for more made up beliefs. Beliefs consistent with the reality I am creating, rather than the one I’m looking at.

· · ·

My Inner Being has written in this blog about some results this process produced. It’s going to continue doing that. So many things are happening all the time.

Life has changed for me since using this process. Most important, I’m finding myself happier. Not because I’m getting more of what I want easier, which I am. But because when I’m spending most of my time focusing on positive beliefs, how can that not become a habit? And how can a positive focus turned habitual not produce a reality consistent with that? And how can that not create a happy life?

That’s conjured happiness.

In the end, I want what I want because I think I’ll be happier getting that. When I’m positively focused, I’m already happy. That’s the best place from which to have what I want show up. It takes out the yearning that happens when I seek happiness in getting things.

The best happiness is conjured happiness. I know that now. And thank goodness that I do because it makes getting things easy.

One More Thing To Create Your Best Life Ever

Guiherme Stecanella best life ever FB blog
Photo: Guiherme Stecanella

In a previous post we wrote “If you stick to your guns, you will prevail.”

For some, this accurate.

But for many others…we’d say the majority of people…sticking to your guns is not enough.

That’s because people who want to be great, sometimes believe they aren’t.

You can’t be great if you don’t think you are.

So when we write: “…stick to your guns,…”, we’re referring to a mindset, not the action you’re taking.

Both action and mindset are crucial though. They work together.

But it’s easy for them to work against each other. And this is our point: For most people they do work against each other.

Take Perry for example.

· · ·

For decades he held many disempowering beliefs.

All beliefs like beliefs like themselves. So Perry’s early beliefs, spawned similar ones. Before long he had a collection of similarly disempowering beliefs.

We like to call this collection a belief constellation. They resemble billions of stars on a clear night. Like a constellation, they connect, forming a picture.

That picture is one’s reality.

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Belief constellations resemble pictures painted in the sky by connecting stars. In the same way celestial patterns form objects, your beliefs form your reality. (Photo: Frederik de Wit)

Belief constellations are tightly woven. It’s hard to find the originating belief. One of Perry’s earliest disempowering beliefs, in this life time, for example, was “I’m an oddball and alone.”

Usually Perry was on his own. His parents were often aloof. His brothers were doing their own things. When the three brothers were together, the younger and older brothers often teased him.

It didn’t matter if it was playful, or malicious. Perry, a serious young boy, took these experiences as seriously as everything else, interpreting them to mean he was alone. And vulnerable. And insecure.

Life always reflects one’s mood through life experiences and situations. Not surprisingly, Perry found more and more “evidence” supporting his insecurity:

He got into a fight with a neighbor boy, which he lost. He was shot at by another young boy armed with a gun. A neighbor’s dog chased him up a tree. A nasty bike accident left him permanently scarred.

Then his parents divorced.

Of course, plenty life experiences reflected Perry’s invulnerability too.

But you can only see evidence for your predominant beliefs. Young Perry’s dominant belief was “I’m vulnerable”.

· · ·

The earlier in life a belief is formed, the more time it has to accumulate like beliefs. Over time, belief constellations become “the way life is”.

By then, most don’t have objective access to the beliefs. They don’t question the “what is”-ness of their interpretations which have hardened into beliefs.

They just believe life is this way.

Remember thought: while life reflects evidence consistent with that, it simultaneously contains evidence to the contrary.

That means, one’s life experience, no matter how dour, can change.

The problem is, humans (a) have a hard time accepting this. (b) They are unwilling to exert enough psychological persistence making change permanent. So, (c) they miss evidence confirming life has changed.

Summarizing:

  1. One’s mindset created from interpreting experience, spawns more confirming experiences. (“mindset” is another word for “belief constellation”)
  2. The mindset recedes into the background becoming “the way life is”.
  3. One’s actions – their physical behavior, but also their thought behavior – shapes to their experiences.
  4. One acts consistent with their “in the background” beliefs.

If a person believes blacks are scary and sees a black person at a stop light crossing the street in front of her at night, of course she is going to lock her car doors.

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Belief constellations are so powerful they create your reality and dictate your behavior. (Photo by Gijis Coolen)

The point of all this is, stick to your guns and live authentically. But be sure your beliefs match your authenticity. Beliefs that your authenticity is wrong, bad, or unworthy of expression, generate internal conflict.

That will show up in your life experience, making life “harder” than it needs to be.

· · ·

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Such life experiences are showing you your inner reality. That’s good.

You could say that’s what physical life is about. Life experience is dazzling. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the dazzle and forget you’re shaping your life experiences.

Every human comes standing in their invincibility. Until they accept others’ beliefs or get “educated”. Which is not all that educational.

In time, they forget the world responds to them. It’s not the other way around.

In losing their way, they pre-pave their return.

Return to what? To their invincibility.

Everyone returns eventually. The majority return after death. Witness what people regret at their death.

Some people (maybe you?) get it sooner. They end up being remarkable.

Their authenticity will not allow circumstances to dictate belief. They are here to change worlds. Not just this world, all worlds.

Fewer of these people are willing to compromise their authenticity these days. They have something to say. And they’re saying it.

Maybe you are one of these people.

· · ·

If you are, your life experience awaits your expression. No pressure though.

You may see these circumstances for what they are. Your perfect design. In this life.

Or maybe not.

The great news is, there are plenty of lifetimes. Between those lifetimes, you remind yourself what you really are. But you don’t have to die to remember. And you don’t need more than one life time to make your mark.

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Death: a doorway through which you pass. Then you remember what you are. (Photo: Rhodi Alers)

So here is the best way to get at beliefs that may have receded into the “what is”-ness of your life: Don’t worry about old beliefs! Instead, create new empowering ones.

Of course they’re going to feel fake to you. All beliefs do at first.

But the nature of belief is the nature of belief. Meaning: hold that fake-feeling belief long enough. It will fade into your background and become “what is” for you. That belief also will accumulate like ones. A new belief constellation will be born.

Your life experience will reflect that constellation. Just like your old beliefs.

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The road ahead that is your life is being designed by you. What reality are you going to create for you and the world? (Photo: Yoal Desurmont)

At that point, you’ll begin believing what once was a fake belief.

The following example is helpful.

Five years ago, Perry met his now wife. As with all love, in the beginning, it was great.

The more time passed however, the more his wife began reflecting back to Perry his beliefs about being in relationships. Of course, Perry’s wife has her own belief constellation born of her own lifetime experiences.

Perry’s relationship gradually became a living hell for Perry. And for his wife. As marriages often do. That’s why so many end.

But Perry knows he is the common denominator in his life experience. No matter where he goes, he’s there, creating his experience via his beliefs. So Perry decided he had had enough.

He put this reality creation business to the test.

And so he began treating his wife differently.

As far as he was concerned, his wife had no responsibility for Perry’s life experience or their relationship. Not even responsibility for her own behavior!

There are a lot of details we’re skipping for brevity.

Life experience shapes to beliefs on an exponential curve. So at first, Perry didn’t notice much happening.

For the first three years.

He just had to accept something was happening. Even though he couldn’t see it. And indeed something was.

In the fourth year, his wife started changing. On her own, she began taking classes, then she began meditating. Then she began listening to uplifting speakers. Then she started reading books by those speakers.

Emboldened by these results, Perry doubled down on his commitment. And his wife became easier and easier to be with.

Their relationship changed too.

In fact, Perry’s wife had changed for the better so much, even her parents mentioned how lighter and happier she had become.

· · ·

You have more power than you may know. You can change other people’s behavior.

But you have to be persistent in the face of no apparent evidence.

So, here are the steps to making old beliefs irrelevant in your life.

First, start by allowing yourself to recognize things in your life that are contrary to beliefs you have. If you believe that life doesn’t shape to your beliefs, note how your life behaves exactly that way. By showing you a random-generated life experience that appears objectively separate from your beliefs.

Noted, deliberately take a moment and reflect on that. Write about it in your journal. Ponder the evidence your life has just shown you that matches your beliefs.

Then note when life doesn’t. Remember: life always does both. Maybe you’ll think about something happening –– your friend calling for example –– and your friend will call.

You’re wanting to realize that life is full of evidence for any belief.

Which it is.

Any life experience is available, bounded only by your beliefs.

Take your time. Allow many examples like this.

Then, write down a thought consistent with a belief you want to have. Start with something easy.

Say, for example, you want to be an actor, but you believe you’re not talented enough. Starting with the thought “I can be an actor” is going to create too much internal conflict.

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You can live your dream life. It’s never too late. You just have to synch your beliefs and your desire. (Photo: Avel Chuklanov)

Instead, you might create the thought “I really like acting”. That thought has nothing to do with becoming a successful actor.

But it’s in the potential belief constellation of being a successful actor. Pretty much all successful actors like acting.

Next, think that thought for a little while, a few minutes.  You’ll start feeling good while thinking it. You might start thinking thoughts similar to it.

You might think “I liked acting as a child”.

“I always wanted to be an actor”.

“Acting is so a part of who I am”.

At this point, you might feel happy thinking. Or encouraged. Or enthusiastic. Or empowered. When you get to that point, try to forget about the thought completely.

Then, over some period of time, you will be inspired to take action. To the best of your ability, follow every inspiration you get.

Talk to a stranger. Go to a movie. Enroll in an acting class….

When you take an action inspired in this way, you have begun the process that ends in life experiences inconsistent with your previous beliefs and consistent with your new ones.

When that happens, revel in it. Journal about it. Acknowledge it.

You are on the way to becoming the actor you’re wanting to be. While old beliefs are on their way to irrelevancy.

We come full circle to the original story that prompted this one.

For now you must stick to your guns, repeating this process. Do that and you create the unshakable mindset. And the life it accompanies.

What you want is what the world wants. Your authenticity. Give the world what it wants and you change it.

But first you must change.