It’s the only sensible way. You can only do what you believe is true. If you don’t believe that the universe is constructed of energy and that the human brain is a system receiving and sending vibrations through the universe’s layers of energy, you won’t focus on your vision consistently enough or strongly enough. For every effort you consciously put into making this Law of Attraction happen, you will use twice as much subconscious effort to sabotage it.
I practiced new ideas almost always in “probation mood” and almost always, they became permanent. I was trying new things and looking for confirmation that they worked. I read about paying yourself first in David Bach’s book and stashed away 2.8 percent of my income. It went against my gut feelings and lifelong indoctrination, but I did it anyway. Within a few months, I saw that it was really working, that my savings were growing. I read in The Compound Effect by Warren Hardy about a gratitude journal he wrote about his wife. In The Slight Edge online community, I met a guy who did the same. I started the gratitude journal about my wife with one entry a day. It took me less than six months to recognize the soothing effect gratitude has on my whole being, and I expanded it to my kids and then to my whole life. Nowadays I write down no fewer than 25 entries in my three different gratitude journals.
Action Items:
- Practice new ideas in “probation mood”
- Take the ideas, try them, and gradually incorporate those that you find helpful.
- While developing new habits, resolve to stick with them for a minimum of 30 days.
Three-Dimensional Philosophy
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“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance
with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.”
― Maxwell Maltz
Personal philosophy is a system for conduct of life. It consists of thoughts, experiences, interpretation attached to those experiences, relationships, emotions, data, data interpretations, and a myriad of other things. Life is complicated and complex; so is a system for conducting it. So in order to make it more bearable, easier to comprehend, and manageable, I will describe this concept in a way the human brain loves to act: with generalization and simplification.
I recognize three main elements shaping personal philosophy: people, data input sources, and your individual interpretation of data. Because everything matters and everything affects everything else, it’s enough to focus on these three elements and develop a successful personal philosophy.
As previously explained, if your personal philosophy doesn’t bring you closer to the outputs you really desire, it is stale. All you need is to refresh it a bit and keep changing it in the right direction. It’s enough to get involved with new people, to alter a bit the sources of your data input, and attach a new interpretation to the data you receive. It will transform your personal philosophy and transform your life.
People may be regarded as data input sources too. But there is something distinct in humanity. It is stronger to hear the information from another man than to read the same information in a book. Relationships and interactions stir more emotions and thoughts than any other way of receiving information. People have a profound influence on your philosophy. People are special and cannot be treated like a radio show or a book. I’ll expose how it works by sticking with the example of the process of reforming my philosophy in 2012.
I met new people. A month after reading The Slight Edge , I joined its online community. It is now sadly neglected, but it was quite alive when I signed up. As you know, the idea of my gratitude journal was partly born out of reading about the experiences of a member of The Slight Edge community. It is just a single instance showing how meeting new people may affect your worldview.
However, interaction in that community was an experience very