When Oprah showcased the movie “the Secret” on afternoon television last year, it would not be long before “the Law of Attraction” would become a household term.  To many, it brought back the teachings of Think and Grow Rich, that “our thoughts create our reality”, and the Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale, which taught us “we become what we think about.”

 Today, many teachers from the Secret show us dramatic and exciting examples of how focusing on certain thoughts, either positive or negative, can propel our lives in the direction of those thoughts with great force.  But, as we really examine the nature of thoughts, we know that our minds are rarely thinking about a world in an unlimited way.  Even very positive, creative people start out with a majority of  thoughts that are at least somewhat  limiting because of how we are conditioned to see our world.  We may even have the great experience of positive thinking creating a positive outcome, and set out to try to do it again deliberately, only to find ourselves baffled by self sabotage.

 Where is this sabotage coming from, and what can we do about it so that we create the lives we desire on purpose?  The study of the mind teaches us that our limiting beliefs often originate from seemingly small incidents in our past, that become fixed in our subconscious because of the emotion that was tied to the event, at the time.  Memory studies also show that we remember past events in direct proportion to the emotion we felt surrounding the event.  Because of this sort of double whammy, we often hear people say they feel stuck hearing the old tapes running in their head, on a decidedly unwelcome autopilot.  We can have a good laugh about it, if we realize the “incident” was a neighbor’s offhand remark when we were 5, and the neighbor was the “big kid” who at the time was 6.  But the universal truth is that we still  react to our current events and take action every single day because of judgements that were created in our past.  The adult mind does not filter out or correct for the belief that was created by the feelings of the small child, no matter how silly the memory seems to us now.  The memory and feelings tied to it are still in there vibrating at a frequency that attracts more of the same, according to the Law of Attraction.  When you find a situation upsetting, see the situation in the past that is the reason for your upset.  To me, Lesson 5 in A Course in Miracles is a great gift and remedy for this, reminding us “I Am Never Upset For The Reason I Think.”  When we are able to see that we are emotionally affected by a current incident out of proportion to the actual situation, we can see its similarity to past events and realize the true cause.  “I Am Never Upset For The Reason I Think”, in my view, lets us understand both why we continue to attract past emotional situations over and over, and also why we overreact to them when they appear again. In my interpretation, this lesson allows us to break free of the pattern, and return to the now where we can perceive and respond to the situation for what it is.  The gift comes when we notice that  an emotional reaction is stronger than a situation has really created, and we release the past connection to choose to live in the present moment.  It is freeing and infectious, for those around you will notice they are understood for their true intentions, and you will be more often, in return.

 Exercise 1.  How can we find our own limiting beliefs, and their origin? The following questions will enable you to cut through to some key limiting beliefs and self discovery.

• Why do I have difficulty trusting and loving some people in my life?
• Why am I angry?
• Who do I need to forgive, for my sake?  Not to say it’s OK, but to say it has no hold over my thoughts.

 Exercise 2.  Write out your goals, if you have not in the past.  If you could not fail, what would you have, do and be?

• Go down the list imagining each goal, and notice very closely what feelings come up.
• Write them down.  This may be some of the most life changing work you can do.
• Notice all the feelings of why you feel you can’t or don’t have it.  That’s what is holding you back.

In my next article, I will continue the discussion by showing you how you can break the emotion tied to each of the memories, once and for all.  You have created your all important list based on your unique experience, and past limiting beliefs.  Next we will discuss some amazing clearing techniques to get rid of the limits!

Sue Shockley  ItsYourTurnForSuccess.com