I am incredibly honored to announce that Deliberate Receiving Blog has tied for first place in Steven Aitchison’s Top 50 Personal Development Blogs of 2012 contest. I was so honored to just make the list last year (I came in 26th thanks to your votes), and thought I wouldn’t be able to participate this year, due to my busy schedule. Normally, I would’ve announced the contest and asked you to vote for me, but I honestly didn’t even know I was nominated. I do remember seeing a glimpse of it on Facebook and thinking how nice it would’ve been to participate again, and letting it go. And next thing I know, I won. Well, holy shitballs Batman (for you newcomers… we use language, um, creatively around here…). I’m truly overwhelmed. You can click through to the contest using the link above. I can’t wait to check out all the other blogs. It includes a few really good friends, but also quite a few I don’t yet know. It’s like a smorgasbord of awesomeness, and just in time for the holidays!! 🙂

I very rarely talk about Quantum Physics. There’s a reason for that: I am not, nor have I ever been, a quantum physicist. Or any kind of physicist. I’m aware that quantum physics is often used by proponents of the Law of Attraction to “prove” that it’s real. If you google something along those lines, you’ll get tons of websites that tout that quantum physics basically teaches the law of attraction. All the while actual quantum physicists are ripping their hair out, crying “We never said that!!” Sure, there have been scientific breakthroughs that have supported some of what LOA says (and LOA theories change depending on who’s teaching it, which makes it all the more confusing), but the fact is that I will never claim that theoretical physics has proven anything, because that just drives all the smart people crazy, and no one wants that. Seriously. Has anyone seen Revenge of the Nerds?

Make no mistake: I wholeheartedly believe that the Law of Attraction is real, I’m just not going to claim that it’s been proven using currently accepted scientific standards (which, by their very nature, contradict Universal Law so therefore cannot prove it, but that’s a discussion for another day). My point is this: I don’t normally talk about quantum physics, but I will today. Or rather, I’m going to talk a little bit about quantum mechanics. And by “a little”, I mean, I’m going to use the thought experiment called Schrödinger’s Cat to make a massive and awesome point, which is not, and I repeat, NOT dependent on whether or not my interpretation of the experiment is totally accurate. If I totally mess up the sciencey bits, I do apologize. But again, I’m here to make a point and this experiment just happens to help me make it so perfectly, that I’m willing to lift my ban on quantum physics or mechanics or whatever, just for today. Are we cool, smart people? Oh goody. 😉

Schrödinger’s Cat

For those of you who don’t watch TV shows like Numb3rs or The Big Bang Theory, let me give you  a quick (and totally non-sciencey) recap of what Schrödinger’s Cat is all about. In the 1930’s, an Austrian Scientist name Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment (emphasis on thought. No cats were actually shoved into boxes.) He proposed the following: Put a cat in a sealed box with a vile of poison and a radioactive source. Add a device that detects radioactivity with 50% accuracy, which shatters the vile of poison upon such detection, releasing the poison and killing the cat instantly. Here’s where it gets wiggy: As long as you don’t open the box, the cat is both alive and dead. You cannot know if the poison has been released, and until you do, both possibilities still exist.

I’ve heard this story many times over the years. It’s come up again and again (I actually thought it was common knowledge until I started talking about it and not one person I spoke to had ever heard of it. Am I… *gasp* … a nerd?). But I never really “got” it, at least not on the level that I do now, until quite recently.

The Many Worlds Interpretation

There’s an interpretation of Schrödinger’s Cat that goes like this: We live in a multiverse (multiple Universes), where every possibility exists simultaneously. Each decision or event is a kind of branching off point, creating two different realities. One where you made decision A and one where you made decision B. Any fan of science fiction will be super familiar with this theory. So, every version of every decision ever made, every possibility, exists in some Universe out there somewhere, simultaneously with this one.

There’s one “reality” where the cat is alive and one “reality” where the cat is dead, and you don’t know which one you’re in until you open the box. With me so far? Brilliant.

I happen to agree with that theory. Big time. In fact, I’m going to take this quite a bit further than Schrödinger did.

You get to choose your reality

You see, I don’t just think that there are multiple realities branching off depending on your decisions. I firmly believe that you get to deliberately choose which reality want to line up with, regardless of if the branching off was based on your decision or not. There is a reality where the cat dies and there’s a reality where the cat lives. Of the realities that can be created, of all the possible outcomes that exist, you can choose which one you’d like to align your own reality with.

If you’re a little confused right now, don’t worry. This will all become clear in a second. Let me apply this principle to some real world situations:

Real world applications

Let’s start with an easy example, one that, if you read this blog regularly, you’ll already have an understanding of. You have a meeting tomorrow and you’re worried that it’s not going to go well. If you’re an LOA student, you’ll know that as you think of this meeting going badly, you are actually ensuring that it will. You are aligning yourself with a difficult experience, one in which your boss will be in a bad mood, traffic will make you late, your laptop won’t work and your presentation will bomb. If, however, you notice while you’re worrying that you’re not feeling good and that you are, in fact, aligning yourself with the scenario you’re afraid of, you can turn it around. You can visualize the meeting going well. You can think thoughts about it that feel better. You can change your point of attraction so that you line up with a reality in which the meeting goes well, even phenomenally so.

You can align yourself with the wanted version of future events or the unwanted version of future events, depending on which version you focus upon.

When is it too late?

The above example is easy to understand. Since the meeting is tomorrow, you have plenty of time to align yourself with the outcome you want. Your mind can wrap itself around the idea that your boss may be inspired to be in either a good or bad mood, you could be inspired to get in the car a bit earlier or later, etc. But, what about if (you think that) the outcome is dependent on your action? And what if that action has already been taken?

Let’s say that you have a business dinner tonight and you were supposed to make the reservation. You’ve been really stressed lately and your vibration hasn’t been great. So, you forgot to call the restaurant (that would be a manifestation of resistance). You might think “I already forgot to make a reservation. This is a busy restaurant and no one can get a table, much less for 6 people, without several weeks’ notice.” And I would say: Think of Schrödinger’s Cat. There is a reality in which the restaurant has a table for you and one in which they don’t. You could be minutes away from walking into the restaurant and still manage to line up with the result you want. All you’d have to do is change your vibration significantly enough to align yourself with the reality you want.

Mind = Blown

Let me stop here a moment and let the full implications of my point sink in: You do not have to make anything happen in your reality, nor do you have to wait for the Universe to make it happen. All you have to do is align with the reality, like jumping into a parallel Universe, where what you want has already been orchestrated. Your ability to make that jump is only determined by your belief that it can be done. When you have a lot of lead time, it’s easy to believe that the reality you want could be orchestrated. When you only have minutes, or when the action that supposedly determines the outcome (it never does) has already been taken, it’s much harder to believe it. And yet, it’s entirely possible.

So, you could walk into the busiest restaurant in town and get a table without a reservation. You could influence your test score after taking the test. You could line up with a friendlier version of the cop, while he is walking towards your car. You could come home to a friendlier version of your wife than the one you just spoke to on the phone. You could simply change your vibration and jump into a different reality.

The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box. All possibilities exist simultaneously until you actually line up with an outcome. It is never too late to determine the outcome until an outcome has actually happened. Your action doesn’t matter. Someone else’s opinion doesn’t matter. Your past doesn’t matter. Your vibration up until a second ago doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is your ability to focus on what you want in such a way that it aligns you with that outcome, which you can tell if you’re doing by the way you feel. You have a chance to change your vibration up until the very last second. You can change how a meeting is going while in the damn meeting. Because until the meeting is over, the cat ain’t alive or dead, y’all. You still get to decide which one it’s going to be.

Each moment carries new possibilities

So, you have the power and the ability to decide, in each and every moment, how you want your future, even your immediate future, to turn out. Of course, it’s much easier if you get a bit of a head start, but even if you didn’t, you still get to decide.

I’m going to start using this metaphor for myself from now on. Do I want a dead cat or a live one? If I’m frustrated about something, I’m going to ask myself: “Dead cat or live cat?” I may even start yelling “You’re killing the cat!” at my clients when they’re stubbornly arguing why they can’t get what they want (or, on a particularly fun day, I may just make dying cat noises. My methods may be, um, unique, but I do tend to get my point across. And laughing is a great way to break out of a rut.)

And so, I’d like to end this uncharacteristically theoretical post with the philosophical question of the year: “Are you killing Schrödinger’s Cat?” Also, I claim the rights to the T-shirt (what a conversation starter that would be!) In other words, are you focused on the outcome you want, or on the outcome you don’t want? Let me know in the comments. About the cat. Or the T-shirt. Or the messed up science (I did warn you though…)