Awesome Dale asks: “Last year in November I resigned from a job that I was no longer enjoying. However I made the decision to leave a few months before that, but wanted to wait for what I felt was the right time to do it. However leading up to the day where I finally handed in my letter of resignation I was very stressed out about how it was going to go down. I thought it was going to end in a screaming match between me and my boss and things were going to get really ugly. I stressed about it, obsessed on it and couldn’t get it out of my mind. However when the day finally came, my boss was completely fine with it and wished me all the best. It couldn’t have gone down any better and now I’m still on friendly terms with him and my former work mates. He even offered me a position back there if my plans didn’t work out.

I guess what I’d like to know is how the Law of Attraction worked in this scenario considering I got theopposite to what I was expecting. There’ve been similar circumstances to this that have happened in my life where I’ve expected the worst and been surprised with the opposite outcome. I guess it goes without saying I’ve spent many years being a pessimist which is something I’m really trying to change.

I’d be very curious to know what your thoughts are on this.”

That’s an excellent question, Awesome Dale. Is it possible to be focused on our fears and still manifest what we want? And if so, how exactly does that work in terms of vibration?

Up until now, I’ve done my best to offer a simple explanation of how we create (or rather receive) our own reality. I’ve been telling you that if you focus in a way that feels good, you will attune yourself to the frequency of what you want and it will come into your life. I’ve also explained that if you focus in a way that doesn’t feel good, in a way that contradicts what you want, you’ll block it from coming into your life. So, how can it then be that one could focus in a way that doesn’t feel good and still get a positive outcome? Have I been lying to you?

Nope. It’s still all true. We’re just about to hit a new level of understanding. Call it LOA 102.

You’re always moving towards what you want

Think of your life journey this way: You’re on a road, your own personal road, destination Awesometown, where everything you want resides. You may think that you have to find that road, that you’re running around in the darkness, looking for the path of light and all that jazz, but really, that’s a bunch of BS. You’ve always been on your road and it’s the perfect road for you. This isn’t fate or predetermined destiny – you determine the contents of your personal Awesometown and you can change them at any time. It’s just that you’re ALWAYS on the road to your personal destination. You can’t not be.

What’s more, the road is more like one of those moving walkways. It’s always moving towards what you want. You’re constantly being pulled or guided towards the fulfillment of your desires. You can’t stop that from happening. So, by default, you are going to get what you want. I realize I’m about to lose some of you to the “Yeah Buts” here, so please bear with me.

Speed bumps

So, there you are, standing on your moving walkway to your own personal Awesometown. You can’t stop the forward movement. That motion is powered by your core desires, which you can never turn off. Stopping isn’t an option. And you can’t slam it into reverse, either, even if it sometimes feels like it. You’re always moving forward. You’re always being pulled towards what you want.

It’s just that sometimes, ok a lot of the time, you’re being pulled towards what you want kicking and screaming. You see, you can’t stop the forward momentum, but you can slow it down. And, you can make it really, really painful.

When you contradict the energy of what you want, when you focus on your fears and doubts and activate your limiting beliefs, it’s like you’re placing obstacles in your path. You keep moving forward, but now you’re hitting speed bumps. Sometimes, the obstacles are bigger – more like walls that you slam into. And if the beliefs are big enough, you might even feel like you’re stuck – you’re being pulled forward but are continuously hitting a roadblock. In that case, you’d still be moving forward, but very slowly and very, very painfully.

The battle between desire and fear

If the walkway’s forward momentum is powered by your desire, then the strength of your desire determines the walkway’s speed. In other words, the more you want something, the faster your energy or walkway is moving, and the faster you’re being pulled forward, toward receiving that desire. The stronger your resistance or limiting beliefs, the bigger the obstacles in your path.

So, how quickly you are moving towards what you want is always a product of how much you want it and how much you’re contradicting that desire. If your desire is strong, if you really, really want something, your path will be moving forward quickly and with a great deal of force. If you have just a tiny bit of doubt, you’ll bust right through those obstacles, and will barely even feel them. If you have strong desire and strong resistance, you’ll be slammed into your obstacle again and again, inching it forward bit by bit with each slam, making excruciatingly slow and painful progress. You’re still moving forward, but it’s a rough ride.

Smoothing out the ride

When you apply LOA teachings, when you deliberately start to focus in a way that feels good, you begin to shrink and remove obstacles, which makes for a much smoother ride. Instead of a torturous experience full of “negative” experiences that just seem to get in the way all the time, stuff just lines up for you. You get to manifest what you want without all the drama. Life becomes easy.

When you focus on your fears and doubts, and you stress yourself out, you raise more obstacles and you end up a beaten, bloody mess. Everything is frustrating and much harder than it needs to be. Life seems to suck.

Getting what you want even when you’re afraid

Now that I’ve laid the groundwork, I can answer Awesome Dale’s question properly. How could he have manifested a great and positive outcome while being totally stressed out and experiencing so much negative emotion, a clear indicator that he had tons of obstacles?

Here’s what I think happened:

• Dale had a strong desire for a better work environment and an amicable exit. His walkway was moving pretty quickly, so even if there were obstacles, he would’ve busted through them.
• He was aware enough of his feelings to wait for an inspired time to quit. This indicates that he was quite aligned with what he wanted. In fact, his positive manifestation would indicate that he had done a great job lining up with his own personal Awesometown (he had smoothed out the ride and there weren’t that many obstacles).
• The fear only presented itself when the goal was imminent, like a wall suddenly appearing on his path. With all that momentum, he slammed right into it and had a rough ride for a little while. His fear didn’t mess up his progress towards his goal, it just messed up his enjoyment of the journey.

Had Dale’s fear been bigger, he might’ve let it cloud his judgment and not wait for the inspired time to quit. He might’ve then manifested a different outcome, albeit temporarily (all manifestations are temporary).

Negative manifestations aren’t destinations. They’re obstacles

When something unwanted happens, like if Dale’s boss had turned into an asshole, we tend to think that we’ve ended up in the wrong destination. We believe that we’ve gone to Failuretown instead of Awesometown, and now we’re stuck there until we can find a way out (the elusive path we’ve been searching for…).

But there is no Failuretown. There’s only Awesometown and the path to it, which you are always on. When something unwanted manifests, you have simply created a large (sometimes really large) obstacle, which is merely a representation of a limiting belief which contradicts what you want.

In Dale’s case, if his desire was for a positive, harmonious life experience, then his fear of a screaming match represented an obstacle to that. His obstacle never grew past negative emotion, but if it had, he could’ve manifested an ugly experience (simply a bigger version of the obstacle), on the way to finally achieving a more amicable relationship with those around him. A fight with his boss wouldn’t have kept him from manifesting harmony in the future, but it would’ve shown him that he had a strong belief in animosity (i.e. that people are jerks). As it was, his belief wasn’t as big as he assumed it was. His manifestations are proof of that. He arrived in Awesometown (on this particular desire), having been shaken up a bit by a few bumps in the road, but not really worse for the wear.

You can’t get it wrong

The beauty of this metaphor is that it illustrates so perfectly that you can’t ever get it wrong. You can’t screw up your journey. You can’t miss your destination. You can’t NOT get what you want eventually. You are always moving towards happiness and your desires. There’s a natural process at work here that you can’t mess up.

But you can decide, deliberately, just how smooth the journey will be. And, you can understand that obstacles are nothing more than overgrown speed bumps, which can be removed, released and/or overcome. You can bust through your own personal walls with force, getting a bit bloody in the process, or you can gently climb over (I mostly advocate and discuss gentle obstacle releasing techniques on this blog). You can speed up your walkway by focusing on your desire, or you can slow it down, by putting your focus on something really general. When you speed up, you’ll hit obstacles with more force, which can make them more present in your life and therefore, easier to identify. When life gets overwhelming, you can slow your momentum down a bit by meditating and focusing less specifically, so obstacles appear with less force and at a slower pace.

What you can’t do is stop moving, go backwards, or lose your way. Even if you’re negatively focused, and obstacles are popping up like those inflatable clowns that you punch but which just keep bopping back up, you will get there eventually.

You should never be surprised when things work out for you. That’s your default setting – you’re always in the process of getting what you want. How long, drawn out, frustrating, painful, joyful, amazing and/or adventurous that process is, however, is entirely up to you. So, what’s it gonna be? Smooth ride or rough ride? Awesometown is waiting…