Meet Sue. Sue is a Law of Attraction Student. She understands that she creates her own reality, that her emotions are indicators of whether or not her thoughts are serving her, and that she’s much, MUCH more powerful than she’s been led to believe. Yes, Sue’s got it down pat. Only, her actual physical reality doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. While she understands how her reality is created theoretically, in practicality, nothing seems to be changing. If you’re feeling like Sue, today’s blog post is for you.

What “Stuckness” really is

We can’t actually ever be “stuck”. Our reality is not static. We can’t actually be caught in a state where nothing is changing. We are constantly creating, constantly shifting into a new reality. Each and every moment of every day, we are moving from one reality to another. When we feel as though we’re stuck, we’re simply moving from one reality into another one that looks exactly the same. In other words, we are attracting the same exact circumstances over and over again. And so, our douchebag boss never changes, our bank account never seems to be able to get past a certain number, and the soul mate we want to attract never comes.

The stuckness, however, is a total illusion. The douche-y boss from today is not actually the same one from yesterday. They’re just very, very similar. As I explained in the Schroedinger’s Cat post, we are constantly moving from one reality to another, with infinite possibilities being presented to us. These possibilities are only limited by our beliefs and expectations. So, if you expect your boss to be a douche, you line up with yet another reality where he is one. Your reality can never prove your expectation wrong. Ever. Yep, I’ll say that again: Your reality can never prove your expectation wrong. You should probably get that tattooed on your body somewhere.

People can be stuck in a repeating cycle of very similar (and generally unwanted) realities for a long time, but breaking out of this cycle isn’t all that hard once you know how. And yes, today I’ll be telling you how. Because I’m freaking awesome like that. You’re welcome.

Step #1 – Change your expectations

Breaking out of your stuckness can be done in one of two ways. You can use one or the other, or for even faster results (because I know you’re a bunch of ambitious little buggers), do both.

The first way is to change your expectations. Now, I’ve written about this topic before, but it bears repeating. If you take the time before an event occurs to create a positive expectation, you can actually change the outcome. I call this being the Ultimate Control Freak, LOA style.

Let’s say that Sue is going to a party. Here are the possible outcomes and their causes:

Scenario #1: Sue has a horrible time at the party. She feels bored and awkward and out of place. She goes home depressed, feeling like she’s never going to make any real friends, much less find a boyfriend. She’s just going to be a loser all her life.

The Cause: Without even realizing it, Sue had a negative expectation before going to the party. The proof that this negative expectation exists is that she had a negative experience. She may not be conscious of the thoughts that lined her up with this event, but they were there. Guaranteed. And Sue’s reality could not prove her expectation wrong, therefore, she got exactly what she “knew” he would.

Scenario #2: Sue has a great time at the party. Without any conscious action on her part, Sue was swept up by a group of people having a great time, by the music that was playing and by seeing a hot guy as soon as she entered the room. Possibly, the five glasses of vino she had didn’t hurt, either. Sue is slightly surprised that her night turned out so great, but has no real idea how it happened. She considers this good luck; a random, positive event that she can only hope will repeat itself.

The Cause: Sue, while possibly somewhat negatively focused, was open to the idea of having a good time. Vibrationally, she was on the fence, so to speak, neither predominantly negative or positive. Her vibration, which wasn’t stable (meaning she was easily influenced by others), was simply affected by a group of happy people and circumstances that made it easy for Sue to react in a positive way. The only two problems with this scenario are that 1.) it could’ve easily gone either way – Sue was going to react to whatever she found on the other side of that door, be it negative or positive; and 2.) Sue feels no sense of control whatsoever. She has no way to ensure that she’ll have a good time at future parties

Scenario #3: Sue has an awesome time at the party. Before the party began, and possibly even the night before, Sue took some time to visualize herself having a great time. She decided that she wasn’t going to settle for anything less, and set up a positive expectation. Why would she leave her experience to chance when he could simply and easily make sure that her experience of the party would be a rockin’ one?

The Cause: By consciously lining herself up with a positive experience, Sue guarantees that she’ll have one. This is why I consider this being the ultimate control freak. Normally, when we speak about control freakishness, we’re describing people who go around trying to control others so they can feel better. But, being the Ultimate Control Freak – LOA style, means controlling your reality by consciously shaping your vibration.

Step #2 – Change your reaction

Now, let’s say that Sue had a bad time, but, understanding how reality creation actually works, she vows not to let that happen again. She decides to start to set up a different expectation and by doing so, she’s already halfway into technique number 2.

If you consider that you’re choosing which reality you shift into in each moment, then it makes sense to take your focus off of WHICH reality you’re currently in, and onto the mechanism of HOW you are choosing the next reality, so you can make sure it doesn’t match the sucky one you’re stuck in. Now, there are many ways to look at this choosing process, but here’s an easy one:

Let’s say Sue goes to work every day and it sucks eggs. Her boss is a douche, her coworkers are idiots, and her customers are rude. In other words, each day, Sue shifts into a reality that matches the last one. She’s feeling stuck, even though she’s actually just re-creating the same scenario over and over again. Creating a different one is much, MUCH easier than Sue realizes.

At the end of each day, Sue comes home, has a glass of wine and tries to unwind. She spends a few minutes telling her cat about the horrors of her job and why it sucks so bad, and then distracts herself with some TV, before she goes to sleep in a state of great discontent. She wakes up groggy and unmotivated, and prepares herself to experience the same damn misery again.

What Sue doesn’t realize is that her reaction to the experience, in this case a day at the office, is what lines her up with the next day’s reality. She can blame the douchebag boss and the colleagues and the customers and the economy and the government and “the system” and her stupid genes which, if only they were different, would allow her to be a supermodel and live in Italy with George Clooney and not have to put up with any of these rat bastards. Or, she can realize that her next day’s reality is determined entirely by her vibration, and her vibration is determined by, as well as the cause of, her current (as in NOW) reaction.

Choosing to react differently

Now, changing your reaction in the moment, when you’re having a shit fit, is nearly impossible. I’m not talking about shutting down your emotions when someone has triggered you and you’re having a meltdown. I’m talking about the slow, habitual, totally changeable reactions we have to our everyday circumstances. Like, our days at work, or waiting in line at the supermarket, or putting up with loud neighbors. The way we react to any of these habitual experiences directly determines the reality we’ll shift into next. Will it be the same, or will it be different? Will it be worse or will it be better?

So, Sue decides that enough is enough. She comes home from yet another horrible day at the office, but instead of burdening her poor, long suffering cat with her troubles, decides to take a different view of what happened. Are really ALL the customers rude? Well, no, now that she’s thinking about it. Some are actually quite nice. It’s just that the obnoxious ones take up so much more of her attention and tend to stick around in her mind longer. She spends a few minutes thinking about the nice ones and already feels better. Are all her coworkers idiots? Well no, some of them are quite competent, but she doesn’t notice them so much because they don’t create any extra work for her. In fact, she realizes that she tends to focus on a very small number of colleagues who trigger her, while there are a ton of others who never do. She spends some time appreciating those awesome colleagues, instead of bitching about the ones she doesn’t like. Is her boss really a douchebag? Yes. Yes he is. May he rot in hell. Sue realizes that she’s can’t, at this moment, shift her focus around her boss, so she decides to at least NOT complain about him.

But the work she’s done by reacting differently to her day already lines Sue up with a different reality. The next day, she still has some rude customers, but MORE nice ones than the day before. Her idiot coworkers are still dorks, but she also has a significant exchange with a really nice and competent colleague. And, her boss is out sick.

As Sue continues to deliberately shape her reaction to her day, choosing to react in a positive way to the events that occurred, she lines up with more and more positive experiences and less and less negative ones. She shifts into slightly more positive realities each day, until one day, she realizes that her whole world looks significantly different than it did when she started this exercise.

Your reaction is YOUR choice

What most people don’t realize is that how we react to any given event is entirely in our control. It’s our choice. If you drop your ice cream on the ground you can cry about it, or you can laugh at yourself, tell the ants that they’re welcome for the sweet gift you’ve just bestowed upon them, and go support the ice cream merchant some more. How you choose to react will determine what happens next.

If you hit all red lights on the way to work, you can have a little mini melt down that causes that vein on your forehead to throb dangerously, or you can use the time to work on your Karaoke skills. Or, perhaps you can appreciate having a bit of extra solitude. How you choose to react will determine what happens next.

If someone is rude to you, you can blame them for being a douche and let it ruin your entire day, or you can recognize that they’re probably in a great deal of pain, and just refuse to engage. You can see them like the crazy people in the park who, when you touch them,  totally freak out because you’ve just invited the alien rays into their brain. Would you take that outburst personally? Probably not. Well, someone having a Tasmanian Devil like response to your parking, or request for information, or whatever, is no different. How you choose to react will determine what happens next.

Are you beginning to see how your reactions, how you choose to feel about anything that’s happened to you, line you up with the next moment and the next and the next? If you react in a way that doesn’t feel good, the next moment will probably be even worse. This is how people create horrible days full of negative chain reactions simply by deciding that something that happened to them first thing in the morning was a “bad” thing.

Bottom line

Basically, you get two chances to break out of the routine you’re stuck in. Before the event – by setting expectations (and you’re setting expectations whether you know it or not). And after the event – by choosing your reaction. Both determine the outcome of the next event, and the one after that, and the one after that. If you want to shift into a reality that’s different than the one you’ve been living, change your expectation and/or change your reaction. It really is as simple as that. Now, go out and be an Ultimate Control Freak – LOA style. Your reality will never be the same again. Thank God.