Today’s post is inspired by Awesome Mike, who is not only a client, but is also currently redesigning my website (no spoilers, but it’s going to be *high pitched sound* AWESOME!), because my life is freaking amazing and synchronous like that.

If you’ve read this post, you’ll know that I firmly believe in the power of questions.  Asking the wrong questions can at best, keep you stuck where you are, and at worst, wreak havoc in your life. Asking the right questions can help you to become unstuck and align yourself with the energy of everything you’ve ever wanted.

What are the “right” questions? Well, in general, they are open ended, positively focused questions such as, “What if it goes well?”, “What if I get what I want?”, “How would it feel if I had that?” Basically, they are questions that are posed from the point of view that you will get what you want, which cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. These types of questions are designed to get your mind thinking in a new way, to look for solutions instead of further defining (or lamenting) the problem. The goal of these types of questions is to get yourself re-oriented away from what you don’t want, and towards what you do want, by opening up the possibility of it actually happening (you can’t manifest that which you don’t believe is manifestable).

Are you close to getting what you want?

Of course, asking yourself these “What if” questions is just one way of doing that, and while they will start you on your journey, there are many more tools you can use to fine tune your vibration along the way. Awesome Mike’s questions represent one of these tools.

In short, he’s discovered that if he asks himself the following question, he gets some pretty astounding and useful feedback:

“Would I be surprised if I got what I wanted?”

You see, when you’re aligned with what you want, when you’re a match to it (which is what you need to be so that it can manifest), whatever it is that you want won’t feel like a big deal to you. It will just feel like the next logical step. In other words, you won’t be surprised. You might be elated and joyous and happy and surprised by HOW it came, but you won’t be shocked that the thing itself showed up.

In my post on winning the lottery, I explained that you have to be a match to the abundance that the lottery win would bring into your life, in order to win that amount of money. Most people, if they were truly honest with themselves, would have to admit that they are not currently a comfortable match to millions of dollars more than they currently have. A lottery win would drastically change their lives in ways that they don’t currently know how to handle. It would not feel like the next logical step. It would represent a quantum leap.

So, if the honest answer to the above question is “Yes”, if you would, in fact, be surprised if what you want suddenly showed up in your reality, then you’re not yet ready to manifest it. The bigger the surprise would be, the more vibrational work you have to do in order to make yourself a match to what you want.

Make peace with the process

Ok, so you’ve asked yourself the question, and you realize you’d be surprised if a million dollars suddenly showed up in your account tomorrow. Great. That means you’re not yet a match to a million dollars. Now what?

Don’t despair. Just because you’re not a match to what you want, doesn’t mean you can’t become a match. In fact, that’s what this physical experience is all about; it’s what you’re built for: discovering some new piece of awesomeness that you’re not currently a match to, and figuring out a way to line up with it. Many of you will have heard me say that you have to “make peace with the process”. In other words, you want to come to terms with and figure out a way to get excited about the idea that you’re always going to be heading somewhere, moving towards something new, wanting something. You’re not ever going to be done. If that thought depresses you, you have an assumption that the process sucks and you haven’t yet made peace with it.

If the idea that you’ll always be evolving, growing, and creating new stuff excites you, you’ve made peace with the process. You’ve realized that you’ll never get bored, that you’ll always be challenged, excited, improving, reaching forward, becoming better, and experiencing more and more awesomeness. You’ve also realized that this forward movement doesn’t have to suck. It doesn’t have to be painful. It doesn’t have to feel like slamming yourself against a wall over and over again, until you finally break through exhausted and bloodied, only to have to turn around and do it all over again (also known as the unnecessarily painful cattle prod method of growth).

No, you’ve figured out that you can get to where you want to go, as long as you don’t put too much emphasis on the “how”. In other words, you’ve developed a bit of faith that there IS a way out there, even if you can’t see it right now, for you to get precisely what you want.

So, you begin to visualize what you want, and you try your best not to get caught up in the how of it all, but when you ask yourself if you’d be surprised if it actually showed up, you said “yes”. Your visualizations have helped, but you just can’t quite seem to foster the belief that what you want really CAN materialize. What can you do?

Dissecting your “yeah, buts”

When you’re reaching for something BIG, something that’s important to you, something you want a lot, but which is still far away, vibrationally speaking, the resistance that comes up to contradict it can be overwhelming. It just seems like the odds are always stacked against you. Your mind can list a thousand reasons for why you can’t have what you want, why it’s not even possible, robbing you of the most important component of deliberate receiving.

Another way to talk about this resistance (contradictory thoughts), is to call them the “Yeah, buts”. So, if you think about what you want, and your mind starts arguing “Yeah, that would be great, but…”, whatever follows that “but” is your resistance. These are FALSE beliefs that you’ve decided to adopt and make true in your life. The great news is that you can dissect these false beliefs and make a new decision. And when you do, you soften the resistance and “but” by “but”, align yourself more and more with what you want. Let’s look at an example, shall we?

Meet Bob. Bob wants to get a new job. Because he’s been studying LOA, Bob realizes that instead of aiming for a job he just doesn’t hate (thinking way too small), he’s going to create the job of his dreams. Bob’s current job is the job from hell. He hates his boss, his coworkers and his clients. In fact, he’d rather be sexed to death by an amorous porcupine than go into the office. And that’s on a good day. Bob’s dream job seems very, very far away. Not only would he be surprised if it suddenly showed up, he probably wouldn’t believe it was true, so great would be his shock.

So, Bob begins to ask himself some questions:

1. “What is it that I really want?” – He may need to list some of the things he doesn’t like to help him figure out what he wants instead. If he hates his stupid boss, for example, he might want a smart boss, who’s a nice guy instead. Bob should try to get to the core of what he wants, though, which will always be described by a feeling. He wants to feel successful, appreciated, understood, valued, etc.
2. “What if I were to actually get what I want?” – Once he’s defined what he really wants (a step most people skip!), Bob can open his mind up to the possibility of actually getting it. He can start to build the belief that success is possible, and get some energy flowing in the right direction. What would it feel like if he actually got his dream job?
3. “What are my ‘yeah, buts’?” – As Bob begins moving his vibration closer to that of what he wants (also called “raising his vibration), his mind begins to contradict him. If Bob asks himself “Would I be surprised if I got what I wanted?” and answers “yes”, considering why he’d be surprised will begin to point him towards his limiting beliefs. Instead of simply pushing these contradictions away, Bob can acknowledge them and work with them.

Why can’t you have what you want?

So, Bob begins to list all the reasons for why he can’t have what he wants, that his mind can come up with. He then begins to dissect those reasons one by one.

Bob’s first objection is that there are no jobs of the kind he wants in his area. He’ll probably have to move, which he doesn’t want to do, so he’s trapped. Trapped forever.

Only, is that true? Are there really no jobs of the kind he wants in his area? Well, Bob’s mind will tell him that there aren’t any, as evidenced by the fact that he’s looked and couldn’t find any. Because, apparently, Bob’s mind has decided that he is all knowing and all seeing. It assumes that if Bob looks, he will see EVERYTHING there is to see. What Bob’s mind doesn’t take into account is that he can only perceive what he’s a vibrational match to. It’s as if he’s wearing special glasses that allow him to see everything but the milk he’s looking for in the fridge, so he can’t find it even though his wife insists it’s right there.

So, Bob begins to contradict the contradictive thought. Essentially, he starts a new mini-process, beginning with Step 2 (open ended questions), using not what he ultimately wants as the goal, but simply the opposite of this one limiting belief.

• “What if there ARE actually awesome jobs in this area, and I simply haven’t been able to see them?”
• “What if searching on job sites isn’t the best way to find these jobs, so it’s given me a false sense of failure?”
• “What if it’s not my job to actually go out and find the job?”
• “What if the job found me?”
• “What if all I have to do is to figure out what I want and focus on it in a way that feels truly good, and the job of my dreams can come right into my reality? What would that feel like?”

The goal of these questions will be to show Bob’s mind that the assumption it’s made is simply not true. Other possibilities exist. And if other possibilities exist, then he can no longer staunchly hold to this one, limiting point of view. His problem is no longer unsolvable. He simply hasn’t yet found the solution. Hope is restored, the clouds part and the angels sing. Also, there will somehow be chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

The power of incremental change

By dissecting your limiting beliefs one by one and contradicting them, you can incrementally (not slowly, just incrementally, as in step by step instead of all at once, as in running the race one foot at a time instead of trying to jump to the finish line) change your vibration and raise it to the level at which you want it to be. This is not only much easier than trying to make a quantum leap, but also generally far more effective (and therefore, actually faster).

If you hate yourself, it’ll probably do you little good to simply chant “I love myself”. The gap between the two beliefs is simply too large. But, if you ask yourself WHY you hate yourself, and then begin to dissect each of those reasons with a willingness to at least entertain new thoughts, these new thoughts will begin to take hold much more easily. For example, you may say that you hate yourself because you’re ugly. You could then begin to dissect the entire standard of beauty, ask yourself who decided that you’re ugly (and who even gets to make that decision), what ugly even means, what you define as beautiful, and finally if it’s not possible that you’re a lot more beautiful than you think you are. Within that process, you might need to start several new mini-processes, but so what? Eventually, you’ll have contradicted all the bullshit beliefs you’ve gathered or been indoctrinated with over the years, and you’ll actually begin to love yourself more.

No matter how big and nasty a belief seems, keep on hacking away at it and it will eventually fall.

Bottom line

So, would you be surprised if what you wanted showed up tomorrow? In the next 30 days? In the next year? If so, why? Why can’t you have what you want? What false beliefs are you holding on to that contradict your desire? Oh, and here’s a hint: Any belief that contradicts you getting what you want is false. Yep, even the ones you think are set in stone. It’s all a hologram people. It’s just a game (an awesome, awesome game) and none of this is nearly as solid as you may think. So whatever story you’re telling yourself that keeps you from being all you can be, give it up. Question it, challenge it, and contradict it. One “yeah, but…” at a time.