How do you go from theoretically “knowing” what to do, to actually doing it, without letting those pesky limiting beliefs sabotage you?
Awesome Amanda’s burning question: “How do you bridge the gap between knowing and practicing? I have studied the Law of Attraction for some years now and I get it (well, almost!) but it’s like reading a book on how to swim; you may understand the physics behind it and understand about flotation and how to get where you want to be BUT WHEN YOU GET IN THE WATER!!! That’s a whole different thing. How do you put into practice what you know without self-sabotaging yourself with those long standing subconscious beliefs that you could drown???”
Dear Awesome Amanda,
Here’s your Awesome Video Answer!
Watch the video directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXrcEjDKu9Y
Would you rather read? Here you go!
Well, Awesome Amanda, I think this is an excellent question. Thank you for asking it.
How do you go from, well, not “knowing”, because if you really KNEW that you created your own reality with every fiber of your being, you would have no pesky limiting beliefs. But how do you go from theoretically knowing it to actually bringing it into practice? Using your analogy of jumping into the pool, when you’re kind of afraid that you might drown, my answer to that would be: don’t jump in the deep end.
Sink or swim. Not a good idea…
You start off in the shallow end. You don’t just chuck your kid into the deep end of the pool to teach them how to swim, Grandpa! Oops, sorry.
Now, that technique can work, of course. I mean, I’m obviously still here, and I did learn how to swim. But was it the best way to do it? Was it the easiest way to do it? Was it necessary? No. It was not.
The point is, you don’t have to defy your beliefs head on. You have a belief system. Make peace with that. Some of those beliefs are serving you very, very well; some of them, not so well. And in order to get rid of the ones that aren’t serving you, you don’t just hit them head on. Again, that can work, but it’s incredibly uncomfortable, and it’s going to cause you a lot of stress.
So, let’s say that instead of wanting to learn how to swim, you want to ask your boss for a raise. You feel deep down that you deserve a lot more money and your colleagues are making more than you are. You really want to go to your boss and ask for a raise but you’re deathly afraid of it. The very idea of asking fills you with dread and panic and anxiety. Now, you would not do the equivalent of jumping in the deep end of the pool and go into your boss’ office and ask for a raise in that condition, with that energy, with that vibration. That would be stupid. You would probably “drown”. You would probably not get the raise, you would feel awful about yourself, it would just perpetuate all of those horrible fears.
It’s not all or nothing
But you also don’t have to do without the raise. There is a middle ground. It’s not either/or. You don’t have to either NOT go swimming, or chuck yourself into the deep end of the pool. What you can do is to prepare yourself, you can learn to swim, you can start in the shallow end, you can prepare yourself vibrationally.
Step 1 – Check yourself before you wreck yourself
The way to do that in this example would be for you to sit down and visualize yourself asking your boss for a raise. And then you would allow yourself to see, via your visualization, by not controlling it in any way, shape or manner, where your vibration is at. So, you would let your fear come to life. Consider this your own, personal Holodeck. You’d go in there and say “Show me my fear.” You’re going to put yourself in a situation, in your visualization, that scares you, and you’re going to see what really happens.
So, in your visualization, perhaps your boss starts to laugh at you, or he scolds you for being so forward as to ask for a raise, and who do you think you are, and he ends up firing you because you’re just the worst person ever he can’t believe that you’d be so rude, and blah, blah, blah. None of this is necessarily going to make any sense, but that doesn’t matter. These are your fears, and you kind of want to know what’s going on. If you don’t know what you’re dealing with, you can’t release it. So let the fear come up, let it show itself to you. And realize just how ridiculous it is, in the process. Now, that may in and of itself release it, but if the fear is big enough, probably not. You’re going to have to do a little bit more work. You’ll have to actually work with it to change it, instead of just defying it by going into your boss’ office and asking him for a raise, even though you don’t believe for a second that it’s going to go well. Don’t do that.
Step 2 – Shifting the Belief
The next thing you want to do is to start to shape the visualization. So, instead of letting it run amok with the fear, you’ve now seen what the fear is, you’ll now want to gently but firmly guide the visualization to one that is more positive. But, it has to be one that you can accept. That means that you don’t go straight to seeing him singing your praises, declaring you to be the employee of the year and praising you for standing up for yourself and asking for a raise. That’s probably not going to happen right off the bat, even in your head. You can’t go from zero to one hundred in one go. You want to work yourself there incrementally.
So, you might start off by simply seeing him listening to you and NOT reacting badly. You bring it to a neutral place. In that neutral place, your boss isn’t overly enthusiastic about giving you the raise, but he’s NOT overreacting in a negative way anymore. He’s not going to fire you, scold you or laugh at you. He might say something like “Hm, that’s interesting. I’m not sure that we have the funds, but I’ll have to think about it”, and maybe there’s a conversation that ensues.
You stay with that visualization until it feels properly comfortable. Now, I understand that many of you are sitting at home thinking “How is THAT satisfying?” Well, it’s not. It’s not satisfying and it’s not the end goal for you to NOT get a raise, but for your boss not to yell at you. It’s just a middle step that allows you to take the next step. So, once you’ve gotten to neutral, which isn’t satisfying but doesn’t feel bad anymore, then you can start to see it happening more positively. Your boss starts to say things such as “Well, I guess we do have a little bit in the budget, and you haven’t gotten a raise in a long time and you know what? I was just thinking about you the other day, it’s actually kind of unfair what we pay you, we have to remedy this situation…” And as you stay with this, you may very well start to build up the momentum into a much more positive place, where then you do see your boss getting really excited about giving you a raise and singing your praises saying “OMG, I think you’re so amazing!”
Don’t make too many changes at once!
What’s important is that you have to keep this realistic (yep, I actually said that), which means that you have to see yourself as you are, in your current state, asking for the raise. Do not think of yourself as much more suave, with a way better wardrobe, and suddenly you’ve grown 3 inches and you’re a hell of a lot thinner and you go in there and somehow your boss is a different person… Don’t do that. You have to see people as they are NOW in order to bring it into the NOW, in order to really work with your vibration. If you start to change things and detach, if say “Well, I’m not as I REALLY am in my visualizations because that makes me feel better,” that’s an escape route, that’s a way for your mind to keep you from actually working with the energy NOW. It keeps you from shifting the belief completely, because you’re still creating detachment by making yourself different from how you are NOW.
So, if you’re visualizing yourself getting into a relationship and you’re twenty pounds thinner in your visualization, you’re not quite there. You need to do a little more work.
[Added Note: I get that this can be a bit confusing. Change your reality in your visualization, but be “realistic”… Without getting into a huge explanation here, just remember this: When you guide your visualization, change one thing at a time. Leave everything else as it is. Then see what comes up for you. Otherwise, you are creating conditions that have to be met before you can receive what you want to manifest. You can’t get a relationship until you lose weight, or you can’t get a raise until you “look” the part, etc.]
Once you get yourself into the state where you can see yourself as you are now, walking into that office, asking for a raise and see it going well – and this may take a few days to get there. You might have to do several sessions of visualization to get there, but it will be worth it. Only once you have done that should you jump into the deep end. Now you’ve learned how to swim. Now you’ve spent some time in the shallow end of the pool, meaning that you’ve worked, not with physical reality, but on a vibrational level, which is a hell of a lot easier, in order to prepare yourself. And once you’ve prepared the energy, now you’re going to attract a completely different scenario. The key is for you to actually feel much better about walking into that office than you did before. Once you truly feel better, that’s your sign, that’s your feedback, that you’ve actually changed the energy.
And yeah, it’s actually that simple.
Hi Melody,
Thanks for this awesome post. I was practicing LoA many years ago, completely unconsciously. My way of thinking was that things will always work the way that is best for me, even if it was unpleasant/uncomfortable at the moment. I mastered this to the point that I was able to claim that death of my mom (when I was 15) happened for a reason as I was very protected and living in the bubble and it allowed me to grow up and learn to be autonomous. It worked. I had full trust that whenever something happens, it is somehow on purpose and that it will bring something good.
I was getting great results by focusing on things I wanted, visualising them (I read some really great books like J. Murphy’s “Power of Positive Thinking” or “Choose to be happy” by Andrew Matthews), and embedding them so strong in my mind that even when I wanted to change them at one moment, I wasn’t able to do it. I was witnessing amazing chain of “coincidences” directly leading me to the objective I wanted!
Then I achieved my objective, reality kicked my butt a bit (I guess relationship-wise I was not THAT aligned with what I wanted) and I completely forgot about LoA, positive thinking etc…. Or otherwise…I did not believe that I deserved to be happy so I was sabotaging my every effort of feeling better!
All those years I had victim mindset. What is surprising, I KNEW this stuff is real. I even had proofs (this is more than many people can say…!), I KNEW it could help me, but somehow it was completely out of reach and erased from my memory.
Then I got fed up of being unhappy and miserable and I started to work my way up. Of course I blamed myself for everything that was happening. Then I read awesome thought from some book (I thought it was “Self-compassion” by Kristin Neff that I can highly recommend, but couldn’t find it today when I tried to quote it…oh well..!): Whenever we screw up, we consider that if we don’t feel BAD about it, we cannot consider ourselves “good person” and it means that we cannot feel GOOD about ourselves. So in fact in order to feel “GOOD” we have to feel BAD…isn’t it a paradox? No wonder that some people cannot ever feel really good!
When I started to open myself finally to the theory that feeling “bad” about things that happened is not necessarily helping, I stumbled upon a book “Emotion Code” by dr Bradley Nelson (www.emotioncode.com). This is something that was a turning point in my life. This book gives a recipe how to identify and release the emotions that have not been processed at one point (including inherited ones!) and got trapped in our body, causing psychological and physical problems. As far as I know this is similar to EFT (although never really tried EFT by myself). After releasing TONS of those trapped emotions everything started to go better. I got more energy, stopped undermining all my efforts, I started to feel like looking for things that would help me feel even better… Then I found “Secret” and other LoA books and then I got redirected to your website (which I love and huge THANKS for the great job you are doing!). In the meantime literally everything in my life improved. I mean like EVERY SINGLE THING! I am still not quite there yet and there are things I would like to sort out but I started to believe that it will happen without struggle and frustration. It worked for me before, right? Why wouldn’t it work now?
All this just to illustrate that self sabotage can happen to everyone. I learned that techniques like Emotion Code or EFT can be extremely helpful when you are so freaking blocked that allowing yourself to actually FEEL anything seems completely out of reach. Now I can consciously work on limiting beliefs that are still there, which I am doing right now.
Nice, but its still hard for me to get. So much has happened. I’m having a hard time working through it. Ive been homeless for a year. I am sueing the company who snatched rug away from under me. I just want a comfortable life back with stability again.
Melody – I’ve been meditating and reading your blog archives pretty intensely over the last few weeks and I just wanted to tell you about a breakthrough I just had!
I have been meditating for weeks, letting go, working on raising my vibration. Even though I initially just wanted certain things financially, I find it has changed my whole outlook on life. I feel like a new world has opened up. Anyway, today I was doing my meditation, visualising my new house and all the money I will have and I was having real trouble, there was a block. I felt as though something bad was in the way. Then I realised that my limiting belief for love, happiness and money is that because when I was growing up, I NEVER got what I wanted – not a damn thing. Whenever I wanted something (affection, money, ballet lessons, to go on school trips), my parents basically said no. They were not just the fun-police – they were the fun-SWAT team. So my whole life whenever I’ve felt happy or fulfilled, I felt as though something bad would happen to stuff it up (I would be told NO). This is where my fear of flying comes from – excited about going on a fun holiday? well the plane will crash just to stuff it up!! It was triggered when I had kids – you have beautiful children that you adore? well something bad is gonna happen to them so you’d better watch out and definitely don’t fly with them or without them.
This all just came up spontaneously (started crying in my meditation and will probably cry a bit more today) and I hopefully am able to clear that now. Very exciting! Thank you!! Your articles resonate with me more than anything else and I have learned so much from you. You are amazing and I will be sending lots of loving thoughts your way :oD
Dearest Ally,
After I read your message, i needed to reply to you. First off, I just want to say that i am truely happy for breakthrough and how you followed a bad feeling to a plethora of limiting belief. I wish that you are able to find peace from moving beyond this. All the best
I myself have uncovered a huge self-limiting belief, all starting with some reflective thought about my current situation and i also felt ‘bad’. After a while i came to the first limiting belief which was ‘nothing in life is free’. after staying with that bitter thought for perhaps years and years i sat with this feeling for mere seconds. I rationalised… things in life are free and ive seen it others life- to which i counter replied ‘nothing in MY life is free’. Long story short, I realised that i am blocking things (free things e.g: coffee from a friend, gift from my parents on my birthdays which are important as these trinkets are an expression of gratitude of others for you. From this moment, I thought I why do i even care if people are grateful for me. i am grateful for me. I am the best person I know! i cared wayyy to much about what other people thought of me. and from that point… magic happens… al the time!
Hi Ally, I know exactly what you mean! I also worry that if I truly feel happy then something bad will happen to ruin it! I’m not quite sure where my belief comes from, I still need to work on it. I do know that I’ve been in an anxious state for a long time, which partly stemmed from being picked on at middle school. I was basically on edge at school every day. I think I felt under attack a lot of the time, I just couldn’t relax.
I don’t have children but if I did I would probably be thinking the same (that something bad is going to happen to them). It’s great that you’ve had a breakthrough raising your vibration. 🙂 Melody’s articles have helped me a lot too.
I’ve been working on myself for quite some time now. A couple of days ago, I was “guided” to begin cleaning up my money vibration. YAY! 😀
The topic of money makes me a little nervous, so this came at just the right time. You are da bomb Ms. Melody! 🙂
Wow! Just what I needed. Thank you so much Melody. We love you!
Great video! Slow and steady is definitely the way to go. The neutral zone works wonders with everything. Things are not as bad as the brain sometimes makes them out to be. Last night my head spit out something that is not true, but it is basing it on the circumstances of the present moment and not where I am headed. That is based on my vibe at the moment. But this vibe fluctuates. When I am vibing high, my brain never utters such things.
you are right when you have stated in blog posts and coaching sessions that the brain is very limited and has a limited view on things, when the universe can see everything. Just knowing that fact makes me feel better and ignore my brain, who tries to show me what is, but I know what is will change.
I am wondering if you can write about your experiences expanding outward at some point. I realize at one recently you had a tough time coming back into focus of the now, but it would be very interesting to hear about it. It must be very soothing and you can experience the love that is out there.
Well said Melody! A little shift at a time, slicing through each fear at a time….do this, and you’ll eliminate self sabotage 1 feeling at a time 😉 Thanks!
I love this article – I’ve been taking baby steps for a couple of months and already had good things come in, like this article says just by changing my mind slightly. Because I haven’t been comfortable with meditation, I’ve just been paying attention to my feelings throughout the day and when I notice I’m feeling anxious or worried, I draw in on what it is making me feel this way then just nudge myself to feeling good about it without trying to logic my way out of it. So, whenever I was worrying about debts I’d notice it and think ‘it’s fine!’ Not even it’s great or amazing (which would be a pretty false/forced emotion from me), just it’s okay, and I out of the blue came into money last week which have halved my debts and everything really is okay!
I also wanted to thank you Melody for your article on why everything can go bad when you start to meditate (think comments are closed on it) – I read it last night even though I’d written off meditating altogether and wanted to carry on being noncommittal forever ha, and decided to try it again just in case… For the first few minutes I was really anxious and uncomfortable, realised it was because I was scared of where my head could go and admitted it to myself that I was afraid and it did ebb away. It happened a few times over 20 minutes – I’d get really on edge, even angry at one point because words kept getting in the way, then I’d say to myself ‘I’m afraid’ and it’d stop. 🙂 Nooo idea what I’m afraid of but just admitting it made me feel better. When I came out of it it took a few minutes to adjust and stop feeling fuzzy so I know it must be powerful…probably that’s what I’m scared of 🙂
Lots of love xxx
Oh another thing that happened just by ‘nudging’ myself to feeling better, which is only little but which I loooved – I had an essay that I was dreading writing, I was bored to hell with it and didn’t really care about the end result and this kind of thing (when I’m not into it) can take me weeks, endless hours staring into a computer screen wanting to smash it in. So, I didn’t do anything about it, didn’t try to make myself work when I didn’t feel like it (which was never), just when I thought about it made myself feel a bit better and thought ‘I’ll just knock it out in a few hours it’ll be easy’ (I have never been able to knock an essay out in a few hours but I felt good pretending I could anyway.) Then, when I eventually did feel like I could sit down and write something, it all just came together – I spent about three easy hours completely absorbed in it, undistracted, and quite enjoying writing until it was pretty much finished. Even while I was typing I was thinking ‘I can’t believe that actually worked’ – weeks of self-torture saved. I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal at all but for me it was like ultimate proof that things don’t have to be hard or take forever if you change your attitude towards them. And I love that this is only the beginning of me realising this and how much shit I’m not gonna have to put up with in the future haha 🙂
Hi RK,
I just wanted to reply about those “fuzzies” you felt while meditating.
They are AWESOME! Once you get used to that feeling and realize it won’t harm you, you will not want to come out of it. I do that almost everytime I meditate now and I’m always bummed when I start to come down. LOL!
I loooooooove those fuzzy feelings. 🙂
Hey there RK,
I explored this phenomenon in a blog post. You can find it here: Involuntary Hand Movements When Reading About LOA
Hugs!
Melody
This was such a good post. I love when you practically lay out a step by step process! Question though about using visualization as a tool; What if your end goal is to be 20lbs thinner? Seeing myself not in the “Now” will keep me detached? Is that why I can’t stop shoving donuts in my face?! Yikes…unfortunately visualization is my go to tool for manifesting things. How would one go about trying to deliberately receive a different appearance then?
Focus on WHY you want to be thinner Ally. You have an assumption that being thin would change your life in some way. Look at that and line up with that. The weight loss is a means to an end. When you let that go, you’ll get what you really want (and the thin body will take care of itself).
I hope that helps. 🙂
Huge hugs,
Melody
I’ve read many articles reading fear and anxiety, this is the first I have read with makes sense. I agree with your approach 100%. Thank you for a constructive article which embrace the issue rather than circumventing it.
My gratitude and thanks,
Mireille
Hello there:
In the video, you seemed to emphasize the importance of taking baby steps and slowly moving up to the ideal visualization of your desired outcome when you have limiting beliefs. But what about attempting the visualization from a different state? Could this help accelerate the process? So for example, instead of having that visualization of getting a raise just sitting on the couch, maybe instead, initiate the visualization when you are, say, having a good time on the phone with a friend, or reading from a humor site on the internet? Would changing the state make the process a bit quicker because you have already entered a higher vibration?
Thanks
Hey A. Blindly,
I thought about this too. I noticed when reading the stories of wealthy entrepreneurs and celebrities, and even hanging out with business people, the one thing that stands out is the fact that they have a good time, always. They do not sit and sulk or shed tears about setbacks. Even if they do, it does not last long and they keep going. They do not see the setback as something that would hold them back and it does not limit them in any way. If they feel they are not ready, they go out and enjoy themselves in any way they could and take it from there. They know they need to feel good and this high-vibing feeling takes them to knew levels and heights.
Hey A.,
Yep, this would indeed greatly accelerate the process. If you get into a great feeling state first (always put how you feel first), your “work” will be so much easier. I wrote about this in my recent post: Confronting Emotions vs. Taking A Nap – Which Should You Choose?
Huge hugs!
Melody
This article is great. I have a question though, what if you’re in a relationship with someone who lives in another country, and you want to keep the relationship going, but you’d rather make it easier for everyone*including the child had together* and move to the other country? I want to do this, but I am so scared of giving up everything for that, even though that move to the other country and having my family reunited is what I want. What does one do in this case?
Do exactly what the video says. Sit with and discover your fears, then shift them little by little. What are you so afraid of? What could happen if you moved? What would you lose? Then, contradict those fears bit by bit.
I hope that helps! 🙂
Huge hugs,
Melody
Thank You
Hey Melody
This was definitely a post I needed at this moment. The way you explained it really took a load off my mind because sometimes I worry I have all this crap going on inside and that I won’t be able to work through it. As always, you have some great practical steps to actually apply LOA. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to about LOA and told them they must read your blog!
wow! This makes so much sense now! Thanks Melody! I was wondering how can this be applied to job search? Should visualization happen before even applying to jobs?
Yep. Always line up the energy FIRST!
Hugs,
Melody
Melody,
I like this slower methodical approach. Some of us have more faith than others, so it’s good to see some practical steps we can involve ourselves in so we don’t go in head over heals and fail.