Last week on
“Growing Your SELF! with Bob Crawford” I talked about the amazing success that you can achieve simply by changing your perspective on a particular situation or person or event. Today we’re going to expand upon that concept and look at how important it is to become totally aligned with your goals and dreams.
Becoming aligned. This is a concept that many people, on the surface, will say that they understand and apply, but the truth is that if you are struggling to achieve your goals, if you are having a hard time manifesting the things you desire, then the problem most likely lies in the area of alignment.
A good place to start is to define what we mean by alignment. You see, it’s one thing to decide what you want out of life. And that really is the first step of the process, becoming clear on what it is that you want. But the first real ‘work’ comes after you decide what you want out of life.
This is the point in the process that keeps so many people from achieving their dreams. Once you decide what you want you need to work on becoming aligned from the inside out. I’ve talked about this a lot on this both on my radio show and here on the blog, but the topic is so important that we’ll probably cover it many more times in the future.
So what is alignment? Alignment occurs when your thoughts, beliefs and actions are in harmony with your end goal or dream. Alignment is when you don’t have contradictory thoughts about your goal, you don’t have beliefs that are in opposition to your goal, and your actions move you towards your goal and not away from it.
If you are reading this blog, you are probably of the mindset that you are more than just your physical body, that you have an inner self, or higher self, or spirit that is an important part of your life experience here on earth. Regardless of your religious beliefs, or the labels that you put upon this inner self, the one thing that matters is that you learn to get in touch with, to access, this inner you.
When you decide on a goal or dream your inner self goes to work and looks for ways to help you achieve your goal. It sees things that you, being busy with your life and the physical demands of the day, don’t see. It sees opportunities, it sees patterns, it sees connections that might be too vague or wispy for you to see with your conscious mind.
Your job is to tell your SELF what you want and then to ‘listen’ when it speaks to you. When you listen to your inner self and follow its guidance you will see that things begin to fall in to place for you.... you’ll discover that you are struggling less, you’ll find that things become easier for you.
What happens for many people is that they successfully decide on what they want... in other words, they’ve told their inner self what it is that they want, but when it comes to the next step, they falter and hesitate. When it comes to listening to their inner guidance they make ‘rational decisions’ with their conscious mind and justify why they can’t do what it is that they know they need to do.
Has this ever happened to you?...
Your inner self is showing you the way, but you justify to yourself why you can’t take the particular path that you’ve asked to be shown?
Let me share something profound that I was listening to the other day and that really struck me as being appropriate for this post. I was listening to Caroline Myss’s ‘Entering the Castle” and she was talking about this very process of shutting down on your inner guidance. The book is actually about the religious mystical experience, but part of it really applies to today’s topic.
You see, we all ask for guidance, all the time. Some of you may be asking God, or your guardian angel or some other holy being. Some of you may be asking for help from a spirit guide or from your deceased parent or some other entity on the other side. Or perhaps you are asking for guidance from your inner self or higher self or spirit.
It doesn’t matter what you call it. We all ask for guidance. But then what happens?
Well, we wait. We wait for a sign or a vision or some tremendous event in the physical world to signal to us that this is the way to go. We’re waiting for a magical spotlight to illuminate our path. When we don’t get a sign we think something is wrong - our goals are wrong or the universe is stacked against us or God isn’t listening to us, or some other nonsense.
What Caroline Myss says in her book is that the guidance we are seeking is always given to us. Right away. The information on how to proceed is there, as soon as you ask for it.
BUT, and this is a huge ‘but’, we reject that guidance as quickly as it is offered. We say, “Give me guidance about my relationship, but don’t tell me to leave the relationship. That’s not an option. That can’t be the best path for me! I won’t accept any guidance that includes that as an option. And I don’t want any guidance that requires me to confront the situation and possibly experience upset. And I don’t want any guidance that requires me to leave my precious ‘comfort zone’. But aside from all that, give me guidance!”
Wow. And this is what we all do to ourselves... all of the time.
When you put limits on the guidance that you are ready to receive you are limiting your chances of success. You are literally shutting off the flow of energy from the universe. You are putting a big red stop sign up in front of your dreams.
Let me say that there is nothing wrong with putting limits on the advice and guidance you ask for, but if you do, you have to be prepared to take the long way to get to your dreams.
It happens so often, to so many of us...
You ask for guidance about your job, but you say “Don’t tell me to quit this job or don’t tell me to move across the country to accept that attractive position. I have attachments here, so that’s not an option.”
Or you are trying to lose weight, but you ignore your inner voice every time it suggests exercise or better eating habits...
Or you decide to write a book or start a business or begin pursuing some other dream, but you still find yourself sitting on the coach feeling guilty after wasting another evening and not doing anything productive...
Are any of these examples hitting home?
What you are doing is creating excuses for not listening to the guidance that you receive. Because you always receive guidance. Always. Right then and there. There is no waiting for a sign or vision. You get an answer NOW.
What’s that? You’re having a hard time believing that?
Stick with me, and let’s be honest with each other for a minute. (Now there is a wacky phrase, as if we weren’t being honest with each other up until now!)
Anyway, how many times in your life have you made a decision that afterward you regretted? More than a handful I bet. Me too. And how many of those times, did you ignore a gut feeling or inner guidance? To put it simply, how many times have you NOT done what you know you should have?
How often do you ignore your inner voice about things both large and small?
If life is a learning experience, then you can learn a lot from pausing and thinking about this idea.
Understand that the alignment process begins automatically as soon as you decide on a goal. That’s the power of your being. You don’t have to do a thing. Once you make a decision and focus your intention on a goal or dream, you are done with that part of the manifesting process. Your inner self will then guide you to the best path to achieve your dream or desire.
Now, let me stop here and make a point. Once you understand this concept of alignment you can throw away all your self help books, you can get rid of all your tapes and CDs and you’ll never have to go to another seminar again. Because once you understand this simple process on an inner level, you’ll have all the tools you need to accomplish any goal and to achieve any dream you can imagine.
The same is true when we speak about aligning with your dreams. You can encounter accidental success, but when you become totally aligned from the inside out, you will begin seeing amazing results in your life.
Your thoughts, beliefs, and actions all have to be acting as one unit, one congruent whole. You can find detailed posts and articles on many of the tools and techniques that work to create this alignment here on the site, but I’ll summarize them for you here.
• You use some of the various tools and techniques that I share with students and clients, such as creating powerful daily affirmations for yourself, creating vision boards, and other physical reminders. These tools all work to reinforce your desires upon your subconscious mind. Chances are you have dabbled with some of these tools, but you might not be using them on a daily basis. You should be!
• You monitor your self talk - all the time. This is crucial and will be the topic of an upcoming show. You need to constantly monitor and adjust your self talk. Every single time you catch yourself engaged in negative or nonproductive self talk you need to consciously react and create a positive thought instead. Don’t waste time berating yourself or feeling bad about having the negative thought in the first place. Simply create a new thought, a better thought instead. Do this as often as you need to. Eventually, as you combine this practice with some of the other tools, you will find your self talk changing and beginning to reflect the values and self image that you are trying to create.
• You practice ways of listening to your inner self, such as meditation or quiet reflection. This is important and you can boost your manifesting power by practicing some form of meditation, prayer, or reflection. As I mentioned earlier, not listening to your inner voice is a major stumbling block for many people trying to manifest their dreams.
The most important thing you can do to become totally aligned with your inner self, is to improve your ability to listen to your inner guidance and then develop the courage to act on that guidance.
It’s the acting on it part that throws most people. Either they simply don’t take action or they don’t take productive actions because they have placed limitations on the guidance they are willing to receive from their inner self. They don’t realize that they are shutting down the very process that they are trying to improve.
Don’t let this happen to you.
Strive to align your thoughts, beliefs, and actions with your goals and you will be astonished at the speed and effortlessness with which you achieve every goal you set!
Peace,
Bob
