Cause-effect relationship #1 – because you have come this far in life, you can achieve ANYTHING – poverty or riches, heavy or light, health or illness, whatever you truly wanted you have achieved.

Maybe you made some new year resolutions – expressing ways in which you would like to see your life change for the better. Maybe this will be the year you quit smoking, or get that raise, or lose that weight. Whatever it is, your first action is to NAME the change you want to make. This is the action part of the manifestation formula. You have done this part so often that you maybe now take it for granted – meaning you have become oblivious to it.

You are already taking action on what it is you really want – it’s automatic – you do it unconsciously. Based on your beliefs, you take action that is appropriate with what you accept as true – your beliefs. You don’t even have to think about or plan anything – you do it automatically. You don’t have to take specific action – just recognize that you already are [taking action].

Why, then, do you not get what you want? The truth is – you mostly DO get what you want (or at least are satisfied with). You just don’t recognize it – because you are so used to getting what you want from life.

If you continue to act (behaving) as you have acted in the past – based on what you believed to be true in the past – you will tend to continue to get what you have always gotten in the past. You’ll continue to take the appropriate action to achieve whatever it is that you have gotten in the past – you do those actions so well  by now that you are unconscious of them – you’re a master at doing whatever it is that you do to achieve what you are currently experiencing. How about that, boys and girls?!

There are really only two ways to change what you get from life:

1. Change your beliefs about whatever it is you want.
2. Change your actions based on your beliefs about whatever it is you want.

Both choices are probably easier to do than you might think. The reason you don’t have what you think you want is because you don’t realize that you already have exactly what it is you want. It’s called feedback – if you want to know the meaning of your communication with the universe, check your feedback. If you want to know what it is that you really want in life, check your life feedback.

Changing your beliefs is a matter of disassociating cause from effect. If you are poor because you don’t make enough money, you have a cause-effect relationship built between being poor and not having enough money. You may have fortified this belief with substantial amounts of evidence – but all that evidence is based on the same premise – the SAME BELIEF – the same cause-effect relationship.

Break your cause-effect relationship and you break the belief. Break the belief and you set up the possibility of a NEW BELIEF – one based on a new cause-effect relationship. It’s so easy – and you already know how to do it – it’s your human nature to create cause-effect relationships at will.

To change your actions, simply change your cause-effect relationships (beliefs) and the action will flow like water from a spring – with NO EFFORT on your part.

Okay – the secret to making new cause-effect relationships… perception!

What? Joseph’s off his noodle now!

How about an exercise to put this into perspective?

Here’s a simple one you can practice that I guarantee will break up old cause-effect relationships and open doors to making new ones.

Remember – this is easy! You do it all the time so you’ve grown accustomed to it and maybe take it for granted. So, when we do it with AWARENESS, things get interesting.

1. Mantra #1 – “I could be wrong about this.” Say it as many times as you can every day. So long as you believe you are right, you will continue to justify your past behavior and strengthen those old cause-effect relationships into the future. Further, you’ll do your best to defend your rightness (“righteousness”) – to the death.
2. Realization – “Everything I perceive is feedback for ME.” – couple this step with the previous one. Your perception could be wrong! Accept it. Remember – YOU are not wrong – it is your perception we are challenging.
3. Mantra #2 – “I now have exactly what I most want.” This fortifies your responsibility for creating your life – and helps strengthen the fact that you are experiencing feedback. Couple this step with the first step – you could be wrong about this as well. You have only what you perceive that you have. And your perception could be so wrong!
4. Mantra #3 – “When I change my perception – EVERYTHING changes to support my new perception.”

Based on the above 4 steps, we ask the following questions:

1. In what ways could I be wrong about this?
2. In what ways could what I’m experiencing be feedback for me?
3. In what ways could I be getting exactly what I really want?
4. In what ways could I perceive this differently?

Okay, now let’s put this little exercise in mantra building into a practical example – losing weight.

A few years ago, I conducted a weight management course for a few people who were clinically obese. Each dropped weight and kept losing weight at about 2-4 lbs per month until they reached their weight goals. And the weight has stayed off. During the 5-week, 2-hours per week, course, we challenged our cause-effect relationships.

Here are some cause-effect relationships we challenged during the course of our class:

• “Every time I even think about eating desert I gain weight.”
• “Every time I lose weight I just gain it right back plus some.”
• “Every time I try to lose weight, I fail.”
• “If I lose weight and look really sexy, men will try to rape me.”
• “If I lose weight and look sexy, nobody will take me seriously. They’ll judge me according to my looks instead of by my personality.”
• “I’ve always been large.” (so, I’ll always be large)

Each of us created our own mantras based on the above 4 step example – and created our own questions to ask ourselves at each point. The questions in particular are valuable because they tend to stir the brain to work with you – to act. If you never question something it will tend to continue as it is.

QUESTION YOUR BELIEFS!

One woman questioned her beliefs about her weight like this:

1. In what ways could I be wrong about eating and weight gain? (this is a setup for release of old cause-effect relationships)
2. In what ways could my being obese be feedback for me? (this is a question of identity – “who am I?” – setting the mind up for a new identity based on a new cause-effect relationship)
3. In what ways could being obese be exactly what I want right now? (this sets up change – big time – as it puts into proper perspective the relationship between cause and effect – and who is responsible for the change)
4. In what ways could I perceive my body shape differently? (this sets up imagination of the actual shape of the change – and measurement of it when it occurs)

Of course, you will have to do some specific activities to release the weight – like eating well and exercising. It’s just that when your old cause-effect relationships are changed and you are sliding down hill instead of trying to fight your way up the hill, eating properly and exercising will come NATURALLY and EASILY – as though they are automatic. You will find suddenly that the foods that used to pack on the pounds may suddenly take on a foul taste; or the exercise you were doing suddenly becomes more fun (or maybe somebody shows up in your life to make that exercise easier and more motivational); or perhaps you’ll get “ill” and drop some weight (this is often a simple body cleanse and is normal in a good weight management course of action). In weight management it is imperative to let go of HOW your body transforms and stay focused on your compelling image of WHAT you want.

You can apply the above concepts to any endeavor – any resolution.

You may also want to consider simply breaking old cause-effect relationships and experience what happens next – without any direction at all from your mind. This would require some bravery on your part as it means giving up all claim to rightness – what I might consider abject humility and the loss of pride – although there is really nothing to lose because you never really had anything of substance anyway – all you had was a perception. You would also have to release any defense of any kind. When you don’t have to be right you also do not need to defend yourself. That means taking on vulnerability as a way of life.

Change without mind direction requires total courage – the kind of courage seldom seen and yet admired and loved when encountered. You have that kind of courage. I know this because you are still here – you lived! Against tremendous odds, you were born. Through darkness and troubles in your life – you persevered. Through your own self-imposed prisons you have come this far. Amazing! How did you do it? How did you become so courageous as to even consider making a permanent life change?

Cause-effect relationship #1 – because you have come this far in life, you can achieve ANYTHING – poverty or riches, heavy or light, health or illness, whatever you truly wanted you have achieved.