Ed Mills’ blog post, Perception Becomes Reality struck a chord with me. He says:

The more I explore the Law of Attraction the more I come to see that what I call reality is nothing more than my perception of what is happening around me.

The Wachowski brothers, in their movie The Matrix, have Morpheus answer Neo’s question, “Is this real?” in this way:

What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you’re talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

Your reality is what you say it is, what you believe it to be. People use the phrase “get real” to goad you into accepting their version of reality–of what is possible and what isn’t. But we know that anything is possible.

Don’t we?

Those of us who know the basics of the Law of Attraction know that “thoughts become things”. So we embark on our life-changing journey, excited about the wonderful way life will be. Some people have more success at it than others. Those people keep building on what they’ve learned, attracting more of what they want, expanding the horizons of their imagination and belief, seemingly growing by leaps and bounds.

Then there are the rest of us.

‘The rest of us’ is, by most accounts, a rather large group. We’re not in the ‘non-believer’ group, but we just haven’t, for whatever reasons, been able to consciously create our lives as well as we would like to.

So the question is, “Why not?” Thankfully, we have kept the faith in the Law–we know it works. We haven’t become members of the group that say, “This stuff doesn’t work.” We haven’t given up. But what to do?

My answer? Study, examine what you’re doing, how you’re thinking, adjust, do it again. The basic Ultimate Success Formula. Realize that just because it’s not working like you think it should, you’re not a failure. You haven’t bombed the course. You get as many do-overs as you need.

For my part, here are the mistakes I’ve made in the wealth-attraction arena. Maybe you can learn from them to make your journey a little less curvy than mine.

So, like I have, do you make these mistakes in attracting wealth?

Mistake #1: Closing the door of your mind to money-making opportunities.

Open your eyes to the fact that wealth is all around you. There is an abundance of money. It’s everywhere you look, if you’ll only see it. When an opportunity to make money comes your way, don’t pooh-pooh it. It came your way for a reason–because you wanted it to. Recognize that and step into it. It may be an opportunity that you don’t think would suit you. “I don’t want to sell soap.” Maybe not, but could you learn from some people who’ve been successful at it? Can you apply their ideas and habits to something else? Keep your eyes–and your mind–open.

Mistake #2: Hanging on to the ‘poor’ mentality.

This, I think, is one of the hardest habits to kick. It shows up when you say to yourself, “I can’t afford that.” And you know what? Your thought becomes the thing. If you just can’t wrap your head around the idea that it’s yours if you want it, then at least practice reducing your resistance to the thought. Do the “wouldn’t it be nice” exercise from Ask and It Is Given. Get your thoughts away from the despair of not having, to the hopefulness and joy of maybe having. You might not think that is much of an improvement, but it is. It’s training your mind to question the permanence of your present situation.

Mistake #3: Practicing despair instead of gratitude.

This is what you are doing when your focus is on lack, when you’re thinking things like, “When is this going to get better?”, or “My life sucks.”

Begin to focus on, and be grateful for, what you do have. “Not much,” you say? I suggest you look around you again. If you’re reading this, you likely have something that only a small percentage of people in the world have: a computer and an internet connection. It follows from there that it’s likely that you have a roof over your head, and that you’re not starving. You probably don’t have to go to sleep listening to the sounds of mortar rounds and rifle fire, and you probably don’t have to worry about being the victim of a kidnapping or suicide bomber.

Do you have the faintest conception of how many people in the world don’t have what you have? Possibly, contemplating that will enable you to whisper a little “thank you”, eh?

There’re more common mistakes, but if you’re like me, rectifying these will keep you busy for a while.

Fear. Fear of failure, fear of success. Fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment. Fear of poverty, fear of wealth.

Fear is insidious. It slips in early in life. It builds upon itself. Fear is a demon that grows stronger and larger every time he works his evil. He becomes more vibrant and hideous until he rules your entire life. Fear is a habit, a habit of thought. The more you exercise your ability to fear, the more it shows up. Pretty soon, fear is habitual behavior.

It starts with the best of intentions, mostly:

“Don’t ride too fast, you’ll fall and hurt yourself.”
“Be home before dark–the world is a dangerous place.”
“You stupid clod. Can’t you do anything right?”

Fear brings with it a host of related emotions: worry, hate, doubt, uncertainty, jealousy and more. All these are fear behind a different face.

Fear, in any form, will ruin your life. Stagnation, never moving on, never improving yourself, is rooted in fear. Closing your eyes to opportunity is rooted in fear. What you’re saying when you say this: “Why bother? It’ll never work for me.” is that “I’m afraid that it won’t work. I’ll get my hopes up and it won’t happen. So I’m not going to try.”

The worst thing about fear is that it draws toward you the very thing you fear. Have you ever noticed that many of the things you worried the most about, gave the majority of your attention to, finally came to pass? You have attracted the very thing you were afraid of. How? By paying attention to it with strong emotion. By focusing on what you fear, you put in motion events and circumstances that cause that fear to materialize. It’s the way things work.

Banish the demon

Don’t expect to kill off demon fear. He’ll always be around, and he can actually be useful–at times. But you can banish him away to the furthest recesses of your mind to be called upon only when needed. You can make him so small that his normal efforts will be inconsequential.

How? What is this force that can overcome fear?

Simply put, courage. Courage is the opposite emotion of fear. You can’t deny away fear, for then you are focusing on fear. You have to work on habituating the new, opposite emotion of courage. Don’t say, “I’m not afraid.” Say instead, “I am courageous.” Hold in your mind the image of the courageous person that you want to become. Whenever fear appears, replace it.

It won’t be easy, and it won’t be a task you can accomplish overnight but if you persist your habit of being fearful will become weak, and your habit of courageous behavior will become stronger.

You know that the mind can’t tell the difference between an actual event and a vividly imagined one. Denis Waitley showed us that with his work with Visual Motor Rehearsal techniques with Olympic athletes. So use that in your work to rid yourself of fear.

Vividly imagine yourself in situations that caused fear in the past. Change your behavior in your imagination to what a courageous person would do–what you would do if you were filled with courage, strength, and confidence. See yourself acting, speaking, walking, moving as you would if you were courageous and confident.

Use many different scenarios–as many as you can think of. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Whenever you have a free moment in the day, take the time to diminish the effect of fear in your life. Make it a project. Make it an important project–one that your life depends upon.

Because your life does depend upon ridding yourself of fear. Your happiness, fulfillment, enjoyment, even playfulness, will increase many-fold when you get rid of your habit of being fearful.

So do your exercises. Strengthen the courage factor, the courage habit. You’ll find that, over a period of time, your thinking will switch from “I can’t” to “I can” just from the absence of fearful thoughts. After “I can” comes “I will”.

“I can and I will”, felt with enthusiasm and confidence, is one of the most powerful thoughts in the universe. “I can and I will” is first cousin to “I AM”. When you know you can, and you know you will, and you know you ARE the person who can and will, you are unstoppable. You’ll have gone from wishing that something was to expecting that something is.

That, dear readers, in case you didn’t catch it, is the Law of Attraction at work.

Get rid of fear and live your life the way it was meant to be lived–in joyous abundance.