I’m pretty sure I’ve heard all of the pieces of this many times before, but the way he put them together in this book made it click in a different way for me. Are you supposed to be specific, are you supposed to be general, how to ask for what you want, what to do when you want to believe you’ll get it but you really don’t, and above all, how can I make this work and be something I can rely on??
For me, the distinct contribution of this book is:
- Be very general in the outcomes/end results you’re fervently hoping for and getting emotionally attached to (mainly just forms of these categories: health, lots of money, work you’re passionate about, relationships, and appearance). Ex. I’m so strong, sleek, and sexy, not I weight 143 pounds and fit in X pair of jeans
- Use details to make your general outcome feel real and to get yourself excited, but don’t get attached to the details. They’re only props, basically. Ex. Outcome: be rich as fuck. Illustrative details: house in the woods on a lake in the mountains; having a housekeeper who manages your cleaning person, chef, groundskeeper, and car-fixer; driving a Ferrari; etc. You can use pictures of specific houses, cars, etc., but don’t get attached to owning those specific houses, cars, etc.—just ones like them or better.
- Don’t get attached to: details, anything that requires other people to behave a certain way, specific people at all, or “how”s.
- Take action in the direction of your desired end results, even if you have no idea what you’re doing—just do something, and the universe will use the fact that you’re moving at all to start guiding you in the direction of what you want.
There are also some good exercises in here to help you get your thoughts going in the right direction and your emotions supporting them.
He also addresses the fear that our limiting beliefs and self-sabotage will wreck everything and undo everything we’re trying to create. His take is: this stuff is all really forgiving, and your positive thoughts and feelings outweigh your negative ones, and the universe always matches your actions 1000x, so just keep showing up and doing your part, and it will be fine. I worry about that a lot, which of course is counterproductive, so I choose to believe he’s right.
I read this just as a launch was wrapping up, and this launch was a big disappointment. Normally, I would have been crushed—devastated!—but this book helped me feel like it’s all ok, just steps on the path. Especially, two things from this book lined up perfectly with other sources giving me the same message on the same day.
1. I listened to a podcast called Unfuck Your Brain, an episode where she was talking about her takeaways from an event she hosted. (This was episode 222!) One of those takeaways was that we have no way of knowing where we are on the journey until we get to the end. It may feel like you’ve been working on this thing for three years (yes) and you feel like it’s never going to take off (how did you know?), and you may be one day away from the insight that makes everything come together. You don’t know! So just keep doing stuff.
Later that day, this book said the exact same thing, using the analogy of using GPS to navigate to a friend’s house where you’ve never been before. Say it’s a three-hour drive. Well, even at 2 hours and 59 minutes, it seems like you’re still in the same state: you don’t know where you are, everything looks unfamiliar, and your friend isn’t there. If you turn around there and go home, you just missed getting there!
(222 also includes “don’t stop three feet from gold,” so I guess that’s three times the same message came to me that day, except I didn’t notice that it was episode 222 until now.)
2. The book was just talking about how, when we’re going around knocking on doors, one that we thought we wanted will often slam shut, and it seems like a big bummer, but the reality is, another door is opening right then as a result of our knocking on the slammed door, that wouldn’t have opened otherwise. So stay cool and just keep knocking on a lot of doors.
Then I pulled a few affirmation cards, and I got: Change Course. “A closed door is an invitation from life to move in an even better direction. It’s time to change course.”
Fortunately, I don’t have to figure out what the right direction is, because I feel a little lost and scared. All I have to do is know where I want to go, take the next step, and trust that it’s working out.
I’ve started two of this guy’s other books, and so far, they’re not grabbing me at all. But this one sure did!
Oh! One more thing I thought was cool. He explains that this whole “life” thing is a simulation or a video game or whatever you want to call it, and we chose to come here to play it. So then, why don’t we remember that that’s what’s going on? This question used to vex me. His answer: because we chose not to, because it’s more fun this way. It’s like going to a movie—you want it to feel real. And it’s so much more fun figuring something out and triumphing than just being told the answer.
I like that explanation. It seems like something I would do, yeah.