Last week, Dan, a client of mine, walked into my office.  He always looked disheveled and beaten down, but today his socks didn't even match.  I'd been to landfills that smelled better than his breath.

I'd suggested in a previous session that maybe he should try avoiding TV and reading personal development material.  He assured me he would.

"Well," Dan said, as I tried not to let on that I was holding my breath, "I did it.  I did what you told me to do.  I read a personal development book."

After I found out what book he read, I asked, "So, what do you think?"

"I think it's all baloney."  He smiled when he said it, but he was dead serious.  "It's a load of crap.  This guy said that we're all born to succeed.  If that's true, then why is it so hard?  If we were really born to be successful, shouldn't it just come natural to us?

I had to be honest.  I'd asked myself that question many times.  How is it possible that we were born to be winners, when so many of us don't know where our next meal will come from?

The answer is that while it's true we're all born with a winning mindset, years of programming and conditioning have turned that to something else.  In my own life, for example, my dad was a prison guard for several years, and hated every minute of it.  Unfortunately, we lived in a very poor part of the country where jobs were scarce.

I can't tell you how many times my young self wanted the latest GI Joe or Tonka truck, just to be told, "We can't afford it."  Or the times when my parents thought my brother and I were asleep, and I heard them arguing about money.

What kind of programming did this imprint on my brain?

Firstly, it told me that if you find a job, you should hold onto that job tooth and nail.  It didn't matter how much it paid or how bad you hated it.  If you didn't take it, there were hundreds of others out there that would.  Money is something that you need, and it's very hard to come by.  People who had a lot of it were always bad people who cheated and lied to get where they are.

It also instilled a sense that personal happiness was just wishful thinking.  Nobody was really happy, they were just temporarily un-miserable.  Invariably, everyone's Sunday smile turned into Monday's scowl.  Everybody who seemed to be happy was just pretending.

So, as you can see, I had a good bit to overcome.  Imagine my frustration when I started network marketing and did the same thing everyone else was doing, only with much poorer results.  It took me 12 years and 5 companies before I even sponsored 1 person!

How did I turn it around, and how can you do the same?  I learned how to reprogram myself.  There were thought patterns and beliefs I had about myself and the world that weren't compatible with my goals.  I realized those needed to be changed.

I became a hypnotherapist in 1995, and began exploring the workings of the subconscious mind.  It wasn't until recently, however, that it all began to sink in.

Movies like "The Secret" and "What The Bleep Do We Know" are just the tip of the iceberg.  The fastest, most direct way to reprogram yourself is through a trance state.  If you've never experienced this state before, you really don't know what you're missing.

And don't let the word "trance" scare you.  All it really means is a state of deep relaxation.  You're not out of control.  In fact, you're in even more control than you are in ordinary consciousness.

So, what's the goal when you're in trance?  First, we need to look at what makes up your reality. 

The first level of reality is your actions.  These are determined by the thoughts you think on a daily basis.  If you pay attention to that voice you hear inside when you judge others or yourself, or when someone makes you angry, you can see the basis of your actions.  If you aren't reaching your goals, then it's obvious that your actions need to be changed.  But in order to change your actions, you must change your thoughts.

Maybe you've read this somewhere before, and tried noticing when these thoughts came up, and then changing them.  If you did this, chances are you know it doesn't work.  That's because you're not going deep enough.  You must address the root of those thoughts.

So, what causes you to think the way you do?  Your beliefs.  Changing a belief is tricky, because beliefs are usually based on some kind of experience.  We don't just believe the sky is blue; we look up and prove it to ourselves.  We don't just believe that cigarettes cause lung cancer; we trust the words of doctors, who are authority figures, that this is so.

Likewise, if our dad (an authority figure) calls us stupid, we trust that this is so.  It becomes a belief, and our thoughts and actions both stem from this belief.  There is nothing anybody can do to change that belief.  Nobody, that is, but you.

But if beliefs are based on experience

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So, life's just not working out . . .

You don't have enough money—again.  Your mate, who seemed so perfect just a few weeks ago, is starting to behave the same as your past lovers.  Plus, you're finding it difficult to even go to work, yet you can't quit because you're barely making ends meet as it is. 

You start to wonder why you keep repeating the same old cycles.  It's been this way ever since you can remember.  But it's not what you want.  You want what you've seen others have.  Endless time and money.  There's so much more you'd want to do with your life.  But you're stuck.

Surely there's a way out.

When I first heard the term, "Law of Attraction," I just figured it was some trend somebody invented, and is now getting rich off some book or video.  But after I looked closer at it, I realized that it's what I've always believed all along.  And it's so incredibly simple.

The law of attraction simply means that you create in your life whatever you focus on.  Sort of like a positive attitude, but with more power.  This law says that the thoughts you think on a regular basis become your reality.  I can tell you first hand that this is true. 

So, what's the science behind all this?  Well, let's think about how you create.  The results you get out of anything usually depend on what you do, your actions.  If you have a thousand dollars, you can choose to invest it or you can choose to go shopping.  Each of those actions will produce a very different result.

You're stuck where you are because of your actions.  What you're doing or not doing is keeping you from reaching your potential.

I can almost hear you say, "But I've tried to change, and it's just so hard to do."  And you're right.  Most of us beat ourselves up when we fail to make a change that we know we need. 

Diets and weight loss are prime examples.  Most overweight people know they need to lose weight.  Some even know their very lives depend on it.  What usually happens, however, is that their dieting fails miserably, they gain even more weight, and lower their self esteem because they view themselves as weak.

Here is a liberating thought:  It's not your fault.  There, I said it.  When you say you can't control it, you're absolutely right.  You can't.  At least, not with your present mindset.

Your actions, you see are controlled by your thoughts.  Now, the simple solution might be to just change your thoughts, but that's extremely difficult, if not impossible to do on a conscious level.

But we can change our thoughts.  Because while our actions are dictated by our thoughts, the thoughts we think on a regular basis stem from our beliefs.  About ourselves, our world, people around us, etc.  So, to change the way we think, we first must change our beliefs.

How in the world do we do that?  First we need to ask ourselves how beliefs are created.  There are two ways.

The first way is trust in an authority figure.  Your father tells you as a kid that snakes are dangerous.  Your doctor tells you that the growth on your neck might be cancerous.

Another way is experience.  This kind of belief is purely subjective, and may contain no rationale whatsoever. 

Imagine you are a young child and you approach your father for some affection.  He turns away and tells you to stop bothering him.  Now, you might interpret this as your father doesn't love you.  He's pushing you away.  You feel abandoned and hurt.

It might just be that your father isn't really pushing you away, he's just trying to meet a deadline for work, or any number of things.  But that doesn't matter to you, and this belief plays in the background of your life until you die.

Beliefs don't just happen.  They occur in one of the two ways I just mentioned.  They need to be supported somehow.

It stands to reason, then, that to change you actions you need to change your thoughts; to change your thoughts you need to change your beliefs.  But how do we go about changing a belief?  If beliefs are created by our life experiences, how do we experience those events which will cause our beliefs to change?

Fortunately, all we have to do is to imagine.  You see, your subconscious doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. 

So, if you can intensely imagine your goal, and practice doing that for about 30 days, you will see some dramatic results.  This much I can promise you.

As a hypnotherapist, I find that many of my clients sometimes have difficulty imagining their goal for as long as they need to.  I solve this by making them a recording of my voice, and walk them through their goals.  This greatly increases their chances of success.

If you have trouble imagining, you might try looking up a reputable hypnotherapist and doing something comparable.

The Law of Attraction is always working.  Your life, in fact, is the way it is because of what you've attracted.  If that's not acceptable to you, then it's up to you to change it.

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Here's an experiment I did when I first learned about this concept.

I wanted to attract to me something unusual, something that I didn't see everyday.  I decided that I wanted to see a black woman driving a maroon SUV.  Don't ask me why, that just kind of popped into my head.  So, every day in my spare time, I would chant over and over, "I see a black woman driving a maroon SUV."

Days passed, a week passed, and still no results.  Keep in mind, I was riding a bicycle 26 miles a day at rush hour, so I saw a lot of cars.  I was looking intensely for my target.  But nothing.  Nothing, that is, until . . .

About two and a half weeks into the experiment it happened.  I was riding up to a stop sign, and there she was, crossing the intersection.  Interestingly, I can't consciously recall ever seeing a black woman in an SUV before this.

After my goal was achieved, I stopped the chanting and visualizing.  But something amazing happened.  The results never stopped.  I was seeing 5 and 10 black women in maroon SUV's every day!  This kept up for about 2 more weeks.

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