Upgrade Your Outlook

By Amy Phillips-Gary

Yesterday I kicked off “Upgrade” week by encouraging you to consider improving and expanding yourself and your life in some way.


Perhaps, as you tuned in and had that “conversation” with your future self, you realized that you'd like to upgrade your financial situation, for example. Or it could be that you decided it's time to enhance your relationship with your partner.

Now that you have chosen an area of your life upon which you'd like to focus at the moment, you might wonder how to achieve these desired improvements. Stepping out from the usual way of doing and experiencing things is certainly new territory for us all.

Upgrading your outlook can help. The way we each perceive what's possible-- or impossible-- and the power we think we have-- or don't have-- can make a huge difference. You can achieve goals when you doubt your ability to do so, but it's usually a long and arduous process, if it happens at all.

However, when you can generate within yourself a clarity about what you want and you fuel it with a hope and belief that you can be, do or have it, the upgrade can seem almost effortless.

Knowing about and practicing the Law of Attraction can help ease and bolster your upgrade intentions.

You might be familiar with the film“The Secret” that came out a few years ago. There are plenty of people online, in other films and at live events who go into greater detail about the Law of Attraction. This is meant to give you a taste of this potentially new outlook that can assist you in making-- attracting-- improvements.

At the heart of the Law of Attraction is the assertion that we live in an attraction-based universe. We walk around as magnets, drawing to us the people, conditions and experiences that line up with what we spend the bulk of our time focusing upon. Sometimes we are aware of what we're concentrating attention on and sometimes we're not and so we feel surprised by what manifests in our lives.

According to Law of Attraction teacher Abraham, there are 3 main steps to the Attraction process:

1.) Ask
This seems simple but... many times we ask for things that we actually do not want. A classic example is to ask to get out of debt. The focus with this request is still on the debt and not on something more affirmative such as: "being able to easily pay my bills and have more than enough money."

Watch what you are asking for and keep in mind that you are attracting what you place your attention upon.

Another dimension to this asking step is contrast. Many times we “ask” for improvements as we live the opposite. If you feel disrespected in a relationship, there is undoubtedly a part of you that is now clearer than before about wanting to be respected.

You can think about it as a silver lining of sorts to the challenges you are experiencing. But, again, it's important that you continue to shift your focus toward what you want. Notice that you feel disrespected and then move your attention toward what you do want.

2.) Answer
This is the easy one. There's really nothing for you to do at this step. According to the Law of Attraction, what you are asking for will always be provided to you. You don't have to figure out how this will happen, it just will.

3.) Allow
Jump back in because this step is the follow through that's all up to you. After you've asked for what you want in an affirmative way, now you can release resistance and allow it to come to you.

I know, this one can be a real challenge! Letting go and staying open to the opportunities that will line you up with what you want is often easier said than done. But this is exactly what step 3 of this process requires.

I think we've all been in situations in which we firmly keep the door to new experiences and improvements to our lives closed and locked.

Whether it's embarking on a career move that seems scary, making it a priority to regularly exercise, communicating differently in a relationship or something else, opportunities for upgrades are literally always there for us-- we get to choose whether or not to allow them.

When it comes down to it, this whole notion of upgrading yourself and your life and the Law of Attraction isn't really so much about being richer, healthier or having a more passionate love life.

These things can all come to each of us in the process; but this is really about you altering your outlook so that you can feel happier, more fulfilled and maybe even downright blissful about your life as it unfolds.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Personal Growth Planet blog is tasking part in National Blog Posting Month (http://www.nablopomo.com/). Every weekday in November, you'll find daily blogs linked by weekly themes.

You Don't Have to Wrestle Life to the Ground to Be Successful and Happy

My family and I live with a 100+ lbs. St. Bernard dog named Ella. With a dog this big, you can probably guess that effective training is vital. I find the techniques of the “Dog Whisperer,” Cesar Millan, quite inspiring and informative. Millan emphasizes the importance of energy when interacting with your canine. Your attitude and expectations can mean the difference between an out of control dog and one who trots happily at your side.

Even though I'm a huge “Dog Whisperer” fan, I still haven't quite got it down. Ella walks calmly beside me as we make our daily treks through our neighborhood-- except when there's a squirrel, cat, another dog, or even a blowing leaf in her field of vision. At that point, all bets are off and the “battle” begins.

Ella appears to me to go into a near-primal state as she ignores my verbal commands and leash tugs in a single-minded desire to get to that other critter-- or blowing leaf. When situations like this arise, my neighbors are treated to the view of me resorting to one of Cesar Millan's techniques-- “the pose--” in which the dog is laid on its side on the floor or ground.

This does not hurt the dog. It is intended to encourage her to shift attention away from the enticing critter and back to me-- the pack leader. It can be a useful tool to help a dog chill out.

Getting Ella in “the pose” when she's in that heightened state, however, usually requires me literally tackle her and wrestle her to the ground. Given her size, it is sometimes the only way to interrupt her wild instinctual mode and re-focus her attention.

How many times do you feel like you have to tackle and wrestle your own life to the ground?

Have you ever felt like the conditions of your life were so out of control or overwhelming that you symbolically tackled and then wrestled them to the ground? This approach to life usually involves tensing up which is certainly understandable, yet almost always not effective at all.

It's as if we believe that the only path to success-- or even a semblance of it-- in this purported dog-eat-dog world is to put life in “the pose,” or at least try to. We meet intensity with intensity whether it's in the workplace, with our families, the economy, the environment, even ourselves.

What you may have already discovered is that when you wrestle life to the ground, it usually doesn't lead to the results you were looking for. A tense and tackling course usually attracts to you more tension and situations in which you feel like you have to tackle life all over again.

Adopt a calm, assertive approach.

A cornerstone of Cesar Millan's philosophy is to meet dogs with calm assertive energy. When Cesar puts a dog in “the pose,” he is not angry or even frustrated. Instead, he calmly re-directs the dog while holding the expectation that his leadership will be respected and he will be listened to. As you might have guessed, when I put Ella in “the pose,” I am usually most definitely not in a calm assertive place.

This is why it feels like tackling and wrestling!

Step back and get into the habit of noticing when your life starts to feel like one big wrestling match. If you're exhausted and drained much of the time, that's a tip-off. Your next step might be to learn how to relax when you begin to feel overwhelmed and powerless. Meditation and deep breathing are two tools you could use to release tension and open to more ease.

Ask yourself what kind of life you want to lead. Sometimes we hold onto hidden expectations and beliefs that contribute to our life-wrestling tendencies. Remember that no matter how out of control your life feels, YOU are in charge of your response to it as well as the direction in which you point yourself.