What Grows in the Garden of Your Mind
Excerpted for Writers N Authors from the forthcoming book, Quantum Success: 7 Essential Laws for a Thriving, Joyful, and Prosperous Relationship with Work and Money, by Master Law of Attraction Coach Christy Whitman
If you’ve ever caught yourself rehashing a situation or replaying in your mind an encounter that hurt, disappointed, or annoyed you, it’s likely that you’ve already noticed two very important things about the power of your thoughts. First, the more airtime you give to them, the more vivid and detailed they become; and second, the mind cannot tell the difference between a thought about something “real,” and a thought about something you are remembering from the past or imagining in the future. When your heart races and your palms sweat while watching that scary movie, the fear you feel is no less real than if the events you’re seeing on screen were actually happening to you.
The thoughts we think, whether “real” or imagined, flood our minds with images that have the power to trigger the entire range of both good-feeling and lousy-feeling human emotions. Our thoughts are like seeds, and our minds are like a fertile field of soil that will nourish any seed that we plant within it—whether it’s a seed from a beautiful rosebush or the seed of a pernicious weed. The soil will nourish it regardless, and in time, that tiny seed will grow into a mature plant that is fertile enough to produce its own seeds.
In this way, our thoughts give rise to a field of emotions that are nourished and strengthened by our continued attention to them, creating a self-generating feedback loop: particular thoughts generate predictable feelings, which then inspire more thoughts that intensify and reinforce those feelings. Said another way, the thoughts we think most frequently lead to chronic moods that can become so differentiated that we actually label them with a diagnosis. But this final manifestation— whether it’s an abundant, fragrant rosebush or a malevolent weed—began as something so small that it was barely perceptible. The thoughts you most dominantly offer engender your most dominant emotional states, and the more attention you give to these, the stronger and more resilient they grow. For better, and for worse.
What distinguishes a pleasurable emotion like love from a painful emotion like sadness or rage is the frequency and speed at which its energy vibrates. The vibrations we offer in every moment are transmitted through the airwaves like radio signals, and are registered by everyone and everything around us. In the same way that a magnet is attractive to steel, we draw energy into our lives that resonates at a similar frequency to our own. As human beings, we are like walking, breathing energy towers that are in every moment broadcasting a frequency to everyone and everything we are in relationship with—and that includes our careers. The quality of the energy we send out determines the quality of the people, situations, circumstances, events, and experiences that we draw into our lives in response.
When we view ourselves as clumps of matter, rather than as unlimited streams of pure energy and consciousness, we tend to view action as the primary means for accomplishing goals. First we must take the action, we think, and then we’ll receive the benefit of that action. But when you understand the more subtle realms of life, you come to see that the reverse is not only true, but far more effective. You can actually align in thought, emotion, and energy with your desired outcome, and that energy will draw you to the actions that will support its unfolding. Actions that are taken from a state of energetic, mental, and emotional alignment with the end goal are infinitely more powerful than those taken without this connection.
In your own life, can you tell the difference between an action taken from obligation and one that is genuinely inspired? Can you feel the difference in work that’s been done begrudgingly and work that has been offered with joy in the giving? The same facial muscles are activated in both cases, but can you tell a sincere smile from a fake one? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you must acknowledge the existence of a world beyond what can be perceived through your five senses. Although it can’t be quantified or counted, this realm exerts a far greater effect on us than anything we can see or taste or touch.
No scientist can objectively measure the appreciation that comes from eating food that was prepared with love (not at the time of this writing, anyway), but most would agree that this is the stuff that makes life worth living. Fulfillment does not occur from just filling our bodies with requisite amounts of fiber and protein, and it doesn’t come about from clocking in to a job each day only for the sake of making ends meet. It occurs in the experiences we have along the way, in the subtler realms of reality where inspiration arises. This is the realm where ideas are born, and are nourished in the infant stages of their becoming.
Once you understand the world of energy and become practiced at consistently offering your energy intentionally, you will inevitably experience a shift in consciousness from lack to abundance. This is where you begin to see that you have the ability to do something other than react to the conditions in which you find yourself—or, worse, try to change those conditions so they’ll evoke from you a different reaction. You discover that you have the ability to choose what you want to experience, generate that experience for yourself from within, and—through the power of your own focus—attract to yourself those people, circumstances, and events that are an energetic match to what you desire.
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