In my recent article about how to stop smoking, I identified three key areas for rising above an addiction or bad habit: focus on what you want, change your identity, and prepare for setbacks.
When developing my outline for that article, I wondered if “Prepare for Setbacks” would be an appropriate section to include. The idea that setbacks will develop along the way might suggest inevitable failure. Such an outlook contradicts the idea behind creating your world the way you want it and attracting into your life only those things that bring great satisfaction.
Even still, when we are moving towards new goals it is inevitable that obstacles will develop between Point A and Point B if we see the “obstacles” as obstacles. When a personal growth plan is unsuccessful, obstacles take on a great deal of power and control over our intentions. When we are successful, our goals and objectives have control over reality and the obstacles take a backseat.
What is Your Reality?
The ideas I have been exploring lately through some profound writers and thinkers – The Law of Attraction, Subjective Reality, Personal Creation
In my view, the problem often is not that we don’t understand the idea. The concept of “personal creation” is an integral part of virtually every world religion, belief system, and personal growth paradigm. We get it! Yet really making creation happen requires more than just “getting it.” It takes real implementation.
I like Dr. Wayne Dyer’s analogy about implementing change: If you want to learn how to swim, you can’t just sit around reading books and thinking about swimming all day! You must get into the water and make it happen.
And to take Dyer’s idea a step further… as you’re learning how to swim, you may very likely struggle in the water – that is, you may have setbacks. But, to answer the overarching question here, you will create exactly the kind of world you want by responding to these setbacks (either as part of the path towards change, or as frustrating signs of your failure).
How Do You Change Your Reality?
To return to my example on quitting smoking, you alone decide what the “setbacks” are. You create your own reality. If you focus on the obstacle and give it power over you, you will continue to attract the obstacle into your reality. You will create that. If you focus on the goal and give power to it, you will attract the goal into your reality.
By preparing for setbacks, you’re disarming them. You take the lead by communicating with yourself ahead of time and during the moment when they arise about what it is you really want. The setbacks will pop up and entertain your old vision of reality. Since you are already a creator, you have to take responsibility for the things already present in your reality.
These changes that you create will generate more power with time. Think of all the time you have spent in the past creating the world you see today. If you’re new to this way of seeing, you may be beginning only now to see things consciously and embracing your control. Making the move from powerless actor and responder to powerful director and creator will take time and will require adjustment. But once you begin to embrace the change, you’ll begin to see exactly the world you want.
