3 Steps To Manifestation The Personal Development Way

Do you know how powerful your thoughts really are? Are you fully aware that these thoughts, all 50,000 per day, are singularly the most powerful influences on everything that happens to you in your life and are the reson you have attracted the people you know, the house you live in and the car you drive?

In fact the sum total of everyone's thoughts is the very thing that shapes everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will ever exist. You may ask then "if this is true then shouldn't it be possible to bring into existence anything we desire?"

Well the short simple answer is YES!

It is through the power of deliberate thought that we can create. While thought alone does have the power to bring tangible (cars, houses, boats) and intangible (peace, harmony and joy) things into existence often times this is not enough!  Intention, or directed thinking and believing, is enough to create powerful enough thoughts to manifest anything we want but you must also add two other ingredients.

Firstly, your thoughts must be backed by emotion. The more powerful the emotion - the stronger the thought. It is essential to create within you the same feelings that you will have when you actually achieve your desire. You actually do this all the time only in the opposite direction. For example, you think of what you are afraid may happen and all of a sudden you feel frightened, tense and may even start to exhibit some physiological symptoms such as sweating or shaking or just get the shivers. Begin to reverse this method of thinking. Think only of what you do want and conjure up the feelings associated with that. How will it feel to meet and marry that perfect person? How will it feel behind the wheel of that new Mercedes or in the kitchen of that new home?

The second key ingredient of the three is action! It is neccessary to be prepared to take some action. This is a key point that many personal development gurus leave out! The action that you need to take will not be strenuous or a toil, it will be enjoyable and feel right to you.

Each of us here on the planet plays their own special role in the complete operation of the Universe. We are all One, interconnected and interdependent. Your desires will almost always come through some form of action and through connection to other people.

Your thoughts do have the power to completely change your life and circumstances. When thoughts are backed by emotion they become an unstoppable force that will carry you to wherever you want to go in life. But you must be willing to take the steps towards your desires when these steps are presented to you. For example thinking and believing you will meet your soul mate will bring you vast opportunities for meeting him/her but you never will if you sit at home all day and do not venture outside! You may find that you begin to get asked to go to places more often or get invited to a place you have never been before. You may even accidently meet old friends or develop new friendships. This is the Universe setting you on a path to your desires. Take that invitation. Even if it is something you have no desire to do or somewhere you do not want to go, you should accept the invitation. Who knows who you may meet or where you may end up!

So remember, ingredient 1 - thoughts have power. Ingredient 2 - thoughts backed by strong emotion and belief can change the very Universe and create ANYTHING you want. And the lastly ingredient 3 - action is the last key ingredient to bringing about your desires and living the life of your dreams. Now get out there and start to CREATE!

We do the bet we can with what we have. We have to be kind.

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Daniel Pink

Another hour goes by of sitting in this room. Now, they've been bringing tea and water and stuff like that to keep us like, whatever. And so, about an hour goes by and no pictures yet. I still want to do it, but my friend, she's already ticked off. She's way mad because we've wasted a good part of an afternoon, and we're going to be late for our next thing. The guy comes back and he's like, no, no, no. We're just about to do it. We're already set and ready to go. And so, my friend is like, let's leave now. I'm like, no, we've waited this long. We may as well just sit, and the guy's going to put us on billboards in Zamalek. I'm like, how can we pass this up? Free exposure, all sorts of stuff. And the guy keeps flattering me. So my head and my chest is really getting puffed up, and I'm excited about this and I'm loving it, loving it although the waiting stuff is getting on my nerves.

At any rate, they take the pictures. This is about two hours later. They end up taking the pictures, and they're like, we'll send you the stuff. Now, my relationship, my friendship with my friend is now damaged. She's like, we sat for two and a half hours for these stupid pictures that you wanted. And I was like, but the guy said we looked good. So, I got caught up in this whole thing. And so, we spent the rest of the vacation out there. I toured and did all sorts of stuff. It was really fun.

And so, I get state side, get back to the states and just kind of bopping along, and finally my friend comes back to the states, and she brings back the brochure. And she talks about the fact that, yep, they made billboards of the pictures, that we were in the pictures and all this kind of stuff. And I'm hyped, I'm excited. I'm like, oh, my dream has come true. I'm an international star in Zamalek, Egypt. It was just crazy. So, my head is like, really big, and I'm really excited.

And so, she gives me the brochure. And so, we're looking through the brochure, and we're looking, and I'm like, where...I was like, yeah, these are the rooms that are in the hotel, and I'm looking through here. And I'm like well, some of these don't look like pictures I've seen before, and then I open up the inside of the brochure.

Now, I want to tell you I sat for two and a half hours to take these pictures, so I'm really excited about this. And they're billboards. They are billboards all over Egypt. And so, finally I open up the inside of the magazine, and there is a picture of my friend and me. And I don't know if you can see it, but there's a picture of my hand. It is my hand. I sat for two and a half hours, ruin a friendship with my buddy for a picture of my hand.

OK. I went to Egypt a little while ago, and actually, it's been quite a while now. So, I went to Egypt to visit a friend and had a great time, got to see pyramids and that kind of stuff. Although, I do have to say the pyramids are somewhat of a let down because when you're really close up to them, they're just a pile of rocks, literally, I mean, just a pile of rocks. You've got to get pretty far before you start seeing the shape of them.

Anyway, so it was a great time hanging out in Egypt and all that kind of stuff. And so, my friend and I were hanging out and we decided to go to, it was a hot day and I think we just left the museum and we were staying in Zamalek. So, we decided to go to a hotel, one of the five star hotels in Zamalek right on the Nile. The Nile is nasty. Anyway, but right on the Nile.

And so, we go to -- I think the hotel, I have a brochure right here, called the Safir -- the Safir Hotel in Zamalek. We're ordering tea and that kind of stuff and this photographer dude, this Egyptian photographer dude comes over and he says, "Hey, can you guys come take a picture with us?"

And, we're like, "No, no, no." And, he was like, "No, you guys really have the look that we're looking for. We really want you to be a part of this."

And my friend was like, "No, you know, we're hot, we need to get back to the hotel." And, I'm like, "No, this is a great opportunity. We're in Egypt and then he wants us to like take these pictures, and actually, the pictures were going to be for the brochure, for the Safir Hotel brochure."

And, he's like, "We're going to put them on billboards and it will be great. Can you do it?" And, all of this is like in this Egyptian English kind of thing so it's kind of thick.

But he's like, "No, you guys really have to do this. It will only take just a couple of minutes. It will take no more than 10, 15 minutes out of your time, we'll get this rolling and you can be on your way."

And so, I convinced my friend to go, you know, I was like, "Can we? Can we? You know, let's do it." And, she's like, "No, we really should get going." And I'm like, "No, this is our opportunity to be famous. So, all this stuff."

So, we're sitting there and 15 minutes go by and my friend's really agitated. She already didn't want to stick that 15 minutes, but whatever. So, I'm kind of blowing her off. And so, a half an hour goes by and now at this point I'm getting a little irritated myself.

And the guy comes back and he's like, "Oh, we just had to get two more people for this shoot, so we're going to go ahead and take it. Actually, if you can just come into this room and have a seat, we're going to prepare to take these pictures."

And so, another hour goes by of us sitting in this room. Now, they've been bringing tea and water and stuff like that to keep us like whatever, and...

AndreKoen.com

 It's 7:00. My mother gets us ready for bed, and she does three things before we go to bed. She makes sure that we've brushed our teeth, that we've washed behind our ears, and she makes sure that we get a big spoonful of cod liver oil. Yuck! Seven at 7. So, she'd line us up every night before we went to bed and made sure those three things happened. We brushed our teeth, washed behind our ears and got a big spoon of cod liver oil. Fast forward 30 years. Before I go to bed, what do you think I do? I brush my teeth, I wash behind my ears, and I do not drink cod liver oil. But why do you think I do those things 30 years later? Because those things have become a part of what I do. They've become a habit.

But how do we structure, how do we get habits? We get habits through routines. Because I did those things on a regular basis, I did those things on a regular basis, they became a habit. So we know that a habit is a learned pattern of behavior that's become automatic, but what is a routine? A routine is a cognitive, something that you think about. It is also something that is scheduled, so it is a cognitive scheduled behavior that we do on a regular basis. And we do that so much that it becomes a habit.

So if you have bad habits, what does that mean about your routines? You once had bad routines. Smokers, when they first start out, have to think about buying and getting cigarettes until it becomes a habit, and they don't have to think about it.

It's funny, Kung Fu fighters and Wing Chung masters and boxers and athletes, they practice these moves over and over and over and over again. They go through drills. They exercise their mind, thinking this thing through. They stretch. They prepare. They do all of these things so that when game time comes it has become a habit.

Whatever you do on a regular basis, that you're cognitively thinking about, something that is important to you, those things become your habits. Be careful what routines you set because that's a powerful thing, because those routines will become your habits, and those habits become the sum total of your behavior. And your behavior is what people see about how you act.

Philip Uri Treisman is a professor of mathematics and public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and also the founder and executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center for Mathematics and Science Education, an organized research unit at The University of Texas at Austin. Treisman, who has been a pioneer in advocacy for mathematics education for more than 30 years, is often considered a “translation researcher”—one who translates research data into practices that have powerful effects in transforming educational outcomes.

Treisman’s findings crystallized the importance of helping students learn to navigate the boundaries of the academic and social worlds of higher education. In particular, helping students to develop and “try on” identities as mathematicians, as academics, and as professionals increased their productive persistence in their studies and, he believed, shaped the way they made sense of the academic content they were studying.


http://www.utdanacenter.org/downloads/articles/studying_students.pdf

http://ctb.ku.edu/en/tablecontents/sub_section_main_1173.aspx


What is racial prejudice?

To be racially prejudiced means to have an unfavorable or discriminatory attitude or belief towards someone else or another group of people primarily on the basis of skin color or ethnicity. For example, John is prejudiced because he believes that the new Hmong refugees in his community are stupid and barbaric because they kill chickens in their backyard. He has reported this to the local police many times.

What do you think should be done in this situation? One possibility is to invite John and Cha (his Hmong neighbor) to a meeting to help John understand the Hmong culture and to help Cha understand the state laws and regulations about killing animals in your home. The meeting should be facilitated by someone who has experience with conflict management and is deemed credible by both John and Cha. This attempt could result in change at the individual level.

What is racism?
When racial prejudice is supported by institutions and laws, racism is present. For example, when the Hmong neighbor, Cha, is arrested and put in jail for killing chickens in the backyard and no attempt is made to understand why he did it or to explain the laws to him (because he does not speak English), racism is present.

What do you think should be done in this situation? One possibility is to invite the police chief and other officers to a discussion about how the newcomers to the community are affecting law enforcement. It is likely that they have tried to explain the laws to the newcomers so that these complaints can stop, but it's not working because of cultural and language barriers. You might want to try and work with the police and local Hmong leaders to develop a strategy for increasing the police department's cultural competence and, at the same time, increase the newcomers' understanding about the laws in this country. This attempt could result in change at the institutional level.

While we can never be entirely free of racial prejudice, we have to be able to identify and address racism because it perpetuates the unearned privileges of some and imposes undeserved restrictions on others. The economic well-being of a group of people is intertwined with racism and unless it is addressed intentionally and thoroughly, a community building effort will not reach its full potential.

Racial prejudice and racism have most been perpetrated in the U.S. by people of European descent against various other groups, such as African-Americans or Latinos. However, because of the shifts in our communities' demographics in some parts of the U.S., racial prejudice and racism also lead to tensions between people of non-European descent, such as between African Americans and Asian Americans. As the U.S. becomes more diverse and the world's residents more mobile, we must be prepared to act in order to reduce the potential for hostility due to differences in our physical traits and other characteristics.

No matter what culture or part of the world you're from, you've seen the results of racial prejudice and racism, even if you've never directly felt it aimed at you. The results of racial prejudice and racism can be seen everywhere: stereotypes, violence, underfunded schools, unemployment, police brutality, shabby housing, a disproportionate number of African-American men on death row, etc. Racial prejudice and racism can be found in many different areas of society: in the media, in service organizations, in the workplace, in neighborhoods, at school, in local government, on your block -- in virtually every area of daily life.

Why is it important to reduce racial prejudice and racism?
Here are some further reasons why racial prejudice and racism should be reduced:

• They impede or prevent the object of racism from achieving his or her full potential as a human being.
• They impede or prevent the object of racism from making his or her fullest contribution to society.
• They impede or prevent the person or group engaging in racist actions from benefiting from the potential contributions of their victim, and, as a result, weaken the community as a whole.
• They increase the present or eventual likelihood of retaliation by the object of racist actions.
• They go against many of the democratic ideals upon which the United States and other democracies were founded.
• Racism is illegal, in many cases.

Racial prejudice and racism feed on each other. If racial prejudice is not reduced, it could lead to racism, and if racism is not addressed, it could lead to more prejudice. This is why strategies to address discrimination on the basis of race should be thorough and multifaceted so that both individual attitudes and institutionalized practices are affected.

In addition, here are some examples of why racial prejudice and racism should be addressed in your community building effort if more than one racial or ethnic group is involved:

1. Every participant in your effort has his or her own understanding of the world and how it works. The European American residents in the neighborhood don't understand why the new immigrants from Guatemala have to stand at the street corner to get work (they are commonly referred to as day laborers). They think it is because they are either "illegal" or too lazy to find full-time jobs. Part of the problem is that the residents have not had the opportunity to debunk these stereotypes through direct interaction and contact with the day laborers and to hear their stories.
2. Every participant in your effort is polite, respectful, and empathetic towards each of the others, and understands that in order to address a common concern, they all have to work together; yet, they have not been able to engage a representative from the African American group in their community. It helps to understand why African Americans have traditionally been "left out" and how important it is to keep finding ways to engage them.
3. The board of directors of a local community center gets together to discuss ways to improve the center so that it is more welcoming to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. They come up with ideas such as hiring more culturally diverse staff, posting notices in different languages, hosting food festivals, and celebrating various cultural events. It helps the participants to understand that even though they are taking the first steps to becoming culturally sensitive, their institutional policies may still be racist because they have not included anyone from the various racial and ethnic groups to participate in the strategic planning process, thereby not sharing their power.

Addressing racial prejudice and racism also means dealing with racial exclusion and injustice. Ultimately, this means that your community building effort is promoting democracy, a value of the United States and its Constitution.

In other words, there are both moral and sometimes legal reasons to act against racism. There are also strong pragmatic reasons as well. Racial prejudice and racism can harm not only the victims, but also the larger society, and indirectly the very people who are engaging in the acts. What's more, some important new research suggests that in some cases, racist actions can cause physiological harm to the victims. For example, a recent review of physiological literature concludes:

"Interethnic group and intraethnic group racism are significant stressors for many African-Americans. As such, intergroup and intragroup racism may play a role in the high rates of morbidity and mortality in this population." (Clark, Anderson, Clark, and Williams, 1999).

While we try not to moralize on the Community Tool Box, let's face it - racial prejudice and racism are just plain wrong.

How can you reduce racial prejudice and racism?
While we try in the Community Tool Box to offer easy, step-by-step instructions for community work, changing a group of people's prejudiced attitudes and an institution's racist actions isn't so simply carried out and it doesn't happen overnight. Reducing racial prejudice and racism is a complex task that varies from community to community, so it doesn't lend itself well to simple, 1-2-3 solutions that can be adopted and applied without having a thorough understanding of the context and environment. Something like this takes knowing your community well and choosing strategies that best fit your community's needs, history, context, energies, and resources.

With that in mind, we offer a variety of activities and strategies you can conduct in combating racial prejudice and racism so that you can decide which of these tactics might work best in your workplace, school, neighborhood, and community.

NOTE! None of these activities or strategies alone will lead to sustainable change at the individual, institutional, or community levels. In order for such change to occur, you have to take actions that will allow you to consistently affect the different levels over a long period of time. Before you decide on the best activities and strategies, do the following:

• Learn about your community (e.g., what groups live there, what has been the nature of their relationships, what incidents have occurred in the past due to racial prejudice or racism).
• Document activities in your community that reflect racial prejudice or racism. Documentation will show proof that there is a problem, especially when the community is in denial that racism exists.
• Invite a group of people to participate in the planning process, if appropriate (e.g., the advocates who always take action, the representatives of each group, the people who are affected).
• Understand the depth of the problem (e.g., it's a new problem because of a group of newcomers, or it's an old problem that won't go away).
• Identify and understand the kinds of policies that may need to be challenged.
• Determine the short-term and long-term, if any, goals of your strategy (e.g., change people's attitudes and/or change an institutional policy).
• Consider how far the selected strategy(ies) will take your community (e.g., as far as initial awareness, or all the way to electing officials from the under-represented groups).
• Consider what existing resources you can build on and what additional assistance or resources you may need (e.g., anti-racism training, funding, or buy-in from the mayor).
• Consider how much time you have (e.g., are you responding to a crisis that needs to be dealt with immediately, to the need to curb a festering issue, or to the desire to promote the value of diversity).
• Review your strategies to ensure that they deal with racial prejudice and racism at the individual, community, and institutional levels, and they link dialogue to action.

Note: Appropriate structures and processes need to be set up in the community to implement these activities. See Chapter 27 Section 11: Building Inclusive Communities for suggestions.   Things You Can Do In The Workplace: From Reducing Racial Prejudice To Reducing Racism

Actively recruit and hire a racially and ethnically diverse staff.  See Chapter 10: Hiring and Training Key Staff for more information.

While it's not enough just to fill your staff with a rainbow of people from different backgrounds, representation from a variety of groups is an important place to start. Contact minority organizations, social groups, networks, media, and places where people of different ethnic and cultural  groups congregate or access information. If you use word-of-mouth as a recruitment tool, spread the word to members of those groups, or key contact people. Also, consider writing an equal-opportunity  policy for hiring and promoting staff.

Actively recruit culturally and ethnically diverse board members, executives, and managers.
Racial prejudice can be reduced if the staff becomes diverse and raises the awareness of each other, but racism is reduced when power is shared by the leadership.

In order to move beyond racial prejudice and ensure inclusiveness, your organization’s board members and executives should reflect the communities or constituencies it serves. For instance, one group decided to reserve a certain number of slots on its governing board for representatives of the cultural and ethnic groups in the community.

Talk to the people of color on your staff and ask them what barriers or attitudes they face at work. Examine your newsletter or other publications and look out for negative portrayals, exclusion, or stereotypes.
Find out how you can improve your workplace for members from diverse racial and ethnic groups that work there. This will not only give you some practical ideas about what you need to work on, but it will also signify that the needs of every group is taken seriously. Look around at any artwork you have in your offices. Are any groups represented in a stereotypical way? Is there diversity in the people portrayed? For example, if all the people in the clip art used in your newsletter are European Americans, you should make an effort to use clip art that shows a bigger variety of people.

Form a permanent task force or committee dedicated to forming and monitoring a plan for promoting inclusion and fighting racism in your workplace.
Racial prejudice is reduced by developing relationships and ensuring that materials are culturally sensitive, but racism is reduced when there is a permanent task force or committee that becomes part of the governance structure to ensure inclusive and just institutional policies.

Mrs Young

Her name was Mrs. Young, and I loved Mrs. Young for three reasons. One, she drove a tangerine orange Corvette, and that was hot. The second reason that I loved Mrs. Young was because she had green hair. Now, she was too old to be a punk rocker, so it was probably an old lady dye job gone bad, but it looked really cool in her tangerine orange Corvette. The third reason I loved Mrs. Young was because I felt that she had my best interests at heart, that she never would do anything to hurt me and wanted the best for me. And so, in 1982 I took a test in Mrs. Young's class, and this was one of the questions on the test. And the test asked, how many planets are there in the solar system? And in 1982, what was my answer? Nine. In 1982 there were nine planets in the solar system.

If I were to ask a six grader today that very same question, how many planets are there in the solar system, what answers might I get? More popularly, I would get eight. Why eight? Why for thousands of years have we had nine planets, and as of recently we only have eight. It has something to do with our concept of the truth. Now if you ask people what the truth is, typically they will say that it's things based on fact. It's based on information. It's based on empirical data.

I want to offer to you that those are small pieces of what the truth is, but the truth ultimately is based on what we know about our world, about our environment, about ourselves today.

I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I reflect on some of my childhood upbringing. And I look at that upbringing now with a different light, and the truth has shifted for me. For example, I recall when I was a small child going to school, and more recently I have been serving on a board that works with Head Start.

When I was a child I just went to school. And I'm sitting in this board meeting, and things are starting to sound familiar to me. I'm getting flashes of my childhood coming back.

And so, after the board meeting I called my mother, and I said, mom, these are some of the things that are coming to me when I was at this board meeting, talking about the things we need to do to help Head Start. I said, mom, why does it sound so familiar? And she laughs, and she looks at me and she says, son, you were in Head Start. And all of a sudden my whole trust about what it meant to grow up had just shifted a little bit. My truth had changed.

Now, I know that some of you out there will say, well, there is this ultimate truth that does not change, and I can't disagree with that. But what I do know is that people create the truth. And one of two either happens. Either you create the truth for yourself, or other people tell you what the truth is.

Here's another example. So I was taught that time was constant, that 3:00 today will be similar if not the same as 3:00 tomorrow, give or take a couple of seconds for leap year. Something happened more recently that shook my belief in what time is or what time was.

And I don't know where you live, but where I live daylight savings time was moved by a total of two weeks. Now, I have questions about that because I was taught that there were 24 hours in the day because of the earth's rotation and that the earth goes around the sun creating that 365 day year and that those things are constant. And so, I got really confused and concerned when time was moved or changed.

Now, I don't know what this means to you, but for me it meant a lot because if people can change time, what else can be changed? And what I found out as I investigated how time was changed. I figured out that time was changed through legislation.

So, ultimately time is a law and who makes up our legislative process? People interact with the law. People create laws so that we know how to operate with each other, so we know what the confines of human behavior are, what's acceptable, what the norms are. People create those laws.

Now, again, there are some ultimate laws that I'm not really talking about, but I'm talking about those socialized human norms that we've created. And so, again, one of two things happen. Either you create those laws for yourself, or someone will create those laws for you. And so, my question for you is, what is it that you believe that you...