The creation of what we want, or what we don’t want for that matter, begins with how we direct our minds. Everything that we hope to eventually create with our hands, we first have to create with our thoughts.
There’s a book called “The Science of Getting Rich” and it was one of the first books I ever came across that went fairly deep into the truth of that concept. The author actually called it one of the fundamental laws of the universe…he called it the “Law of perpetual transmutation.”
Now I’d already seen this law in action, so he didn’t have to convince me that it was real or that it actually worked. I didn’t have a name for it…I just considered it the power of intense belief or visualization. But, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, the law of perpetual transmutation goes something like this:
Just as the law of gravity pulls things toward the earth, the law of transmutation pulls what we create in our minds out of our minds and into existence. The more clearly we draw the vision, and the more intensely we focus on it, the heavier that vision becomes…the harder it is for it to escape the gravity of transmutation.
Now this sounds a little crazy to some, but if you look through history there’s a lot of evidence to support the existence of this force. How many things that we now take for granted would have seemed completely insane before somebody proved they were possible?
Try to imagine if 200 years ago I said: You’re going to go stand in New York, and I’m going to stand in Ohio and using no more volume than a whisper, we’re going to be able to talk to each other in a private conversation just as if we were standing two feet apart. …If I said it with a straight face, you’d probably have thought I needed medication. And the more I explained to you how I was going to magically project my voice through the air into your ear, the more crazy you would have thought I was.
…or maybe I’d tell you about how I was going to look through a special device and whatever I saw, I could project that image from Ohio to China so the Chinese could watch along with me. …next thing you know, I’d be talking about a flying machine, right?
All through history, even the most ambitious creations of the human mind, once considered completely absurd, have been pulled from the mind of their creator into physical form. As long as the vision has remained clear in the mind of at least one person, then progress towards the realization of that vision has remained inevitable. This doesn’t mean something can’t be stopped from happening once it takes mental form, it simply means that before it can be stopped, the clarity of the vision and the certainty associated with it has to be forgotten.
Now, as I said earlier, I’d already witnessed the effect of this law in my own life. I didn’t come up with something as cool as the telephone or the television but regardless, the impact on my life was huge.
Consider the following just a small example of how far a clear vision and a commitment to that vision can take a person. Rest assured whatever the distance is between where you are now and where you’d eventually like to be, chances are you’re already far ahead of where I was when I first started visualizing a better life for myself.
I began my life from what many would consider a disadvantaged position. My father left before I was born, my mother had a drinking problem, I had a lot of bad influences, etc.
Now, I don’t want to harp on it too much, but just to give you a little background, I grew up probably a little faster than I should’ve and part of my “growing up too fast” mistakes involved drugs which I began using at the age of 9. And by the time I was 14, I’d become the poster child for everything “bad” a person could choose to do with their life.
I was emotionally and spiritually weak. I was unhealthy physically, I was unhealthy intellectually, I certainly was unhealthy morally. I’d learned that lying or stealing to get what you wanted was just fine. I’d pick fights with people just for fun…no one I actually thought could beat me of course; if I thought they could beat me I’d back down in a second…cowardly to say the least.
When it comes right down to it, I had no self-respect and I hadn’t earned any and as a result of all that I started to realize that I hated who I was. But I just kept trying to run from it. I kept trying to make what clearly wasn’t working, work.
But the beauty of life is it just won’t let you get away with that. …Sure you can keep doing the exact same thing over and over again, but don’t hold your breath for a different result.
Finally one night, a night I remember very clearly, I gave up. Somehow I stumbled across the realization that it wasn’t failure for me to admit that I’d taken the wrong approach to my life, instead it was failure for me not to admit that.
And with that small flash of honesty came another realization: I had literally been throwing away my life. So right then and there, I started constructing a vision in my mind of what my life would be like if I just went as far in the right direction as I’d chosen to go in the wrong direction.
For probably a couple hours, I built in my mind the antithesis of who I was and I studied how different everything would be if I simply chose to become that person.
It started with just facing all the lies…getting rid of all the weakness that separated who I was from who I wanted to become.
Using that clear intense vision as a guide, I was able over the years to systematically eliminate one by one all the beliefs and behaviors that stood in my way, while adding replacements that increased my ability to make what I’d seen a reality.
Now if you want to talk about a leap of faith, try to imagine that when I started this process I had no personal references that I could get ANY of it done. I was a real mess and I’d never so much as heard of another person who’d done what I wanted to do.
As far as what I had to draw on, it pretty much amounted to years of irrefutable evidence that I was an idiot. I’d spent a great deal of time getting mixed up in things that weren’t easy to get out of, and if I was ever faced with a tough challenge, I’d proven over and over again that I was going to look for the easy way out. I mean, that was clear.
But again, the one thing I did have, apparently the only thing I needed, was that unforgettable image that had been burned into my mind. Once I’d created that image, any attempts to act in a way that undermined it hurt me.
It became clear that avoiding my responsibility to make that image real would not only cause me pain, but it would cause me more pain than facing whatever challenge stood in my way. Keeping that vision clear in my mind helped me transform my entire life.
It helped me do things that people told me were impossible to do. Again, it wasn’t the same as those who said the concept of a telephone or a television was impossible, but it was “impossible” nonetheless.
Go back 20 years and tell somebody you’re just going to stop drinking and doing drugs. They’re going to laugh at you. They’re going to tell you you’re in denial if you think that can be done. And then they’re going to tell you that you suffer from a disease and your only choice is to accept that you’re powerless and join a support group. …And, plan on spending the rest of your days in recovery.
Now, fortunately, that belief is no longer as widely accepted as it once was, but that’s only because there’s lots of people who’ve proven otherwise. But at the time, that was it. I mean that was THE theory…that was pretty much your only “option.”
So anyway, hopefully this example draws a fairly clear picture of how useful this law of transmutation can be. I know I didn’t have to learn its value more than once. I’ve used it over and over for things both big and small. And, to say the least, I’m extremely happy with the results.
Assuming most of you didn’t start out using drugs at the age of 9 and never got into the other destructive things that I did, I’m going to share one more example that maybe you’ll be able to take a little bit more from. Maybe it’ll be a little bit easier for you to relate to.
The most recent “Big vision” I created for myself began about 6 years ago.
I decided once and for all that it was time for me to get serious about my writing career. I’d known for as long as I could remember that I had to be a writer…it was just something that was in me. No matter what was going on in my life, writing had always been a mandatory part of my life. So no more talking about it, I’d put it off long enough, it was time to get started.
So in my mind, I began to visualize what I truly wanted. First, I wanted to be able to write and think without any distractions whatsoever. This covered everything from the day-to-day distraction of having to go out and perform a normal 9-5 job, to having bills, to the distraction of trying to write whatever a publisher might consider worth publishing.
And it didn’t take me too long to realize that I actually had a two-part goal. The first thing I had to do (if I really wanted to have as much freedom as possible) was create wealth.
The idea was simple. If I was wealthy, I could eliminate my bills, set a more flexible schedule, keep my mind focused on the things I needed to keep it focused on, but most importantly I could write whatever I wanted because if nobody else would publish it, that was fine. I could just publish it myself.
So, it looked like I had it all figured out. The goal I wrote down was this: I was going to start a business, earn my first million dollars, and just for fun (to help keep me focused) I wasn’t going to let myself get a haircut until that first million dollars in sales had been reached. Sounds reasonable…maybe. Let’s take a look at where I was when I first wrote that down and began to visualize achieving it.
I’m a 28-year-old high school drop out and I’m living in an old motel that has been converted into efficiency apartments. Now this is no ordinary 250 square foot palace mind you, it comes complete with mice.
I have no credit because I’ve recently filed bankruptcy, and I don’t have any money or I wouldn’t have filed bankruptcy in the first place. …Don’t have a clue what kind of business I want to start and I really don’t have anything to my name. All I’ve got is a motorcycle and a job running a bar. …And I’m convinced the job running the bar is going to eventually drive me completely insane so, I don’t put much value on that.
Now, I could go on and on about how many times I thought my head was going to explode on my way towards making that first million dollars, but trust me that wouldn’t be much fun, so... Suffice to say, within 3 years I had gotten a much needed haircut and within 5 years I’d structured my business in such a way that I no longer had to spend more than 8 hours a month tending to it.
As far as financial distractions go, there weren’t any. I was debt free (including the beautiful home I once had only dreamed of) and with regard to income, I was now making more money working an hour from my home, than I used to earn working a full week running the bar.
A theory on why it works:
There are many theories about how (and why) the process of visualization works.
Some call it divine intervention, others call it destiny, some even call it magic and maybe it’s all of those, but as far as I’m concerned there’s something a little bit more basic at work here and it’s called Cause and effect.
By creating the image of what you want in your mind, you set into motion a cause. …The effect is; your mind immediately begins the process of figuring out how to make that image real.
The more clearly you’ve drawn the image and the more often you focus on it with intensity, the more your subconscious mind works on solving the question of how.
To simplify this: All change in our lives begins with action. And the first action, the most important action, begins in our mind. The desired result has got to begin there.
We can all think of examples where this happens. We start thinking about a movie we want to see and before you know it we’re watching that movie. We see a style of shoes that we like and eventually, we end up walking around in those shoes. …A new TV, a new car, a new career…these ideas get into our minds and as long as we visit them on a regular basis, it’s just a matter of time before we get them out of our head and into our hands.
So if we know the process works on the small things, that it keeps us moving towards them, why not use it on the bigger things too? Why not get honest and clear about what we really want in life? Draw the vision as vividly as we can. Spend time living it! AS IF IT WERE REAL, right this minute.
By doing so, we give our mind the reference it needs to help us recreate exactly what we’re looking at…and step-by-step, piece-by-piece, that’s exactly what our mind will help us do.
