Why you’re not living your dream life

I need to clear my head.

I’m agitated. My head’s foggy. I’ve got an article due that won’t write itself. 

So I do what any self-respecting, new age, personal growth junky does. I pop on my sneakers, put Abraham Hicks between my ears, and head for the trees. 

I love Abraham Hicks. He (or she. Or is it they?) has a way of making everything seem so simple. 

Get into a good feeling place. Visualise the life you want. Feel it as though you’re really living it right now. Then, voila! You’re in the vortex, baby. Gewd thangs are on the way. 

And I feel it, you know? Every part of me feels it. I become aware of my body as it moves along the shrub lined path. The surrounding trees stabilise and connect me to everything. Nothing matters but the moment. My mind paints vivid pictures of my dream life – a humble home resting on the side of a cliff overlooking endless forest. Not a financial care in the world. The freedom to travel far and often, or simply to read a book by the fire in my favourite chair in the middle of the day, with my favourite wine and my favourite chocolate. Which, incidentally turbo my health, beauty and vitality with every sip and bite. 

It’s my dream life. Why not?

I’m in the zone. I’m in the sweet spot of limitless potential. This is it. I’ve uncovered ancient secrets of great masters before me, who’ve surpassed the struggle and the suffering to reside in golden light and endless rainbows forevermore. Hallelujah! 

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Photo credit: Emma Simpson

Hello? Dream life?

I make my way back home. So light. So clear. Whatever was I agitated about? Only the faint whisper of a distant forgotten thought could tell. 

I’m unstoppable. 

I sit at my desk. A blank page in front of me. My favourite pen lay begging to prove its usefulness. 

But first, the fridge needs cleaning. 

It wasn’t long after my whiff of enlightenment that I found myself right back where I started. Agitated, foggy, and once again paying rent on the corner of Struggle Street and Suffering Way.  

I watched familiar thoughts and patterns emerge and realised I was no closer to living my dream life than I was to finishing my article.  

The Law of Attraction.

I’m an avid subscriber to the notion that what I put out into the universe, I receive twofold. If I think in terms of lack, I get more lack. If I spend my days counting blessings, more will come.

But no matter what I think I believe to be true, I can’t manifest the dream life promised inside Abraham’s ever-elusive vortex of abundance.

It got me thinking. There has to be more to it. I’m missing something. 

Then I remembered something Mitch always bangs on about. 

He says our innermost dominant thoughts are what create our outermost dominant reality. Our innermost dominant thoughts are, for the most part, unconscious. We aren’t aware of the truth we’re really telling ourselves. The reality we live and experience is the manifested result of the endless thoughts playing on loop behind our consciousness.

Yikes. 

What are these thoughts? Where did they come from? Why do they have such power over me? What kind of voodoo trickery is this? 

If I’ve got rogue thoughts running amok in my brain, dictating my reality and keeping me from moving forward, I have to do something about it, and quickly. 

I needed answers. I chased Mitch down. This was urgent, after all. My dream life was on the line. I knew whatever he was doing, he’d see the pressing urgency of my situation and offer immediate help.

Instead, he laughed in his kindhearted way. He said a few swear words, too, just for fun. That’s Mitch. 

Are you ready for this?

I think so. Yes.

Well then, saddle up and let’s take a ride.

Mitch Bethan

How you create your reality.

Between zero and eight years of age, you construct 85 percent of your neural pathways. That means, your brain is 85 percent hard-wired by the time you’re eight.  

Your brain has over 60,000 thoughts per hour – consciously, unconsciously, subconsciously, and super-subconsciously. Out of all those thoughts, by the time you’re eight years old, you only have one new thought every three to four days. 

By the time you’re 35, you don’t have any more new thoughts. You’ve built your reality based on the thoughts and beliefs formed in the first eight years of your life. You may think you have new thoughts and your reality changes with the years, but, in fact, it’s only the setting that changes. 

Your future is your past folding in on top of itself, over and over again.  

Say what?

Are you telling me as a 45-year-old woman, I perceive my world today based on hard-wired thoughts and beliefs formed when I was eight? 

Yes. But there’s more.

Oh boy.

Everything in humanity exists in duality. Think about it. We have two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two arms, two legs. Earth exists simultaneously in half light and half darkness with the sun and the moon. We live in a dual reality. However, our senses can only experience things in singularity. 

We polarise and categorise every situation and experience we have. 

Mitch Behan

As a kid, when you have an experience with mum or dad, you polarise it – you make it either good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative, pleasant or painful, and on and on it goes. Your brain hard-wires every experience into a plus or minus. 

You form beliefs about yourself based on how you categorise experiences. For example, say your mum corrects you when you say something inappropriately. No matter how loving her words are in the correction, you decide in that moment you’re wrong (versus right), and, therefore, you form the belief you aren’t good enough.

This happens at a subconscious level.  

As you grow and receive more external information, you build more of your ‘story’, and see a reality based on what you believe to be true. 

Between about five and eight years of age, your brain makes a decision. It says, ‘hey, I’ve got this. I’ve figured out how this world works. I don’t need any more information. I know enough now to survive in the world and get to my deathbed relatively safely.

At this point, your beliefs and the way you see yourself become your innermost dominant thoughts, to be played out in your subconscious as you go through life. 

So that’s it? I’m doomed to a life dictated to me by my eight-year-old self who, by the way, I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure didn’t categorise my early experiences particularly well (in my defence, I was eight). 

No, Eva, that’s not it.

You can’t change your reality at a conscious level. But, you can change your reality by going deeper and understanding what’s happening subconsciously.

You have to create congruence between the person you are at the subconscious level and the reality you want to experience. 

Changing your mind won’t change your reality. You have to change your innermost dominant thought to truly shift your real experience for the long haul.

Right, so what you’re saying is, it’s not enough for me to simply imagine the life I want for it to come to me. I have to go deeper to understand what my innermost dominant thoughts are, that may be hindering my ability to apply the Law of Attraction principle meaningfully, and truly create the reality I want?

Yes.

I see.

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Photo credit: Caleb Frith

Final thoughts.

Mitch gave me a lot to think about, but I was left with more questions.

I get what he’s saying in principle, but how do I go down the rabbit hole to figure out what my innermost dominant thoughts are? And then, what do I do to shift them once I identify them?

My instincts tell me these questions have big answers, which perhaps may be different for everyone. 

At least now I have some sense as to why I keep getting stuck in my cycle and feel somewhat reassured there is a way through. 

What has become blindingly apparent, is my dream reality won’t appear magically without me doing a little bit of internal work. And, like any self-respecting personal growth purist, I’m willing to roll up my sleeves and face the grit. 

Onwards.

Want to find out how to conquer your innermost dominant thoughts and create your dream reality?

Me too! Click the button and let’s go down the rabbit hole together.