So, you’ve read the books and listened to the audio tapes. You know that you transform your life, one day, one thought at a time. By now you’ve heard that the fastest way to integrate something into your life or vibration is to practice it over and over. Where you focus your thought becomes the point of attraction for more of the things that match that vibration. Think about what habit you’d like to try out, and see yourself living it again and again. Feel yourself acting as you would when you’re where you want to be. Begin the habits that move you towards your desired results.
Okay, so now you’re wondering, “How do I make something a lasting habit? This stuff sounds nice, but nice doesn’t pay the bills.” (Actually, nice does pay the bills and more.)
15 Minutes a Day of Focused Thought for 21 Days, Establishes New Behaviours:
The research of Maxwell Maltz shows that thinking about what you want, for 15 minutes a day for 21 consecutive days, is enough to establish that behaviour or way of thinking so that you continue doing the thing without effort.
We are creatures of habit, so use this knowledge in the service of your highest goals. Your natural impulse will be to continue whatever habit you’ve initiated, and after 21-30 days, it will take more effort to not do the thing than to do it. Yes; in 21 days, you’ll feel normal getting up at 5am to jog. It’s crazy, but it’s true. Try it and see for yourself.
That’s 15 minutes a day you’re investing in yourself to establish a habit that will reap you many benefits. Focus on the benefits, not on the habit itself. The habit is a tool, and you are the masterpiece.
You don’t even have to take action for this to work; although, the more senses you stimulate, the faster you’ll be what you want. Even thinking about your new habit will rewire the neural network in your brain and make new associations that will work to your advantage.
From a Zero Resistance Living Newsletter:
The essence of the technique is simply to devote 15 minutes a day to the formation of any habit you wish to establish, and do this faithfully for 21 days. By the fourth week, it should actually be harder not to engage in the new behavior than it would be to continue doing it.
This applies to any type of habit, whether it is a physical practice or a way of perceiving something, such as self image. Zero Resistance Living is a way of thinking and changing your self image in “the theater of your mind” for 15 minutes a day, for 21 days.
It will also help to establish the habit if the behavior, such as jogging, is performed at the same time of day every day. Other senses can be utilized to establish the habit. For example, if you want to establish the habit of meditating, you can reinforce the practice by wearing the same clothing, burning the same incense, occupying the same location, and assuming the same posture.
The more senses you can involve in the new habit, the more likely it is to become ingrained in the neural pathways; so, even if you’re working on your self image in a mental construct, it’s helpful to use all the faculties of your imagination to include sights, sounds, smells, and the
senses of feeling and taste to strengthen the image which you come to associate with your new self image. In other words, make it seem as real as possible.If you miss a day, just keep going until you’ve been doing the new behavior for 21 days in a row.
Success Principle
One of Jack Canfield’s Success Principles is to commit yourself to living your desired behaviour for a minimum of 30 consecutive days, the time it takes your brain form new neural pathways and to therefore adopt the new world view as ‘normal’.
He encourages doing a mirror exercise where you talk to yourself positively, which replaces the negative thoughts:
“You can’t get rid of negative self-talk unless you replace it with something else. You must do the mirror exercise for 30 days, because that’s how long it takes to form new neural pathways in the brain.
Here’s another way to control negative self-talk. When I get critical self-talk, I tell it, “Next time I will….” Then I ask, “Is there anything else you have? If not, then shut up!” The reason we repeatedly engage in critical self-talk is that it is not sure you got the message.” [source]
17 Seconds to Leveraging the Law of Attraction
Abraham-Hicks on how to ‘use’ the law of attraction to be what you want; the power of focusing on a thought that feels good, puts the law of attraction in motion:
“If you can hold a thought, just a simple thought, for 17 seconds, without contradicting it, another thought like it – same shape, same size, same vibration, same tone – by law of attraction, another thought like it will come to it.
And at precisely the 17 second point, these two thoughts will join one another; they coalesce and when they do that there is an energy that is expended, it is like a combustion point. And when these two thoughts join and combust, you can feel a measure of enthusiasm or interest bubbling within you. And in that moment of 17 seconds, these two thoughts that were same become one bigger, more evolved, faster vibrating thought.
Now, if you can stay focused on this subject that you have chosen for another 17 seconds, at the moment that you cross the 34 second mark that is just two times 17 this now more evolved thought will attract unto it and – in other words, the thoughts attract each other. Your thought draws another and the other thought draws it, thoughts that are same in nature come together. And at the 34 second mark these two more evolved thoughts do the same thing, they coalesce and there is another combustion point. At that point, these two thoughts become one, higher and faster in vibration.
If you can maintain your attention to that now more evolved thought, at the 51 second mark which is just 3 times 17 there is another coalescing, another joining of thought and another combustion point. If you can hold that more evolved thought for another 17 seconds, the same thing happens and when you cross the 68 second mark, you have a combustion big enough to affect physical manifestation. Just to get your attention we want to give you some physical comparison: 17 seconds of pure thought is equivalent to 2000 hours of action. If you are working a regular 40 hour a week job, that is about what you work in a year. 17 seconds equals 2000 action hours. If you can cross the 34 second mark, you can multiply your action by ten, 20,000 action hours. If you can cross the 51 second mark 3 times 17 you can multiply by ten again, a 200,000 action hour equivalent. If you can cross the 68 second mark – now that is just over a minute of pure con-contradicted, non-diluted thought it is equivalent to over 2 million action hours.”
If you think that’s preposterous, try holding the feeling of a thought in your mind for 17 seconds – you’ll see how rare yet effective is its practice.
“When you align your energies with the energies that create worlds, when you are no longer contradicting at your CORE, amazing things happen. Now, 17 seconds doesn’t sound like much, but as we watch you we see that most of you at about 8 begin your contradictory vibrations. Most of you do not make it through a whole sentence without contradicting the vibration of your desire.
People will say to us: “Abraham, I want more money, I am so tired of the struggle.” That was about 1 second. “Abraham, I want so much to be well, I am frightened of this illness.”
You have been trained to be so objective that you keep shooting yourselves in the foot. It is a little bit like someone saying: “I want a cup of hot tea,” and so they turn the fire on under their pot, and just before it boils they turn it off, and then they turn it on again, and just before it boils, they turn it off and then they turn it on again and then just before it boils they turn it off and then they say: “For 15 years, I have been trying to get some hot tea!” And we say: “Just leave it on, just leave it on a little longer.” If you could just resist the opposite knee jerk reaction, just a little longer, you will begin to get the sense of what we are talking about.
The reason that it is difficult for you not to offer the contradictory thought so quickly, is because you have been trained to be objective, you have been trained to weigh the pros and the cons, the pluses and the minuses. You have been taught that this is balanced or even-minded. And we say: You take it to an extreme, because contrast will prod you into your greater clarity of desire – that is really the reason of this physical format; we will talk about that in greater detail as it moves forward. Contrast is essential to decision, but once the decision is made, if you will turn your full attention to your decision and do your best to achieve a vibrational match with that decision in very short order, the Universe will go to work in helping you to achieve whatever it is that you are wanting.
When you begin to offer your vibration purely, you begin to see the Universe responding to it. In other words, if you will just play this game for two or three days, two wonderful things will happen to you: The first is you will show yourself you have the ability to hold your mind on something for 17 seconds. And if you can do it for the first 17, you can do it for the second and the third and the fourth.
And the other thing that will happen is you will give the opportunity to the Universe to show you that it is utterly responsive to your vibration. You are going to learn that you really are a beaming energy that is being responded to. And it is going to give you a sense of control, it is going to give you a sense of being the deliberate creator that you really are. Friends, that is why you are here! You are creators!
But let us put that into very clear terms for you; you are creators MEANING you are focusers of ENERGY.
If you do not have the ability to hold a thought, you cannot be a creator.
You are not regurgitators, you did not come forth to just observe all over the place and vibrate all over the place. You came forth to direct energy! And by directing energy, you must HOLD the thought! Now, how do you know how you are doing; in other words, how do you know whether you are holding a thought or not? Well, you have to get sensitive to the way that you are feeling because you can actually feel the fluctuations of the vibrations within you. Your emotional guidance system, in other words, the way you FEEL is the way you know how you are doing!
Imagine a room fan, one of those well-made, heavy, expensive, heavy duty room fans. And it is blowing air in your direction. And it is so well made that even though you can feel the stream of air blowing toward you, you can’t hear it, it is barely making any sound at all. Now stick your pencil in the fan…. Would cause quite a ruckus, wouldn’t it? Well that pencil in the fan, that is exactly what negative emotion is. When you introduce a lower, slower vibration into a higher faster vibration, you can feel the fluctuation of the energy. A pencil in the fan is an extreme example of a fluctuation of energy, but that is exactly what negative emotion is!
When you have a desire, when you have thought about something and you have brought yourself to a place of desire and then you conclude, I can’t have that. When you introduce that “I can’t have it” thought to the higher faster frequency of desire, that disappointment or negative emotion is your pencil in the fan. It is you introducing a lower, slower vibration into a higher, faster frequency. You get the sense of what we are talking about?
As you begin to play with this have you ever noticed, have you ever known someone where as the longer you talked to them, the better you felt? It was just this friend, that when you got together, you always got feeling good. You got silly, you had fun have you ever been with anyone, usually it is when you are very young, usually about teenage years is when this all stops, you get together with that group of people and they are all in that happy vibration and you just play and play and play and play, until you just parlade into an higher and higher vibration, until you feel that there is nothing that you cannot do?
That is the feeling that we want you to reconnect with, we want you to understand that if you could just hold a thought, any thought, for 17 seconds, it is going to COMBUST and give you that energy sensation! And as you do this, as you begin to do it deliberately, and then you see the Universe responding, you become creative things, you begin to then step into the shoes that you intended when you decided to come forth! You said: ”I will go forth into this sea of contrast, this blessed contrast and out of this contrast, it will be easy for me to come to a conclusion! And once I reach a conclusion, then all I have to do is hold my thought in a similar vibration to my conclusion and as I do that I will achieve a vibration outpouring that the Universe will match! I am creator, you said.”