MAKE UP YOUR MIND THIS VERY MINUTE
This is going to be your greatest holiday season ever! You are going to have a sensational time this year throughout the entire festive holiday period. No hassles, no headaches, no depression, and most important, no holiday blues. This is not only going to be your first stress-free-end-of-the-year celebration, it is going to surpass your wildest expectations about what a holiday season can be. You are about to embark on—in a word—your very first no-limit holiday.
NO MORE
HOLIDAY
BLUES
(formerly Happy Holidays!)
UPLIFTING ADVICE FOR RECAPTURING
THE TRUE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS,
HANUKKAH, AND THE NEW YEAR
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
For my brother David:
That delightful child inside of you
always makes the holiday season
a glorious time of year for all of us.
CONTENTS
ONE
THE HOLIDAYS ARE FOR CHILDREN SO BE A CHILD AGAIN!
TWO
MAKE THIS YOUR FIRST “NO-LIMIT” HOLIDAY SEASON
THREE
HAPPY NEW YEAR! HOW TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT
FOUR
LIVEN UP YOUR EMOTIONAL Choices and AVOID THE HOLIDAY LETDOWN
I love the holiday season more than any other time of the year. It is a very special feeling when I know that we are closing in on Christmas and Hanukkah. I have many wonderful memories of being a child at this time of the year, and that child inside of me is still very much alive and kicking today. One particular incident seems to stand above all of the others. I always did my own shopping as a young boy, even though it was often completed with very little money. I can remember going to the dime store and spending hours looking for a present for my mother. Ultimately I ended up with a glass powder holder with a small deer on the top. The total cost was eighty-five cents, yet it was something that I felt so proud of as a small boy. I took home the deer powder container and wrapped it up without the benefit of a box, and then placed it under the Christmas tree and for days teased my mother to guess what I had bought her for Christmas. She would hold it in her hand and turn it over several times always saying, “I just can’t guess, but I’m not going to open it until Christmas morning.” Inside I couldn’t wait for the big day to arrive for everyone to see what I had picked out to give. I always wanted them to open their presents early, because the wait seemed endless for me. Today, some thirty-five years later, my mother still has her precious memories of that glass deer powder holder that I bought as a ten-year-old boy.
The message of this book is all wrapped up in that little anecdote above. If you can get back to that time of your life when you were a child, enjoying every aspect of this glorious season, you can rid yourself of the “holiday blues” permanently. As a child, the shopping was something that filled you with excitement, and you were able to ignore the crowds. The time you spent decorating, wrapping, celebrating, worshiping, and being with your family was a pure delight. You still have that child inside of you, and you can let him/her escape at this time of the year and rekindle that flame of ecstasy rather than choosing to be gloomy over the holiday season. During this special time of year I regularly urge myself to let the children’s laughter remind me how I used to be. This is a central theme of this little book. Remember how you used to be, each and every moment of this holiday season, and try hard to provide everyone with the seeds for future memories of a glorious holiday.
Each of the four chapters of this book offers a very special message to you at this time of the year, and is designed to be of specific help in making this the best season for you and those you love. My objective in writing them was to provide useful ideas that can be implemented every day. If you decide to follow some of the suggestions offered throughout the pages of this book, I am confident that you will find yourself having the time of your life, rather than drearily awaiting the end of the holidays.
The first chapter sets the stage for making this the best holiday season ever. It is written with the idea of rekindling the childhood flame that burns in each one of us, even though you may have let it become dimmer over the years. If you take on some childlike attitudes this holiday season, and use some of the specific strategies offered in this chapter, you will see yourself embracing the holidays rather than being a victim of them.
In Chapter 2 I have detailed many specific ideas for turning this time of the year into a no-limit experience for you and all of your loved ones. It focuses on helping you to shift around self-defeating attitudes and to look for the joy and ecstasy that is inherent in all celebrations, regardless of your ethnic or religious background. You can make the decision to have a no-limit holiday, and I have provided many suggestions to help you do just that.
The third chapter will aid you in taking advantage of each and every present moment that you have throughout the entire holiday time period. It examines the folly of making New Year’s resolutions, since all of us live our lives in present moments rather than present years. The now is quite simply the working unit of your life, and learning how to live in it totally, will help you not only during the holiday season, but through each and every now of your life.
The final chapter deals with how to avoid the holiday letdown, and to turn what often becomes a negative experience into something to love and enjoy. The holiday-season letdown must be viewed as a choice, and consequently it is something that you can also choose to disavow. It is a self-defeating choice that many people make at this time of year, and I guarantee you that if you follow the suggestions in this chapter you will shift this holiday season from an experience of pique to a peak experience, without even having to make a big effort.
Today I view the holidays through the eyes of my five children. I watch how they jump with excitement every time they see Santa or Hanukkah candles or festive lights in the neighborhoods. I glow inside and out as they talk about what to get Mommy or Grandma. I stop to take in the fantastic smells of cookies baking. I love to see their faces as they stop thinking about their own little problems and totally tune in to this time of the year. They love everything about it. They can’t seem to get enough of it. That is the joy for me—to see others basking in the beautiful messages of this holiday season. Whatever your circumstances in life, wherever you live, regardless of how things used to be, this is it…. This is your only holiday season to celebrate. If you stop for a moment to think about what you can do to make this particular season the best one you’ve ever had, you will find the way to make it happen. That’s what this book is all about. Indeed, as you look around you this year, look with new eyes at how to make it all work for you, and while you are at it, “let the children’s joy and laughter remind you how you used to be.”
The Holidays Are for Children
So Be a Child Again!
Remember how excited you used to be about the approaching holiday season? How you would get all knotted up inside with enthusiasm and hardly be able to contain your anticipation? Remember how you thought that it would absolutely never arrive, and how thrilled you were to participate in all of the events that made up the holidays for you? In case you’ve forgotten, the holiday season was once the most delightful time of the year for you. And the reason that it was so delicious and fun had to do with your being a child and consequently looking at the world through childlike eyes. You didn’t judge the seasonal activities, you simply enjoyed them. You can recapture that childlike approach to the holidays, as well as to the rest of life, if you will voluntarily shed some of the “grown-up” attitudes and beliefs that you’ve adopted since you left that wonderful world of childhood behind you.
As adults, we have come to believe that the holiday season is really only for children. You hear it all the time … “If it weren’t for the children we wouldn’t even celebrate,” or “I just love to see the excitement of the children. Except for them I wouldn’t even enjoy it because of the crowds, expense, and bother of it all.” Thus only children can enjoy the holidays: Adults must suffer through them. For you to begin to enjoy the upcoming holiday season, you are going to have to forget this idea and remind yourself that “the season to be jolly” is not the exclusive domain of any one group, and that you have just as much of a right to make this the most joyous time of the year NOW, as you did when you had those visions of sugar plums dancing in your head so many years ago.
How did it happen? How did the most beautiful season of all get turned around into one that is full of hardship and even despair for so many? The real answer is that many of us have forgotten how to be childlike. The focus has somehow shifted from appreciation and excitement to work and travail. You can adopt new attitudes, reflecting the way you once viewed the holiday season as opposed to the way you may look at it today. This little chart will illustrate some of those contrasting attitudes and expectations.
These contrasting attitudes point out how a child views the holidays from a positive perspective—up, excited, and full of awe—and how that very same child turns into an adult who eventually twists it around and ends up viewing the entire process as a negative, costly, and down experience. The truth is that the child who loved everything about the holiday period is still residing within you. You can in fact change your attitudes and make this time of the year the most perfect for yourself and your family by recapturing that child and letting him/her rule you during the next few weeks.
You may have come to believe that because you pay all of the bills, assume the responsibilities, do the chores, and generally work extra hard during the holiday period, it is impossible for you to have that innocent, childlike appreciation for this time of the year. This is patently false and something that you must challenge. You and only you must take responsibility for your own fulfillment, whether it be Christmas, Hanukkah, or an Independence Day picnic. If you have become overburdened during the holiday season, then it is because you have willingly adopted this role for yourself. Certainly you can teach others how to assume some of the responsibilities and change those things about the season that make it tiring and difficult for you. But the first thing that you can do is shift around your attitudes and beliefs.
CHILDLIKE VERSUS NEUROTIC ADULT ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLIDAY SEASON
Just because you have overspent your budgeted ah lowance during the Christmas shopping season is no reason to become depressed. Obviously depression is not going to put additional funds into your bank account. Moreover, being annoyed by the crowds, or dismayed at the behavior of your relatives, or mad at a sales clerk, is not going to make those things change to suit you. Your thoughts and emotions about everything are under your own control! You can decide exactly how you are going to view all aspects of this holiday season. Anytime you choose reactions that make you unhappy or immobilized you are participating in the neurotic practice of adopting self-defeating rather than self-enhancing reactions to your world.
In terms of the childlike versus neurotic-adult attitudes mentioned in the chart on pages 14-16, you can decide to change your expectations this holiday season by adamantly taking the following stances on items in that list.
In order to become more childlike you should not think of yourself as having to give up being an adult. It is not necessary to become infantile and irresponsible in order to be a child again. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. This means being able to be silly, to go along with a gag, to laugh and make jokes, to be nutty and know how to enjoy playing. It means giving up some of the masks of adulthood, and substituting fun and enjoyment. Being a child means wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.
The next time you walk by a schoolyard, watch the children playing. Notice how they are involved totally in what they are doing, how they scrap and run everywhere they go. Notice how they are oblivious to future problems that are just as real to them as yours are to you. They have to go to class in the afternoon, they have tests to take, friends who concern them, teachers who annoy them, and many many more difficulties to confront in their young lives. But somehow they have that magic quality of being able to suspend their troubles and simply let loose. It is almost as if they have given themselves permission to be free and they show it by becoming totally absorbed in their play.
Perhaps you believe that becoming more childlike is easier to say than do. You may be defending your position with sentences like, “Sure, I’d love to be a child and have nothing to worry about, but I’ve got a family to feed, responsibilities to consider, financial worries, and many other problems. How can I be a child and be a responsible adult as well?” When you argue for your problems, the only thing you get are your problems. I am not suggesting that one must be irresponsible to become more of a child. You can have both. But you can become a person who enjoys his or her tasks rather than is defeated by them. You can attack all of the responsibilities you have with a little less seriousness, and you can make all of your goals more fun to accomplish. Or you can maintain your position of having to be an adult and having to be solemn forever. Your problems will still be the same; the only difference will be that you won’t enjoy yourself as much. Being childlike has nothing to do with responsibilities. Rather, it concentrates on developing an attitude of wide-eyed enthusiasm about everything that you undertake or observe.
The obsessive adult gives up his ability to be compulsive and fun-loving in the name of being grown up and dignified. The holidays are a good time to discard some of those overly “adult” behaviors and try to become more of a child again. Who knows, maybe your childlike but responsible behaviors will become permanent, year-round facets of the new you. I guarantee you that you’ll be a happier person for it. For example, try:
Fantasy is not only great fun, it is very healthy as well. If you allow yourself the luxury of fantasizing and dreaming sometimes, you’ll soon find that many of those very things that were only fantasies will ultimately become realities. If you never give yourself permission to dream about something in the future, you’ll never have an opportunity to realize anything different than what you have. The more you allow yourself to be dreamy-eyed and to fantasize, the more you’ll create an opportunity to change your life for the better.
Being crazy is all tied up with letting go of some of the controls that restrict your life. You can certainly be serious on the job, be mature about how you face your responsibilities, and earnest in attacking problems that call for a straightforward, no-nonsense approach. But the ability to loosen up will aid you not only in having more fun, but will help you be even more effective when it is time for seriousness. The ability to “regress” at will, to act kooky and silly, is in fact a very admirable trait. Some people find it exceedingly difficult to ever let go and be a bit wild. They are afraid of what they might do, or they are intimidated by being less than dignified and shedding the ceremonial garb that is in fact their assumed personality. If you observe people whom others enjoy being around, you’ll find out they often possess that unpredictable quality of being a bit crazy.
This holiday season is the perfect time for you to become a little zany. Give some funny gifts, dress up as Santa, and enjoy yourself instead of being predictable and stodgy. Play some silly games on Christmas morning, or perhaps throw a neighborhood party and invite people to whom you’ve hardly spoken all year. Give up the mask of seriousness and see how good it feels. If you do it now, during the holiday season, you’ll find it easier to do the rest of the year as well.
The child inside of you hates organization and planning when it becomes obsessive. The constant analyzing, trying to figure out the why, persistently going over life’s game plan, are all anathema to your natural self. But you continue to do it because you’ve come to believe that you are supposed to think and behave this way. If you have a completely planned-out life, knowing where you are headed with all of your goals spelled out, and you are obsessive about organization, cleanliness, and orderliness in your life, then you have not only forgotten how to be a child, you’ve stifled that wonderful little person inside of you.
During the holidays, you can go to work on eliminating some of the super-organizational behavior that infects so much of your adult life. You can eliminate the need to have the entire holiday season run on a schedule. You can shed some of your compulsive neatness by allowing more freedom in the house during this special time. You can get rid of your own timetable and instead stop to enjoy what is happening in your home. See what gives the most pleasure for all concerned, rather than attempting to constantly foist your traditions and routines on everyone. In other words, just let the holiday season unfold and happen as it will, rather than planning every detail and making yourself miserable when things are out of kilter.
As you can learn from a child’s appreciation of the holidays, so can they and others learn from the special qualities that you bring with you. As you begin to think about making this the best holiday season possible, ask yourself what are the most important gifts you can give to your family, especially your young children. If I could create a perfect shopping list, it would include presents that you will never find in a shopping center or mail-order catalog. As you complete your shopping lists, think about giving some of these as well, and I assure you that you will have the best holiday season you’ve ever imagined.
THE PERFECT GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Give these gifts to those you love:
Indeed, the holidays are for children, but you can make this the best holiday season you’ve ever experienced by becoming more childlike yourself, by adopting new and more self-enhancing attitudes and behaviors toward the holiday season, and most important, by giving the gifts of being fully human to those whom you love. All of the nuisances, crass commercial aspects, the tiring activities, can be discarded in favor of your becoming a child again—not only for the enjoyment of those holidays, but even more important, for the total enjoyment of your entire life.
Make This Your First
“No-Limit” Holiday Season
Make up your mind right this minute. This is going to be your greatest holiday season ever! You are going to have a sensational time this year throughout the entire festive holiday period. No hassles, no headaches, no depression, and most important, no holiday blues. This is not only going to be your first stress-free end-of-the-year celebration, it is going to surpass your wildest expectations about what a holiday season can be. You are about to embark on—in a word—your very first no-limit holiday.
Please note that this is not a chapter about avoiding the holiday letdown, or how to eliminate the seasonal blues. The focus is not on how to avoid anything that is negative. Instead, the emphasis here is on being positive, up, full of life and fun in a season that is supposed to bring out the best in us, rather than do us in. The truth is that this time of year offers us a wonderful opportunity to rekindle the spirit of love and living life to the fullest. Right from the very beginning, you must think of the limitless potential that this season offers you in the way of improving the quality of your life and the lives of those around you. The emphasis here is going to be on having no limits on what you can get out of these holidays. So put on your positive eyeglasses, and for a few moments look at the upcoming days and weeks with this new vision. You are fully resolved to make this a no-limit holiday, and it all begins with your changing around those old attitudes and beliefs about the negative side of this glorious season.
If you have ever experienced a letdown at this time of the year, you know how immobilizing that can be. The important thing for you to keep in mind is that there is nothing inherently depressing about the holidays. Any down feelings that you have are a result of your own thinking apparatus. If you anticipate that things will be depressing, you will rarely disappoint yourself. So you mustn’t blame the calendar for your down moments. You must look within yourself and resolve to have a positive attitude, regardless of the tasks that lie ahead or the fullness of your holiday schedule. Put a sign on your bathroom mirror that says very emphatically NO ONE IS GOING TO RUIN THIS HOLIDAY SEASON FOR ME … ESPECIALLY YOURS TRULY! That kind of a reminder will put you on the right footing for a no-limit celebration.
If you have your expectations set on positive, now you must take a look at how to keep this kind of a holiday spirit intact. Here are a few suggestions that will help you to rearrange your stressful attitudes about the holidays. Then, when you get these new strategies in focus, and remember what I said in Chapter 1, you can use my inventory of handy techniques for making this a different kind of holiday than any you’ve ever experienced before.
The attitudes in the right-hand column will help you to take the pressure off yourself and focus on having a stressless holiday season. But when you approach the entire process of holiday celebration with the attitudes conveyed on the left-hand side of the table, you place limitations on yourself before you even begin. These negative stressful attitudes are what I call a many-limits approach to the most beautiful time of the year. The limits placed on yourself can create anger, frustration, pain, illness, fatigue, unpleasantness, and worst of all, an inability to enjoy anything associated with the holidays.
STRESS-FREE ATTITUDES TO WORK ON FOR THE HOLIDAYS
If you are determined to rethink your own expectations for yourself during the forthcoming season, may I suggest that you try on some of these new behaviors that might, in fact, add a whole new flavor to your holiday. These strategies for having a no-limit holiday are specifically geared toward enjoyment and living your life to the fullest during a period when many people find themselves overwhelmed by shopping, addressing cards, wrapping, cooking, decorating, and an endless array of other jobs. Test some of these out this year, and see if your holiday season doesn’t reverse itself from many limits to no limits for a change. Please notice, too, that none of these strategies requires any large financial commitment from you.
SOME NO-LIMIT STRATEGIES TO TRY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
These are some no-limit strategies you might try on for the holidays this year. Obviously, the list could be extended endlessly, with the only limits being your own imagination. This time of the year does not have to be celebrated in a certain way. There are no shoulds or have-tos, other than those you have imposed on yourself.
I strongly recommend you make a commitment to yourself that there will be no limits associated with this holiday season. Make a personal vow you will not have any stressful thinking or behavior to diminish this beautiful time of the year. Every time you find yourself feeling the pressure, or becoming a servant, or feeling depressed about the way things used to be, try imaging the word CANCEL like a huge rubber stamp on your mind. You will stamp CANCEL on any self-defeating image you place in your head. If you start to think “poor me” thoughts, you will CANCEL that thought for the moment and begin to think in some kind of a self-enhancing way. If you image an angry thought, you will CANCEL it with your rubber stamp and begin to think about how you can make this time of the year better for someone else right this very moment. The focus of all of your mental energy must be on positive channels instead of self-pity. This kind of thinking will ultimately become a habit, but it will only become a positive habit if you practice positive thinking when you are just beginning to get yourself down. This is the perfect time of the year to begin that kind of practice.
With your vow to make this your first no-limit holiday, and your catalog of strategies for thinking and behaving in more meaningful holiday ways, you will find each present moment of the holiday season to be something to savor and enjoy. And, after all, that’s all any of us get during our short visit here, precious present moments to either live and cherish or waste away with negative thinking and actions. Every moment of our lives affords us a choice and the holiday season is no exception. Go for the no-limit choice and the results will astound you. This thing called life is a miracle, each and every particle of it, and the holiday season is a celebration of the miraculousness of it all.
Happy New Year!
How to Live in the Present Moment
Forget about those New Year’s resolutions in which you decide on the first day of January how you will be conducting your life in September, some nine months later. Any resolution that involves you making decisions about long-range upcoming behavior is not only a waste of time, but it reinforces the self-defeating notion of living in the future rather than in the present moment.
This is the only day that you get. Period. You can resolve to be skinny when next July rolls around, or to quit smoking next month, or to write those long-put-off letters, or to embark on your overdue physical-fitness program by the end of this year. In fact, you can go about resolving until the cows come home, and you still have to live your life just like everyone else on this planet: that is—ONE DAY AT A TIME. Whatever it is you are making resolutions about for the future, keep in mind that you cannot do anything for a year because you are constricted by the reality system in which we are all living every day. Whether you like it or not, you can only live minute to minute. You can certainly use up your present moments thinking about what you’ll be doing in the future, but that doesn’t change the fact that you can only live in the now. The important questions to be asking yourself are “How am I going to use my present moments this year?” and “Will I waste them in reviewing to myself how I used to behave, or how I would like to behave in the future, rather than resolving to live each day to the fullest?” When you look realistically at the alternatives, you see very clearly that just like you did every other year you are going to be forced to live in the present moment. The choice you can make involves not using up those precious present moments doing self-defeating things such as living in the past, worrying about the future, or making resolutions for the entire year.
AN ALTERNATIVE TO NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
There is absolutely nothing neurotic about making plans and then proceeding to carry them out, and the New Year is as good a time as any to initiate a self-improvement program. But rather than making your plans for a full year, see if you can practice thinking differently about your ideas for changing yourself in a positive way. Decide very specifically what it is that you would like to change about yourself. If you have some goals in mind, vow to attack them in a day-today mode, rather than making it a year-long project. The reasoning behind this approach is really quite simple. Supposing you decide you want to lose twenty pounds, and your New Year’s resolution involves eating no sugar for the rest of the year. Immediately you begin to think about how difficult this is going to be. Your mind starts working on ways for you to give up on this silly task, so you start thinking, “Wow, this is really going to be tough. I know I’m going to be craving some sugar before next weekend.” With this kind of a mindset, you are already doomed to maintaining, if not adding to, your twenty pounds of excess baggage. And when you think about it, your mind is being very effective. Why should you want to do difficult tasks when you are much better equipped to handle easy ones? As soon as you make the task difficult (such as a year-long goal) then you set yourself up to give up on the idea.
What you can do is set up day-to-day goals for yourself, and then resolve to begin living this way for the rest of your life. Back to the twenty pounds you want to shed. Supposing you decide that you are only going to go one day without eating sugar or any fattening foods. Now you know that anyone can do virtually anything if it is for only one day, but you may believe that you are really only deceiving yourself, and you know you’ll have to do it for a lot of days, and it is going to be tough, so why even try? This kind of self-defeating logic is the very thing you must learn to conquer. Remember this little piece of advice, which will be extremely helpful to you if you can incorporate it into your life: When you go for one whole day without eating sugar (or not smoking, or being assertive, or any other new behavior), you are a totally different person at the end of that day. What you must learn to do is let the totally different person decide on the second day whether he or she wants to do it again on this new day, rather than letting the same old person decide today that it is only going to be difficult in a couple of days anyhow, “so what’s the use.” Always let the new you make the decision, and then you’ll be living your present moments.
You are aware of how easy it is to give up on a resolution, and you may have attributed this to some character flaw or personality weakness. Not so! You give up on your resolutions because you are resisting the absurd notion of trying to live your life in long stretches, when it is patently impossible to do so. If you can do it in daily sequences then you will not be deceiving yourself at all. It is simply a matter of asking yourself at the beginning of the day, “How do I want to conduct my life today?” Then very directly begin to carry out those goals for the day. When you get good at living your present moments one day at a time, you’ll find that you’ve removed that onerous “global goal” from your life, and you’ll also see yourself changing right before your own surprised eyes. Remember, anyone can do anything for just one day, so tune out the sentences that keep you locked into your old self-defeating ways.
SOME THOUGHTS THAT KEEP YOU FROM LIVING IN THE PRESENT MOMENT
If you ever use any of these thoughts or sentences in your life, then you are going to remain exactly the way you are today, and you will never be able to enjoy your present moments.
Similar sentences that keep you out of present-moment focus include:
If you look very carefully at the logic inherent in these utterances you will see you have bought into a conspiratorial kind of logic that has you believing it is healthy to postpone your gratification in the name of being unselfish, careful, or “right.” But you must take a more skeptical look at this kind of thinking and begin asking yourself exactly what the nature of your reality is all about. If you don’t take advantage of today, when will you ever be able to do so?
I know of many people in their eighties and nineties who refuse to spend their money because they are saving it for their old age. And what happens? They die and never use it, passing it on to anticipating relatives or having it eaten up by inheritance taxes. When does your present moment arrive in which you can do things for yourself in order to have pleasure in your life? If you don’t get into the habit of living in the present, then you’ll never be able to do it, and you will accumulate a nice tidy sum of money, collectibles, and miseries, which you’ll pass on to the next generation.
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
Henry David Thoreau once said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” There is still a lot of truth in this nineteenth-century observation, and the vicious circle that produces quietly desperate people operates something like this.
At point one on the circle is the inclination to idealise: to be thinking about some future event and using up the present moment in anticipation of that event. Things will be great—”when I get to the dance next Friday, when I graduate, when I get married, when I get that promotion, when we have our first child, when we get our new house, when we get that bonus, when the holidays arrive, when our friends arrive from out of town, when they leave, when I pass my examinations,” and on and on the idealizing goes. We are always anticipating something in the future and using up the present moment planning, figuring, hoping, wishing, dreaming, or whatever, always about a future time or event.
As the circle continues to point two, the obvious result of future-oriented idealizing is the logical frustration that follows such thinking. “The dance wasn’t really that great, graduation was a bore, the honeymoon was over right after the wedding ceremony, I spent the bonus even before I got it, the holidays were trying and I couldn’t wait for them to end.” The message is clear. When you are accustomed to idealizing and using up the present thinking about the future, then when that future becomes today, you have to be frustrated because you have no preparation for enjoying the now.
The third part of the circle is a sense of depression that results from feeling unfulfilled. You’ve become enthralled with the future and allowed yourself to be let down by idealizing so much. Because you didn’t know how to grab ahold of the now and live it, you feel depressed and demoralized. So what do you do? You idealize again and start the process all over, with the end result being that you fit neatly into Thoreau’s notion of living your life in quiet desperation. The only way out of this trap, which immobilizes countless millions of people, is to straighten out that circle and begin living your life fully today.
I am not suggesting a life-style that is irresponsible and pleasure-seeking at the expense of anyone who gets in the way. What I would like to remind you of is that whatever you do in your life, and no matter how much you may protest, you must still live in the present moment at all times. The question is not whether you choose to live in the moment, but in how you choose to utilize the moments.
LIVING IN THE PRESENT TO DISCOURAGE UNHAPPINESS
If you examine any kind of personal unhappiness or self-defeating behavior you will find a solution to the problem in becoming more present-moment-oriented. If you suffer from depression you will discover that it is almost impossible to be depressed when you become busy in any present-moment activity. You will often discover that illnesses, fatigue, insomnia, and many physical maladies disappear when you really become involved in living your present moments, and that they will only persist as long as you are willing to use up your present moments thinking and complaining about your various ailments.
Undoubtedly you have had the experience of finding yourself so busy or excited by a project that you literally sent away a cold, or you have become so involved in an activity that you forgot about being tired and lived for days on your natural high. Often, when you take on an important job or task, you become so intensely alive that you just don’t have time for any unhappiness or sickness. This very kind of experience, if you can make it a regular part of your life, will get you into the kind of present-moment living I am advocating.
The next time you are feeling sorry for yourself, begin to assess how you are using up that particular moment. You’ll very soon see that your mind was a flutter of thoughts that were reminding you of how badly you had been treated, or was filled with worry about some future catastrophe, manufactured in your mind, and you were letting this moment go by, chalking it up on the liability side of your personal life ledger.
When you become really proficient at living in the present moment, you’ll see that most of these problems will genuinely begin to disappear. In fact, they’ll have to go away, because most problems are not really problems at all, but simply a matter of attitude toward a given life condition. The problem part is about 95 percent in the mind and 5 percent real. When you train your mind to be here and enjoy this moment in a way that is healthy for you, you won’t have room for all those ominous thoughts that take you away from being here now in the present moment. See how simple the logic is?
DESTROYING STRESS-PRODUCING MYTHS
As a child you were constantly being reminded that you weren’t grown up yet, that you had to wait until you were bigger, and that you weren’t really whole now, but if you did everything right you would grow up and become an adult. In other words, you were not complete but on your way to becoming complete, sort of like being an apprentice person. You very likely carry over many of these same kinds of feelings into your current life. Of course it is only a true picture if you decide to make it true. Just because a person is young or small does not make him or her incomplete, unless you believe that to be true and then set about convincing the young person of your convictions. The truth is that we are complete at all moments in our life. Because we are always in a state of change, each moment simply represents a different opportunity for experiencing the moment in a unique fashion. The fact that you are going to be older next year does not mean that this year doesn’t count. But that is the logic most children are exposed to in their earliest years, and ultimately that myth carries right on into adulthood, and people have a great deal of difficulty in seeing themselves as complete, whole, and even perfect in this moment.
You must slay this demon of incompleteness if you are going to get on into present-moment living. Always consider this moment as one to experience fully and you are entitled to do just that. Certainly you are going to be growing, changing and developing many new and different skills and attitudes as you get older. But this is not necessarily a logical reason to avoid the enjoyment of these moments; instead it seems like a rational reason for saying to yourself, This is the only day I have for myself at this age, in this time, today. So why not grab ahold of this moment and live it, rather than putting off my fulfillment until I’m more complete?
The problem with the “Incompleteness Doctrine” is that you never really get to be a whole person, despite your age. The process becomes bigger than the goal of completeness itself. Consequently you become enmeshed in always thinking ahead to a future developmental stage—until you are ninety, at which time you begin to review the good old days. The present never arrives for these conditioned postponers of life. Don’t let yourself fall into that trap, which is a leftover from your early days when big people were able to really manipulate you with that absurd logic.
The second of these deadly sickness-producing myths is the idea that hedonism or pleasure-seeking is somehow a bad trait to acquire—the point of view being that we should seek out pain and suffering in order to be good people. The avoidance of living in the present moment can be traced directly to the multitudinous admonitions: … Postpone your gratification … Save for a rainy day … Be very careful … Don’t spend all of your money on things for today … Sure, school is boring but it will pay off someday … If it feels good, don’t do it… Wait until you are married, or grown up.
Let’s set the record straight right here. Pleasure is terrific and you should try to fill your life with as much of it as you can get. No conditions, no apologies, a simple fact. Pleasure is to be sought out and pain to be avoided. Do you get mad at your plants because they stretch toward more sunlight? Why do they do that? Because sunlight feels good and encourages growth they instinctively seek it out. Do you discipline your pets when they seek to eat, or sleep, or romp? Why do they do all of these animal things? Because they feel good, and all animals know instinctively to go after pleasure and avoid pain.
This is not in any way an endorsement of grabbing your pleasure at the expense of others; I am not suggesting that people be crass or vicious in their pleasure-seeking. You must destroy the idea once and for all that you are being bad if you are seeking out pleasure. Your work ought to be fun. School work ought to be enjoyable for students, not some dreary exercise in plodding through painful learning experiences.
Life does not have to be full of misfortune, suffering, drabness, or misery. It does not have to be grim in order to be important. You are entitled to have every experience be one that gives you joy, and if your life experiences don’t provide pleasure for you then you will be a much healthier person if you seek out that pleasure and do everything that you can to avoid suffering. While you don’t have to develop a phony sense of excitement about changing dirty diapers or emptying the garbage, neither do you have to be immobilized by these routine tasks. You can resolve to do them cheerfully and then get on with enjoying your life.
If you decide to believe that pleasure-seeking is not a vice and indeed something that you want for yourself, then you will also have to decide to get more into the present moment, particularly during the holiday season, and stop all of the needless worry and guilt that use up your moments as a substitute for pleasure. By seeing yourself as complete in this moment and not on your way to anyplace, and by giving yourself permission to have pleasure now rather than waiting for it at a later stage in your life, you’ll have incorporated the two necessary attitudes to help you achieve self-actualization in the present moment. Below are some specific kinds of strategies that you might find useful in changing from a postponer and other-moment person to a NOW human being.
SUMMARY: STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING PRESENT-MOMENT AWARENESS
What new activities such as tennis, racquetball, backgammon, horseback riding, sailing, jogging, and disco dancing have eluded you to date? Include these as well. Have you wanted to write a children’s story? A magazine article? Compose a song? Fly in a small airplane? Go parasailing, waterskiing, crosscountry skiing? Put on your agenda whatever activities you’ve always thought about but never included.
Add anything else such as taking a cruise, volunteering at a nursing home or mental hospital, bicycling ten miles, swimming a mile, eating in a Greek restaurant, or whatever. With this kind of a self-improvement or self-enjoyment agenda, you can check off the things that would help you become a more present-moment, alive person during the course of the whole year. Include activities with your family, gourmet meals, new sexual frontiers, traveling, discussions of poetry, quiet moments together, and the like. You can use this agenda, adding to it as you go along, to help you live more fully in your present moments.
These are some suggestions that you can incorporate into your life to get on with living in the present moment. I have personally used all of these methods to keep myself alive and happy in my present moments. I have decided that no one is going to ruin this day for me, and I am full of resolve about that. I enjoy things like running on the beach, tennis, music, discussions with strangers, beauty, animals, and writing in the middle of the night. I feel that I do not need to explain my decisions about how I am going to live my present moments to anyone as long as I am making the decision to be a responsible human being. But I decide how I carry out those responsibilities, not anyone else. I believe that I must take risks, that I must have new challenges, and that I want to experience every moment I’m alive in as full and exciting a manner as possible. If others find this difficult to swallow, then I consider that to be their problem, since it is my life we are discussing.
I know that I have to live with myself, and that I must feel good about that self I am always with. I do not want to get to the end of my days and look back at having missed this or that opportunity. So I have vowed to be fully alive and see the world the way Whitman described it many years ago: “To me … / Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.” I really believe in that philosophy.
I strive to be fully appreciative of all things and moments in my life. Not by thinking about it all of the time, but by being a doer and an activist. I love the sun—so I go out into it—no questions, no worries, no fretting about what I should be doing instead. Similarly, I enjoy the company of people who are excited about life, who are not inhibited and afraid to take risks. I seek out these kinds of folks, and simply “pass” when I run into complainers, whiners, or folks who want to drag me down.
Here is a beautiful poem, written by an unknown (to me) author. It sums up the contents of this chapter very nicely.
I THREW THE KEY AWAY
I have shut the door on yesterday
Its sorrows and despairs
I have locked within its glooms
Past failures and mistakes.
And now I threw the key away
and seek a sunny room
Which I will furnish with hopes and smiles
And fragrant springtime bloom.
No thought shall enter this bright room
That has a touch of pain
No impatience, unhappiness
Shall ever entrance gain.
I shut the door on yesterday
And threw the key away
Tomorrow holds no fear for me
Since I have found TODAY.
May you live a long and productive life, ONE DAY AT A TIME!
Liven Up Your Emotional Choices
and Avoid the Holiday Letdown
This is the time for happiness, right? ‘Tis the season to be jolly with lots of Ho Ho Hos, bells jingling, children smiling, and happy, happy feelings everywhere. You hear these sentiments in all of the music, view the beautiful scenes in store windows and holiday cards, see people celebrating the coming of the holidays, the New Year, families reunited, and note festive parties and exquisite meals. With this preponderance of “happy-time spirits” everywhere, one would think this would be the time of the year when people would forget their troubles, let their hair down, and really enjoy themselves. But this is not the case. The season to be jolly is hardly the way it is at all. In fact, the opposite is often true. People tend to increase their dependencies on tranquilizers. The number of episodes of depression rise significantly, and admissions to in-patient treatment centers and visits to psychotherapists show increases during and immediately following this season. Perhaps most shocking of all is that the suicide rate shows a marked upsurge at this time of year.
With all of the emphasis on festive celebration, it is ironic that people become more anxious and depressed now than during the rest of the year, which is supposedly full of dull routine and maddening sameness. It is not at all uncommon to hear people say, “I can’t wait until the holidays are over and things return to normal,” or “I hate the pressure of the holidays, I wish Christmas and New Year’s would be banned.” You do not have to join in on the big Holiday letdown; in fact, you can make this particular year-end celebration a beautiful, fulfilling experience if you guard against negativism and then vow to implement some specific strategies that will guarantee that you and your loved ones truly enjoy the holiday season rather than be victimized by it.
WHAT TO GUARD AGAINST TO AVOID THE HOLIDAY LETDOWN
Give yourself permission to enjoy this holiday any way that you choose. Just this year, give yourself some freedoms that you’ve never allowed yourself in the past. Give yourself permission to try new things, to establish your own traditions, and to stop being manipulated into all of the chores in the name of “it’s your duty.” You need not have even one moment of letdown this year. You can enjoy the holiday season from the opening day of all celebrations, including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Hanukkah, family visits, post-Christmas days, New Year’s Eve and Day, and the days immediately following the New Year. Below are some specific ideas for how you can implement a stress-free, tensionless holiday season, and come out of this time period happy and free of anxiety.
STRATEGIES FOR AVOIDING THE HOLIDAY LETDOWN
These are some of the numerous techniques you can implement this season to avoid the typical holiday letdown that infects so many people at this time of year. You have choices in this business of holiday celebrations. The responsibility is always your own. This is a great time of the year. The true meaning of the holidays is one of joy, love, peace, and happiness. Why subvert the very essence of this beautiful celebration by thinking of it as something that you want behind you. The message is simple: Cultivate a childlike awe and appreciation for the holidays. Resolve to work on your ATTITUDE moment to moment. Share in the work AND the fun, avoid traditions that have become burdensome, be creative, and refuse to let the behavior of others affect your peace and enjoyment. In short, be yourself and be firm, and you’ll have a joyous holiday.
This year it can really be the season to be jolly … but only with your cooperation.
Happy Holidays!
Here is an excerpt from REAL MAGIC,
by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.
Available now from HarperPaperbacks
wherever books are sold.
REAL MAGIC, MIRACLES AND PURPOSE
When you are at purpose you are truly flowing with life, experiencing a kind of harmony that comes from not having to strive for something else. In short, you lighten up, figuratively and literally. This comes from the new knowing that enables you to go about your life’s work free of worrisome thoughts. You sense that you are being watched over, and your actions come from this inner beatitude of rightness or centeredness. When you are acting out of that inner knowing which constantly reminds you that you are on purpose and that you trust yourself to act out of that purpose, the right thing is all that you can do.
The holiest book of the Hindu faith is called the Bhagavad Gita (the Song of the Lord). It is the story of Arjuna, the most renowned warrior of his time, and Krishna (God), who appears to Arjuna on the battlefield as Arjuna prepares to do battle. Krishna appears in the physical form of Arjuna’s charioteer. In eighteen short chapters Krishna talks with Arjuna about the essence of being a divine and purposeful human being. This is the book on which Mahatma Gandhi modeled his life. Summarized briefly the Gita’s message is: Behave in ways consistent with love and harmony and do not be attached in any way to the fruits of your labor. If you can attain this state of grace your life will become miraculously peaceful. Live your life entirely on purpose and renounce any and all credit that may come your way from your actions. Be consistently aware of the need to serve God and to serve others in any and all of your actions. This is the way of the miracle worker.
You may be thinking that this is a nice philosophy but one that is too simplistic in the dog-eat-dog, competitive world of the twentieth century. I acknowledge and respect your reservations. In fact, I lived with similar skepticism for the larger portion of my life. I had to go through suffering in order to learn life’s lessons; I was totally focused on outcomes and was not a believer in matters metaphysical, nor was I interested in hearing about being detached from the results of my labors. I was in it for the results. I was focused on my destination, not the journey. The issues of my life concerned rewards, money, prestige and accomplishments. While I was certainly a “success” in conventional ways, I had no idea about going beyond these extreme indices, or about real magic. I can only say that miracles and real magic began to show up in my life when I got myself to purpose. Only when I stopped being concerned about what was coming to me was I able to be in a state of grace.
Here is a portion of a letter I received recently from a reader in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, that describes the experience of readiness to discover one’s life purpose.
Dear Wayne:
As I sit by the fire in my den, my favorite room, I feel so peaceful. All the usual things are happening. Nine P.M., three children going off to bed, my husband packing his bags for this Phoenix trip, etc.
I sit here in the same room, the same clothes. I know I look the same and yet I am not the same person. I walk in the park across from my home everyday and I listen to your tapes on my Walkman. This is “my time,” no phones, no children, no noise, only your voice in my ears and the beautiful park I have come to love so much. I wonder why I didn’t hear you ten years ago, or five years ago when I was so unhappy. I realized that I wouldn’t have listened then, not like I am listening now. Now is my time to hear your message. Now I am truly listening and I love what I hear. Tomorrow I will walk again and probably finish hearing The Awakened Life. I can just walk and walk and walk while listening to you. It’s so peaceful. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. My life is now a miracle unfolding everyday. I am on purpose.
For this woman, her life is a miracle yet nothing outside has changed. The children, the chores, the job are all still there, but she feels purposeful now and is unconcerned about what the outcomes are going to be. This is the state I am hoping to help you to achieve.
Yes you can create miraculous changes in your life. Yes you have the power within you to manifest what may have seemed impossible only a short time ago. Yes you can know the meaning of real magic in your life. The setting for making this your reality is right there inside you. Get yourself aligned with your purpose. Discover the joy and peace of giving, not getting; of contributing, not acquiring; of doing, not competing or winning. Why? Because you can’t really get anything. The message of your life is in what you give. You show up with nothing. You leave with nothing. All you truly can do with this life in form is to give it away. Purpose is always about giving. When you experience giving, serving, loving and promoting harmony you will feel the difference within yourself. André Gide summed it up so beautifully in his journal: “Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.”
As you prepare for this exploration of real magic, you may be asking, “How will I do it?” “What if I need help?” These are sensible questions to which I want to help you find your answers.
WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY
The first time I read the Bhagavad Gita it was as if a lightning bolt had illuminated my life. I had a similar experience when I read St. Paul’s letters in the New Testament. Both of these wise and ancient works had been part of my library for over thirty years. I must have passed by them hundreds of thousands of times and probably had glanced through them as a young boy and a college student. Yet they had no meaning for me until I was ready, when they guided me to miraculous discoveries and helped me to get my life on purpose.
An ancient Zen proverb says, “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” When you are truly determined in your own mind to experience real magic and to live each day at purpose, you will be shown how to make it happen. Let’s examine the four key words in this Zen proverb.
Student. Be a student. Stay open and willing to learn from everyone and anyone. Being a student means you have room for new input. When you are green you grow, when you are ripe you rot. By staying green you will avoid the curse of being an expert. When you know in your heart that every single person you encounter in your lifetime has something to teach you, you are able to utilize their offerings in a profound way. The ability to create real magic involves first of all being a student of life.
Ready. Be a willing student. Your level of readiness to grow and become your own miracle worker is simply a state of mind. As a student you know that everyone and everything is in some way your teacher. As a student who is ready, you are eager for what it is that everyone and everything has to offer you. The “wrong turn” leading to a new and unexpected place is an opportunity to grow. When you are a student who is ready, the stranger who talks to you about how he overcame his addiction years ago becomes a guide sent to you to help you cope with your own personal addiction.
When I was ready to leave alcohol behind me, truly ready, the teacher appeared for me in a meditation with these words, “You don’t have to look any further. Do it now, you’ll have all the help you are ready to receive.” I had heard such words thousands of times, but my lack of readiness always interfered. This time, I was ready, and I was able to walk away from alcohol and never look back. Almost every magazine article I read in the next few days seemed to describe people finding the courage to leave alcohol and drugs behind them. Perhaps those same personal stories had always been there, but it wasn’t until I was truly ready that they served as powerful reminders.
Ready means willing. Genuinely, authentically willing. When you are this ready, you will discover your own personal teacher.
Teacher. The teacher is everywhere. The assistance you need will be provided by the universe as soon as you convert your readiness to willingness. Once you are willing you will find teachers in every niche of your life.
The teacher might well be an experienced soul who is ready to assist and guide you to the miracles you seek. That person showing up in your life now, at the very time you are ready, might be construed as an accident or a divine break on your part. But that wise soul, in one way or another, has always been available to you. Your willingness makes the teacher able to assist you.
Teachers appear in various forms. Your teacher might be a tape that someone “accidentally” leaves in your car and that you “accidentally” play at just the right time. Last week you might have played it for two minutes and rejected the contents; now your willingness allows your teacher to be there for you. Your teacher might be a book or an article that a friend recommends. It might be your unplanned attendance at a lecture or a church service to which someone gave you their ticket because he or she had to be out of town; the message of the speaker seems to be directed specifically at you. Your teacher might be a child who takes you by the hand and asks you a question that you hadn’t considered before, and your answer to the child is your answer to yourself. Your teacher might be invisible and show up as a thought that comes over you in a quiet, contemplative moment and encourages you to go in a certain direction now.
Hundreds of times people have come up to me after speaking engagements and told me how they “accidentally” showed up at one particular event or another and heard exactly what they needed at that time. For example, one woman was listening to a tape of mine while driving home. On the tape I was talking about the subject of “when the student is ready the teacher will appear.” Suddenly, as she was driving by the Unity Church where I was to speak, she saw my name on the marquee advertising my appearance there that evening at 7:00. The time was 6:45. She pulled into the parking lot, purchased a ticket and attended the event. At the conclusion of the presentation she was shaking as she approached me onstage to tell me of this incident. “I’ve never driven home this way before, ever. I was driving my girlfriend’s car and she happened to have your tape in her tape deck, so it was playing when I started the car. I’ve been thinking so hard about making some domestic changes in my life and after hearing you tonight I know that you showed up here in Chicago just so that I could hear you. I was ready and I was sent directly to hear you tonight.”
This kind of story has been repeated to me hundreds if not thousands of times. “I needed to hear you today, and I know you came just for me.” Yet I’ve been giving public seminars throughout the country for twenty years in virtually every major city over and over again. These people have seen the advertisements in the past, but their lack of readiness kept the teacher from appearing even though the teacher may have appeared right next door.
When you, the student, are ready and willing, the teacher will show up. You simply have to look around, open your new eyes and silently ask yourself, “Who is my teacher?”
Appear. The teacher is making an appearance in everything and everyone you encounter. As we’ve discussed, there really are no accidents. The universe is on purpose. When the teacher was there and you ignored that teacher, that was part of the perfection at that particular moment. The teacher, although there before you, wasn’t there for you. That was then and this is now. Today, as you are getting your life to purpose and gaining the ability to make miracles show up in your life, you will recognize the teacher.
When the wounded, dying insect becomes your reminder of the need to be compassionate, the teacher has appeared. When the homeless person with his soiled presence and outstretched hand reminds you of your need to be merciful, the teacher has appeared. When the soldier loaded down with his instalments of death and ready to kill his assigned enemy reminds you of your need to send love and peace where it is most difficult, again, the teacher has appeared.
As you ask the question, “How will the teacher appear?” meditate on James Broughton’s little ditty and you will have your answer:
This is It
and I am It
and you are It
And so is That
and he is It
and she is It
and it is It
and that is That
And that is that! The appearance of the teacher is everywhere, and without the teacher you will find yourself floundering.
Truly, no man is an island. We are all connected and we all learn and grow in this journey together. You will have all the help you need as you prepare yourself for miracle making and real magic.
You have now examined the idea of getting your life to purpose and setting yourself up for the assistance you will need in this endeavor. Yet the major premise of this book is that there is a realm of human existence that transcends what we have come to view as normal or possible. I am calling this dimension real magic. Once you genuinely feel yourself open enough to experience your own purpose for being here, and you have opened yourself up to receiving whatever divine assistance you may require by being a willing student, you will be ready to believe in your own capacity for becoming your very own miracle worker.
BELIEVING IN MIRACLES AND REAL MAGIC
When I write about the world of real magic and miracles I am not referring to developing a talent for turning rocks into gold, raising the dead or commanding the seas to part. When I speak of miracle making I am discussing whatever you have considered beyond your ability to create for yourself because of limitations you believe you have. In later chapters I will describe the major areas of life where real magic is available. For now, I want you to cultivate the foundation for creating real magic in any area that you would like. If you have lived your life believing that certain accomplishments or levels of achievement were impossible for you, then first you must begin by examining your life focus and beliefs before attempting to implement any real magic strategies.
Getting your life to purpose and creating an openness to being assisted are crucial to becoming your own miracle worker. Beyond these qualities of purposefulness and openness there are guidelines for putting yourself in the proper mental framework. These beliefs, or “knowings,” are necessary to help you go within and literally manifest what you have previously believed impossible. I will be alluding to these “knowings” throughout the pages of this book.
In my own life, I have had to travel through a sequence of steps, all within my mind, in order to be at the point where I can write that I feel confident in my ability to manifest what I can only call miracles. I call them miracles because only a short time ago, before I experienced this inner awakening, the things that I can now create and manifest seemed to be impossibilities. I offer these sequential steps believing that if it is possible for me, it is certainly possible for anyone else.
I am reminded of the words of Christ on his own miracle making: “He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do….” Somewhere deep within you, you know that you have this kind of power. Even though you may not have an inkling of how to use it, or how to begin to tap into it, you still know that within each of us is a divine, invisible presence that has something to do with creating a state that can only be described paradoxically as real magic.
Christ went on to say, “… But ye shall know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” That’s correct, in you is that magic invisible presence that I am writing about here. It is not something outside of you requiring a lifelong search to attain. It dwells within you, in that invisible part of your self, where the rules that pertain to the physical world simply do not apply. In your soul, your spirit or higher self, your mind or thoughts or whatever you choose to call it, lies that entryway to the world of real magic.
When you master the inner path of awareness presented in Part 1 of this book, you will not greet the application of this awareness with any skepticism, nor will you doubt that I am talking through that divine inner presence directly and unequivocally to you.
SEVEN BELIEFS FOR MANIFESTING REAL MAGIC
I have identified seven beliefs, or knowings, that can help you tap the power of real magic. They are presented sequentially and once you find yourself with the internal knowing that comes from adopting these beliefs, you will be on your way to becoming your own miracle worker.
1. There is an invisible but knowable life force within you. Try cultivating an awareness of the invisible life force that suffuses all form in the universe, including your physical body. This is the same universal intelligence that directs a rose to be a rose, a beetle to be a beetle, the planets to align and move through space, and you to be you. It is without boundaries or dimensions in the same way that your thoughts, feelings, imaginings, dreams, fantasies and emotions are. This universal life force that is a part of you cannot die. Death implies an ending, and ending implies boundaries. For this first step, just know that this powerful, divine but invisible force is within you. Trust totally that it is there. It is in fact what allows you to perceive and experience your physical body and this physical world in which you find yourself temporarily housed.
2. Your thoughts are something that you control and they originate with you. In You’ll See It When You Believe It, I wrote an entire section on the power of thoughts. Here I simply encourage you to realize that thinking is our way of processing and recording our human experience. Thought originates from within a nothingness inside of you and gives you your humanity. All of your past is in this realm of thought, as is your future. Your thoughts create your experience of your health, wealth and every detail of your world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson reminded us that “the ancestor to every action is a thought.” You live the life you imagine you are living. When you stop imagining or imaging or thinking, you cease actively participating in your physical world. As a step toward the awakened life of real magic, you must consider how your thoughts have contributed to a nonmiraculous, limiting approach to life. Then you will know that you can also produce the opposite. If, in fact, miracles are available for anyone, you can be one of those people who experience them. But they begin in that ancestor to all of your actions, your thoughts.
3. There are no limits. All of the things that you have become convinced are limits are products of the way in which you have learned to think. You probably were taught that logic and scientific verification dictate what is possible and what is not. Before the invention of the microscope most people did not believe in the existence of microscopic life. People who believe only what they can see or prove scientifically are limited by the current level of sophistication of our measuring devices.
You know that at some future time we’ll be flying from place to place on this planet in moments rather than in hours, and interplanetary travel will be a fact of life. The capability to do so is already here. That is, the universal force that is timeless already exists, only the technology is missing. Do you believe in this possibility now, or must you wait until the technology arrives before you can believe it? Only twenty years ago the idea of a remote control that would allow you to switch television stations was an impossibility. Renting a movie was unthinkable. Microwaving meals in a few moments at home was not at all a part of our consciousness. Although the capacity to create these miracles was available even at the time of Hannibal, the devices came along at their own pace. Be a person who accepts no limits in your mind. None!
4. Your life has a purpose. The entire universe is an intelligent system. The universe that is your physical body is a multitude of systems all functioning with amazing perfection, and it too is an intelligent system. The invisible parts of you, your thoughts and feelings, are also part of the system that is you. That intelligence is invisible and can be described or spelled in any way that you choose; thousands of terms have been invented to describe it. But the intelligence is not the label, just as the statue is not the saint and the menu is not the meal. You are that intelligence from which you can never separate yourself, and you have a purpose.
I have explained the necessity of getting your life to purpose and about getting yourself on that purposeful path. What I ask of you here is to simply know it. Know you have a purpose and you will be on your way to creating magical life in any and all areas of your choosing.
5. You overcome weaknesses by leaving them behind. You cannot outthink your weaknesses and limitations. You will not get yourself to the place of inner harmony necessary to create real magic by working hard to overcome your old self-defeating behaviors. What you can learn to do is leave that stage of your life behind you and walk through the gate into a new way of being.
This process of leaving behind old habits begins in your invisible dimension—that is, your thoughts. You see yourself truly letting go of the obstacles that you’ve chosen for a lifetime, you picture yourself no longer needing to rely on those self-defeating patterns. Then, the thinking part is complete. Now you move forward to a new you. When you leave behind the belief that you cannot change, or that you cannot create the miracle you want for yourself, you will leave behind the physical activity that has supported that belief. Picture it behind you, look back at it and know that you no longer live that way.
I can see myself at a distant time actually behaving in those old ways. And I smile inwardly, knowing that I have left that part of me behind. It started with a thought and then an action based on the new thought, and for me this is a miracle that I now live every day. I did it not by constantly trying to outthink the problem or by gradually sneaking up on it but by leaving it behind me. This is in fact the way all miraculous changes are made, when it gets right down to “How do I change?” or “How do I create the miracle that I want my life to be?”
After all the talking, counseling, support groups, medicines, elixirs, pep talks and proddings by others, one must ultimately leave behind that which is self-destructive or functioning as an obstacle to growth. Every single person who has ever overcome any difficulty or brought about positive change in their lives, when faced with the bottom line, has had to leave behind the old habit through their own will. Know this to be a truth and you’ll soon see yourself creating real magic in your life.
6. When you examine what you believe to be impossible, you can then change your beliefs. Take an inventory of what it is that you believe cannot happen in your life. Whether it is related to your physical accomplishments, relationships, health or finances, vow, at the very minimum, to rid yourself of these beliefs. I am not asking that you fool yourself or engage in self-deception. I am asking you to create an openness to the possibility rather than continuing to subscribe to the impossibility. That’s all. Just an openness to a new idea. And remember, you do not have to do anything different in your life at this moment, only change around some mental images. New thoughts will ultimately lead you to new and miraculous behaviors.
If anyone has ever overcome a diagnosis of “terminal,” then know that such a capacity exists within all of us. The universal force or energy that once created a miracle is still present. The force itself has not disappeared, even if the miracles themselves have. Stuart Wilde writes in Miracles, “Because the universal law is indestructible and therefore infinite, we can presume that whatever power was used by miracle workers in the past must still be available today.” And if it is still available, I am asking you to believe that it is there for you to tap into. This universal law that created miracles has not been repealed, and never will be.
This entire book is about helping you align yourself in such a way that this universal force or energy is something that you can know intimately, and use in your life, even if no one else around you knows what you are doing or believes in what you are talking about when you speak of miracles. Once you know and choose to use this force, your life will take on the flavor of real magic. I guarantee it.
At this point I am not asking you to begin performing miracles. I am asking you to simply open yourself to a new inner belief system that says maybe, just maybe, this is a possibility for me. Everyone who has ever come from dirt-poor origins to create abundance for themselves (including myself) has had to use the universal energy within their minds before it could happen in the physical world. If that miracle-making power was available to any impoverished soul, it is available to your impoverished soul should you decide that this is your truth.
Know that if anyone has gone from sickness to health, fat to slim, addiction to choice, poor to rich, clumsy to agile, miserable to happy, or discontentment to fulfillment, then that capacity is part of the universal human condition. Even if only one person has ever accomplished it, then it is indeed possible. And, even if it has never been before—such as a cure for polio prior to 1954, or an airplane ride in 1745— the fact that one unique individual is capable of conceiving it in his or her mind is all that is required for humankind to be open to the possibility. Replace the belief that something you are capable of imagining in your mind is impossible with the belief that it is possible. Go to work on that thought right now, in this moment, which is the only physical reality you have.
7. You can go beyond logic. Although you may not be completely comfortable relying on something other than logic and rational thinking, try to let in the idea that there is another dimension that is very much a part of you, which has nothing to do with logic or scientific validation. You have never seen, touched, smelled or physically felt a thought or a dream or a feeling, yet you know they exist. There is no rational proof for the existence of intuition, yet you know that it exists within you. Until a few years ago there was no physical proof for the presence of microscopic life, yet it existed. And so it is with a portion of your humanity that I call your soul. While we haven’t come up with a “soulscope” to rationally prove its existence, we have, nevertheless, an inkling that such a dimension persists as part of our humanness. There are some who will never believe it unless they see it. Others will see it because they believe it.
These are the seven beliefs you can use as mental steps to setting your internal gyroscope for real magic. There are some who live their entire lives content with the limitations of their five senses. Real magic and miracle making are not on their life agenda. For others, like you and me, while we know the physical part of us to be a beautiful miracle in and of itself, we also know there is a spiritual dimension, beyond the scope and boundaries of our physical universe. The differences between these two awarenesses—physical only versus spiritual and physical—are many. The next chapter will describe in more detail what these specific differences are and how the benefits of real magic and miracle making become available by shifting your consciousness to include your spiritual side.
DR. WAYNE W. DYER is the author of eight books, including his most recent national bestseller, You’ll See It When You Believe It. A psychotherapist, Dyer has a doctorate in counseling psychology. He lectures across the country to groups numbering in the thousands and appears regularly on radio and television. Dr. Dyer lives with his family in southern Florida.
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Real Magic
Your Erroneous Zones
Pulling Your Own Strings*
*coming soon
Available from Harper Paperbacks
Copyright © 1986 by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
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Epub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01289-0
A hardcover edition of this book was published under the title Happy Holidays! by William Morrow & Company, Inc. in 1986. It is reprinted here by arrangement with Arthur Pine Associates, Inc. Portions of this book appeared in Family Circle.
A trade paperback edition of this book
was published in 1990 by HarperPerennial.
Cover photograph by Marybeth
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For many of us, the arrival of the holiday season brings disappointment, stress, and loneliness. Now Dr. Dyer shows how to recapture the true spirit of Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year. He addresses common problems, from gift-shopping stress to unmet New Year’s Resolutions, and gives wise advice.