So the other day I was out walking, like I do every morning. It was kind of cloudy. I’d been frustrated because I have this goal I’d been meditating on, and for some reason I had a funny feeling. Not really a funny feeling, kind of a disconnected feeling. Like when you shift a car into gear, and you shove the gear shift where it is supposed to go, and it feels like the proper pieces of machinery have engaged, but when you apply the gas, all you get is strange, unhealthy sounding complaint from the engine. So you have to stop, yank the gearshift back, and then put it back, only slightly different. Slightly different in position, and slightly different in results. This time the gear slides smoothly into place, and when you slowly release the clutch your car takes off smooth as silk.

I had formulated this goal several weeks ago, and had been meditating on in regularly, with positive intentions, proper visualizations in several different representation systems. But something switched, and I hadn’t noticed it. I had been visualizing the overall completion of the goal, which is about two or three months out, but I came to a significant milestone last week with regards to the short term completion of it. Something that placed the realization of my goal less in my hands, and more in the hands of others. Before last week, the realization of the goal was completely in my hands. When I achieved the milestone last week, I neglected to change the wording of my goal. Since last week, I was still phrasing my goal the same way, but was expecting others to do the work. Once I realized this while walking, I suddenly released all the frustration I’d been carrying around, and suddenly felt a surge of motivation.

The purpose behind visualizing and meditating on your goals is to give your unconscious mind a clear direction of where you want to go. So long as the result that you want is under your control, your unconscious mind will have absolutely no problem figuring out a way to get you there. For example, if you want to lose weight, and you visualize yourself slim and healthy, with sufficient motivation, you will get there, because your weight is completely under your control.

However, the mistake that many people make, especially when applying “The Law of Attraction,” is somehow expecting others to magically fill in the gaps where you have no control. For example, if you have a business, and want your sales to double in three months, you can approach in two different ways. You could focus on doubling your sales by other people magically discovering your business and making calls to you to buy your product. This puts the ball completely in their court, and you have no power over the outcome. By focusing on passively receiving an increase in sales orders, you aren’t giving your unconscious much to work with. This will increase your frustration and anxiety, which may cause you to give up trying to increase your business. On the other hand, if you focus on changing your behaviors so that an increase in business is a natural result, then you’ll have a much easier time. Your unconscious will then be able to feed your conscious mind ideas in the form of insight and intuition on what you can do specifically to increase your sales.

It’s fairly straightforward to do this. Simply choose an outcome that you want, and then focus on what behaviors will create this outcome. If you are not sure what to do exactly, look around and find people that have done what you want to do, and just copy them. The great part about this is once you focus on your own behaviors, it doesn’t really matter if you get it right the first time. As long as you stay focused on the outcome that you want in terms of your own behavior, you can easily adjust your behavior along the way. If you try something and works a little, try something a little bit different and see what different results you get.

It’s like playing golf if you aren’t very good. Sometimes you hit the ball, and it goes too far to the left. You observe where the ball went, and adjust your next shot accordingly. You keep adjusting your swing and aim until the ball is in the whole. The cool thing about setting goals is that you don’t need to keep score. Just keep adjusting your behavior slightly until you get where you want to go. Then simply move on to the next thing you want to create.

Beware of believing in magic. It seems like a great idea to be able to create something simply by wishing for it, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. When you realize that a strong desire of an outcome, coupled with an intense drive to get there solely on your own behavior, you will be able to achieve anything. Focus on the action, and the results will be automatic.