Design Your Universe- Part 2

This is a follow on to my post Design Your Universe- Part 1 which is about using of the Law of Attraction (LOA) to create the life of your dreams. This is a work in progress for me and I'm doing a series of posts on the process.

Note: This is what I've been doing and it's not the definite way to do anything, so just take what you resonate with :)


In my first post I outlined two steps:

1. Feel better.
2. Change your beliefs and believe that your dreams can come true.

I may add more to this in the future but it's what I've been working on for a while now. Please see the original post (linked above) for more on them.

In Part 1 I said that I would write more about tools in Part 2. So here we go. :)

Acting As If

This is a concept I found hard to understand at first. It's where you "act as if" you already have the thing you want. I read about it a lot but it took a while to sink in. I felt like I "got it" more after I manifested the perfume I wanted, at a cheaper price. It always seemed out of reach for me because it was expensive at £32 but I ended up buying a smaller version for £17. (Note: I understand that expensive is relative, for some people this would be cheap! It's interesting to think about how we all have different mindsets and situations). :) You can read more about the perfume manifestation story here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2016/01/manifestation-story.html

Looking round Marks and Spencer (the department store I bought the perfume from) is still something I like to do now. It's a more expensive shop so I don't often shop there but it feels kind of luxurious to browse. If there's a shop that feels kind of "out of your league" you could browse there and maybe buy something small. I've bought bath stuff from Marks in the past and a couple of months ago I bought some rose hand cream. (I realise not everyone is a fan of Marks, e.g. my mum thinks its products are overpriced and not as good as they're made out to be! lol).


One of my dreams is travel; I'd like to go on holiday to Miami and Hawaii. So something I've been doing lately is looking up prices for flights to those places. And (closer to home) I'd like to go to the Lake District. My grandma was born there, so I'd like to see where she lived and I also want to see Hill Top Farm where the author Beatrix Potter lived. So I started looking up bus/coach prices to the Lake District. Another thing I did was look at the World of Beatrix Potter website and sign-up to the newsletter.

Also a couple of other things I've done are singing-up to a Hawaii newsletter and pinning to my Miami and Hawaii boards on Pinterest (especially guides and travel tips). I have technically been to Hawaii because I've been to the airport while travelling to and from Fiji as a little girl, but it's not quite the same as actually staying there and setting foot outside the airport!

If you're into Pinterest you may like this post: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2016/07/pinterest-as-loa-tool.html

And for more on acting as if visit this post: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/acting-as-if-loa.html



Affirmations

I mentioned these briefly in the first post because they can definitely help. They are useful for changing your mindest although if they feel like too big a "leap" from where you are currently then they won't help so much. You can change the wording so they feel more believable. E.g. rather than saying, "I am financially abundant" you can say, "I am opening to financial abundance",

 I was inspired on this front by Kelsey Aida's post. You can check it out here: http://kelseyaida.com/theinspirationalblog/how-to-use-affirmations


There are different ways of working with affirmations. I was saying mine out loud in recent months but lately I've been writing them down. Choose whichever method feels more powerful for you. :) I received a Louise Hay I Can Do It 2017 Daily Affirmations calendar as part of signing-up to Joy Challenge (see below) so I've been looking at them every day. If they resonate then I write them down to look at later. I also belong to the Facets of Joy Facebook forum where we work with Louise's affirmations. You can find the link of this page: http://facetsofjoy.com/resources/*

*25/2/19: The forum closed last year.


For more on affirmations read my post: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2016/09/affirmations.html



Gratitude

I read about gratitude for years but wasn't that into it until I did the Personal Excellence Gratitude Challenge in 2013. I enjoyed that and afterwards I started a gratitude journal. I intended to write in it every day but it's less often than that. However I think the best thing is to just do what works for you.

A few months after I started this blog I decided to post a monthly gratitude list on here as well. You can read the first post here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2013/06/gratitude-list.html

I find that writing a simple list of what I'm grateful for works best for me. Writing sentences like Rhonda Byrne suggests in The Secret, such as "I'm so happy now that I have a working car" seems a bit forced. (Just for me personally). I also like Boni Lonnsburry's Grateful For Now and Then technique where you write 10 things you're grateful for now and then 10 things you'll be grateful for in the future.

I also wrote about gratitude in my post on spiritual tools and practices. (See below).



Joy/Happiness

One thing that many spiritual/manifesting teachers suggest is being happy, not only to manifest what you want but just to all around feel better. Boni Lonnsburry calls it "staying in the joy". Something that's empathised is that we all only want the things we desire because we believe they will make us happy. So ultimately all we want is to be happy. I believe that's true.

I admit that feeling and staying happy is a challenge for me. I've had depression since I was a teenager and also OCD and anxiety. I used to be very unhappy and these days I do feel better but I still struggle. Perhaps one thing I could do is use an affirmation (see above). I'll try that and let you know how I get on. You can try it too if you like :) Affirmations to try:

I am becoming happier each day. (I think I read this one somewhere).
I am finding it easier to feel happy.
Being happy is easy for me.

An affirmation I've seen is something like: I'm working my happiness like a full time job! (This might be one of Kelsey Aida's).


If you are depressed and/or have been very unhappy you may want to start with the first two because they don't seem like as a big a jump from where you are. E.g. if you have severe depression you may find it hard to believe that being happy is easy for you because so far it hasn't been! But you might find that stating that you're finding it easier to feel happy is more believable. (For more on that read the Affirmations section above).

If you have health anxiety (excessive worrying about your health) you may find these posts useful:

https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2016/10/healing-health-anxiety-part-1.html

https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2016/11/healing-health-anxiety-part-2.html


Last June I did Amina Makhdoom's  30 Day Joy Challenge and then again in April this year. You do it with the intention of manifesting a goal by doing things you love every day. My goal was related to manifesting a romantic relationship and I did meet someone last summer but it didn't work out. This time I haven't met anyone yet but I'd recommend Joy Challenge just for the purpose of feeling better/raising your vibration. A secondary goal was to find a new family car and it turned out that the current one could be fixed!

Joy Challenge runs once a year but you can do it any time by yourself like I did. It's fun doing it "live" and participating with other people (plus the prizes are good!) but it's good doing it by yourself too. For more details check out this link: http://www.lunchwithcinderella.com/30-day-joy-challenge.html

I'm also currently taking part in Journaling For Joy, another Amina programme. It's based around the Joy Journal book by Rebecca Kochenderfer. (Note: That's the American Amazon link but it is also available on Amazon UK and probably other international Amazons as well).


You may be like me and actually be afraid to be happy in case something bad happens. This is an issue for me and it's probably more common than you'd think. In that case a thing to do would be change your beliefs behind it (inspired by the work of Boni Lonnsburry). So if I have a belief like this: If I get happy then something bad will happen", I could change it to, "If I get happy then something good will happen". Another could be, "It's safe to feel happy". Boni talks about beliefs in her book The Map and also has articles on her site Live a Life You Love. I wrote more about beliefs in the first DYU post (click the Design Your Universe-Part 1 text at the top of the page). Also check out these posts:

My post: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-is-possible-loa.html

https://www.livealifeyoulove.com/wording-beliefs-a-case-study/

https://www.livealifeyoulove.com/how-to-change-a-belief/

https://www.livealifeyoulove.com/doors-beliefs-technique/


I've done the exercise in the How to Change a Belief post several times and I do feel it's made a shift.


Here are some posts on being and staying happy:

https://www.livealifeyoulove.com/how-to-stay-happy/

https://www.livealifeyoulove.com/how-to-have-a-happy-day-every-day/

https://elysesantilli.com/48-ways-to-feel-happier/ (Formerly Notes on Bliss)

https://elysesantilli.com/happy-life-and-soul/

https://elysesantilli.com/true-happiness/

https://kelseyaida.com/theinspirationalblog/things-happy-people-do-differently

http://www.lunchwithcinderella.com/blog-posts/find-the-joy



Tips I would give are:

Try to focus on the things that make you happy. Two of those things for me are books and music. 

Take note of what makes you happy and then do more of it. (I read this somewhere).

Also think about the things that are making you unhappy and see if you can change them.

I may do a more in depth post on happiness in the future because I think it's quite an important subject.




Meditation

I've mentioned several times how I'm not a huge fan of meditation! lol. I even wrote a post on meditation alternatives. However I do sometimes do it. I seem to get on better with guided meditations such as ones from Gabrielle Bernstein's May Cause Miracles book/programme. Also I find audio meditations more helpful. In the past month or so I've been doing a meditation from Tess Whitehurst's The Good Energy Book and I've found that it's helped me to feel better. I aimed for doing it daily but it's ended up less often. I don't think that's really important though, as long as I'm doing it sometimes. Mine is probably shorter than it's meant to be (a couple of minutes or so) but I just do what feels best for me.

If you're interested in traditional meditation here are a couple of posts about it:

https://personalexcellence.co/blog/how-to-meditate/

http://suzanneheyn.com/how-to-meditate-find-inner-peace-and-purpose/  

Update 14/2/22: The above link wasn't loading for me properly and I've also been getting an antivirus warning for the site for several months now.

Or if you'd prefer here's my post on alternatives: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2015/02/alternatives-to-meditation.html




Spiritual Practice

At the beginning of the year I did a post on spiritual tools and practices. You can read it here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/01/spiritual-toolspractices.html

I talked about quite a few of the topics covered here. As I said in the post, my spiritual practice isn't consistent but that's ok. One thing I forgot to mention that I've been doing for a few years now is looking at my Doreen Virtue Healing Words from the Angels book every day. I open it up randomly when I get up and look at the pages to see what messages I have for the day. (Usually look at both pages). Oracle cards are another thing I use. My decks include Doreen Virtue's Magical Mermaids and Dolphins and Angel Therapy and (more recently) Lucy Cavendish's Oracle of the Mermaids.

Note 14/2/2022: Doreen Virtue has now become a born-again Christian and no longer endorses her former products. So I don't really resonate with using them anymore. Of course it's a personal decision whether to continue using them. :)

I don't think you "have" to have a spiritual practice (I don't believe in forcing yourself to do something like that if it doesn't feel right) but it can certainly help. So if you're drawn to any of the things I've mentioned- or anything else that resonates- then you might want to consider making it part of your own spiritual practice. Daily, weekly or monthly even. :)



Ok, that's about it for now. There was more I wanted to say but this is quite a long post already, so I think I'll leave it for next time! Hope you found this useful. Look out for another post in the series in the coming months. :)



Photo: Copyright Moonsparkle 2017.