Death of the salesman

The sales pitch started over coffee.

Actually, it started over spilled coffee. I had unscrewed the carafe on my coffee pot a little too far causing the entire pot of hot java to spew across the counter and onto my freshly pressed slacks. It was going to be one of those days. Moments earlier I thought how good I looked–almost like a salesman—coiffed and polished and ready to take on anything.

“Really? This is how the day is going to start?” I asked of the universe. I didn’t expect an answer but felt that asking the question would somehow quell any further drama. I tried to brush off my anger and simply get on with the day. No sense in crying over spilled coffee.

Not willing to go without my ritual coffee, I decided to head over to the local coffee shop. As I walked in, I saw one of my favorite baristas, Karen, a young woman who always has a smile on her face and a cheerful attitude. I greeted her as warmly as I could without any coffee in my system.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Oh my God! I’m so tired this morning. I didn’t sleep a wink and I feel like I’m in a fog. I have a paper due for class later today and I didn’t even get it finished,” she replied. Her response was like projectile negativity, it came out hard and fast and messy. She was trying desperately to sell me on the idea that her morning was rough.

It almost worked until my own inner salesman stepped forward. He quickly realized he could outsell her. She was but a mere amateur. He stooped down to her level as he started his sales pitch.

“Oh I know. I’ve been having trouble sleeping for a week and feel like a walking zombie. My dog just had surgery and I’ve been so worried about him and now I’m headed to work and it’s going to be a crazy, crazy day. Did I mention the dog might have cancer?”

It didn’t stop there. We traded tales of woe for about five minutes while she prepared my order, trying to out-do each other with how terrible the day was and how much worse it was going to get.

“Wow, I had no idea,” she told me. My salesman had won this round. I took my order to go and headed to the office.

Moments later, I was talking out loud to the universe again. This time, I was complaining about the lack of parking near my office. Why aren’t there any parking spaces? Why do I always have to park on the street? I’ll probably end up with a ticket by noon. Why do they always have to lock the back door? Why…. Why… Why….

I looked forward to an evening out with my mom and aunt. The two had just returned from vacation and I was excited to hear about their adventure. But as we sat down for dinner, the conversation quickly turned to my problems. I told them about my job, my hatred of my job, my dog and his surgery and generally anything that could convince them that life pretty much sucked.

The salesman had returned yet again, wanting to close another deal. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he convinced everyone that life does indeed suck and that they should buy into that concept wholeheartedly. Instead of money or a fat bonus, my salesman sought different kinds of commissions: pity, nurturing, understanding and sympathy. He earned his commission easily over dinner.

Driving home, however, I finally woke up to the salesman’s presence. I had grown so accustomed to his actions and to his sales pitch that I didn’t even realize he had accompanied me all day. I thought back to his presentations, remembering each interaction where he sought to change people’s minds. I remembered his actions, the feeling in his voice and the high-pressure tactics he used to sell his wares. Who exactly was this salesman and where did he come from? I wondered as I pulled in the driveway.

As I undressed for bed, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Suddenly the salesman had a name, a personality. Finally I knew whom I was dealing with. There he was, standing naked before me: the salesman was my ego.

He’s a clever guy, that ego. He had been wearing my clothes, acting like “me” and taking on my personality. In actuality, he had taken over my personality and I unwittingly became part of his growing sales force. Our goal: to convince others that life is hard, that you can’t get ahead no matter how hard you try and that the universe is always working against you.

Seeing my ego for what it was, I could then get a better grasp on this whole “reality creation” business I write about. Reviewing my day, I thought about all of the times I silently (or sometimes loudly) questioned the universe about my problems. I revisited the conversations I had with others when I shared my challenges, my frustrations and my lack of conviction. I saw all too clearly that I was arguing for my own limitations. And what shocked me most of all was the realization that I wasn’t just trying to convince others that the universe was against me, I was trying to convince myself.

I’m not trying to bash the ego, for I believe it serves a valuable purpose. It is designed to help us navigate the physical world, to help us make sense of it and to work with the intellect and our spirit to create the life we experience. But the ego gets rigid and frightened, and when it does, it overreacts. The ego has a limited scope, unable to see the big picture of the universe like other parts of our spirit can.

The ego likes justification. So those times when we feel stuck and unable to move forward, the ego ups the sales pitch a few notches, telling the world, “See! I told you so. There’s no way out of this mess!” A deceptive sales pitch? You betcha, but it’s an effective one.

When we use language to convince others of our limitations, we end up limiting ourselves further. When we habitually complain about our problems, we end up causing more of them. When we justify unsavory events as happening to us, we create more of the same. It’s a vicious cycle and if it’s not intercepted, it ends up causing more damage.

Take note of your own words and thoughts. Are you arguing “what is” in order to feel justified? Do you tell others about your problems in hopes of gaining sympathy? Are you acting like a salesman or saleswoman, convincing others that you have it worse off than anyone else?

If you find yourself answering affirmatively to any of these statements, you are becoming adept at sales. In these cases, you’re not out to convince anyone but yourself of your limitations, so it’s time to switch to a new strategy.

Try a new sales technique, a gentler one. I don’t necessarily mean becoming Pollyanna and lying about how you feel, but rather gently switching your focus to telling the story you want to live. Talk about things that are true and positive. Remember what you love and enjoy and tell others about them. Above all, remind yourself constantly that just because things aren’t going your way doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for positive change. There is room for change and talking about it in the affirmative helps get the energy moving in that direction.

As for my own salesman, I’ve decided to let him switch careers. I now see him as a “leadership trainee,” showing others that it’s possible to live a good life. His technique will be that of example, letting others see, first-hand, how good life can be and letting them ask, “what’s your secret?” No more selling for this ego, he’s retired from that position.

Now about that commission….

 

 

 

 

The thermostat of your soul

Your vibrational set point

It’s one of those days. You know the kind: when you wake up and from the get-go things just aren’t quite right. You try to brush off the feeling at first, assigning it to the “I woke up on the wrong side of the bed” category. You trudge on through your morning only to be bombarded by unexpected interruptions, negative emails and rude people wherever you turn.

We typically turn our heads to the universe in times like this and wonder aloud, “What the hell did I do to deserve this?” We look to reasons outside ourselves to understand why we are having these experiences. In essence, we’ve resigned ourselves to being victims of an uncaring universe.

The universe isn’t playing tricks on us. It’s giving us exactly what we’ve asked for, even if we’re not aware of it in the moment. The universe is reacting to our own energy field, utilizing the law of attraction to bring us more of what we’re putting out. And on a bad day, we’re giving out a lot of bad energy.

The universe responds to our Vibrational Set Point—the overall frequency of the energy present in our bodies and souls at any given time. That energy fluctuates throughout the day and throughout the week, but in totality, we tend to set a range of vibration that affects most of the things we experience.

Where does our energy come from?

Our outgoing energy comes in the form of thoughts and emotions. Each thought we have has an electromagnetic quality to it; the same holds true for emotions. And in the most basic of terms, the energy of our thoughts and emotions has a particular “weight” or “density” to it. Certain strong emotions and particular thoughts can have either a light or heavy density. Extreme anger, for example, has heavy density to it. Love, on the other hand, very light.

If science isn’t your thing, simply remember this: energy works on the premise of the law of attraction. So energy that you radiate goes out into the universe and seeks out similar types of energy. That energy comes back to you in the form of experience—situations and people that are carrying the same kind of energy.

Now, under normal circumstances, our thoughts and emotions tend to self-correct. That is, they ebb and flow through our awareness without much effort—the way it should be. People often get worried about their own negative thoughts or “bad” emotions, such as anger, sadness or jealousy. There is no general need for concern. Allowing emotions some freedom helps them move through the body and the mind quickly and (relatively) easily. So what trips us up?

The ego and energy

As is the usual case in self-development, the ego can really cause problems. When the ego tries to control thought and emotion, it acts like a damn, catching energy and holding it back until pressure begins to build. As this energy is pooled around us, it gets bigger and denser until we have a hard time clearing it. And when dense energy (read: negative thoughts or unwanted emotions) says with us, we continue to attract bad things into our lives.

Don’t blame the ego, per se. It feels as if it’s doing its duty by reminding us of how reality really is. It tries hard, really it does. Unfortunately, the ego’s reality is based solely on what it observes from the immediate environment. Sometimes it asks for help from the intellect, which tries to apply reasoning to explain why the world operates the way it does. This is a false premise and it’s where we get in trouble.

Let me give an example to illustrate this better. This morning, I received an email from a co-worker that set me off. Before I could even finish reading it, my blood started to boil and I was thinking of ways to respond, none of which were appropriate. I caught myself at first, trying to put the email out of my mind while I ate breakfast and got ready for the day. It didn’t work.

My ego became involved early in this case. I took the information in the email personally; I felt I was being wrongly blamed for a failed work project. Since the ego wants to protect the self (me), it took the information on face value. Certainly, the ego reasoned, the email was aimed specifically at me and I had better start preparing an appropriate response to it. In English terms, the ego said, “How dare she?!? How are we going to fight this?” The ego wouldn’t let my conscious mind look for contrary evidence; it had already made up its mind who was at fault.

Despite my best efforts to forget the whole thing, even for a few moments, my mind wandered back to the email repeatedly and I would get angry all over again. Once the ego got involved, it was almost impossible to let go of the thoughts and related emotions. It’s pretty easy to see what’s happening at this point: the ego was damming up negative energy and it was growing bigger and bigger by the minute.

As the day progressed, things just got worse. I found myself attracting negativity wherever I went. The line at the coffee shop was out the door; drivers were rude on the street; some jerk almost hit my car when he was parking next to me. The list went on and on. My overall energy had fallen into a dangerous zone and I was attracting more of the same (remember the law of attraction?) wherever I went.

Back to your Vibrational Set Point

We tend to only think about our own Vibrational Set Point when we’re dealing with so-called negative emotions and for good reason. It’s uncomfortable. It brings bad things into our lives. But the same holds true for the opposite. A higher Vibrational Set Point can also bring things into our lives, such as love, abundance, happiness, joy and serenity.

On an average day, your Vibrational Set Point will usually be set to a range that works best for you. Are you generally a happy person? Are you frequently sad? Are you prone to anger or jealousy? Or my personal favorite: are you always sarcastic? We each have tendencies that feed overall into our energy field. As we have experiences such as my bad day above, we move the needle of our Vibrational Set Point, inching it closer to negativity or positivity.

Your Vibrational Set Point sets the stage for future experiences. It’s important to remember that so that you can learn to attract what you want instead of what you don’t.

It’s a moment-by-moment job

So if the goal is to have a Vibrational Set Point that’s at the higher end of the scale, i.e. in the range of positivity and love, how do we get there? It starts with becoming aware of your thoughts, emotions and energy at multiple points throughout the day. And when you find yourself moving down the scale, it’s time for action.

As I said earlier, thoughts and emotions naturally move through the mind and body. Left alone, a good percentage of your thoughts and intense emotions will probably pass in a moment’s time. It’s when those thoughts and emotions get stuck that you’ll want to take notice.

If you find yourself ego-obsessed with a negative thought or emotion, rouse your consciousness to do something about it. This takes work and practice. It takes a commitment to self-development. I won’t lie to you: it can be hard. I spent the better part of the day purposely trying to change my Vibrational Set Point. After many attempts, I was finally able to pull my ego out and allow my vibration to rise.

On the other hand, if you find yourself dwelling on happy feelings and reliving say a wonderful call from a friend, stay with it. Look for other things that match the vibration, like petting your dog or taking a moment to appreciate the sunset. Enjoy the feeling; revel in it. Ride it like a wave.

Becoming aware of ego-bound thoughts and emotions is the first step in changing them. Sometimes, it may seem impossible to move higher up the scale when you’re faced with a difficult thought or emotion. Realize this is where you’re stuck and remind yourself that staying stuck will only bring you more of the same. This is the all-important “choice point.” You can stay stuck or you can move out of it. Be brave and set your intention to re-set your system.

Reality Challenge

To help become aware of your Vibrational Set Point and understand how it forms your future experiences, take the next two days to examine what you’re thinking and feeling. Combine this with short journal entries so you remember what you were doing at the time. Simply note how you’re feeling and where your mind is. For example:

Time               Activity           Thoughts                                            Emotions

12:15 p.m.      Gardening      Dreaming of new garden ideas       Good; happy; excited

3:00 p.m.        Lunch             Enjoying Mary’s company                Content

5:00 p.m.        Phone call      Repetitive thoughts about project  Angry, consumed

Try this exercise for two days. This way you can begin to see what kind of energy you are attracting to yourself. Of course, if you’re having a day like I did today, it will be pretty easy to see how a change in vibration can add up to a whole different day. If you find yourself becoming ego-bound in negative thought or emotion, stop and see if you can change course. Distract yourself, pamper yourself, do whatever it takes. If nothing else, realize you have a choice in how you feel and respond and then let it go.

With awareness and practice, you can learn to change your Vibrational Set Point. Learning to adjust your vibrational thermostat to a higher frequency will not only change your attitude but your future as well.

Releasing attachment to desire

“Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”
–Illusions by Richard Bach

The quote above, from Richard Bach’s Illusions, got me thinking about ease and effortlessness in the conscious creation process. Whether we’re creating or removing something from our consciousness, it’s often hard to let go of our attachments and truly go on faith that what we want will be accomplished.

When we make a request of the universe, whether it’s through thought, verbalization or action, we are setting into motion a complex stream of energy. That energy, through the law of attraction, sets out to find like energy that will eventually lead to the manifestation we’ve requested. In what I’ll call the “creation universe,” energy is converted to the specific things we’ve requested: a new job, a computer, or a friendship. The same is true for “removing” things in our life, as we are in actuality creating a new situation instead of removing the old. But that creation universe works more efficiently when you take away your active concentration from it—that’s the rub.

The creation universe works on the concept of faith. In that universe, millions upon millions of computations are made to bring us circumstances, events and physical objects that will act in our best interest. The speed of this universe corresponds to the intensity of the request we make and our belief that it will be fulfilled. As junior creationists, we frequently hamper the process by checking and rechecking for results before they’re ready.

Think about making a hard-boiled egg. Your desire is the finished product—the cooked egg. Yet for most of us, checking for progress on our desires is like pulling the egg out of the water every 30 seconds and cracking it open, only to discover it’s not truly cooked. We curse the process and start again, giving it a little longer. With trial and error, we eventually reach our goal and learn to let the process complete itself and we’ll have breakfast. If only we could allow that for other parts of our lives, too.

Releasing attachments from our desires is a necessity for activating the creation universe and there are three main ingredients that are key to success.

Flexing your will

It takes willpower not to check for results on your desires. The will can be thought of as the active process of pointing your consciousness in a particular, focused direction. In this case, we’re actively aiming our consciousness away from the process itself. That is, we’re using our willpower to stop checking on the manifestation. Remember, the creation universe works with faith and that same faith is required of you.

In our current reality, we’re used to accepting as true only that which we can see, touch and feel. In other words, we have accepted the belief that something is not real unless it is already manifest and we can get our hands on it. In the conscious creation process (or in this case, faith-creation process) we accept that our new beliefs, feelings and thoughts have already created what we want and leave it at that.

Constantly checking on the process nullifies your faith, especially if what you want hasn’t appeared in your everyday world. And once you notice that, your disappointment or your doubt in the creation process will act with law of attraction to bring you more of the same: doubt and disappointment. Flex your will to not check so often.

Go with ease

As powerful as “flexing your will” sounds, it does need to be done with a gentle touch, the second ingredient to removing attachment from want. ‘Ease’ is opposite of ‘anxious,’ which is the energy we emote when we’re checking on our manifestations. Ease, instead, allows our consciousness to detach from the outcome and let the creation universe do its thing…bring our desires to us.

Ease is the energetic foundation of faith: the knowing and trustful assumption that our desires will be fulfilled and done so in a way that promotes our best outcome. When we’re attached to a particular outcome we’re anxious about it, which is why ease is so hard to come by. But learning to ease our way into faith gives us a head start on the creation process. It allows gentle energy to infuse the creation universe and start the ball rolling.

Allow the results

Once you’ve taken an easy, focused approach to conscious creation, you will—at some point—want to check for results. Here’s where allowing comes into play. Allowing means you’re open to the many ways the creation universe can bring your manifestation to you.

Like faith, allowing is a gentle process. It requires keeping enough attention to the possible outcomes that you are open to the fruits of your labor but not so much attention that you try to drive the process with negative energy. Attempting to control the process works against the creation universe by creating resistance. The process of allowing means paying attention to your impulses, as impulses will guide you to the very action or knowledge you need to allow your dreams to come true.

Like any new skill, learning detachment takes practice and patience. Whether you’re removing a cloud from the sky or trying to manifest your dream job, taking a relaxed approach will serve you well and bring you closer to your desires.