(By Tal Gur)

As you know, taking action is the key to creating the life you want. You can dream and wish all you want, but without taking enough action, nothing will happen.

However, as mentioned before, when you’re jumping into action from a place of lack or incompleteness, then what is manifested is something that matches that energetic vibration. This becomes especially crucial with big life decisions—starting a business or big project, entering into a committed relationship, moving into a new city.  In those cases, it’d be wiser to consider creating more space and delaying action until you feel internally aligned. 

How do you know if you’re aligned or not? Once again, your emotions can be your compass: if you’re about to take action but find yourself ungrounded, dissatisfied, resisting, fearful, or second-guessing, you’re not in alignment. On the other hand, if you are called to action from a grounded, content, and inspired place, then you’re internally aligned. 

Previously we explored a few ways to get into alignment. Today, we take one step further and explore the process of creating from alignment—what I often call Joyous Creation.

But before we get there, it’s important you fully embrace the creator in you.

You Are a (Co)Creator

Do you sometimes think of yourself as a victim of certain circumstances and experiences? Or can you sense the freedom (and power) of seeing yourself as a part of that Co-Creative force behind those experiences?

If you think of yourself as a victim, then it’s time to take your power back by taking responsibility. You’re a Co-Creator, attracting into your life the subject of your thoughts, whether you’re aware of those thoughts or not. (As you already know, most thinking is done in the subconscious, below the level of your consciousness—very similar to an iceberg, where the greater part is below the water surface.)

The key is the responsibility part and aligning when you get things you don’t want. As a co-creator, that’s where your power is. You don’t have to understand or be conscious of every aspect of your mind, you just have to make sure you don’t dwell in unwanted thoughts, not giving extra thoughts, time, and precious energy to those things that you do not want. 

When you notice yourself speaking of that which you do not want, simply STOP, and realign. Then, from that spacious, aligned place, focus your attention upon that which you DO prefer to experience and start changing the momentum.

Remember, everything you see around you is energy. And you are like a magnet attracting people and experiences that resonate with your energy. Circumstances in your life are magnetized to you—that is to say, thoughts and people that are vibrationally similar are drawn like a magnet to one another. 

For example, if you mostly think and see yourself as a “hero”— someone who is here to save others — you’ll start attracting people who are looking to be saved. Or, if you treat yourself as a victim, you'll attract people and situations that will further victimize you. 

Put simply, your thoughts (which are nothing but vibrational energy waves) are magnetic. 

Here’s a short poem that perfectly expresses the idea of sharing responsibility:

“I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost... I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

But, it isn't my fault.

It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in. It's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

I walk down another street.”

* Written by Portia Nelson, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

Paying Attention to Patterns

So, as a Co-Creator, you create and impact your reality with your thoughts and actions. Therefore, you want to pay extra attention to what comes your way. Once again, on a deeper level (subconscious and conscious), you’re inviting and attracting it.

This means that rather than being constantly on guard or afraid of what life may throw at you, simply notice the patterns and take ownership of them. Then, claim you power as a creator by redirecting your attention to what’s truly important to you. You can always make that attention shift, no matter where you are in life, no matter how difficult things might appear to be. 

You do not have to forcefully push, just to keep redirecting your attention. This is what FOCUS is all about—giving your attention to the things that matter most.

Becoming More Selective

To create the life you want, you want to become extremely selective. Not only with what you do, what you feed yourself (food, information, etc), and who you choose to spend the most time with, but also—and perhaps most importantly—what thoughts you dwell on.

Remember, every action you’ve ever taken (or are going to take) starts with a thought, whether you are aware of the thought or not. However, as you know, thoughts come and go… That’s their nature. Trying to control what thoughts go through, or trying to stop certain thoughts from entering into your consciousness, is an ineffective use of your time and energy. (In fact, trying NOT to think of something may prompt you to think of it even more.) 

The key is not to control your thoughts, but observe the ones you dwell on and give power to. 

Through practice, you can become better at watching thoughts that don’t serve you, naturally letting them come into existence and pass away. You’ll also become better at taking the time to remind yourself of the powerful you and the great things you seek to create. 

When that happens, when you gently guide your attention to empowering thoughts—to what you actually want— you’ll create a more empowering reality and no longer create unwanted things by default. (You are always creating through thoughts whether you’re aware of them or not.) 

Furthermore and not less importantly, your aligned actions—ones that are inspired from an empowering space and thoughts—will be more joyful, easy to get into, and effortless to take. Even after putting in considerable effort, your actions feel effortless. You are easily drawn into action...

The idea is simple but not always easy. Developing heightened awareness usually takes time— changing life-long habits isn’t the easiest task. This is where the 20/80 principle can come in. 

80-20 Selectiveness

The 80-20 principle says that 20% of your effort will produce 80% of your results. You can read more about it online by Googling “Pareto Principle” but here are some further examples to illustrate it:

• 80% of wealth is owned by about 20% of people (This was Pareto’s initial observation in 1906 when he coined this principle.)
• 80% of taxes are paid by about 20% of taxpayers.
• 80% of problems (health, business, etc) are caused by about 20% of causes
• 80% of sales come from about 20% of clients
• 80% of complaints come from about 20% of customers 
• 80% of crimes are committed by about 20% of the population
• 80% of website traffic comes from about 20% of pages

Now, don't get caught on the exact numbers, it can be 90:10 or even 99:1 at times— The bottom line is that not all decisions and actions are born equal. In other words, you want to be extremely selective about what you choose to focus on. 

The 80-20 of Joyous Creation

What’s the 80/20 for joyous creation? To answer this, I believe we first need to look at the key obstacles. There are two: 

1. Negative Emotions (in particular, making decisions and acting from fear, rather than inspiration)

2. Limiting Beliefs (about your ability to manifest your creation)

As you already know, both emotions and beliefs have a massive effect on the way you experience reality and the results you’re going to have in life. Therefore, in the context of Joyous Creation, our focus is twofold:

1. Increasing inspiration (and acting from that inspired place)

2. Increasing belief (about your ability to manifest your creation)

Let’s look into them in more detail:

KEY #1: Increase INSPIRATION

In The 4-Hour Work Week, author Tim Ferriss makes the bold claim that it is “easier to do unrealistic things than realistic things.” Tim had two main reasons for his claim: there is less competition for seemingly unrealistic goals, plus having an unrealistic goal provides a stronger motivation than a small goal does. Personally, I’d change the word “unrealistic” to “inspiring,” but the principle is the same: Go where inspiration is, even if it often feels unrealistic.

Here’s something you probably already know deep down: uninspiring goals have no power to drive your heart to its desire. There is no magic in those goals—no fuel for inspiration. 

My life experiences support this. When I trained for a mini-triathlon, I found myself literally dragging my feet to the gym with no energy. I missed training sessions, continuously found excuses, and ultimately quit… However, when I set the Ironman Triathlon goal, I found so much inspiration that it drove me into massive joyous action. It required much effort, but it felt effortless and joyous because it was inspiring and exhilarating. The same happened when I tried to save a relatively small amount of money for an uninspiring vacation. I simply didn’t have the discipline to follow through. It was only when I allowed myself to be free of boundaries and truly follow inspiration that I was able to stick to my big financial independence goal and keep moving.

The message is simple: Act from INSPIRATION. Rather than limiting yourself and being practical with your choices, listen to your intuition and inspiration and follow it as much as possible. (Remember, when you only use your rational mind, you limit yourself and miss critical input. Your thinking mind knows how to specify, categorize, and rationalize. To go beyond, we want to integrate all parts.) 

So whenever you find yourself misaligned—feeling fearful, ungrounded, dissatisfied, resisting, second-guessing—STOP whatever it is you are doing. Bring yourself into grounded alignment (awareness/acceptance/alignment), remind yourself of the powerful co-creator that you are, and refocus your thoughts on what you’re INSPIRED to create. Then from that inspired place, take aligned action.

KEY NOTES: 

• We’ve already covered ways to find alignment at length; if needed, refer to previous docs. Most importantly, do NOT suppress feelings or try to control your thoughts. Simply accept them and let them naturally pass. They will.
• With bigger life decisions, consider creating SPACE. As mentioned, your mantra could be: Space or Aligned YES. This is an ongoing process. The more you act from inspiration, the easier and more effective it becomes.
• Act from inspiration not just with bigger life decisions but also with small ones: What am I eating? What am I reading? Watching? And so forth.
• Feeling aligned but have doubts about direction or decision? The surest way to resolve doubts is to take action in the direction that feels MOST inspiring.
• Feeling fear about what inspired you? When you feel inspired and scared at the same time, then this can be a clear signal that you’re in the right direction. Transform the energy of fear into courage. Remember, fear, like any other emotion, is energy. And no energy can be eliminated or destroyed. Fear can only be transformed into courageous, heart-focused action.
• Can’t find courage? Feeling paralyzed? Explore your beliefs and increase your belief about your ability to move forward (see next principle).
• Can’t find inspiration? Intuitive guidance often comes when we reduce the noise, bring more stillness into our lives, and remind ourselves about our mortality. (For example, if you knew you had only one year to live, what would you change/create/do?)

Regarding the last note, Steve Jobs once said: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is TRULY important.”

***

KEY #2: Increase your BELIEF

As you know, it’s not always easy to act on your highest inspiration. Doubt and limiting beliefs often creep in and take over the inspiration. You suddenly realize your dream costs a great deal of money, you remember that you don’t have the skills, knowledge, or the confidence to move forward… You get paralyzed by the sheer task ahead. This is where increasing your belief in yourself and your ability to manifest your vision comes in. 

The only problem: beliefs are not always fast and easy to change. When that happens, the key is to take consistent action from inspiration—as small as it may seem—and gradually shift your beliefs in the direction of your inspiration. Often it’s easier to take those smaller steps because they are not over-stretching your beliefs, and thus you face less resistance. 

This gradual progress may require a dose of patience, but it’s a reliable and effective path towards joyous manifestation. The alternative of a “quantum shift in belief” is also possible, but in that case, pay attention to any forward–backward pattern due to “belief overstretching.” Put differently, notice when you find yourself retreating back to comfort-land and stopping to take action in the direction of your inspiration. 

KEY NOTES: 

• We’ve already covered how to explore and change limiting beliefs at length (if needed, refer to previous docs). 
• As you can recall, to dig out underlying beliefs, ask repetitive “why” questions to clarify and outline any conclusions you might have. When you stumble upon a limiting belief, a key step is to find evidence from your own life, or from the lives of those you know, where the belief does not hold up. When that is not enough, taking gradual, consistent (and often courageous) actions or embarking on a 21-day experiment is one of the best ways to shift and expand beliefs.

***

A Virtuous Cycle of Inspired Action

You’ve probably heard the term Vicious Cycle. It means a continuous iterative cycle of events that produces negative results—one negative iteration feeds into the next negative iteration, resulting in ever worsening outcomes. 

A Virtuous Cycle, on the other hand, is the same thing but with favorable results—one positive iteration feeds into the next positive iteration, resulting in a joyous celebration with a favorable outcome.

Our aim and ideal is obviously to keep positive loops (i.e. virtuous cycles) and break negative ones (i.e. vicious cycles) as soon as possible. (* In general, both cycles will continue in the direction of their momentum until something intervenes and breaks the cycle.)

Focusing on creating a virtuous cycle of inspired action will cause it to grow stronger. When you keep thinking about what you’re inspired to create and feel the positive emotions that arise with it, those thoughts grow even stronger. And when you increase the belief that you can actually manifest what you want as well, you’ll be entering into a more abundant energy and even faster and joyous creation.

Therefore, my suggestion to you is to make a commitment—a commitment that no matter where you are at any given time, that your dominant intent will be to follow and act on inspiration.

Exercises | Downloadable Workbook

***

Apply What You Read

* With Elevate Uni’s All-Access Pass you can get unlimited access to a growing collection of study guides, courses and actionable resources from the best minds in leadership, business and personal growth. Each resource includes not only in-depth insights but also self exploration exercises, reflective questions and action points so you integrate what you learn.