Maarten Reilingh, Ph.D.

Certified Empowerment Life Coach

Can You Transform Thought into Reality?

by Maarten Reilingh, Ph.D. — Certified Empowerment Life Coach

What we think and believe, what we pay attention to, is what manifests in our life. If you want something, you have to believe it is possible; if you want something, you have to place your attention on it. Let's look at the implications of this idea and why it's not quite as simple as it seems.

The principle is as old as philosophy itself and permeates all religious traditions. The Bible, for example, states this idea many times. With belief, we are told in the Book of Job, we have merely to decree a thing and it shall be established unto us. Jesus tells us simply to ask and have faith that what we seek will be given to us. Paul says to the Romans, "be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Or consider a great teacher in our own time, Dr. Wayne Dyer, who turns an old phrase on its head to come up with the title of a recent book, You'll See It When You Believe It. My own teachers, Gail Straub and David Gershon, in Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life As You Want It, write that "we make and shape our character and the conditions of our life by what we think." (Both of these books would make great reading if you are interested in this idea.)

Think for a moment about all our great achievements — advances in space travel, nanotechnology, medicine, engineering, mathematics, warfare, you name it — nothing is achieved without someone first believing it is possible. In fact, whatever it is that's happening in our lives right now — the bad stuff and the good — is a manifestation of what we believe. It sounds simple: to get what you want in life, you must believe that you can have it.

If that were all there was to it, if everybody already had exactly what they wanted because they thought they could, you might be ready to say, "yes, I can transform thought into reality." But it's not that easy. If it were, then everybody would have exactly what they wanted! There are two obstacles to overcome before we can direct our minds in such a way as to create reality from thought. First, we must remove self-limiting beliefs that are holding us back. These are what we are currently thinking and what are causing our lives to be what they are in the first place! Second, we must establish a clear vision of what it is that we want to create.

First, removing self-limiting beliefs: Often, we don't really know what we believe — or if we do, we may find that they are so deeply entrenched in our psyches that they are very difficult to get rid of. As we grow, each one of us learns a set of beliefs about life. From infancy onward, as we observe and listen to our parents, our friends and siblings, our teachers, pastors, and public officials, and increasingly from public media, we begin to pick up ideas about our selves and about the way the world works. What we believe about marriage and work and sex and money and emotions and spirituality comes to us in thousands of lessons — spoken and unspoken — from these sources. These lessons are so pervasive, they are like the air we breathe. We know it's there, but we don't really realize it while we are being influenced. So, when we find that our lives are not going as we would like, often it's because a belief or some beliefs of which we may not be really aware stands between us and what we want. When we try change or eliminate them, they stand like immovable mountains before us.

Before we can make more money, we must get rid of beliefs that we're not capable or worthy of it, or that money is somehow evil or debasing, or that there's not enough to go around. Before we can shed those extra pounds, we have to shed the idea that we don't have the time or the discipline to deal with them, or that eating will somehow bring us comfort or please our parents. Before we can have more interesting sex lives, we have to let go of the idea that our partner will be shocked by our desires or that what we want is somehow wrong or abnormal. Before we can find a higher purpose to which we can devote our lives, we have to release beliefs that we're not spiritual enough for God or the universe to speak to us. (I'll talk about how to turn these beliefs around in a future article.)

Second, establishing a clear vision: In the same way that we are likely to pursue a reward when it holds a lot of attraction for us and we know exactly what it is, we are more likely to undertake the task of removing old beliefs when we have a clear vision of what we will replace them with. When we know what we want, with clarity and detail, our motivation to pursue it will be strong and we'll be better able to recognize it when it actually manifests in our life.

Thoughts will come and go in your mind with or without your special assistance. When you create a compelling vision of what you want, you are taking charge of the thought process, you are molding thought like an artist molds clay or a writer molds a sentence. This is a creative act and you are the creator. This may or may not be easy for you to do. You must be willing to look inward, through all the beliefs that you have picked up over the years, to discover what values, priorities, and passions are important to you, not to somebody else or to society.

So, there it is. You can craft reality from thought; in fact, you already are doing so! The trick is to substitute positive, clear, detailed, and compelling thoughts in place of the beliefs that are currently holding you back.

Maarten Reilingh, Ph.D. is a Certified Empowerment Life Coach. To comment on this article or to ask him about life coaching, find him online at empowerment.webhop.net or call 1-800-210-8567. Material in this article is adapted with permission from Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It by David Gershon and Gail Straub.

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