Okay, you've got the basics down in theory.  How to put this into practice?

You've already taken the most important step toward deliberately creating your reality, believe it or not.  This is a great time to stop and consciously give yourself credit for that!

Understanding how important your thoughts are, knowing that your thoughts have a vibration that are attracting like energy to you - just having this awareness puts you light years ahead of the game!

There have been times when people who believed and practiced these truths weren't allowed to live, let alone share it openly with others.  Let's celebrate the fact that today this is quickly becoming mainstream knowledge, discussed on Oprah and bestselling books on the topic!

Seriously, this is cool!  Let's not take it for granted that we are free to learn and practice and talk about this stuff!

Okay, I'll try to get a sentence out without an exclamation point on it.  J

The process outlined here isn't the only approach.  It's the one that makes the most sense to me after working with hundreds of people to master their manifesting skills. 

But if you find someone else's formula or structure appeals to you more, or if you have ideas about how to alter this to suit you better, follow your intuition!

The four steps are:

1)    Awareness (start recognizing what you're thinking and thus attracting!)

2)    Clarity of Desire (know what you want)

3)    Thought Management (purposely choose thoughts that feel better)

4)    Inspired Action (do what feels good!)

The first two steps are outlined below.  Follow along to the next lesson to complete the final two steps.

1.    Awareness

Your next step to put this knowledge into practice is to become aware of what your vibration is; that is, get clear about what your thoughts are and thus what you're attracting.

How do you that?  It's simple: pay attention.

For now don't worry about changing your thoughts.  First just get really good at noticing what they are.  That skill of awareness will come in handy down the road!

Most of us have a litany of thoughts happening (estimated 65,000 thoughts per day for the average person), and most of those thoughts go unnoticed.

Until now.

This is when you start paying attention to what you're attending to.  Where you become the “observer” of your thoughts.

This will help you become more aware of what you're thinking, and thus what you're creating.

It's best if you engage this new level of awareness without judgment of those thoughts.  Don't start labeling some as good and others as bad; for now just develop your habit of awareness.

As you practice this, you'll likely recognize a relationship between what you're thinking to how you're feeling, too.

Like when you recognize the thought on the last day of vacation, “Ugh, I gotta go back to work tomorrow,” you may feel a sense of dread, resentment or despair that comes along with that thought.

Or when you recognize the thought, “I hope they still have good seats available for the concert!” you may feel something like anticipation or excitement.

That's because our feelings are very closely tied to our thoughts.  This is helpful to know because often it's our feelings that get our conscious attention before our thoughts do. 

In fact, your emotions can serve as a barometer of the quality of thoughts you're entertaining.  When you feel good, you're likely thinking thoughts that serve you.  When you feel bad, it's likely because you're thinking thoughts that aren't taking you where you want to go. 

Once you spend some time with noticing your thoughts, and how those thoughts are connected to what you're feeling, you're ready for the next step:

2.    Clarity of Desire

Know what you want.

Deliberate creation isn't deliberate until we have a purpose in mind, an end result or goal or intention that we want to experience. 

So the next step in the process is to get clear about what you want. 

The beautiful thing about desire is that there's no way we could get ahead of ourselves.  There's nothing we can't have that we can imagine. 

Which means if you can imagine it, you can have it.  It's not just okay to dream big, it's a more powerful way to go!  Because as Michael Neill says, it's easier to have what we really want rather than what we think we can have.

Those true desires, those big dreams are often driven by a higher octane fuel – that's high grade vibrations associated with our favorite big desires! 

Most of us have been trained to be realistic and practical and not set ourselves up for disappointment, so it may not be natural for you to let yourself want what you really want any more.

If that's the case for you, it's time for that to change.

Let yourself want what you want.  What you REALLY want.  We'll learn how to manage the doubts and fears those big dreams might inspire as we go along.

And if you don't know what you want, or what's really possible to create, read the next lesson in the series: “What sorts of things can I manifest?”

Here's a helpful tip if you think you don't know what you want.

First of all, that thought is blocking you from knowing your desire.  When you think, “I don't know what I want,” that thought is not helping to reveal the awareness!  So a good first step is to drop that thought and entertain something more conducive to knowing, like “I'm looking forward to exploring my true dreams and desires” or “It'll come to me – it's revealing itself slowly but surely” or even a thought like “I want to know what I want” to grease the wheels.

Second, if all you do is notice what you don't want, that can be a very helpful clue to what you do want when you go to its opposite.   

Example: I don't want to be told what to do.

Opposite: I want to be free to do as I please.

Example: I hate being overweight.

Opposite: I would love to feel great about my body.

Got the hang of it?  It's pretty elementary, but you'd be surprised how often this tip comes in handy!

If you've been paying attention to your thoughts, it will be particularly revealing to gauge whether your thoughts on the topic of your desire have been serving you or not.

for the rest of this lesson, continue to part two of How Do I Get Started?