The following article also appears in my meditation blog (with a suggested meditation). I’m including it here because I needed to be reminded.

Argue for Your Limitations and Sure Enough, They’re Yours.

Illusions by Richard Bach

We create our own reality 100% of the time. If you look around at your life, everything you see is there because you drew it to you through your thoughts, your beliefs and the words you speak. 

You may know this, you may have heard it before, maybe many times, but it is so easy to let our knowing slide in the face of beliefs generally held by the people around us and the people on TV and in movies. 

We allow our lives to be limited by the circumstances we find ourselves in. We tell ourselves and others that we want to do something but we can’t for one reason or another. Every time we think of that trek to the Himalayas, we think of how much it will cost, how impossible it would be to leave the kids with their grandparents for that long and how we could never hike those mountains given how out of shape we are or because we get around in a wheel chair. 

And as we think those things and explain the impossibility of it all to our friends, we draw even more limitations into our lives just to make darn sure we never see the Himalayas with our own eyes.

But the magic works just as easily the other way too. If we playfully daydream about the Himalayas and imagine how good it will feel to meet those people whose lives are so different. If we imagine how wonderful it will feel to be breathing that pure, pure air. If we pretend in these daydreams that it’s happening now as we see ourselves tasting yak milk for the very first time, we are telling the universe that this is what we want and expect. It is vital to approach these imaginings joyfully.

And the universe begins to arrange things for us. We find ourselves walking by the building that houses the passport office and on the spur of the moment stop in to get that ball moving — just in case. We begin walking more often, just because we feel like it. Your favorite uncle invites the kids to stay with him at his ranch for the summer (which is something they’ve been dying to do). A friend mentions a rich friend who wants to go to Nepal but doesn’t want to go alone and will pay the way of anyone who can be ready to go in three weeks and a married couple would even be better! 

Then, all you have to do is say, “yes”. 

The trick is weeding negative thoughts and negative speech from our activities and infusing joy into our imaginings and replacing them with positive, even joyful thoughts and speech. I know this is hard. I’ve been working on it for years — since I read my first Seth book in fact. Even when we are doing well, those we love draw us back into negativity with their tales of woe. Sometimes they are insulted by our positive stance. Sometimes they are worried about us taking a fall by having unrealistic expectations. Self-made millionaires and many, many famous people got that way through imagining the best possible tomorrows in the face of well-meaning loved ones reminding them of “Reality”. They simply wouldn’t listen to that kindly advice. 

That’s why “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours” from Illusions is one of my favorite quotes. It is a powerful reminder that we create our own reality out of the cloth of our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves and if we keep telling ourselves (and everyone else) that we can’t do something and exactly why we can’t, that is exactly the reality we experience. At least we get to say, “I told you so.”

We need to teach ourselves to think differently. We need to reprogram our thought patterns. We need to begin policing our thoughts and speech and, when we catch ourselves thinking and speaking in a limiting way, we can stop and reframe our thought or speech. For example, instead of thinking, “I’ll never get enough to go to France,” think about how much fun it will be to sample wine from every vineyard — and feel it. 

I’m not saying it’s easy. If you need it to be hard, it will be. This challenge is about reversing a lifetime of learning and allowing the love out of which all being is made to flow through you. Coincidentally, the details of your life will become kinder, more beautiful and more abundantly supportive. 

Been there. Done that. Will do again.