Here are eight creative things you can do to immediately start moving closer to your dreams. I’ve done all of these things, and many, many more.
Are some silly and embarrassing? Yes.
Is living the life you dream of worth it? Hell, yes.
1. Write a blueprint for your life.
Write down (or I suppose you could draw/paint if you’re so inclined) a narration depicting the amazing, clarifying, and happy events that are soon to unfold in your life. Don’t write things like, “I hope” or “I want.” Instead, confidently go into future-mode and reminisce by writing things like, “I did” or “I went.”
The point is to show yourself how things might go, not how they will go—there shouldn’t be any “insistence” that things will go exactly as you write. Simply review what you’ve written from time to time for inspiration or to charge yourself up before you visualize. You’ll find, particularly if you’ve been feeling low, that this exercise stirs hope and creates new possibilities for manifestations in your life.
2. Write a letter to the Universe.
Write a letter to the Universe expressing your feelings of love and gratitude for the way your life is going and has gone. Tell yourself about your amazing successes, the dreams of yours that have come true, what you did to achieve them, how your life looks now, etc.
Write this letter as if all of your current dreams have already been reached. If your wiser, future self has a deeper understanding about life, a greater sense of peace and happiness, a clearer vision of what’s important, be sure to include that as well.
3. Write yourself love letters and checks from admirers, friends, and businesses.
This one is as fun as it sounds. In my visualization scrapbook, I used to have a picture of a beautiful woman from a magazine advertisement for a Hawaiian resort. She didn’t know it, but we were having a passionate love affair. During the creation of my audio program, Infinite Possibilities, I was promising myself to go to Hawaii as my reward, and preferably with someone like her.
Similarly, long before I was ever published, I’d write myself letters from publishers, who, as you might imagine, were crazy-happy to have found me and loved my writings.
Something else I did: I called the provided toll-free number of my lender to get the payoff amount of my home mortgage. I acted as if I could pay mine off. They gave me the exact amount, to the penny, and as a further demonstration, I wrote the check, envelope, and stamped it. (I did not mail it—given my account balance, doing so would have been illegal.) But I remember thinking, Yes! I’m going be that person one day!
4. Digitally modify images and photos.
I thought the suggested cover Simon & Schuster sent me for Infinite Possibilities was a bit lackluster (not really—it just lacked some key elements). So, with some art software, I set out to improve it.
I added: “New York Times Bestseller! 52 weeks!” I emblazoned across the top: “Seven million copies sold,” “As seen on Oprah and Larry King Live,” “Now in 25 languages,” which is a number that “coincidentally” matches how many foreign languages I’m now published in.
I printed my manipulated cover and plastered it on the walls and doors around my home. If you’re not good with digital manipulation, scissors and glue work just fine.
5. Fill in a mock calendar.
Find a calendar or planner and fill the days and months with wonderful events, trips, parties, dates, and adventures that you want to create for yourself in the year ahead. This is a fun way to get creative and envision new things unfolding in your life. After you’ve filled in the days, hang it up to remind yourself of the exciting things you’re going to create and experience in the year ahead.
6. Have pretend talks with family and friends.
This activity requires a friend, on the phone or in person, who understands your way of seeing the world. If no friend is available, try it with an imaginary friend or your own reflection in the mirror. The goal is for the two (or more) of you to celebrate as if your present dreams have already come true. Speak about your dreams in the past or present tense.
If you go first, speak about the success of your own dreams, and then congratulate your friend(s) on their successes. After you’ve spoken for a few minutes, then allow your friend(s) to do the same, speaking of their own dreams coming true, and then speaking of your successes. Get into the elaborate details of all the expected and unexpected consequences that have come from the successes in each of your lives.
7. Scrapbooks and vision boards.
Make a scrapbook or vision board. These are awesome tools, because they steer your thinking toward end results representing the life of your dreams, bypassing the “cursed hows.” And then, those thoughts, when acted upon, will become things. Vision boards, scrapbooks, pictures on the refrigerator, and similar visual tools are used to spark the process of envisioning.
8. Overpay your revolving credit, car, and mortgage payments.
Never pay “the minimum,” which would be like calling the lender and saying, “Oh, hey, this is Mike Dooley. I was just wondering… what is the absolute least, to the penny, that I could pay this month, without getting in big trouble?” That’s not the energy you want to put out there on the “plain of manifestation.” What would it say about your belief in the avalanches of abundance now rushing toward you? Not much.
Instead, here’s a trick: round up to the next dollar. If you owe $352.16, pay $353, because you’re not the kind of person who pays the minimum, ever again. The day will come when it’s not pennies. It will be dollars, and then hundreds of dollars, and then tens of thousands. And eventually, the day will come when you don’t have those debts anymore.
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