Chapter Excerpt

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Energy of Focus…

(The Illusion of Fate)

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the physicist, Lawrence Krauss, stated in his book A Universe From Nothing, “We are hardwired to think that everything that happens to us is significant and meaningful.  We have a dream that a friend is going to break her arm, and the next day we find out that she sprained her ankle.  Wow! Cosmic! Clairvoyant?”

Ya, or maybe it was even fate!  Although you may believe that the things in life happen to you, it is more accurate to say that you happen to life.  A good way to understand this is a situation where you have seen another individual get a completely different result than you in essentially the same situation.  If life just happens to you then that should be a logical impossibility.  However, that isn’t the way our lives work.  You must adopt a less fragmented individualistic view of the World.  We exert our force on life (energy) and toward others and we in turn reap the benefits or negative outcomes inherent of that use.

I’m sure you know at least one person with a defeatist attitude.  In the age of social media these individuals are all too common.  There’s the girl who is endlessly posting morose statuses on her Facebook page like, “Why do I always end up with the biggest losers!”.  We’ve all met the guy or girl who didn’t try something because they decided they would fail or it would not work out from the beginning.  This attitude manifests itself in everything from trying new foods, changing jobs, starting or ending relationships, and more.

Many of those who have developed this mindset also have an ardent belief in fate.  This is a convenient resolution for their mind.  My life isn’t very happy or I don’t have the job or relationship I hoped for so this must just be fate.  You will be hard pressed to find a happy successful individual who will tell you that they got to where they are because of fate.  You are more likely to hear it was the result of self-determination, focused efforts, and personal belief.  It is here you can see clearly the dichotomy between positive and negative energy and the result of their focused application.  You MUST be willing and able to identify your defeatist tendencies and/or attitudes and redirect that energy in a positive manner.  Failing to do so inevitably results in the strengthening of those negative energies.

Remember, energy does not have morality or values; instead it has force and forms.  Failure to recognize and address the negative energy inevitably leads to your manifestation, communication, and transfer of that negative energy through words and actions.  Just as positive energy can inspire and draw others to you, the manifestation of the negative energy within you will have the opposite effect.  People will be pushed away and uninspired.  Ultimately, this leads to the downward spiral often referred to as depression.  The negative energies are transferred back to you by the words and actions of those individuals you have affected and the energies build and become further reinforced in the very real form of neural pathways in your mind.

I cannot stress the point enough so I will repeat it again here.  Everything is energy.  The transfer of that energy manifests itself in real physical/biological ways.  Becoming aware of this reality, regulating and managing these energies and the forms they take is essential to success and happiness in your life.

I do not believe in fate in the sense that our entire lives are predetermined.  I do believe in fate in a less traditional sense however.  To me fate is the path you create in your life by choosing to embrace the opportunities that reinforce your intentions.  The old saying about luck is a good parallel.

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

~Seneca

In creating this book I have experienced fate manifest itself through my choices and actions.  Initially, it was in the random happenstance of coming across the advertisement for Brendon Burchard’s book The Charge.  However, nothing more in the way of what you commonly think of fate would have come of this if not for my choice to embrace some new possibility in life.  To relate back to our central theme of energy in its different forms you could think of fate as the focusing of energies toward some unseen, or unforeseen, endpoint.  As you move closer and closer to that point your recognition of it gradually materializes.  If you choose to embrace that recognition and cultivate its growth your focus becomes sharper.  Taken to its fullest realization it becomes laser sharp and your fate has been determined.

The amazing part about this is that there is nothing whatsoever mystical or theological at play.  Choosing to interpret this as the classic predetermined course of your life will result in the dissipation of the energy that was building.  You can think of it like a camera lens.  Embracing the new opportunity is like focusing the lens on some blurry object that you can’t yet identify.  As the lens comes into focus the subject of your life’s picture becomes clear and easily identifiable.  However, adopting an attitude of predetermination is like taking the picture while it is still out of focus and blurry.  In the end, this approach results in that potential for your life remaining just like the photograph, frozen in time, unidentified, undeveloped.

Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be achieved.

– Williams Jennings Bryan

 

It is no longer possible to fear or believe in failure when you come to recognize the true nature of all that IS. Therefore, when you choose to become aware of the target of of your fate you cannot fail. Anything that could have been perceived as a failure during your journey loses its meaning and instead becomes one of the events that was always part of the ultimate destiny you have chosen. Failure cannot exist unless you accept it as your destination.