6. You Get What You Feel

Thought and feelings have their own magnetic energy which attracts energy of a similar nature … This is the principle that whatever you put into the Universe will be reflected back to you.

“What this means from a practical standpoint is that we always attract into our lives whatever we think about most, believe in most strongly, expect on the deepest levels and/or imagine most vividly.¹⁰

Shakti Gawain

I was sitting on a plane waiting to depart Hobart airport. We were delayed by one final, rather breathless and angry-looking passenger.

When she saw that some guy had parked his big, black, heavy briefcase in the spot above her seat, she became angrier. When she discovered that there was no room for her bags anywhere in the overhead lockers, she began to look seriously disturbed.

And so she sat seething for the entire flight with her bag wedged between her feet, irritated by the offending briefcase.

You might guess the story from here. We landed; the owner of the briefcase stood up, reached over to retrieve it from the locker and dropped it on her head.

BAM! When you FEEL that life is against you, it is.

We attract people and circumstances that match how we feel. When we feel happy, we attract positive circumstances, and when we feel upset and angry, we attract events to make us feel worse.

The Rules of the Game

Imagine that you were playing a ball game and you didn’t know the rules – and other players kept jumping on your head.

Wouldn’t you feel like a victim? Wouldn’t you decide, “This is unfair! I don’t want to play anymore!”?

But then if someone explained the rules – “While you are holding the ball anyone can jump on your head” – that would really help!

The game of life is similar. You need to know the rules, which are: WHILE YOU ARE FEELING BAD, LIFE JUMPS ON YOUR HEAD. Whenever you are radiating thoughts such as “I’m hopeless, angry, frustrated, jealous, scared, a victim”, life beats you up.

No wonder some people decide, “Life is unfair! I don’t want to play anymore!”

When you are happy, life and people reward you in the most unexpected ways.

When you are stressed, angry, or feeling like a victim, life kicks you in the teeth. When is it that you jam your finger, bite your tongue, stub your toe? Does it happen on days when you are feeling great? No, it happens when you are frustrated and angry with yourself.

When do airlines lose your baggage? On those days when you are happy and excited? Or at the end of a long trip when you are exhausted and coming down with the ’flu?

What comes first? Thoughts? Or feelings?

Most often, it seems, thoughts create feelings, a bit like ingredients create a cake.

• You take a thought, “My husband always leaves his empty beer cans on the coffee table”, blend it with “He never even noticed my new haircut” and let it stew overnight with “I can’t sleep because of his constant snoring” and you create an angry feeling.
• You take a thought, “I’m lucky to have a job”, mix it with “Most days are good days” and sprinkle it with “Life is getting better” and you create a happy feeling.

The THOUGHTS in your head become A FEELING in your heart.

Here’s the good news: changing your thoughts can change how you feel.

Negative Thoughts

Here’s more good news: a few negative thoughts won’t ruin your life.

You have up to 50,000 thoughts per day. Amongst those 50,000 thoughts, some are bound to be a bit negative.

The odd passing thought won’t make you rich or poor, happy or miserable.

But a whole bunch of thoughts is a different matter.

Lots of similar thoughts – for example, lots of happy thoughts or lots of “Life is lousy” thoughts – become a feeling that you may hold onto for a whole day or a week or a lifetime.

We Attract What We Feel

We Feel One morning in 2004, my wife, Julie, and I had a disagreement. I said something insensitive that made her furious. I don’t remember what I said, but in twenty years I had never seen her so mad.

As Julie grabbed her car keys and left for her appointment I thought to myself, “No one who is as angry as Julie is right now should be anywhere near an automobile!”

Not ten minutes later, she was sitting in her car at an intersection, perfectly stationary. A van approached the crossroads at high speed, lost control – and drove straight into Julie’s car. Thank God she escaped unhurt.

As Julie soon discovered, the van was driven by another very angry lady.

You ask:

• Was Julie thinking about a car accident?
• No! Did Julie want the accident? No!
• Was she experiencing intense negative emotion?
• Yes! Did she have an intensely negative experience to match her feelings? Absolutely!

You say, “But Julie’s car wasn’t even moving. It wasn’t her fault!”

Ask Julie and she will admit that she created her experience. She will tell you that she had a head full of “Today is lousy” thoughts, and life delivered an experience to match. You are a magnet. How you feel about yourself determines the quality of your experience.

You say, “Does that mean that everyone who is angry in a car will have an accident?” No. It means that if you are full of an energy that says, “Life stinks”, then life will deliver you “Life stinks” experiences. And if you are driving a car at the time, an accident is more likely.

If you are having intense feelings of stress – you feel that life is unfair, that you are being punished by people who are irresponsible – then life will deliver you an experience that will match that feeling. It might be an accident, it might be an illness, or it might be something else unpleasant.

Uplifting thoughts attract uplifting experiences. Angry, victim-type thoughts attract low-energy experiences. You can’t determine the exact nature of all your experiences by how you feel – who you meet and exactly what happens – but you determine the QUALITY of your experiences.

A Magical Life

A change of feeling is a change of destiny.¹¹

Neville Goddard

Did this ever happen to you?

• You went to an inspiring seminar
• You read an uplifting book
• You joined a church
• You fell in love.

You felt so good. Life was different, almost magical. It was like you had begun a whole new chapter. You were optimistic. Challenges were easier to handle, you had more energy, and people were nicer. Maybe you thought, “This is the how my life will be from now on.”

You were cruising – for three weeks. Then gradually, things returned to normal.

So what happened? Were you kidding yourself? Were you deluded?

No, you weren’t. You were simply FEELING better, and your happier feelings created happier circumstances. But then your energy dropped – maybe you suffered a disappointment or two – and you were back to normal.

But some people never return to the old normal. They begin a new chapter in their life and create a new normal.

• They keep reading inspirational books
• They mix with uplifting people
• They develop immovable faith
• They fall deeper in love.

In other words, they keep FEELING good. And so they become one of those people who live a charmed life, who turn defeat into victory and who always meet the right people at the right time.

Get the Feeling

To get what you want, you first need to have the feeling of what you want – as if it has already arrived. You may ask, “Isn’t that the same as prayer?”

It can be, but it usually isn’t.

Most of us learned to pray in a different way, such as: “God, I am a powerless sinner and my life is a mess. Can you please fix it?” This approach doesn’t work, and now we know why. If you are filled with feelings of disappointment and powerlessness, and the belief that “I am a bad person”, you create more experiences to match.

Lost in Translation

So you ask, “If the most powerful form of prayer is to feel the feeling of your wish fulfilled, why isn’t that spelled out in Christian teachings?”

It was. But it got watered down and lost in translation. For example, in the modern condensed King James Bible, in John 16:24, we read: “Ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full.”

So what is lost?

Compare this with the original text: “Ask without hidden motive and be surrounded by your answer. BE ENVELOPED BY WHAT YOU DESIRE, that your gladness may be full.”¹² In other words, feel it all around you, already complete.

Traditional cultures the world over acknowledge the power of feeling. The Navajo Indians understand that you don’t wish for rain. You FEEL the rain. You give thanks that it has already arrived.

Tibetan Buddhist Monks know that the most powerful form of prayer is to pray FEELING THAT THE PRAYER HAS BEEN ANSWERED.

In his book, Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, Gregg Braden¹³ describes his experience in the mountains of Tibet. Braden wanted to know, “What is happening when monks pray?” What is happening when they chant? Why the gongs, the bells, the mantras? In a freezing stone monastery at 14,000 feet, Braden asks the abbot, “When we see your prayers, what are you doing … what is happening on the inside?”

The monk replies, “What you have seen is what we do to create the feeling in our bodies. Feeling is the prayer!”

Feeling is the prayer. That is how life works.

Why is it that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists Christians and Jews – whether they be fundamentalist, orthodox, unorthodox, charismatic, neo-charismatic or metrosexual – believe in prayer? It is because it is not about your particular brand or religious faction, and it is not about the words. It is about the feeling.

When your feeling is a perfect match with your goal – or to put it another way, when all doubt is eliminated – the goal is yours.

At times in my life I thought, “If I just suffer enough, maybe God – if He is up there – will feel sorry for me. Maybe He’ll send me a million dollars.”

It didn’t happen.

Mostly, it seemed, the guys who received a million were the guys who already had a million: “For to one who has it, it will be given and it will be increased.”¹⁴

Affirmations

Affirmations are positive phrases that we repeat to ourselves over and over. You have probably heard of phrases like “I am a money magnet” or “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better and better.”

Some people swear by them. Other people swear that they are a waste of energy. How can this be?

It is because it is not the words that matter; it’s the feeling. Affirmations without feeling ARE useless; you may as well chant phone numbers.

But if you can feel your affirmations, if you regularly tell yourself things like, “I have everything I need”, “My life is getting better”, “I am loved and I am loveable”,“I am healthy”, “I am rich”, and feel it and believe it, life will get better.

First Get the Feeling

We grow up believing, “When things get better, THEN I will feel better.” It sounds reasonable. But it is the slow way to get results, and it is hard work.

• Try fixing a relationship while you feel bad about it
• Try getting rich when you feel poor
• Try succeeding in a job you hate.

When is it that you start to climb out of any mess? Only when you start to feel hopeful.

FIRST comes a glimmer of hope. Then, perhaps you get some encouragement from a friend. You start to feel better. You read a book. You take a long walk. You feel better still. You get a little inspiration. Other people arrive to help. You are on your way.

But first, you need that glimmer of hope, a little belief. Only THEN do things start to improve. It all happens AFTER you begin to feel better.

Finding Mr Right

What do many people do when they are looking for love? They hang out in sleazy bars drinking more than they want. The results are often disappointing. Explains Mary, “Just when I thought I had found Mr Right, he became Mr Learning Experience!”

You don’t have to trawl the bars and you don’t have to impress anybody.

People in happy relationships will tell you, “I always knew there would be someone for me.” They felt it.

Your mission is to FEEL loved – not WISHING you had it but FEELING YOU HAVE IT now – by imagining your perfect relationship and by being kind to yourself.

When you start with the feeling, the Universe will begin to organise itself around you. Opportunities will arise. You go with the flow.

When you finally have that “knowing” that he is out there and when you stop being in a hurry for him to arrive, Mr Right will walk into your life. No one can keep him out.

Relax!

In the 1980s I taught a weekend relaxation course. Over two and half days, the attendees also learned to like themselves a little more.

Here’s what amazed me: in the weeks following their course, people would report all kinds of wonderful happenings. “My back pain has disappeared!” “My boss is friendlier.” “I just got promoted.” “My family is more considerate.” “My husband is more loving.” “I slashed my golf handicap!”

So I would ask them, “What did you visualise to make this happen?” So often they would say, “Nothing.”

Year in, year out, the story was the same for most of the attendees. I wondered, “Why are all these people reporting such positive results? All they learned to do was relax and feel better!”

You are a complex ball of energy. Your energy ball includes every thought, wish and fear you have ever had. Your energy is creating your life, moment by moment. You don’t have to figure everything out – but you do have to stop fighting and worrying and relax.

“What if I Can’t Feel Better?”

You say, “How can I feel great when I feel terrible?” You can’t. You don’t have to. You just take one step at a time.

If we were to rank emotions on a ladder, with the most positive at the top, we might list them like so:

10. Love and Joy
9. Happiness
8. Optimism
7. Contentment
6. Pessimism
5. Disappointment
4. Worry
3. Anger
2. Hatred and Revenge
1. Fear and Grief

So you ask, “How do I get from fear to joy?” The same way you get from first gear to tenth gear on a bicycle, or from first gear to fifth gear in your car. You just move to the next gear.

You don’t jump from hatred to joy overnight – but you can move from hatred to anger. And anger feels better than hatred. That’s progress.

It’s how life works – one step at a time, one rung at a time. You don’t go from $30,000 per year to $300,000 per year, but you can get to $40,000 and then $60,000 and keep going. It is like building muscle, getting healthy or learning a new language.

If you can feel a little better today and a little better tomorrow, that’s enough.

It Doesn’t Seem Fair

You say, “What if I am ill or in pain? How do you expect me to feel happy and positive? It’s not fair!”

Maybe it isn’t fair — but it is a law of life: for your circumstances to improve, you first have to feel more positive.

Laws don’t care what you think. It’s like with gravity: if you trip over the cat and break your arm, you can argue, “Gravity isn’t fair!” But gravity doesn’t care.

It might seem like a cruel twist: “Why should I have to FEEL successful or loved before I can BE successful or loved?” It may seem like an odd way to run a Universe. But here is how the spiritual masters explain it:

You are a part of everything. No one is stopping you from having anything. God is not stopping you from having anything. You already have everything you want; you just don’t know it. The only thing in your way is YOUR BELIEFS.

When you change your beliefs – and as everything is vibration, this means when you change your vibration – your goals begin to drop in your lap.

The Eleventh Hour

Have you noticed that things usually look most bleak just before they start to get better? The entrepreneur is down to his last dollar when he finally scores the big deal. The injured athlete is ready to quit, but she gives it one last shot and wins the gold medal.

You see it all the time in movies. You see it in movies because it happens all the time in life. There is a principle at work here. The darkest hour is often just before the dawn. It is almost like life tests us: “Are you serious?” The bigger the goal, the darker it gets.