If you know that all is well, you know all you need to know. And if you know life is supposed to be fun, you know more than almost anybody else knows. And if you know that the way you feel is your indicator of how connected you are to Source, then you know that which only a handful of deliberate creators .. really know.
Abraham through Esther Hicks – October ‘98

Do you have to know the whole story about everything before you can become a deliberate creator? No. Are there some basic principles you can follow in order to create more of what you want in your life? Yes, and so we thought we’d begin with this Quick Start Guide and describe those basic principles. Included in them is what many people call the Law Of Attraction, and although that name hardly does justice to the power of this fundamental force of nature, that horse seems to be out of the barn, and so we’ll run with it.

The basic principles.

1. By Law Of Attraction, what you choose to believe and expect, whether wanted or unwanted, becomes your experience. The things you’ve chosen to put in your certainty bucket, the things you just plain know, will always be there in your world. That which you know to be probable, will show up most of the time. The things you’re rating as possible will show up sometimes. Improbable things show up occasionally, and impossibilities, never. Your belief-choices have power.

2. You have an infallible emotional guidance system. How you feel tells you whether you’re heading towards what you want (you feel good), or heading away from it (you feel bad). Notice how you’re feeling. When you’re feeling bad, you’re creating what you don’t want. Nothing is more important than feeling good. Always reach for that better feeling thought.

3. Your default state is well being. It’s like if you release a cork you’ve been holding under the water, it bobs to the surface. When you stop thinking negatively, you float up into a world of positive experiences. All that’s needed is to let go of resistant thought.

So it’s all about how you think and how you feel. What would your response be if we were to ask you if you’re a “glass half full or half empty” sort of person? Obviously, if the glass is half full, it’s also half empty. The difference is in how you perceive it. We’re going to make the case here that this difference in how you perceive things is a choice, and the choices you make can have a huge effect on your life. Pollyanna got a bum rap, but she really had it about right. Let’s look at some simple steps you can take to have this game of Life On Earth become a joyful adventure.

Simple steps to success.

Step A. Understand those basic principles above.
1. What you believe, becomes
2. Nothing is more important than feeling good
3. Your default state is well being

Step B. Learn to be aware of how you feel.

What does a fish know about water? Answer – nothing until it leaves the water and has a frame of reference. We see many of you like that fish being so used to feeling less than good that it’s normal. Some of you can go for hours or days feeling bad – perhaps not desperately bad, but definitely not good. Some of you are leading lives of quiet desperation. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel good. Well how you feel is all-important, and we encourage you to start to be aware on an ongoing basis of how you feel, and notice consciously when your feelings take a dive.

It’s worth taking a bit of a time out here to understand the role your subconscious plays in all of this, because it’s significant. Many people trip themselves up by making a new conscious decision and not bringing their subconscious along for the ride. For example, it’s not much use declaring and affirming consciously that you live in easy abundance if you don’t make a commitment to stay the course with that new belief until you’re overridden the old and long-established belief that “money doesn’t grow on trees”. It’s important to get into alignment by practicing new beliefs until you’ve embedded them into all levels of your consciousness.

Your subconscious walks you and talks you. In some respects it also thinks you. You may be in the habit of regarding feelings as just some sort of automatic by-product of your circumstances because when something happens, your subconscious reacts you in a preprogrammed way – positively or negatively. But new habits are possible. You can begin to choose consciously how to react and what to think, and because your thoughts control your feelings, you can therefore consciously control how you feel. We’ll go one step further. As you get comfortable with the idea that how-you-feel is a choice, you’ll discover you can even choose to feel better for no reason at all – even when your circumstances suggest otherwise. What a hoot!

Step C. When you’re feeling bad, stop. Reach for that better feeling thought.

Here’s our version of your Emotional Guidance Scale with zero being that mid-point between feeling good and feeling bad.

Ecstasy +5
Joy +4
Excitement +3
Fun +2
Peace +1
Calmness 0
Unease -1
Frustration -2
Fear -3
Anger -4
Despair -5

We suggest you begin to make conscious assessments of how you feel. Get used to the idea of being aware of your feelings. Get used to noticing when you’ve dropped below zero. Notice where you are when you wake up, and just before you go to sleep. Begin to live in awareness of how happy you are.

You’ve spent a lifetime making decisions about what you want and don’t want. Most of those decisions you’ve forgotten about, but they’re all stored away in the subconscious-you. You know what you want, and when you’re heading toward what you want, you feel good. When you feel bad, it’s because right at that moment you’re heading in the opposite direction. Feelings are a byproduct not of circumstances, but of alignment. That bad feeling is you pinching off your connection to Source. Nothing, nothing, nothing, therefore is more important than simply feeling good.

Feeling good is more important than being “right”.
Feeling good is more important than being on time.
Feeling good is more important than getting something finished.
Feeling good is more important than being empathetic to someone else, because if you can’t feel good, you have nothing to give them. You can’t pour from an empty cup.
Feeling good is more important than staying alive, because if you can’t move toward what you want, there’s no point to playing in this game of yours.
Feeling good is everything.
When you’re feeling bad, stop, and reach for a better feeling thought.

Now we’ve observed that even those of you who understand the importance of simply feeling good, on occasion, get into somewhat of a funk and decide to stay there. We say, the thing to remember is this. You can indulge yourself and pout, but right there and then you’re creating more of what you don’t want. You can indulge yourself when you know you’re “right”, and you want to make a point, and get adamant and press on with an argument way beyond any possibility of a positive outcome. We say, indulge yourself if you must. You can’t, after all, do any irreparable damage to who you are or to anything for that matter. But simply remember this. Right there and then you’re creating more of what you don’t want. We say, learn to stop. Simply stop and reach for a better feeling thought.

Step D. Ask yourself .. what do I want NOW?

How-do-I-feel is the first of the two most important questions you can ever ask yourself.
And the second is .. What-do-I-want-NOW.

What-do-I-want-now brings you back to the place of acknowledging that you have a choice.
What-do-I-want-now helps to shake you out of your fixation on so-called reality.
What-do-I-want-now is the cure for What-is-itis.
What-do-I-want-now is way out of whatever hole you’ve stepped into.
What-do-I-want-now can point you at a reason to feel good.

What-do-I-want-now is always a good question to ask, and we encourage you to create some good answers to that question. Get some DODOs – Descriptions Of Desired Outcomes you can keep in your pocket as touchstones. Get into imagining the juicy details of good things to come. And remember, it doesn’t matter if you change your mind today from what you thought about yesterday. Nothing’s cast in stone here. It’s always What-do-I-want-NOW.

Step E. Commit to processes and a routine that’s designed to create new thought habits.

So now you have the rules for changing your life, but changing lifelong belief-habits takes focus. You have to bring your subconscious along for the ride, and that means committing to change on a day by day basis. We encourage you to find some new thinking processes that work for you. We’re going to suggest one right here today. It’s a favorite of ours we call Letting-Go that you can use any time you want to get into a better feeling place – from negative to positive or even from positive to REALLY positive. We’re going to do two things. We’re going to technically describe the five steps in this process. Then we’re going to have you get quiet and thought-full as we take you through it.

Here’s what you’ll notice about this process or any similar process as you get some practice at it. We’ll describe steps one to five, but where you start and the order you proceed with will end up varying. As you become more expert at this, you’ll build these elements into your thinking in ways that are seamless and invisible. If you own it, and adapt it, and make it your own, you’ll find it becomes something that can take a few minutes or a few seconds. It can take being in a quiet place, or be something you can do instantly even while you’re engaged in a conversation with somebody else. Own it. Adapt it. Make it your own. Here we go.

The Process Of Letting-Go

Step 1
Choose to see what’s at the root of the bad feeling – the fear, or the doubt. Welcome it in, and notice that the very act of welcoming it in changes your relationship to it. It starts to give you power over it.
Let yourself feel it. Bring it fully into your consciousness.
Bring it into the foreground from that semi-present background.
See it. There’s nothing to fear here. Let it build. Welcome it in.

Step 2
Step back from it. Acknowledge yourself as creator.
You alone are in charge. Everything “out there” is your creation.
See the lie that’s at the core of this discomfort.

Step 3
Look back at the fear, the lie. Feel it. Welcome it back – then release it.
Just let it go. If the tactile sensation of holding something like a pencil, and letting it drop helps with the image, then do that. If an image of kicking it in the butt works for you, do that. The release may feel large or small. It doesn’t matter. It’s still working.
You can repeat Steps 1-3 until you feel the difference. You may notice initially that you may be able to get hold of that fear more strongly on the second try, but as you keep repeating it, you’ll find that it gets weaker.

Step 4
Congratulate yourself. You’ve taken hold of the wheel.
You have just begun steering your life. You have taken control by placing your hands on the wheel. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Step 5
And now… WHAT IF UP? What if “miracles” happened?
Now – play make-believe. Let yourself step into a world where things are different. Without this lie, what would the world be like? See yourself in this new world of absolute peace and power. Dance around in it. Imagine it into being. Feel it.

OK now let’s try it for real. Find one of your favorite fears or frustrated desires. There’s something about you or your life you’d really like to change but that boogieman keeps looming in your thoughts. Got it? OK. Now let’s get quiet. Here we go.

Step 1
Choose to see the fear, or the doubt. Welcome it in.
Let yourself feel it. Bring it fully into your consciousness.
Bring it into the foreground from that semi-present background.
See it. Let it build. Welcome it in.

Step 2
Step back from it. Acknowledge yourself as creator.
You alone are in charge. Everything “out there” is your creation.
See the lie that’s at the core of this discomfort.

Step 3
Look back at the fear, the lie. Feel it – then release it.
Just let it go using whatever image works for you.. The release may feel large or small. It doesn’t matter. It’s still working. Repeat Steps 1-3 until you feel the difference.
Step 4
Congratulate yourself. You have taken hold of the wheel.
You have just begun steering your life. You have taken control by placing your hands on the wheel. Give yourself a pat on the back.

Step 5
And now… WHAT IF UP? What if “miracles” happened?
Now – play make-believe. Let yourself step into a world where things are different. Without this lie, what would the world be like? See yourself in this world of absolute peace and power. Dance around in it. Imagine it into being.
Feel it.
Good
So there you have it – .the shortest version possible of how to create the life you want.

A. Understand the basic principles of life, and they are ..
What you believe, becomes
Nothing is more important than feeling good
Your default state is well being
B. Learn to be aware of how you feel.
C. When you’re feeling bad, stop. Reach for that better feeling thought.
D. Ask yourself .. what do I want NOW?
E. Commit to a routine that bring about change.

If you want an even simpler version than that, just remember this.
Nothing is more important than feeling good, and ..
start to live life within the context of these two questions –
How-do-I-feel? ,, and ,, What-do-I-want-NOW?

Good

Then, inevitably of course, there will those of you who will have questions like ..How can that be? .. and .. Why is it so? You want to know more about how it all works, and we will answer every question you have. The good part of knowing those answers, knowing that it all makes perfect sense, is the confidence it gives you to stay the course. That’s what the rest if this book is about – the radical but elegantly simple truth of who you and how you create everything in your experience.

We encourage you into the knowing that there is nothing you cannot do or be or have. There is nothing you cannot change. Nothing. If you want to take charge of your life, then we are intent on helping you to find and use processes that work for you and get you out of that old lifetime of acquired thought habits. Your “work” is to think differently. Everything is a choice. Choose differently. We want you to be in eager anticipation of all the things you desire, and by being in that place, you step into a different version of you. What shows up next is a different version of the world – a world that is a match to this new you. Once you step through that doorway, there is no going back, and we are with you and we are rejoicing with you, each and every step of the way.