Now that a new year is upon us, it’s time to make a fresh start. Don’t let this year be the same as last. Make this a year of opportunity by using the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction isn’t some hocus pocus psycho-babble; it is a proven belief pattern that has been utilized by successful people throughout the ages. Today, science is discovering that the way we think shapes our reality; our beliefs and attitudes make impressions upon our brains. These impressions, in turn, cause “ruts” or patterns which dictate how we view life: do we expect abundance, or do we expect scarcity? Do we see events as opportunities, or do we discount them altogether, missing yet another opportunity/chance?

Granted, it’s easy to keep traveling along in our well worn patterns or ruts. They’re the paths of least resistance, and to break out of them and create new patterns is scary and difficult. As they say, better the devil you know than the one you don’t. However, making new paths that will lead to realizing your dreams is worth the effort. Why stay in self-defeating patterns? They only lead to a life of regret.

By using the Law of Attraction, you will create new patterns that are not ruts; they’ll lead to opportunities to break free. You need to be open to the belief that you can attract what you most want – be it prosperity, contentment, better health, a better job, or a better relationship. By thinking and believing in the Law of Attraction, opportunities will surround you.

Like all New Year’s resolutions, incorporating the Law of Attraction into your daily life won’t be easy. You’ll have to learn a whole new way of thinking – a way of thinking that will manifest what you most desire. Are you ready?

Opportunity is going to knock on your door in 2010. Will you hear it? And will you get out of your rut and answer?

Hero worship, we all indulge in it. We all have people we look up to it. People who we think can do no wrong. We place these people on a pedestal. We think very highly of them and are greatly offended if they are spoken against.

Ten years ago the heroes would have been political leaders, war veterans, inventors, scientists, royalty or social workers. Today we worship actors, singers, super models, socialites and anyone else who may be a minor celebrity. Some of these “so called” celebrities are truly not worthy of such worship. They are shallow, tactless and sometimes even lack general intelligence or at least that is the image they like to put across.

Then there are celebrities like Oprah Winfrey who deserve to be looked up to. I do not take issue with the fact that we worship these people, simply because they are famous and live glamorous lives, my concern is that we aren’t worshiping something that is real. I understand that heroes are never really what we think they are. We can never know the real people, but at least the hero’s of yester year had a real core. We could back up the image we created with actual work that they did. Some of the newer batches of heroes seem to have attained their status just for being who they are.

It irks me that most people today cannot find role models that have true achievements to their name. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder, if a person inspires you, gives you confidence and encourages you to be better, does it really matter who they are and what they have done? Does a hero really need to be heroic to inspire us, or is us simply thinking of him/her as heroic enough for inspiration to come?

It’s good to think big. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get to the highest possible station in life. The problem is that when hopes are high, so are fears. There is fear because there is a chance of failure, a possibility of losing something. Some people are able to rise above this fear and go after their dreams with full gusto.

Most of us are cowered. We lose our breath. We get paralyzed with doubt. Are we capable? Are we delusional? Are we stupid to dream? Should we face reality? These are some of the questions that start to bother us. We get so profoundly affected by our own insecurities that we start to see obstacles where no obstacles exist. We are, after all, only human.

Anyone would have doubts in their abilities if they were dropped at the foot of Mt. Everest and told to climb to the peak. Instead of looking at the peak and unnecessarily pressurizing yourself, I suggest that you look lower. Aim for the first crest you can see, or the first stone in your path, or the rock a few feet away. Start by moving towards that particular goal. Forget about where you have to go from there. Once you’ve reached the first rock, then you can aim for the second and once you’ve reached the second you can aim for the third and so on and so forth.

By reducing your expectations, you reduce the pressure on yourself. This makes it easier for you to visualize yourself living up to those expectations. Aim for the mountains and you’ll at least hit the treetops, aim for the clouds and you’ll at least be in the mountains, aim for the stars and you’ll at least reach the clouds. One step at a time, always aim one step higher that you need to go.

Technology has been developing at a staggering rate. In recent times, technological developments have started to outpace even the most active imaginations. Today, most manufacturing processes have been automated. Assembly lines have become common place. The importance of human labor in the manufacturing process has become almost negligent. We have gone from being the hands that made the goods, to being the eye that watches goods being made.

Technology has made a huge impact on our daily lives as well. We have vacuum cleaners to do our cleaning. Dish washers and washing machines, to wash our clothes and vessels. We have doors that sense our arrival and open on their own, chairs that adjust themselves to suit our postures. Japan is even inventing a machine that helps people walk. With so much being done for us, I can’t help but wonder what will we do? We don’t have to cook, just pop a meal in the microwave. We don’t have to walk; we have cars, busses, trains, mopeds, scooters and a number of other machines to take us places.

With newer technologies emerging every day to make our lives easier, will manual labor become obsolete? There are technologies in the pipeline that will even make it unnecessary for us to plug in our devices to charge them. If machines take care of everything, what will we do? Sure there will be some machines that will need to be taken care of, but how many people would be required to take care of them? These people would need technical training, and not all of us were made to deal with wires and chips. So, what happens to the rest of us?

There may come a time when all humanity will have to do is keep itself entertained. The question is; is such a time really something that we should be hoping for?

Do you have hope for the future? If you don’t, you should! Hope is a crucial first step in building a better future. Make that hope realistic by believing in a positive future for yourself. Believe that good things are coming your way. Know that you deserve it. You really do. If you don’t believe that, then you have another step to work on – acceptance of your inherent worthiness.

Since you are wondrously made, isn’t it only natural to believe you deserve to live a satisfying and contented life? The universe is open to you! Just ask and, with the right thought patterns, you will receive.

Sounds simple, right? Well, yes and no. The key is “right thought patterns.” Those thought patterns mean being positive in all your thoughts, whether it be your self talk or your visualizations. Thinking positively can be difficult, especially if you’ve grown up with a lot of negativity surrounding you. In order to think positive, you will have to make a concerted effort to do so. It takes practice, as well as setting aside time each and every day to practice that underused “muscle.” Once you have mastered positive thinking, you will have hope for the future. And having hope will lead to bigger and better things: the manifestations of your dreams. Pretty soon you’ll be thinking: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades!”

Hope for the future. Build for the future, and believe in that future you so richly deserve! And get some good sunglasses while you’re at it. *wink*

The universe is constantly moving. It is constantly doing things with or without your consent. Stock markets collapse, people get promoted, people get fired. The world spins madly on. It may all look like chaos, it may look like a mess, but the fact is that there is a pattern; we are just too small to see it.

Life gives you a choice, you can either roll with the punches or you can stand up for yourself and fight. We lose so many opportunities because we don’t have the courage to seize them. We are afraid of failure and we are even afraid of our own greatness, so we sit back and let opportunity pass us by. We could have had a great love with our first crush, we could have gotten that big promotion in the office, but we don’t, because we never asked. We never asked our crush how they felt, we never asked our superiors to consider us for a higher position or we never turned that idea into a business.

Then we complain. We never got what we feel we deserved. We never got what we didn’t ask for, what we didn’t fight for. Of course we don’t put it in those words. We say that life is unfair, that we are undervalued, that we are unlucky.

I believe that life isn’t something that just happens to us. We make our lives what they are by our actions and our inactions. We are the ones to blame. We are not puppets dancing to the beat of a puppet master. We are individuals capable of shaping our own destinies. We are responsible for our own choices.

If your life is not what you want it to be, then that is because you aren’t surrendering and doing enough. It’s easy to place blame on external factors. That is our coping mechanism. The truth is that we don’t have the things we want, simply because we never asked.

Every human being has desires. It’s the way we’re built. We want things. It’s easy for other animals that know what they want and just go for it. It gets much more complicated when humans are concerned. We constantly want new things and we tend to remember things. See, we were given the ability to think; we were given a brain.

As we grow up we go after certain things we want. Sometimes things don’t go so well. We either fail or are made fun of or we get scared or embarrassed. If we didn’t have a brain that remembered, then we would have simply picked ourselves and tried once more. Unfortunately, we do remember and so we don’t just try again. We try to come up with a different way to get what we want or we find a substitute for our desires or we convince ourselves that we don’t want that particular thing.

Another drawback of having a brain is that we attach ideas to people. Sometimes these are good ideas, but most of the time they are just ridiculous. We believe that a person is cool because he acts in a certain way. We think someone is better than us because she already has the things we want. We think that the people we look up to are infallible.

It gets worse. Once we get these ridiculous ideas into our heads, we try to emulate them. We try to act in certain ways and we try to be infallible. We deny ourselves the things we desire because they don’t fit in with an image in our head; an image that we created for ourselves.

In the end most of us are walking around in disguise, wearing masks. Pretending to be someone we are not. We are tied down by our fears and insecurities. I think it is time to unmask ourselves and take a good look at who we really are.