Thank you for allowing me to be part of your journey to happiness and abundance in this great, big beautiful universe! I want to share with you practical ways to gain immediate results in creating the life you want using the Law of Attraction.

The three steps to the Law of Attraction, as revealed in the movie The Secret, are:

1) Ask the universe for what you want.
2) Believe that it is already yours.
3) Be ready to receive.

Ask and believe, and you shall receive. Seems almost magical, doesn’t it? But, yes, that is how the universe works!

However, if it seems like it works better for some people than others, I’d like to let you in on another secret that will help you lay a strong foundation for allowing the Law of Attraction to move into your life on a deep and profound level.

Finding Your Dot

The key to get to where you’re going is to know where you’re starting from. You need to find the dot that says, “You are here,” just like the dot on the kiosk map in the shopping mall.

Many of us are like hamsters on a treadmill, moving and moving and moving, just for the sake of movement. Yet we never really get anywhere, because we haven’t shifted our mindset.

Before you can change anything—whether your focus is your career, relationships, or financial security—you need to change how you think and what you believe to be so at the very core of your being.

To really understand yourself you have to get outrageously honest. It’s what I call being emotionally buck-naked.

This is a bold self-evaluation or self-assessment. You peel away the layers and take an honest look at yourself. You celebrate yourself—even when it feels uncomfortable. You tell the truth about where you’re falling short—even when it stings.

This is your opportunity to really stop for a moment and notice that every page in your autobiography up until today, this very moment, has already been written upon. However, when you flip to tomorrow and to next week, next month, and next year, those pages are still blank. That’s what is so exciting about the Law of Attraction. You get to write whatever you want on those blank pages. You get to draw it. You get to create it. You get to expect it. You get to live it.

The biggest mistake most people make is that they take the pages of past chapters of their autobiography, cut them out, and paste them in their next chapter. They make their past their future. Just because it’s always been that way, though, doesn’t mean it must be so tomorrow.

The moment you are ready to own your past, the good and bad, the happy and sad, the highs and lows—and everything in between—is the moment you move into the driver’s seat of your life.

How do you gain control of the steering wheel?

The Four-Step Boot Camp

One of the most effective ways to find your “dot” is to have an honest conversation with yourself—face to face. Do this four-step exercise in front a mirror every morning for just seven minutes and you’ll be amazed by what you learn about yourself and how quickly you gain control of where you’re going.

Look into your eyes in the mirror, and only your eyes—not at your hair, or your lips, or your skin, or your body. Breathe deeply for a minute to find your presence, and then complete the following steps, speaking out loud, if you can.

Step 1 – Acknowledge yourself

Begin by evaluating the four areas of your life:

Success – your career, financial health, community involvement

Health – your wellness, vitality, physical appearance

Relationships – to yourself and with others

Spirituality – your relationship with a higher power, the universe, or god

Speak directly to yourself in the mirror and acknowledge yourself. In so doing, you lift yourself up and celebrate your very being. Here’s how I do it:

“Lisa, I’m proud of you. I’m proud that you are playing a little bigger today than you played yesterday and last week. I’m proud that you are stretching yourself. I’m proud that you spent the first hour of the morning with God. I’m proud that you are spending more time with your son. I’m proud that you have chosen to eat healthier. I’m proud that you’ve drawn boundaries for yourself with your family. I’m proud that you made a decision to ask for help…”

Step 2 – Forgive yourself

Next, release your past.

We hold ourselves hostage to so many old thoughts and old regrets, so many should-haves, could-haves, and if onlys. Sometimes it’s at a steady low volume in our heads, like background music; other times we turn the volume up so loud that we can’t hear anything great coming out of ourselves.

People want the Law of Attraction to work in spite of all that negative chatter going on in their heads. But the Law of Attraction is not magic. We all have to go through the process and do the work. There is no shortcut. There is no magic wand to remove our negative experiences.

Those experiences are part of you. It’s your job to learn how to love yourself and expect the best for yourself, regardless of what’s happened. The Law of Attraction is about shifting from all those places of negativity to possibility.

I’ve lived in those dark places. Do I slip up? You bet! I often feel myself lacing up the old boxing gloves and beating myself up. But as soon as I feel the first blow, I immediately take the gloves off, embrace myself, and apologize. In the mirror I tell myself, “I love you. I forgive you.” Then I move on.

And, no, it isn’t easy, especially when you’re dealing with deep-seated hurts and abuses from the past. For example, for years I turned to a lot of men for sex while looking for a little love, but I didn’t find any love because I was not loving myself.

I had let the abuses of my past define me. I had to work through my forgiveness every day until one day it didn’t come up anymore. You’ll know when you’ve worked through something, because it will no longer be an issue when you look in the mirror.

The best thing you can do is process it out. Once addressed, it will simply be a part of your history, not part of you. It doesn’t make you who you are anymore. You clean it out to make more space for all the goodness and the greatness that’s on its way to you. This allows the Law of Attraction to move into your life on a more profound level.

Step 3 – Determine where you need improvement

Next, take an honest assessment of the improvements you need to make in yourself to attract what you want. This can be sobering as well. You don’t get something because of luck. You get something because you’ve shown up and you are ready for it to come.

For me, every morning goes something like this:

“I need improvement in prioritizing my schedule to invest more in my physical health by working out. I need improvement in drawing better boundary lines inside my family. I need improvement in spending more quality time with my mother and grandmother…”

Be honest with yourself, because you’re laying important groundwork here.

Step 4 – Make a commitment

In this step you’re really designing the next chapter of your life. You’re telling the universe, this is what I’m committed to doing.

For example, “I’m committed to riding my bike at least three days a week, I’m committed to keeping my boundaries. I’m committed to finishing my book by June…”

This is your bridge to the Law of Attraction. You begin to speak the possibility inside your commitment. You’re finding the dot that says, “You are here.”

You’ve gone through your own personal boot camp. You’ve achieved a deep level of intimacy—“into me I see.” You’ve filled your own tank with love. You’ve built yourself up physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Now, you ask the universe to make your commitment happen. But don’t think your work is over.

Breaking the Myth

The biggest myth people have about the Law of Attraction is that you simply ask for something, make yourself a cup of tea, sit back, cross your legs, and just wait for the genie to appear, but this is not a passive process.

There is no part about the Law of Attraction that says be still. You have to be in action about what you want. You’ve committed to creating something, and the universe gives you the creative ideas and the resources to act and make it happen.

When you bump into the right person at the right time, it’s up to you to follow up and call them back. When the universe sends you an idea for a new book, it’s up to you to begin writing.

You are an active participant in your life, an active participant with the universe. In fact, you will probably become even more active because the Law of Attraction will bring you more opportunities than you ever dreamed.

Mini Boot Camps

I strongly recommend you consistently do the mirror exercise every morning to pave the way for the Law of Attraction to work more profoundly in your life. However, you can also do mini boot camps throughout your day.

For instance, when you’re driving home from work and waiting for a red light to change, take a moment to look in the rear view mirror and quickly congratulate yourself for a positive action you took at the office or forgive yourself for a negative comment you made during a meeting.

At home remind yourself in the hallway mirror what you’re committed to. Give yourself quick snippets of support throughout your day to keep your tank full of love.

Design Your Destiny

Remember, the Law of Attraction is obedient to your thoughts. It is always working in your favor. Your job is to get ready, to be whole and complete in you so that when the universe responds you get absolutely everything you desire.

You get to write your next chapter. You get to write it with full expression, with full acceptance, and with full expectation.

People have asked me, “Can you believe you’re on the Oprah show?”

With all humility I say, Why not? Why not me?!

Why not that little girl from south-central L.A, who grew up in the midst of gangs, who didn’t look like any beauty queen, who couldn’t find any beauty in herself. Why not that little girl who was considered academically challenged? Why not that young woman who was so desperate for love that she picked wrong and almost lost her life? Why not the single mother who craves for the best possible outcome for her son, an African-American male child with no father around?

The question is not “Why you?” The question is “Why not you?!”

You have been given the most perfect life with the most perfect experiences. God didn’t say everything in your life is going to be served with warm cookies and milk. But he did say that you have a right to come out of everything you go through. You have a birthright to abundance and prosperity.

The universe knows it, and it’s up to you to know it.

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