ATTRACTING WHAT YOU BELIEVE
"Thoughts Become Things."
~ Mike Dooley

12-Step Programs – How They Demonstrate the Importance of Belief and the Power of the Law of Attraction

Our last newsletter shared several tips for how to change your beliefs to support better manifesting. This week we’ll share more insights on the power of belief, and take a look at what 12-Step Programs can teach us about the Law of Attraction.

Have you ever attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting or studied their literature? They have a book called “Came to Believe,” full of true first-person accounts by alcoholics who miraculously lost their desire to drink after years of heavy substance abuse. AA teaches that you can and will lose your taste for booze if you ask your Higher Power to take away the desire. And their halls are full of people who’ve proven it.

The Upside

What is the mysterious magic that makes AA work for so many addicts, whom no one else has helped? A lot of it has to do with the power of belief. You come to a meeting and meet dozens of people who used to have the problem you do and who have been cured. This gives you confidence that a miracle could also happen to you.

When you take that increased belief and combine it with a request to your Higher Power to remove your desire for the substance, you reprogram your subconscious, kicking out the old attitudes that made you want to imbibe and replacing them with healthy ones. The old programming may not be completely dissolved and can show its face every now and again, but if the new programming is strong and deep enough, the old urges are faint and rare in occurrence.

The AA model has been copied by thousands groups of people suffering from other addictions, and all report the same kind of success. Whether it’s alcohol, desserts, cigarettes, or compulsive shopping, coming to believe in the power of something greater than your everyday conscious mind allows that something greater to make the deep change needed for a healing.

The Downside

AA and 12-Step Programs in general have been criticized, though, for making their people dependent on them. Critics argue that dependence on a substance is replaced with a dependence on group meetings. Members are commonly told that they will always be sick and that they only have been granted a tenuous remission. They’re commonly told that if they don’t attend at least four meetings a week, they will fall back into their old habits.

This talk of eternal sickness and eternal need for the group creates new subconscious beliefs in members, that if they leave the program they’ll go back to their old ways. And sure enough, those who leave typically do. That, of course, convinces the remaining group members that the warning was correct, reinforcing their fear and dependence.

The Breakthrough

But there are people who’ve left the program and managed to stand up without the aid of the group. They did this by understanding why 12-Step Programs work: because the teachings generate belief that their habit will disappear, opening the door for that which is deeper than conscious mind to dissolve it. These people succeeded in rooting out disempowering beliefs they picked up in the program. They came to believe there was a level of consciousness – their subconscious mind – that was totally capable of correcting every wrong in their life. Their conscious mind had only to request it, expect it, and await the result.

It was not necessary to say that they were powerless, or to attend repetitive meetings. They only had to understand that the Higher Self within them did not depend on anything outside itself to keep them upright. If they told themselves they’d always be sick, then sick they always would be. If they told themselves they were whole and complete by the power of the divine working within them, they would grow well and strong.

Such people throw out the bath water, not the baby. They know the AA founders stumbled upon a universal truth. Through their knowledge of the Law of Attraction, these former addicts are able to toss out the limiting beliefs they learned and self-determine what they desire. They’re no longer driven by subconscious hankerings or the haunting fear of backsliding.

How It Applies to You

You don’t have to be an addict to get the message such courageous people demonstrate. The same principles apply to changing anything we don’t like in our lives – any habit we don’t want, any negative behavior. You ordain, through affirmations and visualization, the new behavior desired. You ordain that desire for the bad will dissolve, that desire for the good will take its place. You trust that subconscious mind is fully capable of erasing your old belief/ thought pattern and replacing it with the healthy one you prescribe. You keep dropping these messages into your deeper mind, tweaking your affirmations to address any and all of your doubts, and presto – one day the bad desire has disappeared.

We have a friend who lost 138 pounds through Overeaters Anonymous. She was one of 20 people in her group to lose over 100 pounds. After two years with the group, she felt she was dependent and addicted to the group, and her constant fear of backsliding made her feel divided and weak. So she left, and promptly gained back three-quarters of the weight. It took her several years to eliminate her negative programming (at the time she was not adept at affirmation and how to change her thoughts), but once she cleared herself of the destructive thought patterns, her weight loss program took off. She now reports she has the same moderate level of desire for food she experienced while during her membership in OA, but without the group dependence and constant fear. If she can do this, so can the rest of us. These are universal principles operating here.

Manifesting Change: A Way to Wipe Out Limiting Beliefs

Last week we mentioned the latest course our family has taken in the Law of Attraction: Mike Dooley’s Manifesting Change. It’s a set of 12 CDs that grows your belief in yourself and your ability to have what you wish for. It explains many fine points about the Law of Attraction, places where people get hung up, and how to correct ourselves.

We have this course to thank for a new level in our daily energy, because one of the things Mike talks about is that. He tells how he used to always say, “I’m so tired,” and that he was always tired, even though he was only a young man. His girlfriend commented on it, and he got the idea that maybe he was tired because he was always saying he was.

So he stopped mentioning his tiredness to people and started telling himself, several times a day, “I am filled with energy and vitality. I perform my tasks today with vigor, joy and enthusiasm.” Then everything changed for him.

We have tried these affirmations for several weeks now and are amazed at the new levels of energy and productivity we’re experiencing. We’re not getting tired the way we used to, and doing routine chores actually feels enjoyable most of the time. That’s very different from a few months ago, when there seemed to be no time to do everything and we felt weighted down with responsibilities. Now work just seems fun!

The tiredness story is only a ten-minute segment of the 12 hours of Mike Dooley material, but we share it as an example of how this course was helpful to us. The CDs also reminded us that the Law of Attraction can and should be used to change things within ourselves that are causing suffering and problems in our life. So often we think of the LOA as a tool to bring us “stuff,” but it’s so much more.

Mike’s course comes with a money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose if it’s not exactly what you wanted. But we would be surprised if anyone asked for the refund. This product jump-started our engines, and we think it will do the same for you. Visit Mike Dooley’s website to learn more about the content of Manifesting Change.

Wishing all our readers expanding wealth, fun, and every kind of gladness!

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