1. Start where you are. It doesn’t do you much good to try to mold yourself into an ideal that is nowhere near your current reality. You will just end up frustrated and discouraged. Instead, realize that you are exactly where you need to be NOW, be honest about where that is, and only then can you decide which direction you’d like to move forward in.
2. Turn down the static. To hear the whispered song of Spirit, you need to turn down the volume on what is distracting you. Think of your mind like a radio receiver, picking up on thoughts from all around. Imagine each of these thoughts playing on a specific station or frequency. Now, imagine that all the stations were playing at the same time, overlapping each other. All you would hear is static. You wouldn’t be able to distinguish what you want to hear from all the other background noise.  Too often, this is how most of us go through our lives – picking up the thought waves of everyone around us by default. Turning down the static is what allows us to hear that quiet inner voice that can guide us towards making the conscious choices that serve us. In order to do this, we need to make it a high priority to find time and space to be alone on a regular basis, even if just for 15 minutes a day.
3. Get clear about what you want. Many of us don’t know what we want – we’ve been so busy responding and reacting to what life throws at us, we haven’t had the time and space to figure it out. Most of us know more about what we don’t want. So start there. Take what you don’t like about your life and turn it around. Look at each area: relationships, finances, family, health, career….and write down how each of these areas would look if you could make it any way you wanted. Play with the possibilities. Don’t worry about how it will happen. Don’t think about whether or not it’s possible. Don’t overwhelm yourself and stress over the details of making this vision a reality. For now, just relax and imagine every aspect of your ideal life.  State your intentions in positive terms (“My health and wellbeing  gets better everyday” rather than “I don’t want to feel bad anymore”)
4. Create short term goals – Keep this simple and focus on one thing at a time. It’s also helpful in the beginning to choose smaller intentions that have immediate payoffs. This will help you stay motivated. Change is hard work, so be gentle with yourself. You are more likely to stick with something if you have some early successes and can see gradual progress. Small baby steps are easier to pull off than grandiose programs that have you overhauling your entire life overnight. Keep it real. When you succeed at the first small intention then you can set another small intention, and another, and so on.
5. Align with your desire – Practice existing in the vibration of what you want to manifest.  You can do this through visualization, role play, creative movement, vision boarding (collage), and open ended “what if” questions. An important point to remember in this step is to keep it feeling fun and easy. You will get your best results when your mind feels relaxed and your heart feels open and joyful. In your mind, go through the experience as if it is happening now. Use all of your senses to literally put yourself into the scene. Get up and actually move your body in coordination with the visualizations.  Ask yourself, “what if this were real now, what would I be doing, how would it look”. Do it now, even if you start by just going through the motions. Your vibration will begin to change, making it easier and easier for you to exist in that feeling.
6. Pay attention to your feelings – Use your feelings as a compass. The better you feel, the more in alignment you are. If you’re trying too hard, your body will feel tense, your mind will feel strained, your heart will feel closed and guarded. Tune into the physical feelings in your body, and also your emotional, mental, and spiritual state of being. If anything feels restricted, make adjustments, move your energy, intend for joy and then listen for your soul’s song to guide you.
7. Be an objective observer of your thought patterns – Approach this as if you are doing research into your own subconscious, as if you are on a “field assignment”, taking notes. If you notice thought patterns that are self-sabotaging and destructive to your intentions, just make a note of it. Just the simple fact that you are aware of it is enough to begin shifting it. The last thing you want to do is to get into a downward spiral of shame and guilt. That is the quickest way to put a complete halt to your growth. Remember there is nobody judging you (except for yourself) – there is no “right” or “wrong” way for you to be. In every instance, you can simply ask yourself – does this thought pattern or behavior serve to bring me closer to attracting what I want or further from it?
8. Take responsibility – Responsibility is the “ability to respond”. We may not have control over all the external forces that influence our lives, but we do have control over how we respond, and how we respond sets the stage for what we will draw into our lives in the future. When painful things happen, we have a choice: we can respond by closing ourselves off OR we can respond by using the painful experience to grow and expand our sense of ourselves and what we are capable of. Responsibility is also about knowing when to make each choice, as both closing down and opening up are appropriate responses and can serve us in different ways.
9. Be honest with yourself & others –Making life changes and unraveling old patterns is challenging work, and it’s normal for your emotions to swing from one extreme to the other (and everywhere in between). Honor yourself and others by expressing the truth of how you’re feeling. Of course, depending on the setting and the company, the depth of what you share may change. Use your intuition to gauge how much to share, when, and with whom. But even in the most superficial of interactions, be as honest as possible. If someone asks how you are and you don’t feel comfortable sharing, find a polite way to say so. If you’re not sure how you feel, express that. If you need time to process something internally, say so. If you need space, ask for your boundaries to be respected. Notice how people start responding to you differently when you are honest about what you need and what you can (and cannot) give them.
   
10. Trust in Divine timing – the process of transformation is unique to each individual. There is no prescribed timetable or predictable sequence of events. It takes as long as it takes. Trust in the process and give yourself the time and the space that is needed. Know that every day, you are one step closer to manifesting the change you desire. Stick with it. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” (Lao Tzu)

~ Rev. Amy Topham, 2008