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One of the most important aspects of Law of Attraction and manifesting is Taking Inspired Action. While The Secret originally offered the idea that really all we needed to do was Think, Believe and Receive, the universe doesn’t quite function so simplistically. In reality, daydreaming about what you want and then doing nothing about it really amounts to nothing more than fantasy. Now — don’t get me wrong — I’m not advocating working 24/7/365 at the expense of your wellbeing to achieve your goals. Not at all! I am, however, conscious that if we want to create something bigger and better than what we’re experiencing now, we need to put forth some effort.

The good news is that it can essentially be boiled down into five easy steps that will bring you closer to realizing your dreams.

Step 1: Five Actionable Items

An actionable item is something you can do straight away with little to no preparation. If you’re used to doing To-Do lists or David Allen’s Getting Things Done process, you’ll already be familiar with having things that you can do right away. In GTD, this would usually be something that takes two minutes or less to accomplish, but we can be a little less strict and just say that if it’s something you can finish relatively easily and quickly, it’s actionable.

Doing five actionable items daily is the very definition of taking baby steps towards your goals. From the perspective of creating healthy habits, doing these actionable items daily for 21 days will help create and anchor a positive habit that will be with you for the rest of your life.

Step 2: Committing Time Daily

When it comes to fulfilling our dreams, we want to ensure that we put some work into it each and every day. Fans of Abraham-Hicks will know that holding a thought for 17 seconds kickstarts the Law of Attraction. At 68 seconds, manifesting begins to be realized. In the same vein, we want to commit a certain amount of time each and every day to realizing our particular goal. For example, maybe you’re a super-busy business person, so you might only be able to commit to learning guitar for 10 minutes each day. Fair enough! Put it into your schedule and try hard to keep it up. Perhaps, however, you have somewhat more time and you feel as though you can commit to 30 minutes/day. Do it!

It may feel limiting or stifling your freedom to schedule your work in this fashion, but in recognition of how our brains work, it’s actually more freeing to schedule such tasks. That’s because of how our brains work. We’re designed to task switch, not multi-task. Moreover, our memories are great for short-term recall, but not so great at keeping long-term memories immediately available. Our brains work best with short-term recall and long-term storage. Stuff that we need to remember for days or weeks get archived and, as such, may get forgotten because we don’t work in that archival memory space. When we’re thinking and processing, we’re working in short-term memory.

So, as an adjunct to Step 2, I’m going to sneak in a side-benefit and suggest that instead of trying to keep all the stuff you want to do in your mind and remember them, write everything down! Once it’s written down, put into a calendar or a reminder app, you can forget about it until you get that ding that says, “Hey! It’s time for you to do X now!” Combined with committing time, this is a one-two punch for both productivity and freedom.

Step 3: Do A Good Deed

In a Law of Attraction world, we reap what we sow. When we do good deeds without the baggage of anticipation for a reward, the universe tends to spread good deeds back to us. And often we wind up receiving more than we’ve done. In my experience, literally nothing brings good things to you like doing good things for others. And, wow, just how good it feels, right!? I’ve literally run over to help a wobbly senior cross the street as she got caught out by a red light part way across. I held up traffic and walked her slowly to the other side. At the sidewalk, I got a smile and a bow out of her that melted my heart and kept me smiling for a long time afterward.

Bonus points if you break out the retro “FREE HUGS!” signs at a busy, public park. It’s pretty much guaranteed that any of those people who come for hugs really, really need them. And when it comes to hugs, everybody wins.

Step 4: Write!

Writing is important for a number of reasons. Many of you will no doubt be familiar with journaling as a means of processing things past, present and future. Writing helps to clarify where you’ve been, where you are and where you wish to go. From a biological perspective, writing builds new neural pathways that strengthen the anchors of your new thought patterns. When you write down something you were previously thinking about, you’re literally in the process of creating new beliefs. Remember: Beliefs are nothing more than thoughts you’ve repeated sufficiently to accept as true.

When we study with visual, auditory and kinaesthetic approaches, we create new neural pathways, but we also strengthen the ones that already exist. By doing so, we create a matrix of relationships in the brain that recall the same data from many different perspectives. The more complex these relationships, the more stable the memories/beliefs/behaviours themselves. Writing not only announces/repeats your intention to the universe, it builds up those pathways in the brain that strengthens your resolve to achieve your goals.

Step 5: Be Creative!

It doesn’t matter whether you express your creativity by building a delicious sandwich (bonus points for being healthful) or riffing on your favourite guitar. Spend time each and every day creating and getting those juices flowing. As you explore your creativity, the universe will offer inspiration on how you can expand your creativity and show you opportunities to which you may avail yourself to get closer to your goals. Additionally, as we explore our creative side, we will naturally be inspired to come up with creative ideas that enable us to be more effective in our work and our manifesting.

Much love to you all. Have fun taking those steps!

trane @ Living Intentionally