Imagineering Your Future

Dear Fellow Writer,

OMG, it's the end of the week again!

Did you achieve your weekly writing goals? I hope so. Every little helps.

Try not to judge yourself on your daily word output. Rather add up all you did in a week - and divide that number by five. That should make you feel better!

This week I wrote 10,000 words for my new novel, Purge, bringing it to 31,500, about half way through the first draft.

All well and good but I realized I'd left out quite a bit of story that will need to be added next week - before I carry on with the second half of the book.

Some of my Amazon Kindle books are currently selling for around the ONE DOLLAR mark.

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I've also put up an interview on my author page at Amazon.

Keep writing! 

Imagineering Your Future

Imagineering Your Future

People often ask me about effective goal-setting in relation to a writing career. 

Where do you start?

Well, what you have to remember about any kind of planning is that, to ensure success, it must be an emotional experience. It's not enough to merely make a list of 'things to do' without any kind of attachment to what you're planning. You must go deeper: to connect your desires with the subconscious.

Your subconscious mind is a fabulous place. Not only does it have a clear recollection of everything you've ever done, seen, heard, smelled, dreamed, read and experienced, it has the ability to regard the past, present and future as a single point in time.

Now.

This means that the subconscious cannot distinguish between what has happened and what will happen. It sees all kinds of images simultaneously, most of which are shielded from our conscious minds for practical reasons: we wouldn't be able to focus on much of anything if we were constantly bombarded by everything in our brains. The conscious mind is the dam, whereas the subconscious is a vast reservoir of dreams, reality, emotions, experiences, possibilities, hopes, fears and, yes, visions of your own future.

It is therefore imperative to fantasize about your future, in as much detail as possible.

When you use your imagination to create strong, sensory-filled images, the subconscious mind cannot tell whether these are real or not. Hence, when your mind thinks about a situation and tries to make sense of it, it will give as much weight to fantasy as it does to reality.

Think of your goals as beacons. The stronger the light, the easier the beacons are to see through the darkness of your intentions. When the subconscious is aware that you are consciously interested in reaching these beacons, it will help you. And the more you visualize your perfect life, the more energy your mind will put into helping you pull those goals closer - and manifest that perfect life in your present: the now of the subconscious.

Got that? So before you do any planning, you need to do some serious daydreaming!

It's not necessary to formalize this process. Many sources suggest meditation or at least sitting or lying down with your eyes closed and then visualizing a perfect, alternate future.

However, in my experience, (and Einstein's) it's simply enough to idly daydream while doing anything or nothing in particular. The real trick is to have fun with it.

Rather than just imagine the future you want, you should try to attach emotions to the images you create. Good emotions: happiness, joy, elation, satisfaction, pride. Make your emotions so real you can feel your heart pumping in anticipation. This works because these happy, fun, emotion-charged images are the ones that the subconscious gets most attached to - and regards as most relevant to you.

Think about it. When we were growing up, we thought about our futures and how great things would be when we were allowed out on our own, when we were free. We then spent our twenties full of expectation, basically trying to re-create the joy we thought was going to be ours. The problem is that most of us are taught not to believe in our dreams and, over time, we are essentially forced to learn to 'accept reality.'

However, there are those of us who never do 'face reality' and go on to achieve their dreams - and these people become the ones we most admire: actors, writers, musicians, directors, composers, and celebrities in general.

The difference between them and the rest of us is simple: they never gave up.

Artistically successful people keep believing, usually against all the odds.

And if you want to change your life now, no matter what age you are, you must simply engender that same naive faith in what's possible that you had in your younger days. Or, if you've never felt that way about life, learn now to live with a new-found expectation of so-called irrational, unrealistic futures that are possible simply because you can imagine them.

Do that now. Often. Make it a habit.

Every day spend as much time as you like imagining your perfect future.

See everything in vivid detail: where you want to live, how much you want to earn, what house and car you will have, what the weather will be, what your friends will be like, everything you will be doing to fill each and every day. Make it fun and exciting. Make it perfect. Make it blissful. Make it real.

And as a writer, of course, you will want to write all this down.

But here's another aspect of this practice that you should know: that it's NOT the focus or the energy or the compelling nature of your visualizations that is the essential component of this process. Far from it. It's letting go of your future's importance to you that really counts.

Feverishly holding on to visions of a wonderful future is not what gets you there. It's the lighthearted playfulness you feel when fantasizing that takes you much further.

Comparing your current reality to your future dream life tends to bring about worry. And worry pushes back your future. You must visualize enthusiastically, yes, but you must not overly concern yourself with specific, time-stamped outcomes.

That doesn't work. 

What works is the development of an overwhelming certainty in the face of no real evidence. And by 'development' I mean letting go of worry, impatience, negativity and frustration.

Only then are you in the right space to allow positive things to happen for you.

It's a trick you play on your mind, to be sure. But it works - and it gets easier and more effective with practice. 

Having faith this technique works is just that - an act of faith - and no amount of rationalization will create it or interfere with it, once you understand how these things work.

So dream and dream big whenever you like and then just relax and let go, sure in the knowledge that your ideal future is coming, simply because you can make it so.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell

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