Debugging Life – Looking Through the Mirror of Reality

I’ve gone through some debugging lately. That’s what programmers do when their software does not do what they want it to do. They write the program and watch what it does on the screen. When what they see on the screen isn’t right, they “debug” their code, finding and correcting errors until what they see on the screen is exactly what they want.

The term “debugging” came from the early days of computers when computers where large electrical machines that used switches to run binary calculations. One time, engineers were getting errors in their results but couldn’t find anything wrong in their program. They then checked their switches and found a bug squashed in one of their relays. The squashed bug caused the switch to fail resulting in the error.

Life also has software.

It’s our belief system.

Reality, our outer world, is the monitor through which we determine if our software is giving us what we want. The outer Reality is our computer monitor.

What really drives life is not the conscious beliefs we have. It’s the really deep, ingrained beliefs that are the result of social, religious, work and peer programming.

These are the beliefs we don’t even realize we have because they have become part of our nature. These took years of reinforcement with line after line of code embedded within our subconscious with each emotional experience. It becomes who we are and determines our actions and motivations.

It is the core of our magnetic experience.

I may want to have a million dollars but if I believe deeply and unconsciously that I don’t deserve the money, I will either never get the million, or if I did, I would blow the million in a few months as my “software” corrects the “anomalous” reality. The belief may have been caused by advise from authority figures, from religious teachings, or even from a childhood full of lost dreams.

While I have many beliefs in my system that need to be replaced by more beneficial beliefs, I have lately been struggling with this one particular belief.

That is that belief that what happens to me in life is because of either fate or because of things outside my control. (This sounds strange coming from someone who writes about the Law of Attraction. But it is this ingrained belief that drives me to search for the path to freedom.)

It is based on years of believing I was a victim! I was a victim of an angry and judging God! It was my parent’s fault that I am so introverted. It was my grandfather’s fault that I’m not good at business. It is my company’s fault that they don’t need my particular skills. It is always somebody’s fault.

This is a very troubling belief because, by believing I am a victim of fate and outside influence, I endanger my own happiness. By embracing a victim mentality, I continue to make myself a victim and invite others to victimize me as well.

But, at the same time, I have had many empowering experiences and during those experiences, I felt completely in control.

The belief comes up when I encounter something new and risky – like a business venture!

I make excuses why I’m so bad at business. I’m like my grandfather who was a great politician but a terrible business person. I have to work full-time. I’m an introvert and I don’t like socializing. I don’t like economics. I don’t think of money a lot. I’m a mental person not a hardware person. I don’t like to delve in details. I want to do something creative, not just make money!

It’s just a whole bunch of excuses other than one true thing – that I’m scared of losing a steady income on a risky venture. I have bought into the statistic that most businesses fail! Even before I started, I had expected to fail.

I recently reinforced this belief by finding out that I am an INFJ in the Meyers-Briggs personality type list, one of the worst personality types when it comes to business. This is one of the personalities with the “victim” mentality. By buying into the Meyers-Briggs personality category, I just reinforced this particular line of code.

I find rules, follow them blindly, and justify my actions based on those rules. I read articles in the internet and take them as “fact”. (Everything in the internet has to be true, right?) I subscribe to “rules” of marketing, networking, blogging, grammar, relationships, work and even compensation.

My whole life has been governed by rules and I’m, frankly, tired of it.

Rules have done nothing more than make me conform and accept an internal programming that has been written and debugged by someone else for their benefit. By my accepting their internal software, I accept a whole bunch of bugs as well because they just ain’t me! (Yes, I said ain’t).

It’s like running Apple software in a Microsoft computer! Software run in the wrong hardware comes with a million bugs!

So I’m debugging.

I will follow the rules that make sense for me and I’ll make my own if need be.

I’ve only just begun. I have a whole lifetime worth of debugging to do. It is never too late.

The nice thing is, when I fix a bug, I expect to see the change instantly on the screen of life. Life is my monitor. If life is right, then the bug is fixed. If life is not quite right, then there is a switch that needs a little bit of cleaning.

I guess I’ll be talking about cleaning a few more switches in the future.

Law of Attraction Testimonial – The Secret Treasure Within Your Personality

I took the Myers-Briggs test again. I turned out to be an INFJ personality which stands for Introversion (I), Intuition (N), Feeling (F) and Judging (J). The Myers-Briggs system classifies this type of personality as the “Protector”.

This was actually nothing new. I took this test a long time ago but I didn’t like being labeled as a non-aggressive and emotional so I ignored it. I was told success goes to the Type A, logical personality. I wanted to succeed and get the promotions and money! I wanted to be seen as a go-getter!

I had to be really honest with myself this time. I was taught that aggressive, Type A personalities win in this world. All the other personality tests I have taken put me in the same category as the Myers-Briggs test and I tried to deny that I was truly an INFJ. I thought that being an INFJ was a success killer.

I took another test in which the personalities were described in colors – red for fiery leaders, yellow for cheerful and personable people, blue for the logical analyst and green for the friendly and non-aggressive. I turned out to be green. So does being “green” take me out of the running for success?

The last ten years of my career have been the most satisfying. I changed my outlook in work from one where corporate money and success were key to one where thoughts, ideas and creativity reigned.

I took a position that was aligned with who I truly was. I embraced that fact that I was a thinker, a creative, someone who loved to work alone, who needed to understand how things worked, and one who could lose himself in puzzles and mysteries.

I was right-brained but I also exhibited strong left-brained tendencies by making plans, checklists and being quite expert in mathematical analysis. I avoided stress by doing things well ahead of time so I would never rush. I was always early, never late.

In other words, I really was an INFJ.

For a long time, I thought I had to be an extroverted analyst to succeed in the engineering world.

Yet, over the last ten years, despite being a non-aggressive, “anti-social”, thinker, idealist, intuitive problem solver, I found myself at the top of the engineering world in my company.

So, I didn’t have to be someone else’s idea of the “successful personality” after all to be happy and successful.

I just needed to be true to myself!

Any personality type can succeed and attract all the trappings of success by first embracing their unique skills and mindsets. For within each mindset is the secret of success, success that is unique for each person, if they are willing to allow themselves to be so.

Each person is a genius in their own field. Ask a genius musician to build a rocket and failure is sure to occur.

It is here that I am cautious when counseling others, especially those just starting their careers. My way isn’t your way. Your success is particular to your make-up. Your special powers come from the type of person you are. I am an emotional thinker. You could be a practical doer!

The Type A person can’t help being Type A and becomes aggravated when told to sit down and think! The thinker hates to be pushed for a decision without being given the time to actually think. The doer doesn’t want to waste time analyzing and the analyst needs to “do the numbers” before committing to a critical action.

Each one of us is most magnetic when we allow ourselves to be what we truly are despite what the world says we should do to achieve success.

Does that mean we only attract to ourselves those of similar personalities? Not necessarily. Our uniqueness is what makes us important. Just because I’m not the fiery leader that many people admire doesn’t mean that my input is not valuable. In fact, my success comes from my intuitive faculty. I can see in my head what’s going to happen if you do step A, and I can read how people feel when event B happens.

I complement fiery leadership rather than displace it. I have my own fun role to play. I have embraced the person that I am. My stress level has gone down because I no longer strive to follow other people’s idea of what I should do. I can do things my way while allowing others the freedom to do things in their own special way.

And what’s even better? I attract easy and fun work. Even now things are changing so that more fun work, possibly outside my current source of income, is coming my way.

I have even demoted money as the most important goal of life. Money never made me happy. Don’t get me wrong! Money is important! I don’t find poverty appealing by any means. I can’t think properly when my bank account drops to near zero. But thinking, creating, and solving puzzles make time pass quickly and happily. Then the money comes anyway!

Don’t listen to me!

Follow your heart. Be who you are. And you will attract your own treasure.

Law of Attraction Testimonial – The Opportune Moment for Dreams To Come True

Perhaps the hardest thing one deals with in the Law of Attraction is time. As much as we want our wishes to come true right now, some things have to age properly to meet our expectations. The grander the dream, the more time is necessary.

Because of today’s technology, we are becoming used to immediate gratification. Unfortunately, the Universe doesn’t always grant immediate gratification. Sometime, a little time and patience is necessary.

My engineering career began with a dream in the 60’s. That was a time when man was embarking on a daring journey to the Moon. As a small boy, I was fascinated by the power of a rocket launch and the magical serenity of the stars as viewed from space.

I wanted to be a rocket man.

Perhaps that was my motivation for taking chemical engineering in college. Among all the engineering disciplines, this offered the promise of creating fire and thrust by the loud chemical reaction of two liquids. It was a pathway for me to build the chariots to the Moon.

In my last year of college, I still had the dream. I grew up and went to school in a Third World country. There were no such things as rockets. The energies of education were geared towards the necessities of life – food, oil, pottery, soap, etc.

As I declared to my classmates that I wanted to work on rockets, I was laughed at! I became a laughing-stock. I was the dreamer, the guy who would never do anything practical. What a fool!

That was when I stopped talking about my dreams. It’s hard enough to believe that one’s dreams can come true, but let one person ridicule that dream and your spirit just comes crashing down. Then the dream is thrown away and forgotten.

So what does one do? Do something practical! After all, that is what engineering is all about. So I made soap!

I lasted about six months. My first employer gave me the option to leave the company rather than get fired. Of course, I took the option and realized my own mental make-up was not compatible with the industries available where I lived. I wanted to be part of something greater.

I had another option. I opted to take my chances in the US.

I left everyone behind and tried a new life in California. I came from an accredited school so my degree was completely compatible.

It took a while to find a job. In the meantime, I helped my cousin in his entertainment work.

Every year, he sponsored a festival for artists called “Tapestry in Talent”. As a no-talent part of his crew, I was given the job of running the movie projector for the story of the Moon Space Program.

I was in heaven! The job was easy – run a movie projector. But the subject matter was something that captured my imagination. In full color and stereo, I experienced, over and over again, the power of the launch from Cape Kennedy, the orbits around the Earth, the trek across space to the Moon, the historic first step on the Moon surface and the triumphant return.

I would run this movie over and over again for the audience. But it was I that was truly affected.

I wished more than ever to work with rockets.

I was no rocket engineer. I had no job, no experience, and was culturally naive.

At least, a job surfaced. I made silicon chips for the newly born computer industry.

But I could never escape the vision of space. I looked for jobs with NASA, but I had no credentials to offer. No job offers came.

All I could do was dream.

Then, one day, as I walked towards one of my bus stops on the way home, I passed an Air Force recruiting office. Something drew me in. I went through military training in college so a career in the military was a lot more appealing than making silicon chips.

But there was something more important with this particular event.

I was offered the chance to work with rockets! And after getting my commission, I assigned to the Air Force’s Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. I had arrived. The rest is history.

Time is actually quite a friend. In the engineering world, the creation of anything special involves understanding its relationship with time. The more grand and critical the final product, the more time is required for its proper development.

Whenever things are circumvented for the sake of time, both time and money are lost. Allowing time to do its work, makes the manifestation strong. Find a shortcut and the manifestation stands on a three wall foundation. It’s unstable and crumbles at the slightest disturbance.

Every engineer who has had the “pleasure” of having to fix something because not enough time was taken earlier to do the work right, knows what I’m talking about.

This was true for the Moon program. It had to go through its paces, going through the right steps in the right time to achieve the historic landing. Skipping a single step would have caused the whole thing to fall. Impatience would have kept us on the ground.

That decision to join the Air Force thrust me into the space program. But to get there, I first had to have the desire, then the relevant degree, then the previous military experience which made the Air Force an attractive option. Then I had to be just the right age.

This rocket guy was once a kid who had a dream that everyone laughed at. But time had a way of making it happen.

Dreams never die. They just await the opportune moment.

Law of Attraction Testimonial – A Rendezvous With The Dance

In the performing arts, I began as a dancer. Even as the years have degraded my ability to perform, it had not diminished my desire and ability to create. Give me the music and the dance appears immediately in my mind. The work of choreography had been one my greatest joys.

It was the year 2003. I found myself in an engineering position in the East coast that was not very much fun.

At the same time, I became part of a very small church which gave me a chance to perform once more as a singer.

The thing about the performing arts bug is that, when it bites, it infects you dramatically (pun intended). I began to sing again, and write songs again. But I missed the stage.

I wanted to create.

I wanted to choreograph.

I knew at this point that if I could make anything real in my mind, I could make it happen. What separates the fantasy from the manifestation is the intent to make something happen. Otherwise, it is nothing more than a vivid daydream.

No! It was my intention to re-enter the theatrical world and create once more.

The only problem was, I didn’t know how to make this happen. I had no connections with any theatrical group. I didn’t even know where they were. By this time, this did not bother me. I had already seen my desires come to fruition in ways I could not have imagined, nor controlled. All I needed to do was to intend and to imagine the intention fulfilled.

That was easy. I simply play music, close my eyes and experience the choreography in my mind.

That’s a funny thing about imagination. You have the freedom to imagine anything, but the only imaginings you can do easily, are those that are aligned with your true desires. I could easily imagine an enjoyable and satisfying choreography session, but I sweat at trying to imagine myself playing in a football game. The former is easy, fun, as simple as taking a step. The latter is WORK!

There was always a social gathering after church. I was with a group of men, chatting about something which I can no longer remember. At a certain point, one of the gentlemen proudly announced that his son got the lead role in a high school’s production of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie”.

Then he mentioned the high school was in desperate need of a choreographer!

My body gives me a signal whenever I come across the right answer for a problem. It is a quiver. Even though I look relaxed outside, I quiver and shake within. It’s like a wild vibration that only I can hear or sense.

Needless to say, I informed this gentleman that I was a choreographer and I offered my credentials from years past. He brought that list to the show’s director and I was requested to come in for an interview “audition”.

I knew I was going to get the job. Whenever the quiver comes, things always turn out right.

I came in the middle of the production so I had very little time. But the work was right and the dance came to me whenever I heard the music.
The work was successful and the choreography was noted in the newspapers.

The school was happy enough to have me back for the next year and planned a production that would utilize even more dramatic choreography.

Unfortunately for the school, but fortunately for me, I was on my way back to the West coast.

As has been my experience with achieving my desires, it was not important to know how to make something happen. Plans are fine, but attachment to a single and very specific plan closes the door to other easier ways to get what you want.

It’s like a comparing the ability of a kindergarten student to a rocket scientist on ways to get to the moon. One can cut out paper rockets and stay firmly on the ground. The other can get to the moon in a hundred different ways.

So plan your trip and take your first step. But trust in the Universe to get you there.

As a postscript, there was something else of note that happened during that production.

I was struggling with the choreography at one point. There was something that was not working and I couldn’t quite put a handle on it.
During one rehearsal, one student’s mother was watching and told me that the energy seemed a bit low. She told me how one choreographer used to give the cast exercises in the beginning to get them going.

That brought me back to another time when one stage director told a cast that their actions had to be large on stage to be seen by the audience.
The quiver hit me again. I knew what I had to do. I realized what the problem was.

The next rehearsal, I “commandeered” the stage from the director and musical director. I had the entire cast on stage and had them copy me as I danced to some simple steps. With each step, I made the movements bigger and bigger, wilder, more and more energetic. By the time we were done, they were hyped up, breathless, and excited! They got the idea. Make the movements big, increase the energy, and even the simple steps excite the audience. It wasn’t the steps that made a difference. It was their attitude of fun!

What’s the point? The answers to your questions often come from others around you. The direction you have to go is shown to you by others. The Universe speaks to you though people, circumstances and intuition. That’s why humility is so important. It makes you open to receive.

All you have to do…is see…and listen.

The Law of Attraction – The Essence of Creative Imagination

Long before I learned about the Law of Attraction, I realized that, if I could make any event real in my mind, that is, if I could see, hear it and feel it, it would invariably happen.

With this realization, I experimented to make something I wanted, happen.

But then, I was to learn something extremely important. It was a bitter lesson that would govern the rest of my life.
I was an engineer in a large aerospace corporation. I led a team that was involved in a very complex system costing millions of dollars. I was the lead engineer in one of the most prestigious programs and we had significant success that cemented my reputation. Not to mention that it had a dramatic impact on my paycheck!

Then somebody put a bug up my ear.

One of my colleagues told me that, one day, he wants to be the President of the company.

That got me thinking. Why not me? Why can’t I be the president of a company? My family had a lot of prominent people in the government and private sectors. I was expected to succeed. Why not make a name for myself in the industry? Going for the president of a company was the proper thing to do and it would make my family proud!

So, knowing that I could visualize things into existence, I imagined the trappings of the presidency. I visualized a large office, with a large desk and a window wall. Everything in that office just shouted..”Mr. President”.

That was it!

Over the years, inspired by Tesla (that’s another story), I improved my ability to visualize. And not just visualize. If I imagined a beach, I heard the people playing, the sea gulls and the surf. I saw the white sand, the colorful towels, the palm trees swaying as well as the distant car lanes. I felt the sun on my face and the coarse, warm sand under my feet. I picked up a handful of sand and felt the grains of sand flow through my fingers, something I loved to do in “real” life.

So I imagined my presidential office in all its colorful and solid “reality”.

To get to the presidency in the company I worked in involved climbing up quite a few ladders with lots of very capable people entrenched in their positions. I was an engineer in a position of technical leadership. I had demonstrated excellent technical leadership (according to my reviews) but have never been in management. From where I was, the climb to the presidency looked like the climb up the staircase of the Empire State building.

Then, it happened.

An executive recruiter was referred to me by an acquaintance from a previous job. The position was for a management position in a small engineering company with only two steps to the presidency.

I took the job.

When I arrived at my new office, I saw the office of my imagination, complete with the window wall.

I got what I imagined!

But I was in for a rude awakening.

I got the office, but I also got a lot of heartache.

You see, I was a terrible match for the job!

My personality was at odds with the work of management. I wanted time to think and create and I found myself engaged in meeting after meeting solving problems in personnel and money. I wanted to invent new things but found myself planning corporate strategies and personnel schedules and budgets. I liked working solo but found I had to deal with a lot of other people. I hate conflict yet found myself fighting with other managers!
I came to realize that I was not made of management material!

I was miserable!

I learned that being a manager of engineers meant that I no longer engineered. The creativity was gone! What I once thought was to be paradise became a prison. I was trapped. I moved my family across the country for a job I didn’t really like.

I got what I thought was the right corporate path, but I did not ask what my heart truly wanted! I did what I thought I was expected to do to make my family proud.

Looking back, I easily imagined the office because it was pleasurable (emotionally) to have such a prestigious working place. But I could not imagine the work because it was actually distasteful to me. Had I tried to imagine the work, I believe I would have had extreme difficulty holding an image. My own emotions would have repelled the thought.

Does this mean my original thought about vivid imagination was wrong?

No. But it was missing something extremely important. It was missing my heart’s desire. I focused on the trappings and not the work. I missed working on the essence of what I truly wanted.

Because of this misstep, I suffered through four years in a job I hated, in a place I disliked. But I applied the same process to recover, this time including the essence and the feeling of what I wanted. Just as before, I got what I wanted. And I am much happier for it.
That was another key lesson. Happiness is success. The trappings like the office, the car, the mansion and the wealth have nothing to do with it. Success is as individual as we are. If we go for the happiness, then success is assured. Different things make different people happy. There is no one happy strategy for all.

So despite the heartache, the lesson learned was tremendous.

It reinforced my belief and knowing in the creative power of Imagination. And, I replaced by goals of position and wealth with that of happiness. Events that followed vindicated this strategy. As I got happiness, the position and wealth followed, in surprising ways.

As Einstein professed, imagination is, indeed, the preview of life’s coming attractions.

How To Get From Earth to Jupiter on a Gallon of Gas – Using the Energy of the Universe

You might be surprised to know that the shortest path from point A to point B is not a straight line.

In fact, if you look at the orbit of planets and stars and all things that travel in space, everything moves in curves – circles and ellipses. Things only appear straight to us because our narrow view. Zoom in on a curve, get close enough, and you see a straight line!

To get from Earth to Jupiter, with the least amount of fuel, spacecraft use what is known as the Hohmann Transfer, an elliptical path between the Earth and any planetary object that takes the least amount of work. All you need is a kick at the start and a reverse kick at the end. In between, the spacecraft just… coasts!

The majority of the work is done by something that exists all over the Universe – gravity! And, its free!

NASA gets it right. Why work so hard to move in a straight line when it costs practically nothing to follow a curve, and still get from Earth to Jupiter!

That’s how I would love to live life – know what I want and use the Energy of the Universe to get it. Just kick-start the process and coast (play, have fun) all the way to success.

I often have an expanded view of my own power. I tend to think that I have the strength and the wisdom to accomplish anything if I try hard enough. That’s what I have been taught. Work hard and succeed. But that’s not what happens is space. Work hard and you’ll miss your destination!

In space, your destination pulls you!

I have been guilty of trying to solve problems from my own limited thinking, believing that I can control things through my physical actions. I forget that I am a multidimensional being who can create solutions from my own Higher, much more Energetic Self.

I don’t want to go from point A to point B all the while saying, “I going to make this work, or die trying! I’m going to work my butt off.”. Then, as I work 80 stressful hours a week, some nut passes me by on a measly 40 hours or even less. What’s his secret?

He, or she, is surfing the Universe’s energy waves.

I have found that those who work the hardest gain the least. Those who work the least seem to gain the most, but only when they let the object of their desire pull them in.

They are the ones who have the most fun doing what they do (coasting), because they do what they are in love with.

Now that’s a life!

Indeed, blessed are you who live your passion, who follow your heart. You are in touch with the Universe’s Infinite Energy. You don’t push. You are being pulled!

That’s how spacecraft travel enormous expanse of space on so little fuel!

If it is a Universal Law, then it must work for to me too!