Inspired Action vs. Efforting: efforting

Is the way you’re living full of magic?

By magic I don’t mean pulling rabbits out of a hat unless that’s your thing.

I mean magical in the sense you feel the presence of the Universe at work for you in your life.

You experience serendipity on a regular basis. Magical in the sense you are so often in the right place at the right time. The perfect idea comes to you, the dots connect. You feel in the flow of life, moving with ease, feeling good. Things are always working out for you.

Magical in the sense you feel so lucky—even though you know luck doesn’t really have anything to do with it. It’s the magic of alignment. It’s the “luck” that comes from the ease and flow of downstream living.

That’s what I mean by magical.

I’ve worked with many clients who, like me, are Law of Attraction enthusiasts.

By leveraging Law of Attraction, many have experienced a significant shift from manual to magical.

And life has gotten so much easier. And they feel so much better. And the manifestations come so much more quickly.

So they’re hooked on magical.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes get tempted to go the manual route or backslide into manual ways of showing up in the world. But having experienced firsthand the difference between magical versus manual, they are wisely and selfishly committed to the former because life is simply so much better.

But this has me thinking: What about those who haven’t yet made the shift from manual to magical?

If you’ve been living in a manual way, efforting upstream, how can you do life differently? How do you create the shift from manual to magical?

Now you might believe the shift like I’m talking about is something that can only happen to you. That it’s not something you can intentionally create or cause.

Well, that’s a belief, for sure. But I happen to think it’s not a very helpful belief. Are you just supposed to sit around and wait and hope that this manual to magical shift happens for you? That you wake up one morning and voila! it has happened.

I want to encourage you to start seeing this shift from manual to magical as something you can intentionally create.

Always remember: A belief is simply a practiced thought. So if you practice the thoughts I’m about to share, you can most certainly create a new belief. And the new belief would be you can shift from a manual to a magical way of living—and you can make that shift today.

Let’s start with this: How are you currently living? Would you describe it as manual or magical?

If you’re unsure whether your approach to living is manual or magical, here are five questions you can ask:

  1. Are you trying hard to make what you want happen?
  2. Have you been willing to forego feeling good in order to achieve your goal or get the shiny penny you want?
  3. Are you relying on stamina, grit, willpower, and effort to make things happen?
  4. Do you believe you have to work hard to get what you want?
  5. If you’re not efforting and taking action to make things happen, are you at a loss for how else it would come to fruition?

If you answered “yes” to one or more of those questions, then you are very likely living in a manual, not magical way.

“Trying is your indication that you are not going with the flow. You work so hard. You try to use your effort and your action and your hours and your hard work and your stamina and your grit and your determination to cover up energy that’s misaligned. Cut it out! Focus upon the energy first.” —Abraham

When your approach to living is manual and your energy is misaligned, you cut yourself off from the magic of the Universe.

You deprive yourself of the magnificent ways in which the Universe can work on your behalf to create what you want.

Manual means you try, you effort, you take action—often even lots of action. And, of course, you do make things happen. You put some of the pieces in place. But none of it is easy. Some version and variety of struggle accompanies every step along the way when you take a manual approach to living.

“Effort is not your friend. Effort is what you do when you don’t believe. Trying is your indication that you’re not going with the flow.” —Abraham

Instead of efforting your way to what you want, magical means you head downstream, going with the flow and experiencing ease.

And the Universe delivers… the right resources at the right time, the answer to your question, the solution to your problem. Circumstances, people, events, situations, and things line up for you.

When you choose magical over manual, the power of the Universe conspires with you in all kinds of happy and beneficial ways.

Here’s the essential question: How do you shift from manual to magical?

It comes down to three things:

  • The thoughts you think.
  • Whether you prioritize feeling good.
  • What kind of action you take.

Let’s take these one by one.

First, shifting from manual to magical comes down to the thoughts you think.

If you want to shift from a manual to magical way of living, you have to let go of the belief that trying hard is how you make things happen. You have to let go of the belief working hard is the right way, the respectable way, the only way to get what you want.

Quite simply: The shift from manual to magical requires you to think new thoughts.

  • If you were raised to believe hard work is how you get what you want, then new thoughts are required.
  • If you are someone who believes hard work is the right way to live, the respectable way, new thoughts are required.

“Most people do not expect their path to great abundance to be one of ease and of joy. They have been taught that struggle and hardship and sacrifice are requirements that must be met before the reward of great abundance can be realized. Most do not understand that the very struggle they deliberately involve themselves in, in their quest for success and advantage, actually works against them.” —Abraham

Abraham is describing efforting, trying hard, working hard. Is Abraham describing you? Do you believe struggle and hardship and sacrifice are the price you pay to get what you want?

It’s this simple: Creating a shift from manual to magical requires you to think new thoughts and hold new beliefs about effort and about ease.

  • Are you willing to let go of the belief that hard work is how to make things happen?
  • Are you willing to embrace the belief that ease is the pathway to what you want?

“There are a lot of people who want to bang their life into position through action. We want you to relax your life into action through thought.” —Abraham

Next, shifting from manual to magical also comes down to whether you prioritize feeling good.

If you are not willing to feel good, then you can’t live in a magical way. Because if you’re willing to feel negative emotion on a regular basis to try to get what you want, to try to make what you want happen, that’s a manual way of living. Period.

Magical feels good. Manual doesn’t.

It might seem strange the way I phrased that If you’re not willing to feel good, but that really is what it comes down to. Are you willing to feel good?

“As you begin to feel freer regarding the expenditure of time and money, doors will open, people will come to assist you, refreshing and productive ideas will occur to you and circumstances and events will unfold. As you change the way you feel, you access the energy that creates worlds.” —Abraham

Many of us are so used to indulging in negative emotion. Middle of the scale emotions like frustration and irritation, overwhelment and doubt, worry and blame, discouragement and disappointment. We are so in the habit of feeling those emotions and way too willing to continue experiencing them.

Well, here’s a bit of tough love: If you’re willing to experience negative emotion on a regular basis as the price you pay for trying to achieve the goal or get the shiny penny you want, then nothing can change—and there simply is no shift from manual to magical.

  • A manual way of living is willing to experience negative emotion as the price for achieving and acquiring.
  • A magical way of living prioritizes feeling good, and embraces that feeling good is not only the ultimate manifestation, but also the pathway to everything desired.

“Most people have a hard time delegating, or even wanting to delegate, because you have been justifying your existence through your hard work, and you equate success with struggle; you equate results with struggle. And so, you sort of wear your struggle like a badge of honor. And all of that is opposite of allowing the Well-Being. So if you are setting standards and you’re feeling uncomfortable about the standards that you’ve set, tweak the standards back a little bit. Ratchet it back a notch. Give yourself a break. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Lighten up. Be easier. Go slower. Take it easy. Have more fun. Love yourself more. Laugh more. Appreciate more. All is well.” —Abraham

I am raising my hand as someone who very much used to wear struggle like a badge of honor. Before my obsession with all things Law of Attraction, I definitely equated success with struggle and results with struggle. But no more!

Give yourself a break. Go slower. Laugh more. Be willing to feel good.

Next, shifting from manual to magical also comes down to what kind of action you take.

“Your work is to go forth into this physical environment looking for things that are a vibrational match to joy, connecting to Source Energy, and then following with the inspired action.” —Abraham

Notice Abraham didn’t say anything about a long must-do list or forcing yourself to get a bunch of stuff done.

Of course, shifting from manual to magical doesn’t mean you won’t ever do anything or take any action.

There will be action involved with a magical way of living. But it’s inspired action, not forced action. It’s action to receive, not to try to make things happen. It’s action you’re excited to take and enjoy, not action you are using grit and willpower to make yourself take.

Forced action versus inspired action. From the outside looking in, we might not always be able to tell the difference about what kind of action someone else is taking. But you can tell the difference when it’s you because you know how you feel.

Forced action versus inspired action feel entirely different. Only one feels good, and it’s the magical way, not the manual one. It’s inspired action, not forced action.

Efforting and forced action don’t feel good. There’s friction and pushing to make things happen, which is usually overwhelming and tiring. There’s relying on discipline and willpower to keep taking action to try to make things happen, which often leaves you frazzled and exhausted.

“The more you effort the more you are holding yourself in a vibration that doesn’t let what you want come because you’ve already identified ‘it’s big and it’s difficult and therefore I must try.’ And the very trying holds you in resistance to the ease that is natural.” —Abraham

So all that forced action is not really very efficient. You are creating resistance with your forced action. Inspired action, on the other hand, has no resistance.

“The rule of thumb is, you never take action when there is negative emotion within you because it will always be counterproductive. Always talk to yourself until you feel better and then follow the inspired action that comes from that open valve.” —Abraham

Keep this in mind: Ease is not the opposite of productivity. And this is not a choice between forced action and no action.

When you choose to believe in ease and when feeling good is important to you, inspired action will follow. And it will be truly magical—both in how it feels as you do it and the results it creates in your life.

I want you to happily let go of living manually and embrace living magically. You can do this by thinking new thoughts, feeling good, and taking inspired action.

“Most rarely align with their true power because it seems illogical to them that there is power in relaxation, in letting go, or in love or joy or bliss. We want you to breathe rather than try, to relax rather than offer effort, to smile rather than struggle, to be rather than do.” —Abraham