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Every one of us is way more powerful than we think we are. I know this now, and yet plenty of times I forget it. So it's good to have techniques and ways to remind ourselves just how powerful we are.

Over the last fifteen years or so. I have been learning a lot of these techniques and now it feels like it's time to Eel out there and share some of what I know. You may or may not be familiar with the use of affirmations and visualizations to change aspects of your life. If you're not, I will explain it as you read on. If you are familiar, how often do you make time to use them? Do you really want to change your life, and truly discover what your passions are? If you do, then I hope to give you some ideas in this article and even more in my "Dance Your Dreams Alive workshops". My own story is mixed in with the techniques to illustrate how they have worked in my life.

Eleven years ago I started doing affirmations to create a new job. I repeated the phrase "I am creating a wonderful new job for me now" at least 1,000 times a day almost every day for about six weeks and then I stopped and let it go. I think at the time I had probably read it in a Louise L Hay book, that 1,000 times a day was the optimum number to say or think in a day. My job at the time involved a lot of driving. So I had plenty of time on the long drive home from Sligo or Letterkenny to Belfast to do the affirmations. It never felt like an imposition, because I really did want to create anew job. 3 months later I was made redundant by the knitting wool company I worked for, and within 3 weeks of that job ending I along with my girlfriend at the time was offered a new job owning and running Moonstone. a New Age shop in Holywood Co Down.

This came totally out of the blue, and I was so sure that my affirmations had helped to create this wonderful fulfilling job. Though initially it was difficult to raise the capital to buy the business, I trusted the universe to work it out. And this is one of the secrets. Don't worry about the "hows", just focus on the end result, which was what I did. In other words. don't get caught up in trying to work out how you are going to bring about the changes in your life. See the end result, see yourself in your new job, your new house or relationship or whatever you want, However don" use the word "want" in your affirmations like "1 want a new job" because you will continue to want it and you probably won't get it. Now if it's a visualization you're doing feel the emotions and sensations in your body of what you are wishing to create in your life. Feel the excitement and introduce other people into the visualizations and share the excitement with them. This is what I did nearly two years ago, when I had split up with my girlfriend and I needed to create a new house to live in.

I visualized that I was driving my new car and bringing different friends in the car to show them my new house. The house that I saw nearly always had a rounded corner with a door in the corner. - not a Usual design feature. Within 3 months I was living in a house, which had a rounded corner with a yellow door in the corner. And I was the first person to rent this house on a year round basis. Pretty good eh!
I do feel sometimes we can become a little blasé about how our lives are unfolding, and even about how we may have created the events in them. So sometimes it's a good idea to remind ourselves that affirmations and visualizations do work. Or if it's a case that you haven't used these tools yet, now could be a good time to start.

Another tool to work with, is to make up a scrapbook with photos and items which you want to create in your life. I had just moved into my new house when 1 bought a scrapbook, and I started cutting out photos of foreign places I wanted to travel to and cars I wanted to drive.

On the cover of the scrapbook; I put a beautiful photo of an azure lake and snowcapped mountains in New Zealand. On the inside pages I had photos of Australia. India, China Peru etc. That was in September, and four months later I was in New Zealand! And it wasn't in my conscious plans at all in September. A friend was setting off in October to travel round, the world and she mentioned that she would be in Hawaii in December and New Zealand in January. I said I couldn't get away in December with the shop being so busy. out maybe NZ you never know.

When I was travelling in NZ I had plenty of time to think about my life and plenty of time to enjoy myself. So I came back from that holiday feeling I wanted to have much more fun and joy in my everyday life. I started to think about the things that made me happy and gave me joy in my life. I started writing lists of what made me happy - anything from floating on my back in warm sea under blue skies to having a good laugh with friends. Then I started asking friends to tell men what would be on their lists, and these included getting stuck into a good book and wearing beautiful colourful clothes. So I suggest you could try doing this. You may find that there's lots of things on your list which you haven't done for a while, as I did, and then it's time for creating these things to happen again, to make you feel good.
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So I firmly believe that we are powerful creators, and mostly we don't really believe we are. We think that it only happens to other people, because they're lucky or whatever But that's not how it is!

I feel that by using music and movement in co-ordination with affirmations helps to embody the creations we want to have in our lives. In my training as a Dancing the Rainbow teacher I got to experience emotions and feelings of the chakras through dance, stillness and creativity of various forms. I am now' exploring the use off these techniques combined with affirmations and visualizations to create the life we were born to live. For instance, if you want to create a new house to live in, as well as saying the affirmation " My perfect house is unready for me now". you could play some music with a heavy drum beat to resonate with the base chakra. Amongst other traits the base chakra energy includes matters of security, safety and house and home? So you could dance and move to the music while saying or .singing your affirmations. Saying it with real feeling and really meaning it, even 'it see unlikely to you that will have the finance to create this new home. That's the "hows" again and you can leave the "hows" to the Universe to sort out.

It's very important to remember this, because we naturally do tend to get caught up in trying to figure things out. Whatever it is we are trying to create in our lives we somehow believe we have to know how to do it. whereas in fact we don't, apart from practised obvious things like driving a car For the big important things in our lives we just need to visualize the end result and leave Great Spirit, God or the Universe to work out how to create it. I know this requires quite a bit of trust, but I feel this is the big thing to learn right now. TRUST. Trust doesn't require faith in God or whatever it can come with that but it's not compulsory. I feel trust develops with time as you trust your intuitions and your inner guidance. So just try trusting when you're doing your affirmations, really try it. Don't question it, don't doubt it just do it. Let the Universe know that you mean it, you're not just messing around. You really are going to create this change in your life , because the time is right for it to happen, and it's what you've always wanted!

Over the last ten years or so I've been a partner in two shops, firstly at Moonstone in Holywood and for the last four and a half years at sacred Earth in Ennis. I've really enjoyed my times in these shops and my life has been pretty amazing, the things I've done, the places I've been, the friends I've made, the relationships I've had. This year I've got it that it's time to get out there and share some of the talents that I have - and I believe we all have talents to share.

So, I am now making workshops again and that's exciting for me. A lot of the insights and inspiration for this happened over a short period of time a few months ago. I was reading this book Manifesto by Barefoot Doctor, shortly after seeing him in Belfast, and I got really fired up writing affirmations and sticking them up on the doors and mirrors in my house. The I went out walking in the field near my home. I quite often go to one particular field to talk to the beech trees (and sometimes they talk back to me). On this day it was gently raining as I stood sheltering under my friends the trees. I had a cassette walkman in my hand and I started to conduct a workshop to the 25 imaginary people in the field with me. It was so liberating, talking in the field and being so inspired. This half hour tape has guided me to do a workshop based around lots of ideas that I've been working with for the last couple of years and also allowing any new inspirations to flow on the day. So, now I'm thrilled about offering my "Dance Your Dreams Alive" workshop to everyone who resonates with my story and feels that it could transform your lives in some small way or even with a quantum leap.

I believe it's not just possible, but likely that we can walk into a new way of living - in a limitless land where dreams become real - not always exactly as we first see them but real enough for us to have no doubts that we created them with a bit of help from the Universe, Great Spirit, God or whoever you wish to call on.

I feel that as time goes on, we are able to create and manifest things in our lives more effortlessly and with much less struggle. But we don't get it by sitting back and waiting for it to happen. We need to get up and create it by any means that are available for our highest good. As we acknowledge who we are, and our individual journeys that have led us to this place, we can become the powerful creators we were born to be.

John Meharg has a website at www.sacredearth.ie