The choices and actions that we make every day often contradict the intentions we hope to manifest. If you work with law of attraction, you’re probably accustomed to working with vizualization and affirmations. But you need to ensure that choices, behavior, and actions also support your intentions. If I participate in needless hostile or negative situations, I contradict my intentions for harmony, peace and freedom. By refusing to engage in situations where I might have experienced a reaction at one time, I support my affirmations through my choices and actions.

Let’s take a common example, and I’ll try to expand on it to show ways that we contradict our intentions. As you read, I hope you can relate other situations.

When you are in traffic, do you allow the car in front of you, containing some anonymous driver you will never see again, to come between you and your inner peace? Do you exert any thought or energy aimed toward their driving skills or about their lack of thoughtfulness, intelligence, or sanity?

When even minor irritating situations such as this arises, you may go into an instinctive and automatic emotional reaction. The more thought, attention and focus you put into it, the more energy you send senselessly in that direction. You place importance on what should be an insignificant incident by virtue of the amount of energy expended in thought and emotion. Either eliminate the underlying thought that caused your reaction, or simply remove the habit. Habit can be changed, and the thought can be eliminated. Then, events like this will cease to bother you.

The law of attraction states that it will bring to you objects or events upon which you focus. The more focus and energy you put into those thoughts, or intentions, the stronger the force. So, in this scenario, you would have sent a lot of energy into the Universe, requesting similar hostile situations to occur.

Here’s what you’re saying to the Creative Force in the previous example: "I like strife in my life. It is very important to me how people such as this think, behave, and drive. I focus on this, because it is important to me. I’ll think about it while it’s happening, and it’s so important, I’ll continue to think about it for a few more hours. I will talk to other people about it. I might even want to memorialize this event and put it in a journal! Give me more people like this to think about."

Is that where you want to place your focus? Free will exists in this great diversity on the planet, and there will always be inconsiderate drivers, and inconsiderate people in general. That driver has the right to act as they choose, and you can choose to what extent you include them in your life through your focus. Let them pass through for a few minutes, and then be gone. Do not give them power to disturb your inner peace or take any precious thought or energy.

When unimportant or undesirable people or situations appear in your life, you can simply choose to dismiss them. When you obsess, you have decided to include them as a significant part of your life. Simply observe and dismiss.

If you frequently react in such situations, you need to ask the following question: "Am I going to let you [whoever your block or irritant] come between me and my freedom, peace or growth?" In that moment, it should be clear that you have the ability to make a choice about what your reaction will be. You may find that making the choice to reject your reaction is difficult, but only because you have developed habit. Over time, this practice will give you control of your thoughts, emotional reactions, and even adverse physical reactions. The first step is recognition that you have choice. It may surprise you to know that these changes are not only possible, they are certain to happen if you stick with this work. And in the future, events such as this will not bother you. Make the choice, and own the choice. A cumulative effect occurs when you take control of your life events and choices. The more you exercise your strength and will, the greater control you will have over each event and reaction, every single time.

You may feel that you would not want a situation like this to disturb you if you had choice. But when it occurs, ask yourself this question: "Am I willing to let go of this reaction, right now? Can I allow this person to cut me off, beep at me, give me the finger, without a judgment on my part?"

You might just find that you feel justified in your reaction, and that you LIKE your reaction. You feel entitled to it. Perhaps you even feel they deserve it. People often make the mistake of engaging unnecessarily in hostile encounters, believing that they are defending their boundaries. These same people often fail to protect themselves when a situation truly calls for it.

If you follow the above process, and find that you feel justified or simply like your reaction, you have become aware that you are making a choice each and every single time you react.  Fear, anger, rage, rejection, hate, or any negative emotion you feel in response to an event or person can be turned off by your own request. Since you allow it, you can disallow it. Like knowledge of all choice, this is empowering!

At some point you learned that you needed to judge people who crossed your path. Rather than dismissing people or events that should be unimportant to you, you give them significance by your focus. When you judge people and focus on them, you include them more in your reality. "Give me more of these people. I like judgment, and I want people I can judge." So the Universe complies. It always does!

Once you’ve made the choice to dismiss or reject your emotional reactions and your judgments, inconsequential people and events will cease to be an issue for you. You will learn to focus only on circumstances and people that you desire to include in your reality. Then, the Universe will stop presenting these unwanted situations. The rare person who crosses your path will be observed, and dismissed.

Here’s the alternative. If you want to include them in your life, continue to judge their driving, their lifestyle, their relationships, the way they look, their religion, their hair color, and the food they eat. When you do that, you give them importance. If doing so enhances your life in any way, promotes your growth and intelligence, or brings love and prosperity, then it’s certainly worthwhile. Otherwise, notice that you would be contradicting any request or prayer you have made for more positive experiences.

And you should ask yourself why you continue to exert precious energy on these experiences. What do you get out of it? There has to be a payoff somewhere, or you would not do it. Does it provide justification that your belief systems are correct? If you find a persistent belief underlying your emotional reaction, you need to examine, and be willing to dismiss that thought, whether it pertains to bad drivers, ignorant women, callous men, inconsiderate bosses, or an uncaring government. And as much as you feel justified in that belief, you have to ask whether being right is more important than creating something different. Remember that the principles of law of attraction tell us that our thoughts will draw matching circumstances. So these underlying beliefs we hold onto will cause these very events, over and over, until we are willing to change, or let go of, these beliefs.

In some cases, people simply operate on autopilot. They feel their emotional reactions and judgments are normal and expected, and don’t question them. They may not like those encounters, but don’t know any other way of handling life situations, big or little.

Know that while your goals may be of a more positive, loving and peaceful nature, your own beliefs, actions and focus will continue to bring undesirable events to you, serving to oppose your positive intentions. Action conveys your serious intent to the Universe, not a few stated affirmations. So what are you really asking for? You may be keeping your desires from manifesting.

When you put energy and emotion into situations that you do not desire to include in your future vision, you also waste creative energy and power. As you put emotion behind the words and thoughts, you add power to them. Emotions take thought and roll it into force. Thought is a spark of electricity. Emotion behind it is a bolt of lightning. Use your power of emotion wisely. Put it where it matters. When you want to make clear intention to the universe, use thought, word and emotion to back it up. Learn to follow through with choice and action on each of your goals of intention.

Many people seeking spiritual growth or personal development have a basic desire for freedom. This desire often serves as a driving need for change. Inner freedom allows us to pursue our dreams and goals without interference or limit. The constraints in our mind keep us where we are in life, and prevent us from creating or allowing external change. This is really the only limit we really need lifted in order to achieve personal success and happiness.

We all define freedom in different ways. Although we may feel that having financial abundance would provide real freedom, we’ve all seen examples of wealthy people trapped by their own addictions, fears, or negative thinking. We can probably agree that while they have achieved financial independence, they do not have inner peace and true freedom. So freedom is an inner state of mind, as well as an external condition.

Negative and fearful thinking puts in place boundaries that imprison us. For an extreme example to prove a point, imagine that you had all the money in the world. And obviously, with a huge bank account, you could do whatever you desired, including travel to beautiful and exotic places. But what if you feared travel? Imagine being terrified to leave your home. Agoraphobics face that fear daily. An unfree mind imposes numerous conditions and limits.

Any unhappy circumstances you find yourself in results from your thinking. If you have any fears or self-doubt, they hold you back from the life you want. For example, if you fear intimacy and love, you will not find true joy in a loving relationship. You will likely choose the path or person that doesn’t challenge your fear. If you fear for your personal safety, you will not want to travel or go out comfortably into the world and enjoy the activities that you might otherwise desire. If you have fears about your own competence and value, you will not move into the career that you want, be with the mate that you want, and not feel valuable enough to get what you deserve. You will hesitate to move toward goals out of fear of failure. While anger is truly a self-defeating emotion to hold onto, fear is by far, the reason most people live out their lives in a dissatisfying way.

Fears not only hold us back from our heart’s desires, but they have the power to attract negative conditions that validate the belief systems that cause those fears. If you fear intimacy out of a belief that you will be hurt by infidelity, you may draw that very situation to you. If you believe that the world is an unsafe place, you may manifest conditions that validate that thought. We can’t predict the outcome to the negative thoughts that we harbor. Our lives are designed in such a way that we are often given just what we can handle, and no more, that will push us through restrictions and free us to love more, be more, and live more.

Understand that most of your fears are not valid. They do not keep you safe, they only hold you back. We know perfectly well when a fear is reasonable, and when it is not. Begin now to "feel the fear and do it anyway." With intelligent discernment, make choices that are not dictated by your fears. If you want something, move towards it, and don’t listen to the negative internal voices. As you consciously work to overcome these fears, you will eliminate them.  Ignore them, and they will persist.

As the repressed unconscious thoughts heal, we come to enjoy a new state of being without the anxiety, fear, anger and negativity that once ruled our choices and actions. This is an attainable goal, and ultimately what you will find on your journey of growth.

We need to achieve on an inner level first what we hope to find in the outer world. So while we work on manifesting the outer condition of financial freedom, and other abundant conditions, we need to free ourselves of every condition which detracts from our internal sense of freedom. This only requires a willingness on our part to release negative thoughts of self-criticism and undervalued self-worth, as well as those judgmental beliefs that we often feel self-righteous about.

While you feel that your belief systems are infallible and universal truths, they are only judgments that you have come to accept as truth. They may be judgments about what people are, what marriage is, what life is, what government is, how fair the judicial system, who you are, and so forth. Many of your beliefs are counterproductive to creating the desirable conditions that you want. You need to begin to eliminate all those beliefs to which you have attached some negative judgment, regardless of what you perceive as truth. Persisting in negative beliefs will only create undesirable conditions that validate those beliefs. If you want to shape a new and different reality, you need to believe in a different reality. Sometimes we feel that we are willing to believe a different truth if we see or experience it, but it’s almost always true that we first need to believe it before we will see it. The principles of law of attraction tell us that is precisely what we must do.

Remember that thoughts within the mind have a magnetic pull that attracts like objects or situations in the external world. The Creative Mind offers no room for rationalizations, excuses or disclaimers. In the infinite and diverse universe that we live in, there is no universal truth for all people. Each and every individual has an entirely different reality.

Know that joy, freedom and love is out there and available to all, not only a select few. Believe that it is your right and destiny, and commit to achieving it.