Practice makes Permanent

As I was growing up  the adults in my life kept repeating “practice makes perfect”.  Teachers at school reminded us every day; parents reminded us at home, dance instructors said the same thing, work hard and practice, practice, practice. 

Ever since I met Abraham, I have been thinking “what is the role of practice in the context of the law of attraction?”

Bit by bit, the information I needed to get a clear picture has been coming to me in many different ways – and now I feel I have clarity on this subject.

There is much to be said for practice.  

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I don’t think that practice makes perfect, I think that “practice makes permanent”.

If you learn to do something one way and you practice it again and again, now you have learned it and made it permanent. 

If you were going to teach a child to swim, you could just toss them into a body of water and they would splash around and get to find their balance enough that they would not drown, but left to their own devices in figuring out how to swim they would come up with their own technique and if they never had any formal instruction in swimming ever in their lives, they would stick to using that technique – in other words, practice would make it permanent.  Whatever bad habits they have as swimmers would be just as well learned as good habits.

I notice that the same thing happens when people learn to drive a car.  My father, for example, never had anyone to teach him.  He learned to drive in his twenties by watching other engineers while he was work on a construction site for a hydro dam and power generation facility.  Trust me when I tell you that I used to clutch the car seat with both hands, nails digging into the seat with my eyes closed when he drove me to school in the mornings.  His idea of using the brakes was to go from 60 to stop in a heart beat.  We didn’t have air bags or seat belts in those days and she would extend her arm to the dash board in order to keep herself from hitting her head against the windshield.  Needless to say, my brother and I got tossed around pretty well in the back.  My father got into some pretty bad accidents – but did he change his driving style? No, never.  My mother gave up, and hired a driver as soon as their financial situation allowed it, and never let my father near the car keys again!  It wasn’t that he did not want to change – it was just that he had practised so well that his existing driving disc had so much momentum that he could never slow down the momentum enough for any sort of change to come about. 

So practice has two roles: 1) it creates momentum on what ever disc you are on; 2) it encodes the cells of your body with the information for performing the action.

Take the example of driving again.  Have you ever driven on autopilot?  I have.  If I am not really focusing on where I am going and giving it my full attention, I will end up either going to my children’s school or my office by default, because I have practiced that route so much that when I get in the car that becomes my default disc because it carries so much momentum. In my father’s case, he had learned to apply the brakes with all his strength and that was his default – it never changed.  The muscles of his body had learned to apply the brakes in a certain way, and they did it with perfection every time!

Take tennis or golf – if you learn to serve a certain way and you practice, practice, practice, you can do that serve or (drive) that way with your eyes closed  (good or bad) – why? because the cells of your body have learned what they have to do to give you that serve and the momentum is high. 


If you want to change it, you have to do a couple of things: 1) you have to tell yourself that you are ready to learn a new way of doing it, 2) you have to stop doing it the old familiar way, 3) you have to learn the new way, 4) you have to practice the new way enough so that it’s momentum surpasses that of the old way, and it is encoded or learned by the cells of your body – and now it is your default.

As children, we learn to think the way the adults around us think and those thought patterns become permanent because we practice them every day.  Notice how adults always tell children “don’t do that”, “don’t touch that”, “don’t drop that”, and “if you don’t practice you won’t succeed”?

With the use of the word “don’t” we create an expectation for the opposite of what we want.  
What is a better way of saying it?

“don’t do that”                                                                 “do this instead of that” or “let that be”

“don’t touch that”                                                           “let that be”

“don’t drop that”                                                             “hold on tight” or “put that down”

“if you don’t practice you won’t succeed”?          “I want you to succeed, and I feel that if you practice it will help you do 
                                                                                                 just that”

Beyond doubt the word “don’t” is a misuse of the word “do” and I am working on letting it go by consciously telling myself that I want to let it go and then watching for opportunities where I can form better sentences – sentences that come from a positive vibration.

Many of us, rather most of us have learnt to think in a manner that is not conducive to harnessing the power of the law of attraction at it’s best.  We still move towards the things we want but we could move way faster if we changed the way we think and offer our words.

For a few years now, I have been working on changing the way I offer my words, and as I teach others to do it, I find that it makes a huge difference – over a period of time.

Most people who start working with the law of attraction, feel that since they have an intellectual understanding of the law, it changes everything and so now they should start manifesting everything that they want in short order.  For some, the results come quickly but for most it takes time.  It’s like saying, this is my fist day picking up a tennis racquet and learning how to serve, but I want to play a perfect set.  My body hasn’t learned the movements, I have no momentum, so how is this going to happen?  I need to practice and I need to learn the right techniques from others – I can watch them on tape or take lessons, either way I need to practice, and with every serve I need to observe my results and make modifications to my technique – right?

That is exactly what I need to do when I start using the law of attraction – I need to start learning it, practicing it and refining my techniques until I get it right – until I have momentum.  How do I know if I am doing it right?

Abraham always says there are two ways to know if you are doing it right: 1) you feel good; 2) your manifestations show up that tell you that you are heading in the right direction.  I notice that as soon as people start feeling better or even good, they start looking for the manifestations - asking how long it will take for the manifestations to start happening, and with that they push those manifestations away.  If they could just enjoy feeling good without looking for the manifestation then the manifestations would come.

Much love and appreciation,
Zehra

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