In the ’80s, the United Negro College Fund ran a series of television and radio spots with the slogan ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste.’ That slogan goes beyond getting minorities into colleges, and on to every day life. Your mind is the most powerful tool you have to create the life you want.

Everyone in the reach of Western Media has, by now, heard of The Secret, or The Law of Attraction. In a nutshell, whatever you positively visualize in your life, you’ll achieve. Even if you don’t consciously direct it, your perceptions of the world will alter how the world happens to you. People with negative attitudes draw negative events to them, and people with positive attitudes draw good fortune to them.

In scientific studies, this is sometimes called the observer effect, or the Placebo Effect. More plausibly, it’s that keeping a good mental attitude and a solid set of goals in mind keeps you mentally prepared to take advantage of opportunities you’d've overlooked before. Opportunism is one of the great defining characteristics of successful people; though this is also the reason why hypochondriacs get sick more often as well. What you believe will alter how you interact with the world, and how you see your own ‘personal karma’.

While the singular of data is not anecdote, there is some direct experience you’ve had. How many times have you woken up in the morning thinking this was going to be a bad day, or ‘one of those days’. And then had a self-fulfilling prophecy? Welcome to the Law of Attraction on a personal scale. It’s your own mind and your own expectations sabotaging you.

Correlation is not causation, though there are a lot of people who try to link the Law of Attraction to some quantum mechanical effect. Going too far down this line will make your head hurt, either from the quantum mechanics or from the way the terminology is being misused. Ultimately, this drives into solipsism if you look at it too deeply, and that’s not what the Law of Attraction is about.

Many scientists now believe that all so called ‘supernatural’ powers such as esp, telepathy, remote viewing, psychic and clairvoyant phenomena can be explained in terms of quantum theory. In short – everything we see, hear and feel is merely a creation of our thoughts! Nothing is solid; it is all energy and this energy has been created by the power of our minds.

Although you may not even have considered it before; learning how to use the power of your mind is vitally important to having a great life! Obviously it is better to have your assets working for you instead of working against you. Let’s take a closer look at how to use the power of your mind to achieve what you want.

Start with a goal. Visualize it clearly in your mind. Make it a goal with boundaries; for example, if you’re thinking about money, don’t think of the goal in the context of ‘A lot of money’. Put a dollar figure on it. Make it a real goal, with precision. Once the goal is set, focus your mental actions on achieving that goal. Keep the effort constant; don’t do it in bursts and lags.

Some people are aware of the power of their mind; they focus on tasks, they set goals, they make lists, and they follow through them. You can see them; they’re the ones who always seem to have a plan and who always focus on what’s around them. Everything they do is aimed at furthering that goal, and with their mind and will ruling their passions, they have a palpable air of success. This success isn’t difficult to emulate; it’s very simple. It just requires clarity of purpose and focus.

Your ability to shape your life, by actively taking part in the influence your mind has on your perceptions of reality is nearly unlimited. It’s limited primarily by what you can imagine yourself doing. At times, this can border on obsession; imagine wanting a new home. Every day you start out with a list of tasks that will bring you closer to your dream of home ownership. You plan it, you think about color schemes and landscaping. Eventually, this will boost your performance at work; it’ll encourage you to save, or to cut back your credit card debt.

Then, the house of your dreams hits the market. It’s for sale. And because you’ve been planning and focusing on this, you qualify for the mortgage, and the owners like what you’re planning with the home. You close the deal and move in and everything you’d been focusing on, all that energy, has helped realize your goal.

It’s up to you to make your life. You can either sit passively by and let life happen to you, or you can grab it and direct it using the power of your mind. Work on small goals and build up to larger ones the same way small rocks can lead to a sturdy platform to see the world from. Don’t let anyone or anything stand in the way of the power of your mind with the Law of Attraction.