I apologize for the title, it may seem a bit extreme but once you read the following you’ll understand why I used it.

Full blown heroin addicts are known to have a $500-700 a day habit. They are able to find this money day in day out whilst fighting the elements of weather, street crime and the law.

Although the means by which they acquire this money is certainly not commendable, one must marvel at their ability to continually find it against all those odds. I’m sure the majority of us would struggle in such an environment.

“But it’s the drug making them do it” I hear you say, and what a great point, because at this point of time, if you did think this you have possibly had a great Ah-ha moment in life, well at least I hope so; let me explain.

You are right; it is the heroin that makes the addict do what he or she does. There is no question about that, but in fact the heroin addict is performing the exact same way as all of us throughout our day, the only difference is their chemical is heroin, and yours are based on your habitual thought processes.

Every thought you have and action you perform throughout the day has an associated chemical release from the brain into your body. This is extremely important, because any chemical, it doesn’t matter whether it is heroin or a chemical produced in your brain, will become addictive if the body receives it too often.

Let me repeat: any chemical, it doesn’t matter whether it is heroin or a chemical produced in your brain, will become addictive if the body receives it too often.

Think of any habitual behaviour you have, whether it is yelling at the kids at the slightest err, reacting in traffic, your reaction when receiving a bill; all these reactions release chemicals, made in your brain, that flow to every living cell in your body.

Think of thoughts you have, worrying about the next mortgage payment, worrying about your kids future, worrying about your health, re-living a moment in the past; all these thoughts release chemicals, made in your brain, that flow to every living cell in your body.

The cells in your body have receptors that receive chemicals, and it doesn’t matter whether the chemical is produced in your brain or from an external source (like heroin), the receptors job is to receive them, and when they stop receiving them they get upset!

So let’s return to the heroin addict. We already established that the behaviour of the addict is driven by the drug itself. But what about you? Can you accept that your everyday behaviour, reactions and thoughts are driven by chemical addictions?

Well, guess what, if you accept this, your well on your way to creating a better life, because indeed it is true, you are a walking chemical producing and chemical receiving organism and all that needs changing from your point of view are the sorts of chemical in circulation.

When you react badly to something, feel the feeling it is producing in your body; that is your body receiving a dose of chemicals! The more you do it, the more your body craves it, and the more the circumstances that trigger this off will appear (The process that creates more circumstances, like a valve that blocks out or lets in, involves other parts of your organic make-up which is explained in our book).

The point here is that when you can associate feelings in your body, that you do not like, to a thought process you have, you have uncovered a possible addiction, which put another way is a habit.

Habits are fuelled by chemical addictions, it is the receptors that become addicted, the receptors send messages to your brain requiring more chemical, the brain responds by searching the memory bank for memories that will trigger off the feelings associated with this chemical, or the brain will instruct the 5 physical senses to seek out circumstances outside of you to trigger of a reaction. That is the cycle of addiction and habit.

To put it bluntly, your results in life are based around your chemical addictions. Those who have the sort of life people envy are also walking chemical factories, but their chemicals are those associated with feelings of success, good health, peace, love and so on. I’m afraid I can’t put it any other way; addictions will continue to produce the same thoughts and the same circumstances in your life day in and day out.

Next time you react to something and it makes you feel bad, ask yourself if this is a common behaviour for you? If it is, your next job is to accept that you have an addiction and replace what ever thoughts you are having with something that gives you a good feeling. A perfect example, my 6th child, all I think about is the way he laughs, and how often he laughs. No matter what bad reaction I have, thinking of him always stops the chemical bombardment in its tracks. Now you try it!

In the world of self help and development, there are two primary schools of thought relating to the creation of desires in our life.

One is that in order to get what you want you must focus on it as often as possible, and at the same time block out any opposing thoughts to your desire.

For instance, if you want to own a nice new house, you should affirm this intention as often as possible using things like pictures, affirmations (i.e. I am living in my dream home now), visualizations, writing down the goal and many other sorts of tools for the sole purpose of bombarding your sub conscious with the new desire.

To make it even more effective you should learn to add emotion to it, thereby creating a more intense realization that you already have it. At the same time any time doubts creep in suggesting that you can not have this desire you need to be aware that the thought is occurring and stop it in its tracks.

However the second school of thought is to make your intention clear to the universe, and then simply let it go. By letting go it means you basically do the opposite to the first school of thought, and that is you do not spend huge amounts of time and energy bombarding your sub conscious with your new desire.

When looking at these two schools of thought there seems to be a contradiction. How can one camp say you need to bombard your sub conscious and the other camp say you should not. The answer lies with one thing and one thing only, and that is your belief that the desire can happen.

This is extremely important because someone who needs to tell themselves something over and over again needs to do this because deep down they simply do not believe it is possible.

Think about it for a second. If you believed that a certain desire, experience, possession etc was very possible in your world, would you need to continuously tell yourself that? The answer is no. Think of it another way; a lot of things are possible in your life but have you achieved them all yet? No, simply because you haven’t had time, but that doesn’t make them impossible to you.

However once you get to goals that are larger than anything you’ve ever attained before there is an instant blockage in your system and the only way to remove this blockage is by force.

By force I mean you have to literally reprogram your beliefs and automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are what drive you daily and when someone lacks belief in what they can achieve their automatic thought processes match that belief. Using tools like the ones mentioned earlier, such as affirmations and pictures etc are all great at doing that.

So what is really at the core of achieving something is not the goal itself but rather the belief that you can actually attain it.

Reprogramming your mind then is a process of instilling the belief that you can attain something and removing any limiting beliefs.

If on the other hand you have faith in yourself and the process, then all you need to do is make your intention clear and let it go, knowing that in due time it will arrive.

What is essential in either process is removing any need to know ‘how’ it will come. If you keep asking yourself how something is going to come to you, you are simply reinforcing the belief that the goal is out of your reach.