How the Law of Creation helps you heal your past and create your future.

Have you ever set out to create something and burned out before you got there?

Have you ever picked an affirmation or mantra in hopes of manifesting a new reality and felt like you were lying?

Have you tried the Law of Creation and felt like a failure because it just didn’t seem to work for you?

Me too.

Yes, here’s me admitting that my own favorite framework has often remained in the realms of “idealistic vision” while I’ve gotten stuck feeling too human to make it work properly.

You can imagine the level of breakthrough I experienced when I realized why I so often got stuck. Turns out the Law of Creation framework needed some minor adjustments. And those adjustments blew my mind.

Let me share one of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve experienced that has brought me more healing and helped me understand how to make unconditional love something that is accessible and practical.

To begin, What is the Law of Creation?

ChatGPT: The Law of Creation states that we have the power to shape our reality through our thoughts, beliefs, and intentions. By consciously focusing on what we desire and aligning our energy with it, we can manifest the life we want.

Many times you will hear other terms for this same concept. The Law of Attraction and Manifesting tend to be the top two popular variations. I prefer to use the term Law of Creation because it feels in alignment with the natural world and for me it integrates the greater presence of the Divine as a collaborative effort to Co Create our life.

I have taught the Law of Creation for the past ten years using five simple words to make it easy to remember and actionable. Those five words include:

Feeling includes our emotions and sensations in our body.

Being includes our capacity to embody and hold space for our creation

See & Say includes our thoughts and beliefs

Do includes our actions.

Each part is important and needed for the whole.

Feel, be, see, say, and do.

If you don't remember anything else from what I teach, remember those five words in order and by the end of this article you will know how you can use those words as a beautiful guide to heal your past and create your future.

For many years I taught the Law of Creation differently. Now, it might seem a little weird for me to talk about the old way of teaching this, but I think the old way contains two common fallacies that still exist in the world today that we need to be aware of. These fallacies are prevalent and you have likely found yourself believing and practicing the old way as well. Once you know why I changed it, the new way will have more impact and you too can make the necessary tweaks in your approach to creating your life with significantly more success.

My old version of the Law of Creation included the same words but in a different order.

In the past I always lead out with the element of See and Say. This was built upon the belief that our thoughts create our feelings. See and Say are the images and words in our mind. They are our thoughts. It is our thinking mind.

And yes, our thoughts do create feelings...

But creation does not always happen in this order…

It doesn't always begin with a thought. Have you ever felt a feeling but you didn't know why...you just felt something?

When we start to study the nervous system we discover that our thoughts are not the origin of all of our feelings. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychology professor at Northeastern University introduced what's known as the theory of constructed emotion. According to this ground breaking theory, emotions begin in the body as physical sensations, which our subconscious then uses to predict how we should feel based on how we've felt in the past when we've experienced the same sensory state of being.

If our heart is racing, our breath is quick and our blood is pulsing through our veins, our brain may interpret these sensations as fear or excitement, depending on what we've experienced in the past when we felt similarly.

So, for instance, if we're preparing for a big speech and have had unpleasant experiences with public speaking, our subconscious may interpret our sensory state as fear. But if our past experiences with public speaking have been positive, our subconscious may interpret the same sensations as excitement. Our emotions are really just mental concepts created by our body and driven by our past. Or, as Dr Barrett put it, our emotions are "constructions of the world, not reactions to it."

Our mind isn't always accurate in interpreting our emotions. It will supply a reason to explain why we have a sensation in our body based on past experience. It's biased.

Do our thoughts create our feelings? Yes.

And...do our feelings cause our thoughts? Also yes.

So if that's the case, you may wonder why the order for the Law of Creation matters at all. In the life coaching world, or in the mindset and self improvement world, it is common to lead with the belief that if you just change your thought about something, then your feelings will change.

This is wonderful! Except when it doesn't work.

There is not a 100% accuracy rate on this approach. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Have you ever been told to just choose a new thought and had it backfire? Have you ever picked an affirmation or a mantra and had it fail to produce the change of feelings you were hoping for?

As a devoted meditator I love picking a mantra I hope will change everything and recite it on repeat for long periods of time. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it all falls flat.

If this is so, it becomes really important to understand what is happening in the moments where the new thought fails to change my feelings. (This is where understanding how the nervous system works can literally change everything and I’m excited to talk about that more in the future.)

So fallacy #1, just pick a new thought doesn't always work. Feelings precede thinking.

Next, you may notice that the first four words are present tense and the final word is future tense.

This too is a common approach to goal setting, to self improvement, and even to religion or the cultural belief in The American Dream. Our society is obsessively focused on the future. Who we want to become, what we want to achieve, what outcomes and successes we are working towards, whether in this life or the next.

James Clear in his classic book, Atomic Habits, points out that many goals fail because they were only focused on the future outcome. He then presents his model for the three layers of Behavioral Change.

The outermost layer is the outcome. This is where most people stay.

If you go one layer deeper in his model of behavior change and establish a process to reach the outcome, your chances of reaching your goal increase.

But here's where things get even more interesting. It was those that went to the third layer and made the goal or outcome their identity (in other words, their current state of being rather than a future state of being) that were most likely to achieve the outcome.

So really, it's not that we need to ditch the practice of thinking of the future, we just need to find a way to make that future state of being the same as our present state of being. We need to embody that version of ourselves in the now. It's important to make that identity component who we are today, not who we hope we will become once we reach our desired outcome. Present tense all around for everything!

So not only did I change the future tense "become" to present tense "be", I put it in the most powerfully transformative place in the cycle. Right at the beginning. Feeling and Being may seem really similar. They are. But the subtleties of how they are used in the Law of Creation are so effective and beautiful.

When we put this new order in place, we aren't leading with future outcomes anymore. Instead we are leading with our feelings and leading with our very being. This is so much more effective.

HOW DOES THIS LOOK IN REAL LIFE?

If your goal is to lose 20 pounds, you could put that goal into the old version and SEE, SAY, DO. Visualize it and affirm it and do the actions it will require to reach your desired outcome. This can work. As long as you don't burn out or get sabotaged by any of your limiting beliefs.

But watch what happens when I lead with a feeling instead.

My outcome based goal may still be to lose 20 pounds. But how am I hoping this will make me feel?

Underneath every one of our goals is really just a feeling of how we want to feel. What do I think losing 20 pounds is going to bring me? Perhaps I want to feel confident? Energized? Strong? Lighter? Attractive? Loved?

So when I lead with a feeling of how I want to feel, the most amazing thing happens. I can experience that feeling right now. I don't have to wait for an outcome. I can BE that person now. I can FEEL that experience today.

If you save what you want to feel for the moment of outcome, you might find yourself disappointed. Your feeling and your being need to be practiced. Have you ever had the experience of working really hard to achieve an outcome and NOT felt the way you hoped you would feel when you finally hit your goal? It's actually common for amazing athletes like Olympic Gold Medalists to feel depressed after they achieve their amazing goal...because they put so much attention on the outcome and the moment quickly passes as a moment in time.

My business coach, James Wedmore, tells the story of how depressed he got after he had his first six figure launch. He thought everything would feel different if he made a bunch of money. When that moment finally came and he made multiple six figures in a single launch, he immediately afterwards went into a state of depression for several months because the feelings he thought would be there never came.

If instead, you are leading with feeling, then you are giving yourself the gift of feeling what you want to feel in the present moment. Right now. You're practicing the feeling! You get the delight of experiencing the joy of life right now instead of waiting for the outcome to bring what you want to feel. It's the joy in the journey instead of delaying your whole experience of life for when the outcome you want finally happens. It is being present.

It is from this state of embodying the feeling you want to feel that your thoughts and actions naturally change to support you, because now you feel in alignment.

On the flip side, if you don't change your feelings first, you may have had the experience of saying an affirmation or picking a new thought and you feel like you're lying. You feel like you're lying because the feeling in your body doesn't match the thought. The mind and body are in conflict.

But if you change the feeling first, and then add the new thought, you have significantly changed your energetic alignment. As my coach Brian Johnson used to say, "your physiology informs your psychology." In other words, the body comes first. Start with the feeling.

Just imagine at this point how this affects your actions. This is why the being comes before the doing. If you have alignment with your body and your mind, the actions are so much easier. When you're just doing doing doing to reach the being, you will expend way more resources than you need to. It can eventually work from that direction--if you don't burn out and give up--but it's not guaranteed and it's significantly more effective to change your state of being first. And I'm all about being efficient and effective.

So can you see how this new order is more effective?

FEEL

BE

SEE

SAY

DO

You lead with how you want to feel so you can experience how you want to feel in the present. You embody this feeling as your state of being right now. This sets your body up to believe the new empowering thoughts and from this state your actions are easy. Now you're in alignment. Your energy is supporting you rather than being in conflict. Your nervous system is supporting you rather than being in conflict.

If you lead with feeling and you understand how to change your state of being on the level of your nervous system, then whatever new supportive thought you choose will feel like a match. Then you do the actions necessary and create your life. This approach works 100% of the time.

If you simply follow this framework you can create anything. Except... there's still one more problem…

You can feel amazing and in alignment in one moment, and in the next moment your false beliefs come and sabotage everything.

Your brain freaks out.

You doubt yourself.

Wounded parts of you from your past come out to protect you from getting hurt again or failing again.

You get pulled back into old patterns.

Your nervous system goes on alert because this feeling and calmness and expansive state is unfamiliar territory.

What I just modeled for you was using the Law of Creation facing the future for what you want to create. Guess what? You can also use it facing your past.

You can use the Law of Creation to create your desired outcomes, AND you can use this exact same framework to heal your wounded parts that have had experiences in your past that have created limiting beliefs that hold you back.

What many of us do is ignore these wounded parts. We think If we just put all our focus on the positive and ignore those self sabotaging voices, then we will overcome them. If we just keep repeating the new thought or mantra or affirmation then we will drown out the voice that believes differently....

What if I told you those self sabotaging parts are not not going away and they aren't meant to be overcome?

What if instead they are meant to be loved and accepted and integrated into the wholeness of who you are? What if we actually do need to listen to them?

Want to see this in action?

Let's use our example of wanting to create weight loss again.

Facing the future this method could look like me first asking how I want to feel?

I want to feel lighter.

Can I just be with that desire for a moment? Be with this desire to feel lighter. Presence it. Hold space for the desire to feel lighter in my life.

Can I see how feeling lighter would look in my life? What do I see? How does feeling lighter look in my day to day?

Can I say the words that will support this desire for me to feel lighter?

What can I do to help myself feel lighter today?

I love going through this framework even hypothetically, because I feel transformation happening in my body by first leading out with feeling and being. It feels amazing!

And yet…

What often happens is this new feeling, this new calmness in the nervous system has created a different environment than I am used to being in. Even though it's a better frequency, it's a calmer and more expansive state of being, it hasn't been my homeostasis in the past and it's unfamiliar. Perhaps I notice a false belief pop into my mind that doesn't believe it's possible for me to really feel lighter. Maybe I have a memory come to mind of times I have failed in creating weight loss or physical change in my body. Perhaps I recall all the times in the past that I have tried to change and have failed.

Instead of the false belief now sabotaging my effort to create something new, I can use this same framework to heal that wounded part of myself who feels defeated. These parts are not to be ignored. They are to be listened to and loved. They are not triggers to sabotage your desires, instead they are invitations to heal the past so you can create a better life from a place of wholeness.

Watch how this works facing the past...

How does my wounded part feel?

It feels defeated. I remember all the times in the past that I have failed and I'm afraid that I will just fail again.

Can you just BE with that part of yourself right now that feels defeated? Can you allow yourself to fully feel the feeling of defeat. Can you hold space for this feeling of defeat?

What do you SEE? Perhaps you see a memory from the past. Perhaps you see a younger part of yourself who has struggled with defeat and failure.

What could you SAY to this part? Could you speak lovingly to this part of you who feels defeat?

"Dear one, I know you felt defeat. I know you feel like you have failed. I validate your suffering. I honor what you have been through and hold space for this feeling. It's okay that you feel this way. I love and accept you. Just as you are. You are worthy. You are loved. You are whole. I welcome you. I love you."

What could you DO for this part? Perhaps you imagine yourself giving this part of you a hug, or holding this part gently. Perhaps this part of yourself has a request of something you could do for it that would help sooth. Perhaps your part needs reassurance. "I know there have been times that haven't worked in the past, dear one. It's understandable that you would be worried that you would fail again. I want you to know that I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to love you no matter what happens. I'm going to try doing this in a new way and most importantly this new way includes loving you with no conditions..."

Essentially, using the Law of Creation facing the past, invites you to parent your wounded parts. It invites you to feel your feelings instead of spiritually bypassing. It invites you to do the shadow work that is necessary for your own healing and any forward progress you hope to make in your life.

We all have wounded parts that hold limiting beliefs about who we are and our love-ability and worthiness. This surfaces for everyone, especially when you make the effort to move forward and change the patterns of how you feel and what you are creating in your life. If you ignore these wounded parts, if you ignore your false beliefs, if you ignore the parts of you that freak out and instead just keep trying to move forward, its like you have an anchored boat and it doesn't matter how much you paddle, you're not going to get far.

True joy comes from a place of wholeness. And wholeness means that all parts of who you are--are loved and accepted. This to me, is the most powerful part of the Law of Creation, because it integrates the infinite power of unconditional love. You are choosing to love all parts of who you are without condition.

In the past, you may have been conditional with loving yourself. This looks like only loving the part of you who has earned it or deserved it, but judging the parts of you that reacted in ways you didn't accept or judging parts of you that you don't like. This is conditional love. I will love you IF....

Unconditional love is different. It loves all your parts. It holds space. It is gentle and kind and accepting. It see's the heart. Your whole self. And guess what happens when all your parts are welcome? They help you create what you want to create instead of sabotaging. Que the angelic chorus.

I know this was just a quick overview of the framework. Can you imagine what this practice could do for you personally? It is one of the most rewarding ways to meditate and create that I have ever discovered. I do this for myself everyday. Sometimes I start facing the future and choose how I want to feel that day... and if a limiting belief or wounded part surfaces, I run through it facing my past. It immediately de-escalates the sabotaging feeling and I am able to return to neutral. I'm training my body and all the parts of me to work together and create a new homeostasis. This is the power of unconditional love and working with the body and your feelings first.

The Law of Creation has taught me how to love myself without conditions. Learning to love myself without conditions has rippled into helping me more and more be able to love others without condition as well. Being able to feel what I want to feel NOW has allowed me to let go of striving and hoping future outcomes will change my feelings. It has allowed me to love the journey of life, to love all parts of myself, and to know how to handle every obstacle that comes with mindfulness and love. It's the joy of discovering that the treasure you've always been searching for is already inside you.

Feel be, see, say, and do.

You are a creator. Now go co create something great.

*Want to go deeper with me in the Law of Creation? Check out my FREE course where we do a deep dive into each of these elements.