f I were to look on your bookshelves, I’m sure I’d find books on how to attract a soulmate, how to magnetize more money and abundance, or how to find your purpose – Am I right? The movie The Secret caused an avalanche of interest in the law of attraction - how we create our reality and attract the life we desire.

I was an avid follower of the teachings of Abraham – the most popular teacher of the law of attraction. I attended their workshops whenever they came to Boston – hundreds of people would show up. I still love Abraham, and I sometimes wonder how many of their followers manifested the life they desired.

How about you? Do you try to think positive thoughts to stay in the vortex? Do you act as if you already have what you want? Do you have affirmations written on post-it notes posted on your mirror and fridge? Maybe you’ve crafted a few vision boards?

There’s nothing wrong with doing any of this stuff, but let’s be honest – there are a lot of people who are still waiting and wondering: Where’s my stuff? There are still people stuck in a life that refuses to change. And despite the positive thinking, there’s a familiar set of limiting thoughts and emotions unique to everyone that seem to be on an endless loop.

So, what’s changed about my understanding of how we create the life we want?

I still believe there is power in what we think about, but I’m not so bothered when I feel negative emotions. It used to be that I would take a daily inventory and make sure my negative thoughts and emotions wouldn’t see the light of day. I was scared that I would attract those thoughts. And as I look back on those days there was a lot of what we call, spiritual bypassing going on in my life – a lot of avoidance of feelings and shoving stuff under the rug.

But I’ve come to see that the negative and limiting thoughts and feelings, and the hard times I lived through were actually an important message from my inner being that there was something in my life that was asking me to take a deeper look.

I believe that there are key moments in our life – despairing times when nothing seems to be going right – when we are being given the opportunity to look inward and ask: why does this situation keep happening to me? What are the blocks?

I believe these moments are divine interventions designed to turn us in the direction of our worthiness, our North Star – Otherwise, the cycle keeps repeating, and nothing in our life changes.

So much emphasis has been placed on becoming a powerful thinker – just change your thinking and your life will change. We can force ourselves to think something, but it doesn’t go deep enough – we have to feel the change in our body and in our soul. We are so much more than a thinking brain.

At the heart of successful manifestation is self-worthiness. Do you feel truly worthy of what you desire? When we close the worthiness gap, that’s when we become powerful magnetizers.

Imagine an airplane trying to land on the runway, but there is debris and other vehicles blocking the path. The airplane can’t do what it’s supposed to do – land. The Universe wants us to give us what we want – to live to our fullest potential. But there needs to be a clear path – a perfectly aligned match. Your clear runway is your worthiness.