Every year, millions of people sit down with vision boards. They visualize. They set intentions. They do everything they've been told to do. And yet they're only incremental changes, not the big manifestation of the vision that you want. What if I told you the very thing you're using to create your future is actually the thing that's holding you back? You know, not that long ago, I was lonely. I was struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. I had two homes in foreclosure. Now I've gone from 0 to 40 million in a business that's helping millions of people. I'm married to the woman I love, and I've literally made my vision board a reality. And in this episode, I want to show you why visualization and vision boards might actually be the one thing that's holding you back and how keeping your goals in front of you and reading them out loud every single day isn't necessarily useful. And I want to help you see why the universe doesn't need you to try harder, visualize better, or constantly remind it of what you want. Because the truth is, what you want is likely already on the way, if you can just sit still long enough and get out of the way to receive it. Now, let's get into it.

Welcome to A Changed Mind, a journey into the topics that matter to you most. From the neuroscience and spirituality of mindset and personal growth, to groundbreaking strategies for health, wealth, and relationships, to open and honest conversations about pressing global issues such as the environment, censorship, corporate capture, and democracy, each and every episode reminds us of the certainty of the goodness of the future and provides the teachings, tools, and timeless wisdom inspiring you to create real, lasting change in your life and in the world. If you've been desiring a sanctuary for your spirit, a place to go to tune out the distraction, negativity, and doom and gloom so that you can tap into the deep power, the vibrancy, and the potential you have inside. You're in the right place. Welcome to a Changed Mind. For a lot of people, visualization has become just another task on the personal development to do list. It's another thing to do in order produce the results that we want. And the challenge is that it's also another thing that the mind uses to measure, to judge, and to control outcomes. When I was first getting into personal growth and creating my own reality, great teachers said things like, hey, visualize every single morning. Sit down and really feel it as if it's happening right now. See it clearly. And I had a challenge doing that at the beginning. I'LL be really honest. Like, I didn't feel I was very good at visualization. My wife, when I met her, on the other hand, you know, she would just go into another universe, coming back in extraordinary bliss. And I thought that there was something wrong with me. And unconsciously, what that turned into was like, am I doing it right? Why hasn't it happened yet? Maybe there's something wrong with me. And all of that is creating the one thing that can block you from materializing what you want from your vision board, which is resistance. So the real problem is when visualization becomes not something you're doing because you enjoy doing it, but that you're using as a way to produce an outcome. That's when there starts to become an attachment. And if you really take a look at how maybe you've used visualizations or vision boards, they may have been fun in the moment, and that's actually the purpose of them. That's the exclusive purpose of visualizing, is to feel joy in the moment. But perhaps afterwards, you've had some expectation or you've gotten into a routine or believing you need to visualize on a regular basis. What we're doing there is we're trying to horse trade with the universe. And so you're no longer in creation at that moment. You're in a negotiation. You're kind of saying, like, look, I'll do this if you give me that. And that's not how creation works. That's expectation. For years, my wife and I, we would sit down at the beginning of each year with our journals, and we'd create these little illustrations and pictures with maybe some words and some diagrams. And it would be about how we'd want to create in that year. And we'd actually build it out for five years, seven years. And we'd talk about where we'd live, and we'd talk about the kind of work that we'd be doing and the impact that we'd be having and the family that we would have. And we talked about how we feel and the kind of freedom that we wanted. And the truth is, much of that became true recently. I had some friends over at my house, and I actually have my vision board back from 2011 sitting on my desk. And someone looked at it and said, oh, my God, that's your house. Did you actually take a picture of your house and put it on your vision board? And I looked at it, and I was like, oh, my God, the front of my house looks exactly like this house I put on my vision board back in 2011. You know, back in 2011, I wasn't with my wife. I just had a picture of a beautiful woman that represented a woman that I wanted to meet, who would be intelligent, who I could build my business with. A couple weeks later, I actually met Carol, who is now my wife. I had pictures of people that I looked up to, and I had this vision that someday I'd actually coach them and help them. And it wasn't long ago that my sales team called me and said, hey, there's a guy on the phone who's pretending to be Les Brown, the great motivational speaker. And I said, well, put him through. And I got on the phone, I said, les? He said, the one and only. He said, I've been seeing what you're doing out there and how you're making an impact. Are you available for me to hire as my business coach? Like, my vision board became my reality. But when I look back, it wasn't because Carol and I forced it. It wasn't because we visualized harder than anyone else. It happened because we learned how to live in joy without needing the outcome. Did we do it perfectly? Absolutely not. But. So the vision board is meant to be a joy activation mechanism for that moment. And it's great to visualize because you're getting clarity on a future that you want. You know, your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. So as you do authentically, without attachment, contemplate your future, your brain actually starts to build new neural networks. You literally build a memory of a future that hasn't happened yet. You start to become the person you need to become in order to meet that future. And as a byproduct of visualization and living in and anticipating in your future, you actually develop the brain of the person who has the thoughts and the ideas necessary to create that future. But what many of us do is we add it on top of a pile of things that we need to do in order to produce the results that we want. And I would suggest that even more important than visualization is living in your joy. And so I want to talk to you about this framework that I came to understand actually through studying what I think is one of the great current personal development metaphysical teachers, which is Abraham Hicks. Esther Hicks, if you're not familiar, channels, she gets into a meditative state and she channels this non physical entity known as Abraham. At first it might feel a little bit weird, but then you go and you listen to Abraham and you're like, man, this shit is good. And it is some of the best on Law of Attraction. And there's a five step framework that Abraham teaches that I think is really helpful because it allows us to use tools like visualization and vision for fun, but not become dependent upon them in order to produce the results. You know, there's a lot of old school personal development teachers out there who say like write down your and put it on a sticky note or a post it note, you know, right next to your computer. Read those goals out loud every single day. And I would say if you enjoy doing that, then do it. But if you're using it as to a means to an end, you don't understand how creation actually works. So I want to give you this five step framework from Abraham. And it's really powerful because you're going to see how automatic the universe or God or Jesus or Allah or whatever you define as your higher power, how automatically it hears and responds. We're told this in scripture, right? Ask and ye shall receive. Well, it didn't say ask and ask and ask and ask and over again and over again and you shall receive, right? It's not like God is far off in the universe and so you have to shout loudly in order for him or her to hear you to respond. It's a lot more simple than that. I think that's why Jesus had a lot of things he said in the Bible. Like my yoke is easy, right? It's not that hard when you understand how it works. So here's the five steps of the Abraham framework that's going to allow you to either set aside your vision board and your visualization or simply do it because it feels good, not because it's in a. It's a requirement of manifestation. Step one that Abraham maps out is called living in the contrast. And so Abraham basically says that in your life you're going to experience things that you like and that you don't like. And the things that you like are referred to as preferences. And the things that you don't like are referred to as contrast. And so on a moment by moment basis, on a daily basis, you're sifting and sorting, as Abraham would say, through these multiple realities that are coming together. Because we're all creating our own reality and it creates this reality soup and we're bumping into each other's realities. And there are some things that you're gonna experience that you don't like. That's the contrast, right? Living in the contrast. And so that might be you take a look at your bank account and you're like, I would like to see more money there. I don't like to see the amount of money that is there. But noticing what you don't like is helping you actually fine tune your preferences. So the idea was that you would incarnate into a reality that would have all kinds of different options or possibilities. You would notice those things that you like and you would create more of those, but you would also notice those things that you don't like. And it would help you get clear on what you want. So you don't like feeling physical pain or chronic illness in your body that helps you get clear on this desire, which is to be healthy and vibrant. Maybe you're like me, you know, a little more than a decade ago, I didn't like being single. I didn't like going out on dates with women that I didn't see any long term potential with. So that helped me get clear on who I did want to be with. Right? I wanted to find a soulmate and the qualities and characteristics of this person. So step one is you're living in the contrast, right? You're noticing the things that you don't want. Step two is, as you notice the things that you don't want, there's an automatic response. Step two is the automatic response from the universe. And so in step two, you almost, it's like your nervous system sends off a communication to the universe, which is the desire. So because you noticed in step one, as you're living in the contrast, what you don't want, in step two, you've activated a desire. And so what that essentially means is through your thoughts, through your emotions, not at a conscious level, but at an unconscious level, you've sent off your request to the universe. And so the universe begins to organize all of the components necessary to materialize what it is that you want. And so that might be thoughts that you now have access to, thoughts that start to come your way or that you become resonant with, that become the action plan and the action you need to take that could be aligning circumstances and situations and creating coincidences and synchronicities to help line up and produce the result that you desire. But in step two, the universe is automatically responding. And there's a lot of scriptural reference to this. You know, in the Bible, in Matthew, it says your father knows what you need before you ask him, right? It's this idea that instantaneously, without you even knowing it, as you're experiencing the problems in your life, you're broadcasting a desire, meaning a request for the opposite. And the universe is now conspiring to organize all that. In the Quran, it says, when my servants ask you about me, I am near. In the Quran, it says, I am closer to you than your jugular vein, right? I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon me. So these, these rules are in scripture, these guidances. The moment you ask, you receive. And so if you notice, so far, you haven't actually done anything other than live your life. This isn't about vision boards, because the vision board is created in your response to the experiences that you don't like. You're creating this future of things that you want through the interaction with the things that you don't want. And it's automatic. What you'll also notice is that anything that you've ever created in your life, 99.9999% of what's required to produce that outcome has nothing to do with you. For example, this show gets around 2 million listeners a month right now. Someone could say, well, you know, that that's a great outcome. That was a thing that was on my vision board at one point in time, right? To have a platform where I could influence and help many people. And someone could say, well, how did you do that? And I would say, well, you know, I started recording an episode once a week. I stuck with it. I took some coaching courses on how to optimize for the YouTube platform, started publishing the audio episodes on the audio platforms. Eventually I started doing two episodes a week. And for the first 18 months, nobody really listened. And then all of a sudden, the show took off, and now there's 2 million listeners a month. Good for me. I stuck with it. I did the work. I've recorded over 200 episodes. And all of that is true. But if you really look at the greater reason for why I have a show like this, the universe would say, well, we knew that David was going to want to create something like this, so we created the Internet. And then on top of the Internet, we gave people ideas so that YouTube could be born. And then we had other people become active to create coaching programs around how to optimize for YouTube. And we perfectly timed an introduction to those people through a Facebook ad that came through David's news feed. So the universe would look at it and go, well, Dave, I kind of did the heavy lifting. I appreciate that you recorded an episode every single week. But we created the Internet, we created YouTube, we created Facebook. So 99.9% of the heavy lift is actually done by reality. And so this is also another way of saying you don't really need to know the how. And so far you're not even doing anything in this five step creation process. Step one, you're living your life and you're experiencing some things you don't want. Step two, reality is responding based on the desire that your interaction with the contrast created. So so far you've done nothing. Step three is really your only job, which is to be a non resistance. So when you have requested something from God, the universe, reality, as a result of experiencing a problem, your job now is to make sure that you don't entangle with the problem, but you align with the solution. The great mystic Neville Goddard talked about living and acting as if the wish were already fulfilled. You now live in anticipation and expectation that what you want is on the way, both coming through you and to you. And you live in non resistance, which is another way of saying believe. You live in faith. Faith that life is always working for your greatest growth, your greatest prosperity, your greatest evolution. You don't even need to be aware of the desire, but when it shows up, you'll be like, oh my God, that's exactly what I wanted. But your job in step three is to just not get vibrationally in the way of reality as it is organizing through you and to you to produce the outcome that you've requested. Again, going back to this idea that, you know, Jesus said, my yoke is easy, right? My way is easy. If you just understood the ways that I'm explaining the Father functions in your life, you would see how easy it is and you would relax. You would live knowing that you're taken care of in any moment. Because every time you experience the contrast or something that you don't like, a preference or a desire is already on the way. The fourth step in Abraham's model is experiencing more contrast. So essentially you're going back to step one, because as the things that you desire are manifesting and materializing in your life, there's still lots of things going on. You're still living in a collective reality. You're bumping up against other people's realities as they're creating it. So you're going to experience more of what you don't want. But that's okay because that's going to, as Abraham would describe it, launch more rockets of desire. So now you place more requests, more requests unconsciously to the universe. And notice, that doesn't mean you have to go back now to your vision board or to your list of things or your Incantations. And add more to the list if you want to, because it's fun for you. That's great, because joy is non resistance. But the point is to live in your joy. And the point is to live in non resistance. The point is not to spend your whole life reading your list of requests off of your computer monitor, or having to spend every single morning and hour a day in visualization or praying to your vision board. So step four is you will experience more problems. That's okay, because they become requests or desires. And step five is, Abraham describes it is mastery of the process. That's step five. And when you master this process, you start to perceive problems as something different than problems. Because every time you experience a problem, you realize it's just the catalyst for this new request and a desire. And so you very quickly move from paying attention to the problem to anticipating the solution. And so in this way, you have very few problems in your life. Problems come but for a second, and then they pass because your attention becomes directed to the anticipation or arrival of the solution. And you go on with your life. You just go on with your day. You go on with your afternoon. I've used the metaphor of sitting at a diner and ordering a pastrami sandwich. You know, you're sitting in a booth, you order the pastrami sandwich. The server goes to fulfill on your desire. But could you imagine? Every time the server's trying to leave the table, you say, excuse me, is my pastrami sandwich arriving soon? Excuse me, should we talk more about my pastrami sandwich? Maybe I haven't felt my pastrami sandwich deeply enough, in which case it may not arrive. So could we just sit here and meditate together on my pastrami sandwich? The server would never be able to get back to the kitchen to get your pastrami sandwich ordered so it can come out for delivery. But this is in many ways what we do with the universe. And we do it through this obsession with visualization and vision boards and. And task lists and goal lists and New Year's resolutions and so on and so forth. But again, your father knows what you need before you ask him. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon me. This is what the great teachings teach. So visualization should not be used as a tool to get something. If it is, then that's a sign of doubt. It is a sign of fear. What if this never happens? What if I'm not doing it the right way? It is a sign of resistance. Visualization and vision boards are for fun, to feel appreciation, to play with imagination, to experience beauty, to enjoy the moment, to do it with your partner. And when done this way, it becomes an act of non resistance and anticipation versus transaction. And so the bigger truth is this. The world Earth is the garden. It is the Garden of Eden where everything is taken care of for us and it is designed through mathematical, geometric and quantum laws, spiritual laws to respond to alignment. And so when you stop trying to force outcomes and negotiating your self worth, or if you're doing enough, and when you let joy be the compass, then life begins to organize itself around you. So I hope this episode served you well, that you enjoyed it as much as I loved sharing it with you. Do me a favor. If you haven't yet subscribe to the channel, be a part of this community. If you have any questions or comments, leave them here on the episode. If you're following along on YouTube, I try to answer as many as I can. If you're on the audio platform, same thing. Share this episode with somebody you think needs to hear it. That's how we continue to spread the word and do this work together. Because all of this growing of ourselves and betterment of ourselves, it's not a do it yourself, project it to do it, to do it with others. So thank you for being here with me today. I love you so much and I will see you in the next episode. Hey, it's David. One more thing. If you want to go even deeper. On everything we've talked about on today's episode, so don't forget to jump over to www.DavidBear.com. you can find the link in the. Show notes and subscribe to our newsletter. A couple of times a week, I'm going to be sending you the latest. Episodes that we've released along with additional free trainings. You'll get immediate access to my free.