to create the life you want.
Affirmations for the newly converted
Jul 27th
Right now I am trying to share my work with the Law of Attraction and positive Affirmations with N. Unfortunately N really doesn’t like his job. I know he wants his own business, house and better income but I know poor N is stuck in focusing his attention in lack, worry, fear and the victim mentality. It is hard to be positive and working on asking the universe for all the things I want when your partner is focusing on the lack and is not too happy about it. Now N is a man and would not be seen dead reading one of those positive attraction self help books so I am trying to give him some exercises to get him out of the lack as I am sure he is attracting bad luck and I want that to go away fast. Yesterday for instance he received a fine from the council for littering! $300 fine, money just thrown away!
So tonight I gave him this exercise:
- Think and remember how it felt when something wonderful happened. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be making the girls laugh, or when Moana said da-da last week or even driving your favourite car (he is mechanic after all). Whatever it doesn’t matter.
- How does it make you feel?
- Now hold onto that feeling of good and swap that memory to the thing you want. That is what you do. Request to the universe what you want but keep holding onto that feeelling.
He did entertain me with giving it a go. I am no expert but I am hoping if I encourage him enough it will be a good start.
The workshop that started me on my journey to gain some control over my life was delivered by K and Dr Michael at ConnectwithSpirit, The Art of Manifesting Workshop. What I love about these manifesting and subsequent meditation classes are the anecdotal stories people have. I am a sucker for reading Just Life magazine at the supermarket register or the hairdresser so I am always fascinated to hear these real life stories which K and Dr Michael have and how spirit and the Law of Attraction has worked for them.
Also during my research into the blog sphere I found a beautiful website, Abundance Tapestry, Manifest Abundance With Creative Self Alignment. Evelyn has some lovely posts on abundance, tips on how to overcome mental focus and blockages and anecdotal stories which I love. Her vision board is there too. Her post 7 Jazzy Ideas To Making Affirmations FUN is something I think will also work with N. I think the make-believe mini exercises will work and I know he has images of cars for his business on his tool box and in the garage. Now we can work on the exercise above and have fun writing blank checks out.
I saw this viral YouTube video called Jessica’s Affirmation. I know it has gone around the internet lately but it will brighten up your day and if you ever need an affirmation boost just watch this.
Last note….however later on TV tonight despite my best efforts, when a voluptuous lady bounced onto screen, N commented on the lack of boobs and if the LOA exercise will attract bigger ones into his life. Jokingly he then wholeheartedly gave my little exercise ago with a silly grin while staring into the universe. Hmm maybe that boob job will come early after all.
Lessons learnt on the Kokoda Track
Jul 25th
I recently posted on Twitter this statement, “The 2007 Lisa hiked the Kokoda track. The 2010 Lisa struggles pushing a double pram uphill. How ironic.” I have been thinking about this statement and its not quite true. The Kokoda track was hard really really hard but what did I learn that I am unconsciously putting into action today? Did the challenge to complete the Kokoda track somehow get me through the physical challenge of a multiple birth, recovery and now the responsibility to parenting twins? Excerpts from my diary are below:
My Kokoda Track Diary
Friday
I heard today that you are supposed to leave something behind on the track; something spiritual, something inside. Like my reason to go on this journey I’m not quite sure I know what it is. I’m here alone. It is a journey and challenge I must make on my own. I want to do it and I can do it. I want to be proud of me. I am so happy and I can’t wait to do more travel and get married and have a family and earn lots of money. Ha! Ha! Lol
Sunday
Not quite sure what to write – been thinking about it for the past few days. I was told the trek was not a pretty trek but they are wrong. It is beautiful. The villages are clean and so well kept. The families take so much pride. I didn’t like Port Moresby. Saturday was a slow start. We spent hours waiting for out charter flight to go to Kokoda but when it happened it was fantastic. The tour group is so well organised. I have a porter called James. Today was our first full day or trekking. It started off quite hard. My backpack was not sitting very well and heavy and my feet were squished. I gave more of weight to James and took the soles out of my shoes. My body aches. We went thought four villages today. John goes through the war history almost at every stop. The group is good. I am getting along with everyone. The tents are great, comfy but 6:15 am leaving campsite is a bit early! I am not all that organised in the dark to pack everything. Fortunately we get to the campsite relatively early today at 3pm. The view is beautiful. I wish I had Milo. I am feeling good though. The muscles in my legs – I am very impressed. I miss N. Miss him lots. Love L
Monday
I miss N. My knee gave way today. I am really trying to perserve but it hurts so much. I have taken anti-inflammatories and pain killers (endone!) and anti-nausea. This track is hard. I think we are at Eora Creek village tonight. It is raining again. I felt so bad because my porter James had to carry my stuff. He is so helpful through the track. Please god make my knee better. Its only two days in. We did ten hours trekking today. We leave at 6:15am and usually get to campsite by 4pm. I’m tired. I have been thinking lots about my life while on the track. Not sure yet what to let go. I wish I had a watch because I wake up at night and don’t know what time it is. I am having chocolate withdrawals. I should have bought Milo and coffee bags. My tummy has been ok. The group has been great. I think it is because you have to be a certain person to decide to go on a trek like this, motivated etc. Everyone has been genuine concerned but I don’t want any attention on myself. Love L
Tuesday
Not the best day today. My wallet and all my money was stolen in the middle of the night and my leg kills. I am feeling depressed.
<Diary ends. One trecker in our group was flown out due to illness. I was told a year later that they had a helicopter on stand-by ready to take me out as well. I think if I had known that at the time I might have given up. Thankfully I made it.>
Monday
Back at home. I am not sure how I am feeling. My brain feels like scrambled eggs. Combined with the intense experience of the Kokoda track, I didn’t quite expect the mental and emotional challenge that came with it.
It was hard, bloody hard. I had been training for about six months for the cardio but the (ITP) iliotibial band decided to play up causing sever pain in my left knee and hip.
I am not quite sure what I am supposed to be doing now. When you focus on something for so long and then it is over it is hard to adjust back to ‘normal’ life. The monotonous sound of the track alone in your thoughts as you concentrate on every step. The words I had playing included trust – trust my boots, trust my walking stick for balance, and trust my porters hand.
My Lessons Learnt
When everything feels overwhelming and too hard just look down at your feet and trust. Trust your feet to take you there.
The story about Chlamydia
Jul 23rd
“You’re the only person in the world who has a folder on your computer hard drive titled Chlamydia,” my sister once said.
Now to get the story straight almost ten years ago I spent a year studying the molecular evidence of Chlamydia affecting our Koala population. It was my graduate science Honours degree and during the project I carried the scientific motivation and fascination for discovering something new although most of the year involved silently trying to spell Chlamydia correctly and pronouncing the species name C.trachomatis without embarrassment.
Now my results are not ground breaking (although I recently searched for my own publication and it has been cited a few times since – Whoopee fo
r bibliometrics) but I did discover and characterise novel uncultured Chlamydiales in Free-Range Koala Populations.
Although I no longer work in the laboratory, I have never been able to capture the same feeling of accomplishment as I did from that project.
What made this project different? Was it:
- The autonomy and problem solving,
- The opportunities to experiment with an idea,
- Having access to skilled and intelligent mentors,
- Strict deadlines which meant late night and weekends in the laboratory to try new experiments, theories and repeat results. Extra hours which for some reason I did not mind doing.
- The meticulous writing up of laboratory notes. Like a Vision diary creative expression is all in your laboratory books and lastly
- The satisfaction of having your results in print.
I often wonder if I should have continued with the curiosity that drives career scientists into a PhD and research. Instead I chose the commercial world. Today I wonder if I had continued on the research trajectory would I have been driven to discover something innovative and groundbreaking or even becoming an expert in my own niche of science and would it have been a more fulfilling career.
So what parts of that project I enjoyed most can I start to replicate again today?
On a final note, not to dampen my achievement in the paper “Molecular evidence for novel chlamydial infections in the koala (Devereaux etal Syst Appl Microbiol. 2003 Jun;26(2):245-53), can you see the different interpretation my father had as he would proudly report in public that his daughter “is named after new species of Chlamydia and had a publication to boot.”?
Seek Your Dream Career and Hit the Apply Button
Jul 21st
You spend most of your life at work so its best to find something you enjoy. Hence I am always interested to know how people got their dream job. Over the past fifteen years I have had jobs that helped me get through study, had the graduate jobs, and I have also been fired from a few (or in other words where I did not culturally fit).
Recently I was asked for my advice on how to get that DREAM JOB and this is my practise in action:
- Do an online career assessment. One of the best ones I have seen is based on the theme ‘Fish for your career’, this career test assesses your interest in over 170 occupations to determine the career and area of study that best suits you.
Find your ideal career with this popular online career assessment.
Take control of your career and put it into action every day.
Set up daily FREE email searches on Seek.com.au
This is how. Set up an account with seek.com.au (Australia’s no 1 job search engine or find equivalent overseas) and list all the dream job titles you want in the keywords. This strategy is not necessarily to apply for the jobs but to research and read the advertisements.
What it teaches you is:
- Where the jobs are (interstate, local, overseas etc).
- What is the demand for these jobs or skills? For an example is there a high need for people with these skills (represented by a lot of advertisements) or only a few?
- Are they permanent roles or cyclical, more casual and part-time or contract or consultancy preferred.
- What companies recruit these people? So you can do research on the companies, and even approach them for work experience? Get to know the companies! Especially for industry knowledge and competition in the market and if you ever meet people from these companies you will have something to talk about.
- What are the salary scales for junior entry to senior roles.
- Selection criteria! What do I need to do to get the skills required for these kinds of roles? And then integrate them into your career plan. If you are lacking in one key skill that a lot of advertisement ask for you know that is what you have to do so you can apply.
This is not a quick fix as it takes time to understand a particular job and industry market. I have been doing this for years since I worked in recruitment back in 2003.
Even though I have a good job now I still receive the Seek emails every day for keywords I am interested in like technology commercialisation and business development. It is always good to be up-to date in the market and know who is employing who. Keep your network up to date so you know where people leave jobs and where they are going too (i.e. Linked-in is good for that). It will take some time but worth the effort.
Laugh with me to the Last Degree
Jul 20th
I have always been an advocate for personal networking in my career and I have countless stories of the old adage, “It’s who you know not what you know” working new opportunities for me. My foray into online social media was first introduced with an ICQ account somewhere in the late 1990’s before the Live Messenger was launched. Then I joined Facebook over three years ago just for keeping in contact with my friends and kept it separate to Linked-In for networking with work colleagues. But it was only last week that when I started to research the relaunch of my blog did I open accounts with Twitter and Dig. That is only the start of it and now my head is spinning with information streaming through the social media networks. How does anyone keep track of it all?
To try to focus back onto my blog and provide something of value without getting distracted by the barrage of continual news, spam, jokes and interest. I signed up with hundreds of other bloggers to take part in the 31-Day ProBlogger and the SITS girls The Secret to Success is Support Build a Better Blog Challenge. Perhaps by connecting to this forum all the Helpful People in my Vision Board will come forward to help me develop and grow my blog?
I won’t post each task but yesterday was Day 1 and I am already late with my homework.
The task was to develop an elevator pitch for your blog. A pitch is not something new to me in my day job as I work with scientist and entrepreneurs who need to pitch their ideas daily to find funding and support. So I have had a brainstorm and come up with three. What do you think?
- Laugh with me to the last degree to create the life you want.
- Laugh with me to the last degree to realise your dreams today.
- Laugh with me to the last degree and see the law of attraction in action.
The theme being that no matter where you are in life, nothing can really stop you from realising your drea. I have chosen laugh as besides from the fact I am known for a distintive laugh but life is funny and I hope to always bring warmth and humour into my posts.
As mentioned in my earlier posts, this blog is a resurrection of an old blog titled Ski with me to the last degree to raise awareness for bipolar disorder when I was raising money and awareness for the Bipolar Expedition (hence the url The Last Degree). However as that chapter has closed I wanted to keep the blog and domain name and resurrect it into something new that was current in my life. In the eighteen months since my bipolar blog, I gave birth to twin girls and turned 30 but what has given me a framework and inspiration to my blog is a vision board and a growing list of all my hearts desires. This blog aims to capture that journey of the law of attraction in action.
The Bipolar Expedition Blog
Surprise dear “Its Twins”
Jul 19th
N holds me accountable for the “spontaneous” twin pregnancy. Perhaps it was my obsession with Sweet Valley High books or watching the movie The Parent Trap or living with identical twin sisters but nothing quite prepared me for the ultrasound technician to say, “Congratulations its Twins.” I had gone to the Queensland X-Ray department at 9 weeks on my own – pure curiosity I am afraid with a referral in hand. I should have waited for the usual 12 week scan but I was impatient. I am the type of person who searches Wikipedia for the plot before I watch the movie, read the finishing chapters of a book half way through and certainly not one to keep spoilers from The Doctor.
I am also not known for delicacy and can be depended on saying things at the most inconvenient time. “I’m pregnant” as N chokes on his Weet-Bix. Now in the car park I call N at work, “Surprise, Its twins” as stunned silence permeates through the phone. Tactful comments may also run in the family as not 6 months later as I am admitted into the maternity ward four weeks early, “Have fun” my father says as he leaves for the evening.
Right before all hell breaks loose.
Lets ask what my heart desires
Jul 16th
Ok so boldly I best start my new blog with a list of my hearts desires and ask the universe what I want today.
I LisaD, use the full power of my intention and attention to create the following desires now:
1. Finances:
- I currently earn $200,000 a year.
- I won $500,000.
- I have a $1million share portfolio.
- I have a $2million property portfolio.
2. Home:
- I own a new family home on semi acreage with 4 bedrooms, study, 2 bathrooms, 2 lounge rooms and a gourmet gas stove kitchen. A deck wraps around to capture the sunlight for a peaceful time to read or enjoy a glass of wine at night. Our home is a place with family dinners by the fireplace and a lounge big enough to put up a nine foot real Christmas tree. At the back is a double shed for N and his cars and a pool to swim in at summer. A huge old tree stands tall ready for a new tree house which N is already making plans. We have a herb and veggie garden with sweet greens ready to be picked. Our home is warm and wonderfully ours to grow and be happy.
3. Relationships:
- We got married on a beach destination wedding. Moana and Adelaide will wear gorgeous while baby flower girl dresses and we will have two weeks to ourselves by the lagoon in a beachside villa.
4. Health and Body:
- I am gorgeous and healthy. My post pregnancy belly and bottom are sexy and slim.
5. Work:
- I am a successful business women who thrives on problem solving and project management.
- I own my own company.
6. Creative Expression:
- I am an Author of a successful book.
- I am an Artist with paintings in local galleries.
7. Travel/Adventure
- We have packed up the house and travelling around Australia in a caravan for one year.
- I have been offered a job overseas and we move and work in another country for a few years.
- We holiday in Europe.
8. Spiritual
- I have expanded intuitive awareness.
9. Special Intention
- N owns an auto mechanic workshop and it is very successful.
10. Gratitude
- I give thanks by tithing to my immediate friends and family.
- I give thanks to the community by managing special projects in awareness in mental health and children charities.
I trust that what I want; I will receive. Now the journey begins…
That warm fuzzy feeling
Jul 14th
I have read a few books on Law of Attraction and selected a few of my favourites to share with you. Last week while the twins and I were treating ourselves to lunch at a coffee book store I picked up this one, Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting: The Power of Positive Feelings. Now I am only half way through this book so I can’t give you a full review but the reason I picked it up was something different from the other books I had read. “In our everlasting search to find more happiness in life we devour positive thinking books but the millions. But if those books truly hold the secrets to abundant and joyful life why do we keep buying new ones?” (P 1). This book shows you how to find that feeeeling the feeling or intuition of success and how to hold onto that positive vibrating energy which in effect when is high will meet other like energy bringing the attraction into reality.
So feeling good can be difficult when days are long and there is work to do, chores to do and groceries to pick up. What makes you feel good and how can you hold onto that feeling? Coincidently the other day I had my ipod on random shuffle on my hourly drive home from work and the good old beach boys starting playing;
“Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take you to
Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama”
I might be a bit of a dag but I like that song. Why? Because in grade 6, my teacher would put the cassette on with this song and instead of the usual catholic songs we would sing this. Even today I have no idea why. She had the words neatly printed on the overhead projector and in chorus 30 eleven year olds would sing:
“Key Largo, Montego, baby, why don’t we go down to Kokomo
We’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it slow
That’s where we wanna go, way down in Kokomo.”
Once my teacher even brought out the map of the world to point out all the locations in the song however the infamous Kokomo was never found. Where is it?
While we stumbled through line by line of the song we often looked at our teacher staring out the louvers of another Queensland school day.
“We’ll put out to see and we’ll perfect our chemistry
By and by, we’ll defy a little bit of gravity
Afternoon delight, cocktails and moonlit nights
That dreamy look in your eye, give me a tropical contact high
Way down in Kokomo”
Now I am a little older and wiser I get quite nostalgic when I hear this song and instantly it gives me that warm fuzzy feeling of being high. I wonder if my teacher ever found her Kokomo?
“Everyone knows a little place like Kokomo
Now if you wanna go to get away from it all
Go down to Kokomo“
About Me
Jul 13th
Hi, I’m Lisa and this is my blog thelastdegree which aims to boldly present to the universe all my intentions for materializing those dreams I have had for the past thirty years. You may have read the cult following book “The Secret” or other books promoting the Law of Attraction and one of the key rules is to ask and you shall receive. So I decided there is no better avenue to ask than through my Blog.
I started this Blog in 2008 to raise awareness for Bipolar Disorder; “Ski with me to the last degree to raise awareness for Bipolar Disorder”. I was a member of an expedition to the South Pole. Over the eighteen months the blog was live I raised $5000 from friends, family and the local community. As a follow up the monies raised by the Bipolar Expedition was given to the Australian Rotary Health for distribution for further research. Unfortunately the expeditions did not go ahead due to the difficulty raising the capital required however the group was very successful in raising awareness in the community for mental health issues.
Over the past twelve month I debated on what to do with the domain name and blog. In April 2009, I attended a manifesting workshop. The goal of the workshop was to attract all the wants in your life by request to the universe. We did this by creating a collage of images or vision board using the Feng Shui Bagua map as a guide to the location. These sections relate to all aspects of live such as fame, relationship, children, helpful people, career, knowledge, health, family and wealth.
A copy of my 2009 map is below. In April last year I was in a new relationship and no children but I did want children so in the Children right hand side I had pasted random pictures of children and pregnancy. What transpired in the next few months was a pregnancy but what makes this picture so special to me was I became pregnant with twin girls. My two little angels in the photo below.
Click here for a larger copy
2010 and I have a new board in development which I plan to release over the duration of this Blog. So once again please come with to the last degree and see if I can make true all my dreams as I learn more about the Law of Attraction.
To contact me, please email lisad at thelastdegree.com
