The Trap Of Magical Thinking

What Is Magical Thinking?

• Magical thinking is the belief that one’s ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world, or believing that one event happens as a result of another without a plausible link of causation.
• It offers us the potential to be and feel more omnipotent than we actually are.

Where Is It Commonly Seen?

• The New Age Spiritual Community
• The Law of Attraction
• Intention Setting Pratices

How Does It Show Up?

• It is often phrased in several ways...
• For Example, you are "creating your reality", "manifesting your desired outcome", "setting your heart's intention."
• Then you are to look for evidence of it showing up or manifesting in your life.

The Illusion

• At first, these strategies and methods feel helpful and empowering
• What happens when they stop working?
• Why are we seeking meaning or "signs" in the first place? (More on this later
• Magical thinking allows us to think we have more power or control over our experience than we do
• A common phenomenon that often supports this is..

The Beider-Meinhoff Phenomenon

• Composed of two elements: Frequency Illusion and Confirmation Bias
• It occurs when the thing you've just noticed, experienced or been told about suddenly crops up constantly.
• Now that you are looking for it, you find it

The Beider-Meinhoff Phenomenon

• To make it all the more powerful, confirmation bias occurs after seeing it even once or twice.
• In other words, you begin to confirm your own beliefs, because you are seeing it more.

Changing Your Thoughts

• This can be helpful in the short term for getting thorough a situation or changing the focus of your attention
• Working on changing the focus of your attention will help to create some space around difficult emotions and/or make some shifts in one's life

In The Long Run...

• Magical thinking can be a distraction and even steer us straight into the fears we were hoping to avoid through it.
• It also keeps us engaged in struggle, a tug of war within our mind against the momentum of our own unconscious conditioning

Where Is This Coming From?

• Engaging in these practices often stem from a need or desire to feel safe, find validation, feel like we matter, or like we are connected to something larger than ourselves.
• It can feel like a helpful way to cope with many of our everyday fears and uncertainties

So What Is The Problem?

• We like the results of how this change in thinking feels, but most of the time it is helping us avoid the deeper issues that reside under the surface.
• This is why we must look at what is driving or motivating the desire to create, manifest, or intend things into our experience

So What Is The Problem?

• When people don't receive a "sign" or guidance, it often leaves them feeling frustrated, confused, trapped, lost, or they lose faith.
• This can bring us right into the fears we thought we were working on or thought we had transcended or transformed in some way

What Lies Beneath

• Many things that we want or desire arise from a void/value we are trying to fill or a fear we are trying to avoid...usually both.
• A natural part of being human is to avoid pain and discomfort

Common Voids, Values & Fears

• Money
• Purpose
• Relationships
• Food
• Time
• Intelligenc

Getting To The Root

• I help people get to the root of these fears and desires
• No longer driven by our unconscious conditioning

The Root of the Unconscious

• At most, we utilize 10% of our brain.
• 95% of what we do, the choices we make, are determined by the unconscious mind
• It has access to immense capabilities that we don't even fully understand yet.
• And yet, it still follows patterns that arise from this deep seated belief system and identities

Translation of Fear

• Money - Not enough - Failure - I'm aDisappointment
• Relationship - Not enough - Stupid - Alone - I don't matter

The Reflections Process

• I help people systematically uncover these deep rooted, unconscious patterns and strip them of their power so they are no longer directing our choices and actions
• This helps people to be calm, free and in control of their lives
• Puts you in the driver's seat, so your desires aren't driving you, and you get to more consciously direct them

Give Them My Card

• If you or someone you know is ready to take a practical approach to inner peac
• Overcome anxiety, stress, depression
• Get to the root of what is really driving one's magical thinking, or other commo forms of bypassing