Empower

I remember that night clearly. After months of depression, with my landlord threatening to evict me, I was tossing and turning in bed. Yet another night of not being able to sleep. Three hours since I hit the sack and I was still wired with anxiety. In frustration, I forced myself to be still and just stared at the ceiling for what felt like another hour. And then. It happened. A lightbulb moment that changed my life from the inside out. A moment that changed EVERYTHING and set me on a course of ever-expanding fulfillment and happiness.

But let’s rewind a bit first.

In my previous career, I was a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. I worked with adults suffering from alcohol and drug addiction or experiencing difficulties with major life transitions.

I approached mental health through several perspectives. The first was through Somatic Psychology, which was holistic, present-centered, and focused on the connection and interactions of verbal and nonverbal processes. I utilized mind-body techniques to help clients become more aware of their cognitive and body-based symptoms, to develop acceptance and appreciation for their strengths and challenges, and to create opportunities for healing and growth.

While my work has a counselor was sometimes rewarding, I was suffering from an acute feeling of “Physician, heal thy self!” Here I was trying to help others fix their myriad problems (sometimes succeeding) and yet I felt I had so many problems of my own.

I was always dead broke.

I was stressed out.

I was depressed.

I felt like a failure.

Despite all my years of doing meditation and mindfulness training, in the Tibetan tradition, I just couldn’t get out of my negative mental boxes. And did I mention I was always broke? Finally, that fateful night that I was tossing in bed unable to sleep, I started reminiscing. I asked myself, was there EVER a time that I was successful? And if so, what was different back then?

It wasn’t long before the memories came flooding back – of winning a gold medal for highest academic achievement during my high school graduation. It was a big deal, especially for my parents. I came first in a class of 330.  No easy feat and what a MANIFESTATION journey it was. Let me explain.

I grew up in a very academic family. Everyone and his uncle was either a doctor, scientist or engineer, no exceptions. My parents always pushed me and my older brother hard when it came to school work. We had to be top of the class. And if not, the strong implication was that we would be losers. And who wants to be a loser in the eyes of their parents? We all ended up doing well enough. I usually scored in the top 10%. Fellow classmates would refer to me as “The Brain.” But it wasn’t good enough! No sir! My parents wanted me to win the gold medal, which was a prize given out to the highest GPA student in every grade level, in the middle school and high school we attended.

Every year during the high school graduation ceremony, gold, silver and bronze medals would be awarded to three students of every grade level. You would have the top students, aged 12 to 18, all standing there on stage, gleaming as they got a standing ovation from all present. Three years in a row my older brother got gold. Twice he got silver. He made my parents proud. I, on the other hand, got nothing! I was usually in 4^th to 10^th place every year – year after year, and never got on stage or got any particular prize. While 10^th place in a class of over 300 would be considered a joyous achievement by most parents, it was considered an embarrassment to mine. That’s just the way they saw things.

I remember the summer before entering my final year of high school. I was feeling down, dreading another year of failing to get that gold medal. On one particular summer day, walking to the park to play baseball, my best friend asked me what was up. I explained my dilemma to him. He rolled his eyes and laughed at my so-called predicament. After all, he was a straight D student and I was always in the top 10% – what a silly thing I was complaining about! But he could see that I was serious and that I was upset.

Then he told me something that changed my life.

My friend was reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book, The Education of a Bodybuilder, which these days is regarded as a classic in the motivational genre. My friend excitedly explained to me how Arnold set his goal of winning Mr. Olympia as if he already achieved it. That last part was the key. The goal was not visualized as something in the future. Instead, it was experienced as something that already occurred. To paraphrase Arnold, “I already won the contest. Everything else was just about going through the motions until it was awarded to me officially.”

Wow. What an interesting concept. This was my first introduction to the Art and Science of Manifestation. I had never even considered approaching my current problem, or any problem that way. It seems to have worked for Arnold. Maybe it would work for me? Besides, I had tried everything else in the last 6 years (an entire lifespan in kid time) so what did I have to lose?

Summer ended and I remember how excited I was entering that first day of school. I remember telling that same best friend with a smile, “I already won the gold medal. Now it’s just a matter of going through the motions.” His first reaction was “Gee! I wonder who told you that?!” then he laughed and went around the lunch table, telling all my competitors, all the smart kids in our grade level, how I was going to win the gold medal. They laughed too. Some of them sarcastically came over to shake my hand. Yet I kept smiling.

Later that week, my parents had several family friends over for a get together. During all the hub bub, I overheard one of those friends, a doctor like my dad, congratulating him on my older brother’s multiple gold and silver academic wins. He then asked my dad if Isaac (that’s me!) was going to win this year. I will never forget seeing my dad wince and just shake his head “No.” But you know what? I kept smiling. I had already won. I just had to go through the motions. I don’t know where I got that confidence. I just had it. Like my soul simply decided to activate the confidence switch and that was that.

I will never forget that last year of high school. It was pure magic. With little to no effort I would get perfect scores on nearly every assignment and every exam. Even in the more subjective courses and with teachers who, years before, would never give scores higher than 80% to even the smartest kids in class, were routinely giving me 95-100% scores on everything I did.

It got so bizarre I remember telling my same best friend, “Watch this. I’m going to write up complete nonsense for this assignment and hand it in and I will get a 100% score.” My friend thought I was crazy. No way that was gonna to work. I did it anyway. I typed up completely random sentences for that English composition assignment and handed it in. A few days later, it came back with a 100% score and the teacher’s handwritten comment in the top right, “Great job, Isaac!” He obviously never read it. He just saw my name, assumed it would be top-notch and graded it accordingly!

The entire year flew by like that; High score after high score after high score. And I wasn’t doing anything differently from previous years. I was not studying any harder. If anything, I was doing less than ever before. All I did was show up, did the exams or assignments with minimal studying and everything just worked in my favor. All my smart-kid friends and acquaintances couldn’t believe it either. They exclaimed that the teachers must be smoking crack or something!

When the letter from the principal reached my parents that June, letting them know I had won the gold medal and that I would be on stage for our high school graduation, they were floored! They couldn’t believe it. They were prouder than proud, beaming from ear to ear. And I just smiled calmly. No surprise on my end.

The high school graduation ceremony was a highlight of my life. I will never forget it. They announced the prizes in order, grade level after grade level, from bronze to gold. As was customary, the last name called, the gold medal for the graduating class – would trigger a standing ovation. And it was a large crowd. There were 330+ students in the graduating class and all their family and friends in the stands; easily a couple of thousand people or more overall. When my name was finally called, I walked up on stage as if floating on air. The crowd rose and roared. Classmates were shouting my name. I could see my parents and family friends in the stands, along with all the parents of my classmates – all clapping and cheering. What a night!

So where did it all go wrong?

After high school everything just seemed to fall apart. I started to question it all – from societal rules and expectations to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I became disillusioned with the world. Angry. Bitter. I completely forgot about manifestation. I dropped out of school. Then re-enrolled after tearful pleadings from my mom, only to drop out again a year later. I started a spiritual quest. I took up Tibetan and Vedantic meditation practices. I worked a variety of small, crappy jobs and saved up enough for a plane ticket to India. At age 23, I backpacked across that country over the course of a year – a trip I could write one or two books about. I learned a lot. I saw a lot – from gruesome deaths on the bustling streets of Delhi, to forgotten ancient temples, deserts, forests, mountains, monkeys, monks, crazy ex-pats, wise men and wise women, crooks, beggars, real gurus, fake gurus, bizarre cults and so much more. That trip felt like two decades of experience compressed into twelve months.

I came back from India fundamentally changed. I enrolled in Naropa University in Colorado. I completed a BA in Contemplative Psychology and then an MA in Somatic Counseling Psychology. Out of college, I opened up a small practice as a Mental Health Counselor. I just wanted to help people. I ran the practice for a few years but it never quite took off. I was always behind on the rent and I couldn’t seem to “crack the code” in helping most people overcome their issues. I then realized I had never really solved my own issues! How could I help others if I was still damaged myself? If I was still angry at the world? If I was still unfulfilled? If I was dead broke and stressed out? I eventually closed down my practice.

So now we come full circle to that night tossing and turning in bed just a couple of years back. I remembered that brief moment in time from high school when THE ART OF MANIFESTATION had made me fulfilled and happy. It was like the proverbial light bulb went off in my head! Why in the world did I ever stop manifesting my life if that method worked so well? Why did I stray from that path when it had given me all the answers? To paraphrase the late, great Joseph Campbell and his works on mythology, perhaps that was simply me refusing the call. Every hero in mythology refuses the call to his higher purpose and has to first to go through a painful ordeal. We are all heros on our own journeys. It was time for me to get back on the right path.

I started to devour everything I could find on the art and science of manifestation. From the ancient hermetic, Tibetan, and Vedantic methods, to Kaballah to “new age” and modern techniques. I learned what they all had in common and boiled everything down to simple and direct principals. Then I simply applied those methods.

And what a difference that made!

In less than a year, I manifested both material and spiritual wealth. I started an e-commerce store that took off like gangbusters. I traded in crypto and made another small forturne. I dove deeper than ever before into my meditation practices, which prior I had simply been using as an escape. But now I manifested serious progress, plumbing the depths of self-discovery and self-realization.

I felt like a completely new person.

I changed my last name to Choejor, which in Tibetan means “spiritual wealth.”

And last but not least, I started this blog!

This blog is a passion of mine. I do my best to share what I have learned about manifesting both physical and spiritual wealth, the incredible power of positive thinking, visualization, The Law of Attraction and the simplicity of gratitude. I always aim to write one or two articles per day in the hopes that someone out there, maybe a version of my younger self, will come across this material and supercharge their own lives. You don’t have to waste years or decades in frustration. You can have the life you want by simply manifesting it from your deeper core of inter-related values. You just have to learn how to “program” those values to get you the results you want.

It works. Trust me.

Keep reading and hopefully this blog helps you achieve your deepest desires and dreams!

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