Want a short cut to success, happiness, personal growth and freedom? Who doesn't? Here's one of the best: ...but first, a quick review of how your brain works. a. Your brain has about a hundred billion neurons. b. Each neuron connects to an average of 5,000-10,000 other neurons. c. The "pathways" created by these connections enable to brain to think and remember. d. These pathways are reinforced whenever we use them (by thinking the corresponding thoughts). e. These pathways can change rapidly by "branching" (making new connections) and "pruning" (breaking connections). This may occur in a matter of seconds. I've watched video as neurons' dendrites reach out and make new connections, then separate from old ones. It's both amazing and very, very encouraging. The trick, of course, is learning how to break the unwanted pathways and get positive ones to take over. Sociology MA candidate and dance therapist Nathalie Staffler provides a clue. Her favorite methodology is to make her clients aware of how positive they feel while participating in a preferred physical activity. This may include dance, soccer, jogging, walking, yoga or any other form of movement. Once the client has a firm awareness of these positive feelings (thus reinforcing those neural pathways), Nathalie encourages him/her to recall those feelings whenever negative thoughts and feelings arise. This combination of thoughts and feelings creates what I call "blending." The negative neural pathways fire along with the positive ones and voila! Branching occurs between them. They link up. Can you imagine what happens next? The positive connections can literally replace the negative ones. The opposite can also occur, of course, and negative thoughts can destroy positive ones. I strongly suspect that which "side" wins depends primarily on your general paradigm and your conscious choice. If you choose (consciously or simply out of habit) to believe that life is hard and you are bad and so forth, then you'll probably "choose" to let matching thoughts and feelings win. If you choose to believe that life can be happy and safe and productive - even if your life doesn't seem that way yet - then the positive can win out. The problem, of course, is that choosing only on a conscious level is often not strong enough to overcome and replace negative thoughts and feelings deeply-rooted in your subconscious. At this point, many people turn to positive affirmations. By continually reaffirming positive thoughts, they intend to strengthen positive pathways and eventually replace the negative. Finally, here are three tips to make your affirmations more effective:

1. Make your affirmations go deeper. Many people, as they repeat their affirmations consciously, also reinforce their negative pathways because just beyond their conscious thoughts lie the doubts. "I am a good person," they say out loud, while their mind subtly counters with: I'm a no-good loser. If you notice such resistance to your affirmations, choose to make them go deeper. Be determined. Feel your affirmation as intensely as you can. Shout or sing or dance it or whisper it. Your mind will eventually do and think what you tell it to.
2. Combine positive and negative thoughts and feelings. Once you have a good grip on your positive neural pathways, go hunting! Find any negative thoughts or feelings and dive in with the power of positive thinking. Let them blend and no matter what happens, remain determined and believe the positive. WARNING: hunting negatives can be dangerous. Without practice, it's easy to get stuck there. Even if you're good at it, don't make a habit of seeking the negative without an even bigger habit of seeking and enjoying the good in your life!
3. Get support from a skilled energy worker who operates on this level. Especially if you happen to get stuck in negative thoughts and feelings, get support from an intuitive shifter who can either help you make the needed shifts or at least guide you through them. Intuitive shifting using the guidelines spelled out above is the most basic explanation of what I call "Eneural Blending" (pronounced with the emphasis on the inital e like "energy" plus "neural"). By working with the subtle energies connecting us, actual neural pathways may be affected. This is the fastest, deepest, and easiest way I've found to create real, lasting, satisfying transformation.