I’m sure many of you have heard the analogy of the frog that gets boiled alive in water—which I admit is an unfortunate allusion—but effective nonetheless.

Essentially, the premise is that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out. If you put him in lukewarm water and increase the temperature by five degrees every hour or two, eventually he will boil to death in his own complacency, or some such thing. It’s merely meant to be an illustration and I somehow doubt its accuracy but I use it to bring up an important point.

I’ve always been a very sensitive person and, if I remember correctly, my parents use to describe me as overly sensitive. I recall being in second grade and my teacher, upon noticing that I did not arrive with a pencil, asked me if I wouldn’t mind remembering to come prepared to school each day. My face got all hot, I was flushed out, with beads of sweat appearing on my forehead, my throat was dry and my eyes started to burn as if I would burst into tears any moment. It was a truly mortifying moment in my life and utterly unmemorable to everyone else in the room.

Now obviously as the years wore on I grew a thicker skin, but not really too much thicker. Then, an incident happened that made me realize that I was finally connected to intention so thoroughly that I inadvertently altered my entire personality.

I got home from work the other night and I had a message from someone in my life whom I love and respect and view as an authority figure of sorts. She was explaining to me that although she was peeved with me from the night before, she was over it now and there was no need to drag it on any further.

I thought about what she was saying for a moment and I sat back in my chair and took a quick inventory of what I was experiencing. Why was I not carrying around my usual emotional hangover that I would normally be feeling in the face of an incident like this? There is no doubt in my mind that that would’ve been my programmed reaction from ages 5 to 42.

So what changed?

Everything. It has been said that our personalities are our “personal realities,” and mine is in such a profound state of change at this juncture that everything about me has changed without my being completely cognizant of it. I am so plugged into the intention of my present journey that I have left the old Billy somewhere a few miles down the path—and that can only be a good thing.

Using all of the amazing tools I have been reading, the talks I’ve been listening to, the meditations I have been engaged in and the thought I have been immersed in, I have truly changed the predicted course of my life and I know, like I know that I am breathing, I am headed to the outcome I intend for myself.

So, I offer some tips on how you, whoever you are, can achieve the same results:

Set an intention.

I have an image in my mind of being a bestselling author and this is my sole intention. I visualize what this looks like every single day. I see my beautiful maple desk, my window that looks out on the lake where I live, my bookshelves, the book signings, and the travel. I do not, even for a single moment, stray from these images. This is what it means to set an intention.

Quantum gratitude.

I spend time every day where I work myself into a state of emotional gratitude for the life I have imagined for myself. It has been proven with scientific accuracy that our minds do not know the difference between something that has occurred in reality and something we imagine vividly. When you take the time to really be grateful for what you know is on the way to you, that thing you are grateful for in advance will find you. This is a certainty.

Live in an abundant mindset.

There has never been a time in my life where I have been more giving and had more in my checking account. I can’t explain how this is happening, I just know that it is true. When your friends on social media are humbling themselves and asking for help…help them. When someone is holding a sign saying they need a dollar, give them five. It will come back 10 times over. It may seem counter-intuitive but trust in it.

If you stay on this path, you will not only be forging ahead into the very life of your wildest imaginings, you will—as I stated earlier—become a completely different person in the process. You will be the guy who is waving people to go ahead of you in traffic. You will be the lovely woman that shines light into every room you enter.

When Gandhi said to be the change in the world that you wish to see, I firmly believe that this is what he was talking about. If we all came from this sort of focused intention, the world would be a beautiful place.

Author: Billy Manas
Image: Nicholas Green/Unsplash
Editor: Lieselle Davidson
Copy Editor:  Khara-Jade Warren