Read this diagram from the bottom of the page

Here on the diagram is where I am now and up the top of the page is the dream that I'm headed towards. For me to have what I want, my dream, then something has to change, depending on the size of the dream, probably many more than one thing.

All these lines along my path to my dream, represent the things that have to change in order for me to reach my dream. The bigger the line, the bigger the change that has to happen to reach my dream. And here's the key issue, my soul uses my emotions (the only conscious method it has) to tell me what it is that needs to change in order to reach my dream.

The bigger the dream is, the bigger the change and the bigger the change is, often the bigger the emotions that are raised. And, of course, most of us have bunch of different dreams, of different things that we want out of life.

I'll say it again because this is sooo... important. The emotions are messages from your soul. They are simply the only conscious way your soul has of communicating with you about what has to change in order for you to reach your dream.

What happens when we don't understand the process of manifesting, when we don't understand the process of getting what we want, is that we get to a place of big change or transformation that has to happen in order for us to reach our dream and we don't like the emotions that come up as part of the process. Most of us have never been taught how to understand our emotions or deal with them thus we have experienced these so called negative emotions as something unpleasant to be avoided as much as possible.

So this is what happens:

The first change place with really big emotions.

Most of us think of anger and fear and frustration and sadness and grief as negative or "bad" emotions”.

So, because we don't like feeling "bad", when we get to the first "change place" of high emotion, we bounce off in another direction without ever realizing that that "bad" emotion was simply a message from our soul about what had to change in order for us to reach our dream. And that the emotion was only "bad" or bigger than it needed to be, because we didn't recognize the early warning signal that would have told us we needed to change something in order to reach our dream.

So all of a sudden, we're headed off in a new direction, away from our dream, without even realizing that we've done it! Then we think that life's tough and how hard it is to get what we want.

And then we don't like the emotion that comes up from that new direction either, so then this happens:

So here we are, lurching around from one situation to another, from one lot of "bad" emotions to another, never realizing that we have lost our focus on our dream -- never realizing that these "bad" emotions were simply the only conscious way that our soul can tell us what to change in order for us to get what we want.

That's when life feels like it's really bouncing us around, from one negative situation to the next. A friend of mine put this beautifully once, "it's like we are a boat and the waves are just washing the boat around wherever the sea wants to take us and what we really want to do is to drive the bloody boat where WE want to go!

So how can we "drive the bloody boat"?

We drive the boat by recognizing that every "bad" emotion is simply a message from our soul to help us to change whatever it is that we need to change in order to reach our dream.

So we drive the boat by answering the four magic questions (notice that it's four questions now!)

1. Whose thoughts or feelings are these?

2. What do I need to know or do about it/them?

3. Are the thoughts or feelings totally gone? And if not, repeat the first two questions until they have.

4. And sometimes you may be ready to get the answer to this question "How does this fit with my dream?"

Understand that it's OK to change the dream too. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting to a place of high emotion and big change and say "Humh! This dream is not worth what I'm going through right now -- I'm going to change my dream." And re-focus.

The story of Sam earlier in the book is a classic example of this. Her dream is to be an extraordinary healer - not a good healer, an extraordinary healer. And to be an extraordinary healer, then some pretty extraordinary changes and transformations have to take place. (I can tell you this from VERY personal first hand experience in my own journey!) Any time Sam wants, if the changes are too big and not worth it to her, she can change her dream.

The only place I no longer want to be, is with the waves pushing the boat around all over the place, constantly hitting change places and bouncing around in all sorts of directions, with no focus at all on my dream and never getting there! I am sooo... over the struggle of that!

And I'll repeat again what I said earlier, failure itself is just another change place on the way to our dream. That makes more sense now, doesn't it?

WOW, DOES THIS MEAN THAT EVERY FEELING AND EMOTION THAT I EXPERIENCE IS A MESSAGE FROM MY SOUL ABOUT HOW TO MANIFEST MY DREAM?

Wow, does this mean that every feeling and emotion that I experience, every single last one, is a message from my soul about how to manifest my dreams? Yep...

The more I have practiced, the easier it has become and that process is still improving. Over the last couple of weeks, sometimes the process is almost instant, with a couple of big messages taking a few days. But even these big ones were reduced to small uneasiness's quite quickly (rather than the big panic they were originally). And I can almost always see how that fits with my dream.

And I'm watching other people go through the same process, getting better and better at it.

Last year, before I got the insight of The Questions and Escalating Upsets I had a lulu of an example (a really big one!) of something that had to change in order to reach my dream, that made me see this whole process really clearly.

Someone close to me questioned my competence and my integrity in a really big way - so big that I agonized over it for months, doing healing session after healing session to get rid of the intensity of emotions that I was experiencing about it, which was the only way that I knew at the time to deal with it.

The last of the negative feelings about this incident dropped away when I realized what I had to know, and how that fitted with my dream (even though at that stage I hadn't understood "The Questions" as I now know them).

The story goes like this ... I've written an amazing, very unusual and different book about communicating with horses in an extraordinary way. I am deliberately manifesting selling a million copies of that book in the next five years and making it possible for a million horses to bring their million people to the light of understanding and joyful communication.

Now this book is sooo... different and sooo… unusual, that to sell a million copies in any time frame is going to have a certain number of people questioning my integrity. And if I haven't learned how to think it through, question my shortcomings, methods or motives - tick the boxes and then feel secure in my integrity, then I'm gonna' get creamed, then I'm going to have a miserable time.

This wonderful lady as far as I know, is still unhappy about my competence and integrity, even though I've gone through the process of ticking all the boxes. Even so, how can I hold it against her for helping me to manifest my dream? There had to be SOME situation similar to this that enabled me to question my competence and integrity in order for me to get the necessary understanding. So, in fact, I owed her thanks for helping me to manifest my dream.

Many of us on a path to be the best person that we can be, have been taught that acceptance of what happens to us is an important ingredient.

I'm here to tell you from first hand experience that it's EASY to accept what happens to us, when we can see how that fits with manifesting our dreams. It's easy to be actually grateful for a lesson like that when we can see how that fits with manifesting our dreams.

Who in your life has been helping you to manifest your dreams? Like my friend who questioned my integrity, who in your life have you been mistakenly blaming for that?