CREATE the life of your dreams.

I am writing this for YOU, but I am also writing this for me.

It feels like I have lived an entirety of life within the past 7+ years (hence the accumulating grey hair), but one moment stands out to me as the launching point, guiding my journey to the here and NOW.

I have spoken here previously on my leap from being a Business/Marketing major to becoming a Chiropractor, but if you haven’t been following until now, here goes:

While working as an account manager for a trucking company (yea, wasn’t a good fit), my good friend and roommate was in Chiropractic school and crushing it. He would come home and have amazing stories of the experiences he was having in school and great friends he was meeting; all while immersing himself in the profession he had been preparing for the last 6+ years since we went to undergrad together.

I remember one day vividly we were sitting in our apartment and I looked at him and lamented “Man, I’m over this job. Tell me about Chiropractic.” That was the beginning. It helped my cause that he’s brilliant and SOLD me on day 1. I enrolled in science undergrad courses the following day. Shout out to my brother Nate.

But there was a HUGE leap required of me when making this step; physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. First and foremost, mentally.

As mentioned, I studied business administration and marketing during my undergraduate days in Sioux City, IA. When I say “studied”, I am being kind to my former self. My studying consisted of partying and soccer (which I had a scholarship for), and the required materials absorbed the night before a test or project due date to get the “C” I needed to keep eligibility. Life was simple, but not easy. I also had a major family emergency come up that pushed me further into the partying scene and an extended period of darkness. I’ll save that story for a later date.

Upon graduation I took the first job offered, and worked there until the day of my infamous conversation with Nate.

Now beginning Chiropractic school was a challenge to say the least. I was walking into 600 level science courses as a business major and the naivety that I could continue my same old studying habits and “get by”. That was definitely not the case. I FAILED, hard.

Now on academic probation and ensuing student loan debt already building, I had a choice: QUIT or ADAPT.

“If it was easy, EVERYONE would do it.”

My momma didn’t raise a quitter, and those were the words she gave me that provided the relativity I needed.

I clearly remember walking down to my apartment at the bottom of the hill from school soon after and having a revelation: It’s time to put the odds in my favor and upgrade the perspective of my current experience. I must make the choice to transcend the noise of failure and create a new reality. Neglecting this truth would lead to dropping out and heading back to my old life.

So, when I reached my apartment building and saw the letter “D” signifying the door to my home, I immediately saw the word DESTINY come into my mind.

From this moment forward, I began retraining my mind to match the vision I had for my future. It started very simply: every day I walked the 12 minutes to or from my apartment, I would envision the future I sought, and speak it into existence. And soon I went from the kid sitting in the back of class too over-stimulated to carve a path in my new surroundings, to an active participant in life, attending seminars and making new friends. It took some time and plenty of sweat equity, but I made it. Graduating from Chiropractic school and beginning my journey as a Chiropractor, and adventurer of life.

I didn’t know it at the time but by having a vision and actively striving to achieve it, I was recruiting the help of my Reticular Activating System (RAS). Located within the brainstem, the RAS is responsible for filtering out information not necessary to fulfill the aspects of life related to survival. When success in a given area is mandatory for survival (through conscious engineering: meditation, mantras, affirmations, etc.), it receives precedence from the RAS. It effectively stacks the odds in your favor to attain the desired result. Its connection between the brainstem and cerebral cortex builds a “bridge” between the unconscious and conscious minds. 

The simplest way of viewing this relationship is through habit. If I upgrade my daily habits through conscious integration within my cerebral cortex, I could re-train the unconscious activity within my brainstem, given the necessary repetition. First I had to SEE myself as a graduated doctor, and live in that moment before it happened. This was everything for me. I had never spent any time in meditation prior to this, and the feat of seeing my future began to change my perspective, As I practiced, the vision got clearer and clearer until I was LIVING it. 

Now, this was only half the battle. I still had to do the work to match the success I was seeking.

For me, this meant reading EVERYTHING related to my field of study. If something in class peaked my interest I immersed myself with the hope of lessening the learning curve I was staring directly into. I had to reduce external distractions and make life “simple”. I would read scientific articles outside of normal classwork and write reports on them, all while quieting the noise from non-school related input. I was rewiring my brain for success, and soon I was reaping the benefits. Incorporating this mindset into training the art of Chiropractic was paying dividends as well.

Now this is just the beginning. If you can sit in stillness long enough and visualize your life before it happens, your RAS will begin to work more effectively and your external environment may seemingly be working with you to reach your dreams. For example, receiving an invitation to a school function or taking a class where you learn something that brings you even closer to that vision. Some call it coincidence, some luck, or The Law of Attraction. To me, these are necessary stepping stones that must be taken to help guide your path along the way. Lacking awareness to its power leads to slower progress.

To this point, I had to learn how to keep myself in a position to receive insights as they came in; and meant I had to be conscious about the thoughts I was thinking and what state of mind I was in on a given day. I began to cite mantras, or affirmations to create clarity within my internal environment that would match the input I wished to receive. These are a few of the mantras I used, or still use to this day:

• “I live my life through EASE, being guided always by my purpose. I know that every door can be opened, and on the other side is LOVE.”
• “I AM happy. I AM healthy. I AM wealthy. I love the life that I live.”
• “I AM capable of all things, through the power that rests within me.”
• “I AM connected to Source energy in this moment. Any answers I seek will be provided when I need them.”
• “My perspective is a collection of my experiences, and today I choose to upgrade my experiences to enhance my perspective.”
• “In this moment I AM connected to the Quantum field. In this space I may receive all insights needed to fulfill my destiny.”
• “In this moment I AM free of internal distractions; clearing the slate for universal intelligence to shine through.”

The creation of consciousness within one’s life has its challenges, as I would soon realize. I was quickly seeing that many of the mental patterns developed throughout my life were very detrimental to the path I was seeking, so I had to squash them, fast. This raised my anxiety levels in the short term, but as these programs became less and less active in my life, those feelings diminished. I was attempting to overcome the patterns instilled in me from an early age, and as such, I began to question everything. 

To this day, I am continually rewriting the programs and downloading information into my subconscious through enhanced awareness and conscious living. I still fail, alot; but this shift in my perspective has given me my life back after a few years spent in darkness. And for that, I AM grateful.

Finding a committed partner and having 2 wonderful children was a part of the plan all along, and life continues to move in the right direction. The hard moments still present themselves, but they don’t stick around as long as I’m doing the work. As dreams become reality, I choose to expand and dream bigger. Faith in the process leads to less stress about the future. 

A few steps that may help integrate this practice into your life:

• Find clarity through meditation, creating the space to dream.
• DREAM BIG, and live out the moment before it happens.
• Develop action steps to reach that dream and be willing to do the work.
• Maintain clarity to see the dream become reality by utilizing mantras or affirmations to stay on the path (especially useful when times get hard).
• Be willing to fail, so you can succeed.
• Maintain faith through it all.

With love and appreciation, 

Zach