Going general is an easy way to kick-start good-feeling thoughts. We’ve talked about the value of going general before, how focusing on positive feelings is often easier than thinking about the specific details of your desires. It’s much easier to think of freedom and maintain good feelings than it is to concentrate on the exact bicycle you want but don’t really believe you can have. Freedom is quite general as a thought so you have faith that it is possible for you. You imagine that you can experience it if you have the bike you want but also in many other ways—when the week-end starts or by feeling the wind on your face when you’re in a car. It could be as simple as taking a break from doing homework and going out into the garden. Once you get the ball rolling in a good-feeling direction, you will automatically start getting more detailed thoughts of what you want. But for now let’s focus on going general and figure out some ways to get a visualization session started easily.

Go general in time. Instead of getting tensed up by trying to visualize that you will get your dream bike by your birthday next week, open up the timeline and think very generally about having this bike at some point in your life. If you remove the very specific detail of when you see yourself having this bike, you will be more relaxed. It is much easier to believe that at some point in the next year or two you will find some way of getting it than that by some miracle it will happen when you say. By being more relaxed, you spend the visualization time thinking of how it feels to have your bike instead of on all the reasons why you won’t be able to get it that quickly which is ultimately being focused on the lack of your dream bike in your life. In both cases, the law of attraction will respond to you. In the first case by bringing the bike to you and in the second by bringing you a whole lot of “no-bike”.

Take the focus off “how”. If you stay specific about how you plan on getting this bike—make lemonade every day, sell it on the street corner, buy the bike—you are closing yourself off to other potential options for reaching your desire. Maybe you know someone who has the bike and you have something they want that you can exchange for it. Or maybe you’d be just as happy renting it out from a bike shop some weekends. By keeping your view wide instead of restricted to the way you have become convinced things need to unfold, you give yourself a better chance of believing you can attain your desire. Selling lemonade every day instead of swimming might feel very hard and as much as you want your bike, maybe you don’t want to sacrifice your summer. So, as long as you stay stuck in this narrow perspective, you go on feeling like your desire is unattainable.

Going general is not about settling for less than what you want. Thinking about the details of what you want can feel good and if that’s how you feel when you start a visualization session, stay with it! But if not, know you can always get there by starting more generally.