Reality Frames

I used to be terrified of public speaking. Truly terrified. There is that often-repeated line about people fearing public speaking more than death, which supposedly means that at a funeral they would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. That was me.

Unfortunately, I also have a habit of purposely putting myself in places that stretch me beyond who I already know myself to be.

So years ago, long before ALLTRUEistic existed, I decided to hold a large event. Hundreds of people would be there and I would stand on a stage talking about ideas that would eventually become the foundation of my work: meditation, consciously creating reality, our collective power, and how much more there might be to this human experience than we understand.

The event was everything I cared about and I had to get on a stage.

Before I walked out, I closed my eyes and went to the end of the experience. I did not rehearse my opening line or picture myself surviving the speech. I saw what I wanted to be true after it was over.

I felt people hugging me and telling me how powerful the experience had been. In my mind, I opened emails afterward from people sharing that something they had experienced that day had changed their lives.

Then I went onstage.

When it ended, people came toward me, they hugged me deeply, and they told me what the day had meant to them. Then later, the emails arrived.

Years later, apparently still determined to make myself uncomfortable, I joined Toastmasters. One day, when my name was called to speak, I asked for a few brief moments to center myself before going to the podium.

I closed my eyes. Again, I went to the end. This time I heard one sentence in my mind: Wow, you are really good at this. This is natural for you.

I gave the speech and returned to my seat. A man handed me a note. He had written almost those exact words.

Wow. You are really good at this. This is natural for you.

What I did before those two events has become a powerful practice I eventually named Reality Frames. It takes seconds, it extends into every area of my life, and it can change how your day unfolds.

We create the dream and abandon the Tuesday

Years ago, in a corporate job, everyone on my team knew I needed a few minutes alone when I arrived at work. I would close my office door, pull out a journal and look at my day. Meetings. Calls. Conversations. Things I was looking forward to and things I absolutely was not.

Then I would consciously create them.

One morning our sales projections were far off target and the number was mine to fix. The pressure was real. I sat at my desk and wrote that three unexpected clients contacted me that day, each ready to begin immediately.

Then I closed my eyes and lived it fully in my mind and in my heart.

The phone rang. The front desk called back to my office. “Tiffani, there is a client on the phone for you.”

It was someone I had not heard from in months. They were ready to move forward with our service immediately.

Another call came.

Then another.

I remember hanging up after scheduling one new client and hearing the phone ring again.

About fifteen minutes into the workday, all three had been realized.

Here is the important part and it is the part that usually gets missed. It was a Tuesday, and it took just minutes, and I did the same thing before the drive into the office, before the meeting after lunch, and before the conversation I was dreading at four o’clock. I experienced the gym workout in my mind before any physical movement, and always before sending something into the world that mattered to me.

Somewhere along the way I realized how strange our relationship with conscious creation can be.

We will spend months imagining the new career, the relationship, the abundance, the healing, the home, the future version of ourselves. We make vision boards, we meditate, we journal, and we hold these enormous realities in our minds and hearts.

Then we get up and spend the actual day responding to whatever happens.

We consciously create the dream and abandon the Tuesday.

Yet a career is made of thousands of meetings, introductions, decisions, presentations, emails, ideas and conversations. Health is lived through doctor appointments and lab tests. A business is built through campaigns, clients, interviews, pitches, opportunities, negotiations, and countless moments when something could move in one direction or another.

I hold the larger destination and surrender how it needs to find me. I do not need to plan the how. I have learned that trying to control every step can close me off to possibilities that I never would have known to ask for.

But surrendering the route does not mean surrendering my participation in it.

I can frame the result of the presentation before I enter the room. I can experience people responding to a marketing campaign before it launches. I can create the reality of new clients arriving, revenue expanding, or a team becoming excited about what is possible when everyone begins creating the company from the inside out.

I can frame the response before sending the résumé.

I can frame the opportunities unfolding in a meeting before entering Zoom.

I can frame the house selling before the listing goes live, which I just lived.

I can frame joy before an ordinary dinner.

Why would conscious creation be reserved for one enormous desire?

Source is unlimited. Nobody is keeping a tally. There is no clerk at the front desk of the universe flipping through a ledger and saying, “The million dollars? Right. That was your one. Reality stops bending here. Please enjoy the rest of Monday exactly as it comes.”

If conscious creation is real, why would we use it sparingly?

Why not create the moments too?

Reality Frames

I eventually gave the practice a name. Reality Frames.

A frame is a distinct experience within your life. A phone call can be a frame. So can a long drive, an afternoon, a presentation, a workout, an investment, a social event, or anything that holds possibility.

If you can feel yourself standing at the beginning of something and recognize when that experience will end, you can frame it.

The practice is simple. Before you enter the experience, consciously create the reality you choose to step into. Live it in your mind and heart. Feel what it is like to already be inside it. Then enter, leaving room for the unknown to arrive in a form you would never have thought to ask for.

Photographers understand something about framing that I love. Two people can stand in exactly the same place, at the same hour, looking into the same room and create completely different photographs. One catches the tension in the corner. Another sees the sunlight falling across someone’s face. One notices what is broken while another captures two hands reaching for each other.

The frame is chosen before the shutter opens. You frame the shot before you take it.

I began wondering what would happen if we lived that way.

Before the meeting

I once worked for a difficult boss. My body could react simply from hearing him enter the office.

One day he unexpectedly asked me to meet with him. Before I had any information at all, my mind created the experience for me.

What did I do wrong?

I could feel the anxiety taking over and the meeting had not begun. I was already living one version of it. Then I caught myself. I went into my office and closed the door. I closed my eyes and created a different meeting. I experienced the conversation going beautifully. I felt myself leaving his office excited about what had happened. I let my mind and body know a different reality before I walked in.

Then I opened the door and went to meet with him. That day I received a compliment for my work, but the promotion was beyond what I had imagined.

I am fascinated by the fact that the first reality existed only in my mind too. We treat fear as though it is reporting facts while imagination is merely making things up.

Neither meeting had happened yet.

So why was “what have I done wrong” somehow more rational than deliberately experiencing the reality I wanted? That question alone can change the way you move through your day.

What are you putting into your body?

There is another place I use Reality Frames that almost never comes up when people talk about conscious creation.

What we put into our bodies.

I do not put anything into my body or on my body until I fill it with information including food, supplements, medication, and skin care. Before I receive it, I pause and consciously frame what I want that experience to become within me.

If I am about to eat, I hold nourishment, vitality, strength and wellbeing. I see my body receiving what serves it and using it beautifully. With medication, I take what I need and I frame it as I take it, working in harmony with every cell and filling my body with the benefits. Before applying nightly skin care I feel and imagine youthfulness, radiance, and glowing features. It takes seconds.

We spend so much time thinking about conscious creation as something directed toward the outside world. Your body is also part of the reality you are creating.

The day my body remembered

One morning I went to the gym after barely sleeping. My body felt heavy, my legs felt weak, and everything in me wanted to go home. In the rush that morning, I had skipped something I usually do before working out. I normally frame my workout first.

I sat down at the leg press and loaded my usual weight. I struggled. I took weight off. Still weak.

Then it hit me.

I had walked into the workout without creating it.

I opened ALLTRUEistic and pulled up the intention I use around my physical body. The image appeared on the screen, one I had returned to again and again while experiencing strength, muscle tone, flexibility and power.

Before I even started the practice, something shifted. My body knew that image. I closed my eyes and experienced the workout I wanted. I saw the movement, I felt the strength in my legs, and I experienced my body as capable and powerful.

Then I sat back down at the leg press. The weight was too light. My strength had returned. Nothing outside of me had changed. I had not gained another hour of sleep. The machine was the same. My legs were the same legs. Yet the experience was completely different.

I find that extraordinary.

Download ALLTRUEistic for FREE on the App Store and Google Play

Sometimes even I forget

When we moved into a new home, I thought I had everything handled. We got the keys and waited for our furniture to arrive. Then the moving company called and said the truck had never been loaded. They had no idea when our belongings would arrive.

Days passed.

Then a week.

Then another.

I was frustrated, uncomfortable, and completely absorbed in what was going wrong. At some point I had an almost ridiculous realization. I had never consciously created the move.

I had planned it. I had organized it. I had scheduled it. I had worried about it. But I had never actually sat down and experienced the reality I wanted.

So I changed that.

I wrote the experience as already true. I was sleeping comfortably in my own bed. Everything we owned had arrived safely. Our belongings were in the garage. We were unpacking and building a home. It took less than a minute.

A few hours later, the moving company called. Our furniture had just been put on a truck and would arrive in two days.

Longing is different

Recently I caught myself wanting a new opportunity.

I had been spending an enormous amount of time inside the development of ALLTRUEistic and could feel that I needed to reach outward again. I wanted a new connection, a new opening, something unexpected and awe inspiring to emerge.

For part of the morning, I was simply wanting it. Then I noticed that I was longing instead of creating. So I opened ALLTRUEistic and went into an intention I keep for experiences like this one.

I did not choose the person, decide what the opportunity needed to be, or construct the route. I went to the end. I felt the emotion. I saw myself walking through the door at home with a huge smile. I experienced the excitement in my body. I imagined telling my husband the incredible thing that had happened.

Then I went back to work.

A few hours later, an extraordinary opportunity appeared. One I had not planned and could not have orchestrated. As I write this now, I have not even made it home yet, but I already know the excitement of sharing it with my husband.

The part that comes last

There is one more piece to Reality Frames, especially when one experience is bleeding into another. Sometimes you are about to enter the next frame while still carrying the last one.

The argument follows you into work, the meeting follows you into dinner, or the disappointing email climbs into the car with you. Your body enters something new while your mind is still several rooms behind.

That is when I use one breath. I exhale the last frame and then I create the next one.

The purpose of the breath is simple. It makes space for conscious creation. You cannot fully step into the reality you are choosing while continuing to rehearse the one that just ended.

So let it end.

Exhale the last frame. Experience the next one. Then step into it.

Tomorrow, find one

Look at your day and pick a single moment.

Maybe you are sending out résumés. Before you press submit, live the experience of already working in the position you want.

Maybe you want clients. Instead of spending the day wondering where they are, experience the call, the introduction, the email, the moment someone says yes.

Maybe you are walking into dinner with someone you love. Frame presence and connection.

Maybe you are taking something your body needs. Hold it for a moment and fill it with the information you choose before you receive it.

Maybe nothing important is happening at all.

Frame joy anyway and see what the day does with it.

I still hold enormous visions. I still imagine realities that feel almost impossible from where I stand today. I still love the great unknown of asking what else might be possible for us, individually and collectively.

I simply stopped believing I had to wait for something enormous in order to practice conscious creation.

We call these moments small because we can see their edges. Laid end to end, they become a life.

Something happens once you have framed enough of them. The day stops arriving at you and begins answering you. The evidence collects. Coincidence becomes harder to believe in than participation. Eventually the thing you created turns into the least interesting part of the story, because what you cannot stop thinking about is the way it arrived.

Fate is a beautiful idea. So is your own power to create.

There are doorways everywhere. The next one is a few minutes from here and nothing inside it has been decided.

What reality are you walking into next?