As children, we called it “make believe.” People encouraged us to be imaginative and creative, to fantasize and enjoy. Then, as we aged, the guidance changed. Grow up! Be realistic! “Making believe” became the more serious game of “making beliefs”: judging, drawing conclusions, deciding what’s good and bad, right and wrong. All our emotions and behaviors then follow from the beliefs we create.

Parents, priests, teachers, corporate executives and politicians compete busily to teach us or sell us beliefs so that they can influence our feelings and behavior. They know, and we soon learn, that winning the games of power, both personal and political, depends on what we choose to believe.

Paraphrased, J. Krishnamurti said, “Choice is an illusion. Do I do this - do I do that - all of this is confusion. I can only choose when I’m confused. When I know clearly, there is no choice.” Thirty years ago, Benjamin Libet showed that there is activity in the subconscious within milliseconds before a conscious thought occurs. In other words, our so-called conscious thoughts are given us by our subconscious.

Law of attraction practitioners know the way to attract new romance is to love themselves the way they want to be loved by another. Loving yourself creates a vibrational match for receiving love from the outside. It’s a simple matter of giving yourself that which you desire from another.

But what if you’ve already got a partner in life who isn’t “being all that he can be”? Or maybe your dream-come-true bride devolved into a shrew over time? Can law of attraction help you change someone or improve an existing relationship?

Many deliberate creation experts say you can’t change another person, even with the voodoo power of your mind, because you can’t create on another’s behalf. Which is true. We can’t control what someone else wants, nor what they attract in life. Manipulating another into change isn’t likely to be successful.

We live our lives based in what we believe. When we think about the truth of this statement, we immediately recognize a startling reality: Beyond anything else that we may actually do in our lives, the beliefs that precede our actions are the foundation of all that we cherish, dream, become, and accomplish.

From the morning rituals that we go through to greet the world each day, to the inventions that we use to make our lives better, to the technology that destroys life through war - our personal routines, community customs, religious ceremonies, and entire civilizations are based on our beliefs. Not only do our beliefs provide the structure for the way we live our lives, now the same areas of study that have discounted our inner experiences in the past are showing us that the way we feel about the world around us is a force that extends into that world.