# Keep Your Eyes On Your Own Paper By [Michael J](https://paragraph.com/@michael-j) · 2022-03-08 --- Thoughts become things. What you believe, you can achieve. Vision boards. Affirmations. Goal setting. Tony Robbins. Joe Dispenza. What The Bleep. The Secret. Regardless of your preferred “manifesting style”, there’s a few ideas I’d like to share in regards to where you begin the journey. ### 1\. Come as you are. It’s very important, when we choose to consciously create, to do so from a place of **_radical authenticity_**. Meaning that we spend the time to really dive in deep within to figure out what it is that we authentically want to manifest. I say this from my own humility that I will assume most of us have been and maybe still find ourselves in from time to time -- which is a place of **trying to manifest other people’s lives**. Whether this is our parents wishes for us, our friend’s lives we envy, self-imposed pressure we feel from family members, or God help you, some celebrity you worship. Using the external world and the people in it can certainly be useful to find inspiration for our own lives, but it can also produce unconscious **limits**. I say unconscious because these limits are not visible. They exist as “_what you don’t see others doing_” and/or “_what nobody else_ **_IS_** _doing_.” The external world is full of people who say, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”. And guess what happens when, instead of creating exogenously (outside your Self), you create endogenously (from within)? You get to [skip the line](https://www.amazon.com/Skip-Line-Experiments-Surprising-Reaching/dp/0062998927). ### 2\. Trust yourself. The only real, authentic desires come from within us. This is surely more challenging at first; but ultimately, you not only end up with more meaningful value on your vision boards, you’ve also simultaneously built strong “trust muscles” as well as neuronal connections in your brain that reinforce your ability to know and trust _yourself_. And every **single act** of trust builds into an [**atomic habit**](https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits) of trust. ![Image cred to Dani Saveker on Pinterest](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1048280b815e865406f9dedb7a38b28b87ac0700dec3163830f76dca1e1491bc.jpg) Image cred to Dani Saveker on Pinterest Who better to spend time building trust with? ### 3\. Keep your eyes on your own paper. Remember in grade school when the teacher told us to “keep your eyes on your own paper”? My guess is that they were simply trying to teach an 8 year old not to cheat; BUT, look a bit deeper (_seems to be a theme here_), and hidden within that lesson is a message about what really matters in this life . . . It makes no difference what the person next to you writes down for his or her answer. This is **your** assignment to complete. **Your** race to run. You already put [skin in the game](https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Game-Hidden-Asymmetries-Daily/dp/042528462X) when you chose to incarnate onto this Earth dimension. Now play! How your paper compares to someone else’s is no concern of yours. Fill the paper with **your** work. Your concern is to show up every day, no matter what it is you do, write your name at the top of the paper, and fill it with **your** work. Your concern is to share what you have to offer from where you are right now. Your concern is to fall in love with the process, not grade the outcome. > _"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it._ **_It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions._** _It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” -- Martha Graham_ In other words, **KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPER.** --- *Originally published on [Michael J](https://paragraph.com/@michael-j/keep-your-eyes-on-your-own-paper)*