Your expectations act as strange attractors in the personal world. The effect occurs because expectation gives rise to biased observations, and each biased observation means that the fulfilment of the expectation becomes more likely than before. It seems crazy that just altering an observation could alter what is real, but there is solid physics to support the basic principle.
The Physics
As physicist Saibal Mitra describes in a remarkable thought experiment, observation is everything. His technical paper is Changing the past by forgetting. His protagonist is an AI who can effectively undo events in his world by deleting an observation from memory. He observes a planet-killing asteroid inbound. By deleting the observation, he is thereby defined as existing back in a reality where such an event is enormously improbable. Undo reality!
We cannot do that because our brains do not work that way. But the same principle applies when confirmation bias operates. A different observation is made, and a different version of events comes to define the state of the world. It is not, of course, that changing an observation affects the world in any way. It is simply that it alters which version of the next moment you wind up in.
Creative Visualisation
This is the explanation for the unreasonable effectiveness of ‘creative visualisation’. This is the deliberate production of mental images in the mind’s eye, generating something new. As a standard practice in psychology this is a well-known concept, as described in the Wikipedia page Creative Visualisation. It has been shown to be highly effective in managing anxiety and even pain. Dramatic improvements in the psychological state, and even the self identity, are also possible. In athletics, improved performance is well documented.
There is also the idea that producing mental images in the mind’s eye will lead to this becoming real. This is creative visualisation in the new age sense, described in the Wikipedia page Creative Visualisation (New Age). In the personal world this is an inevitable tendency. Repeated visualisation gives rise to mental habituation which generates expectation. This gives rise to confirmation bias, and thus a strange attractor. Thus over time, the reality will likely become more and more like the visualisation.
This is not just because one behaves in such a way as to fulfil the expectation, though of course that may be a contributing factor. The point here is that the biased observations in and of themselves alter the probabilities, so that the expected outcomes are more likely to be experienced. This is how the strange attractors work.
Each biased observation alters the probability, making the future I want to experience more and more likely. As a result, there is ‘positive feedback‘, meaning the tendency is reinforced. Thus whatever one strongly anticipates becomes more and more likely to be experienced. The key point is that each biased observation takes you to a parallel reality in which the desired circumstance is more likely in the future. This version of the world is the one in which my team actually did score a goal, so a win is more likely.
A progression of such shifts means that very unlikely future events may become more and more probable for this individual in their personal world. And this means there are perfectly good rational grounds for the expectation.
Practice
The main way to build expectation is repetition, but there are many practices and techniques. A well-respected resource is the book Creative Visualisation by Shakti Gawain. She describes methods and exercises that are very powerful. This is the technology in detail, the implementation. The only caveat is that her explanation of ‘energy’ should be understood as a purely internal phenomenon.
As she also describes, ‘affirmation’ can work very well. This is simply formulating a description of a desired state in inner dialogue. Then one recites the description of the ideal state to oneself on a regular basis. As quoted on Wikipedia, the famous affirmation by the psychologist Emile Coué was:
Every day in every way I am getting better and better.
Classic simple positive thinking. He also discovered the importance of the placebo effect when he was working as a pharmacist.
As with placebo, the expectation produces the effect. In placebo we have to take the cue from outside, a sham medicine and a smiling, reassuring, confident prescriber. In affirmation and creative visualisation we take direct command of the forming the expectation. Thus one specifically defines the strange attractor. This is the power of the process. This is the logic.
Of course, if you take on something big, and some issues really are big, there can be huge inertia. Just as real world issues can be far from what works for everyone, so too deeply embedded psychological issues can be far from what is desired and intended. So the system may change very slowly. Llike steering a supertanker, the direction is hard to change. The trick is to be the ‘trim tab‘. The trim tab is a mini-rudder on the back of the rudder. That is much easier to move than the whole rudder, but the trim tab turns the rudder and the rudder turns the ship.
Creative visualisation is how you set the trim tab of the personal world for big changes. As your expectation grows, the rudder starts to move, and the course of life begins to change. The extraordinary implication of the logic is that we can consciously and deliberately steer the way our worlds tend to go.
The Secret
There has been a tradition of great secrecy about these ideas in the past. This is seriously misguided. The trouble is a fundamental false assumption. This is the idea that one is interacting with the whole of the ordinary world. This is ludicrous, but very seductive. What an ego trip! But this also carries a terrible threat. What if our opponents get hold of these secrets and start using them against us.
But it does not work like that. The effect operates only in the personal relative world. This alters the meaning of the whole situation. Secrecy is the last thing needed and wanted here. Everyone should know about this. In a society of such individuals, the more people that understand their responsibility the better it is for everyone, in every way, especially including themselves. This is the tragic idiocy of the secret.
The real secret is how to make this work properly. The revelation is that the world is personal, and provided the visualisation is done properly so that expectation builds up, the effect should be significant. Understanding the logic of the relative world fosters expectation in the effect. This can require physiological capacities that have to be developed. Gawain’s famous book is a great help here.
The Unseen Wizard
The timeless myth of the wizard is a poetic depiction of real principles that are fully operational in the personal world. We just have to learn how to pull the sword from the stone. Nothing physical happens. There is no Harry Potter magic. This is just relative-world physics. The key is to understand the extraordinary position one holds with respect to one’s world. You are the wizard behind the curtain.
It means one can steer the path of the personal world, little by little. So life really is a game. And the game is much greater in scope and vastly more involved than we have conceived. Now, finally, it is time to play with a full deck. It should be a lot easier to win now we know what we are doing. By visualising the circumstances we desire we create strange attractors. This biases the sequence of observations in life toward versions of the world in which these desired circumstances become reality.
The next main section is Quantum Karma.