It dawned on me recently that I’ve long taken for granted a process that is innate within me, something I do regularly without realizing that has been the key to creating all that I desire in life: from business to health to relationships to experiences to finances.

It’s a rather simple technique that has allowed me to attract amazing people, opportunities, jobs, clients, travel, money, love and freedom into my life for 20 years and counting.

At the risk of sounding boring or ordinary, I’ve kept it to myself. And then it started happening for a client recently and I realized…there is nothing ordinary about this at all. It allows extraordinary people to do, be and have extraordinary things.

Here’s how it works for me.

When I decide I want something, it’s as though it’s signed, sealed and delivered. It’s locked in my brain as on the way, in motion or in progress. I tend to see this thing vividly in my imagination, a movie if you will, as if it’s unfolding. I picture it randomly while out on a walk, while meditating, or at random moments throughout the day. I play “the movie” in my mind regularly, until it’s my reality, no matter if it’s 5 days, 5 weeks or 5 years into the future.

The earliest memory I have doing this was in middle school playing softball. I’d see the homerun playing out before I ever got up to bat. The actual home runs followed.

Later in life I would see the dream city long before moving to it; the perfect job and salary being offered to me in the long months prior when I was struggling to find work; the travel that would take me to beautiful places I had never been; and ultimately—the love of my life, a beautiful child, the body that gets more fit with age, the coaching practice and the amazing people I’d help, the amazing quality of life and the bank account that grows without restriction or limitation.

On a scientific level, this is the Reticular Activating System (RAS) at work: part of the brain that is responsible for our ability to focus and ultimately, how we perceive the world. A classic example of this? When you have an interest in a type of car and then start seeing that car everywhere, that’s your RAS. The RAS takes what you focus on and creates a filter for it. It also seeks information that validates your beliefs.

So a caveat to this is you must believe that you are worthy of actually having what it is you want. You can visualize and attune to something all day long, but if on a subconscious level you don’t believe you can really have it, you will block yourself from having it. In those instances, subconscious reprogramming with a trusted practitioner can be massively helpful, I can personally attest to this.

Once you decide on something and believe you’re worthy of having what you want, the only thing you need to do is keep showing up for that thing, laying one small brick at a time, until it’s yours.

Sounds simple but this is where most people go off track.

Because things can distract along the way, or a goal or desire starts off strong and loses its luster after a certain period of time passes by.

If there’s something you want, consider it yours, believe it’s yours, and then take tiny action steps forward in faith daily until it all adds up to the thing you want.

In time, the miracle moments, the “of course that happened for me” start showing up as your reality—where you just get to marvel and smile in awe.

Because you are now the co-designer and co-creator of your life vs. a reactor.

And it’s a pretty amazing reality to live in, if you allow yourself to live in it.